Storytime: An Italian man beefs with a little girl from NE

Hellooooooooo everybody!

Long time no see… I know. I swear I am constantly thinking about writing and posting, but I am so busy sometimes that I can’t muster the energy to put some personality into a post. Right now I conveniently have a spare moment to write so lucky us! I’m sitting in the lobby of my Berlin hostel waiting for a pickup from the girl I’m traveling with, Andrea’s, family member that lives here. Apparently, they have a house on the lake somewhere on the outskirts of the city and we’re going to have a lake day… not completely sure at this point. I just go where I’m told to go.

I promised I would post about the angry Italian man from my Sevilla, Spain hostel that hated air conditioning, so this will be that. In hindsight, it isn’t as interesting as I made it out to be. I think that’s just because I don’t really care anymore to have strong emotions about it. I’ll tell it anyways, though!

What happened was that I was in a 12? 14? Person dorm. I can’t remember that specifically, but it was a large dorm room in Sevilla. I met some girls in my room and spent most of my time with them, so it wasn’t horrible. I was top bunk of the beds in the corner of the room and no one slept under me for a day until this man came and was assigned to the bed under me. The usual small talk occurred - I got his name (I don’t remember) and now know he is from Sicily. That is all we had to say to each other.

For context, Sevilla is HOT. In my opinion, worse than midwest hot. With that being said, I am a curly-headed girl that is practically allergic to heat. Air conditioning is my savior in times like these. And let me tell you, that room could get COLD if you wanted it to! All you had to do was go to the lobby and ask them to change the temperature. This is where I became familiar with Celsius.

The first night with the man sleeping under me was great! Chilly room in the middle of summer heat and black-out curtains and zero problems for me! However, this Sicilian man did not like that cold room and made sure everyone in the room knew the next day. His complaints were along the lines of “everyone was using their comforter!” and my response, sassy as ever, was “I think that’s what they’re meant for.” I don’t think that’s the response he wanted.

Now this is where my lack of knowledge on the conversion from Fahrenheit to Celsius comes in. This man went to every. single. person. in the room and demanded that we not change the temperature to anything under 25 Celsius. The ignorance in me went “ok…” and didn’t think much of it. Let me tell you! 25 Celsius is 77 Fahrenheit! I can’t sleep in anything above 68 Fahrenheit. So when I tried falling asleep in THAT, I was not having it. I could not find salvation for the life of me.

Fast forward to the next day, everyone wakes up drenched in sweat and two new girls enter the room. They literally said to our faces “It’s so goddamn hot in here.” Like yeah, girl… I know. Since these two girls had no knowledge of the stupid agreement we all made with the Italian man the day before, they happily trotted downstairs and changed the air conditioning to a reasonable setting. This Sicilian man did NOT like that. He had walked into the room while we were getting ready to go to a Flamenco show. What he said simultaneously made me chuckle and fume:

“Hello little penguins how is your igloo?”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Whatever. I’m going to get that on a hat or something.

When he walks into the room and says this, he has a girl trailing behind him. I say “Do you know each other?”

“This is my girlfriend from Sicily.”

Sigh.

So we (Franchesca and I) leave the room and try not to think about the penguin comment. I mean, penguins are cute but how about sticking a cannoli somewhere where it hurts, buddy. Later we come back to find my shoes (which were nicely laying in the corner) placed in random parts of the room. Odd, I think. Then I noticed the way he strategically placed my shoes in a way that a lot of the doors would stay shut. EW. Also, use your own shoes.

A few additional things to note about this man:

• He had not showered for the entire week he was there

• Wore a fedora

• Snores

• Heard him using his electronic razor one morning (the morning right before his girlfriend came into town) but exited the bathroom… beard unshaven. How appalling!

When we had re-entered the room to find my shoes all over the place, we also notice the temperature had gone up… drastically. So I marched my little Nebraskan butt down to the lobby and asked them 1. What temperature the room was at and 2. Not to let anyone put the temperature above 22 Celsius. A happy and REASONABLE compromise! When this man checked what our room was at…. This guy changed it to 28 Celsius. 82.4 Fahrenheit. Hell to the NO. So I changed it back to 16 Celsius because now I’m mad and want to be able to enjoy myself despite his efforts to stifle my good time.

Fast forward a few hours. I’m falling asleep… the world is good again… I’m dozing. The man gets up. He walks out of the room. Franchesca and I are texting.

F: Did it just get hotter

Me: I think maybe it did

F: I’m legit getting hot now…

Me: Boiling.

Yup. He left to change it again. I pick my battles so I left it. Pissed off, but I left it. Fast forward once more… it’s maybe 5AM. I wake up to the girlfriend jumping down from her bunk and hobbling over to ours. Getting in the bed below me. And then having a FULL conversation at FULL volume with that… gross, gross man. And then doing whatever they felt they had missed out on when they were apart. You can imagine my horror. And anger.

One thing about me, luckily, is that I can sleep through ANYTHING. I once slept through an entire Rascal Flatts concert just because I wanted to hear Life is a Highway and nothing else. So this was easy to ignore. Just annoying.

The next day the two of them leave and I have plenty of rage in my body to last a lifetime. (This rage only really lasted maybe a week in hindsight.) You’d think I had enough emotional turmoil from this alone, but I was only fueled more on the last day as I was literally found stranded on the border of Spain and Portugal. Something like this would only happen to me. ONLY. ME. A story for another day, though.

And at the end of the day, I’m Olivia. I’ll figure it out! You live and you learn. Sorry if it wasn’t that interesting. Guess you had to be there!

Plenty to update on so I’ll try to keep them coming today 🙂

Liv