Superlative housing

If you ever want to master superlative of adjectives in Italian, I advise that you try to look for a house in Rome (and I suspect it might also work in other Italian towns).

Finding a place to stay was naturally the first priority upon arriving to the eternal city, and it took us only a few hours of browsing rent postings to understand that no housing announcement is complete without a generous amount of absolute superlatives. A room must be bellissima and rifinitissima, independently of its bare stained walls and furniture gathered from great-grandmother's house or a waste collection site; no matter if it measures 1x2.5m, it's definitely spaziosissima; and even if you have to walk for half an hour to get to the nearest stop of a randomly passing peripheral bus, it's collegatissima and centralissima. An oxymoron brings in a distinctive added value: my favourite one was mezza luminosa ma senza finestra - half luminous but without a window. Aha. 

Househunting in Rome: not this place, it has crumbling walls and too much draught

Luckily enough, we found a nice couchsurfer who hosted us the whole first week, while we dug through the hundreds of house rent announcements and drowned in desperation faced with bellissimi luminosissimi prison cells, AND who also took us to try a pizzeria that won some kind of national competition among pizzerie.

Award-winning pizza: an honourable start of my Italian chapters

And at the end, possibly with some supreme force intervention (the vicinity of the Vatican, perhaps?) we managed to get a place with none of those scary superlatives, but one which is nice and homey. I mean, how else would you explain the coincidence that my dad happens to have one work colleague in Rome, who has a boyfriend who happens to own a flat in Rome, and that both of whom happened to be moving out of that flat into a new house just the week when we arrived... seriously?!

Thus we elegantly inherited their place, including their flatmate-friends: one has a red beard and the other one researches medieval tombs, and their presence definitely helps my Italian progress.

Moving in...

... aaaaaand we're home!

Our new kitchen seems of Mary Poppins, equipped with every instrument you might possibly think of (except for a garlic press), in triple quantity. After some five years having, at best, sparsely equipped kitchens, it seemed like entering a nirvana, and we adequately took advantage of all that wonder.

Bloody Mary vs spritz

All ready for exploration now!