Dublin Calling E-Book

Robert Sanasi

• Herausgeber: Robert Sanasi
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 269

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

In November 2007 a young Italian man immigrates to Ireland and starts a new life. He further tells of the experiences, emotions and thoughts that have accompanied him in his process of growth during the fast paced years he lived in what he calls the 'Dublin calling'. A crazy and exciting existential ride full of life, hope, pain, love, sex, friendship, excesses and weaknesses of a 2.0 migrant. He wanted to take back everything, he wanted to experience unpredictability. Chance had finally come...Dublin was calling!

Leseprobe

Robert Sanasi

Dublin Calling

A migrant's Restlessness

First English version, June 2014

Translation by Simona Gauri - www.homosapo

Index

INTRO

Dreaming or awake...?

Real Nightmares

C’est la vie

What’s the story?

Re-calling

Last merry-go-round rides

To the wandering restless souls

and to my brother who continues his struggle

INTRO

Six yearsof my life in Dublin. Six long, crazy, exciting years. In the land of Joyce and Wilde, U2, Guinness, multinational companies and of the many foreigners. And my destiny, written somewhere, was to come here.

From Salento to Dublin. A journey made of love and hate, of everything happens under its sky, sometimes glossy and cloudless, other times irrational and overcast. And in its streets, a little crazy and someway melancholic. Moody, like I am.

So many contradictions and anxieties that have accompanied me over the years. So many emotions and memories I will always keep within. And those I wanted to tell, in one breath, as if they were a long rock song, exactly as I have lived them.

Starting from that day, November 7th, 2007: Ryanair flight from Forlì.

No one had told me that I would have missed the sun so much in Ireland.

“I have nothing to offer anybody,

except my own confusion.”

J. Kerouac

I

Dreaming or awake...?

I read Joyce’s “Dubliners” many years ago for an exam at university and never ever I would expect to find myself in his hometown someday. In modern Dublin. I had dreamed for years to go to Australia, land of sun, and I found myself flung to Ireland, the land of clouds, instead.

I landed in Dublin on one autumn evening, which in Ireland means winter already, and for the first few days I stayed at Giorgio’s place, a friend and fellow countryman who lived with his girlfriend Giulia andanother fellow, Marianna. I first met Giorgio by chance one afternoon in our hometown, Nardò, and he later invited me to Ireland knowing that there, during the economic boom of the “Celtic Tiger”, I would be able find a job and stablepaycheck. An unrealizable dream, in Italy. I arrived in Dublin knowing good English, already, but I immediately hit my head against the terrifying Irish accent. Understanding something coming out from the native mouths was an impossible mission in the beginning. I came from one year spent in Bologna. I had moved there from the Salento area looking for an opportunity to work and live after graduating. All I did was chores and alike tasks as a promoter, which means receiving payments differed by three months. I had spreadmy curricula all over Italy and abroad, with no answer at all. I was called only for sales jobs and estate agencies works. But, I never had the talent of the salesman. Yes, I am eloquent and fluent, but please, don’t make me sell anything. I am not acquainted with the art of convincing others to do something or to goal-oriented jobs including lashing at lunch-break in tragicomic-sitcom style. No, no ,no. I like to deal with people: that, I like. So I was looking for a communication job, as my degree suggested. I like very much to talk, to write, to create images and stories shaped into words.

However, the communication field was too wide or too narrow, according to different points of view. Thick. So, what did I do? I flew to Dublin to seek a jobin a call center. More communicative than that...

After the first week spent at Giorgio’s, I moved in a hostel within walking distance from his place. The dear old “City hostel” in Charlemont Street. It’s in one of the hostel’s corridors that I had a first telephone conversation with Paypal company, for an “Italian Speaker” position in their customer service. The result was positive!

I then managed to get to the final phase prior to an interview with an HR manager, and before that, a written test in Italian and English.

That day I got up in advance to avoid distressing delays that would have only increased my anxiety for what could be - and it was indeed - the most important interview of my life. I took the bus headed to the PayPal headquarters, butit was the wrong one. I found myself at eBay, instead. Fuck, I had been told that the two companies were related and physically close to each other, but it was bullshit. Yes, they were both North of the city, yet not so close to walk from one to the other.

I found myself walking along highways where only cars sped up and there was no one to ask for directions. Then a pious soul appeared, telling me PayPal was quite far from where we were and that I couldn’t possibly get there walking, as this would take a good amount of time and I was in a hurry. I had been summoned for my interview at 9am. It was already 8:50am and I didn’t even know exactly where I was. A taxi was passing by, so I stopped it and jumped in and begged the driver to speed up. Meanwhile, my anxiety was mounting. I got to the company’s hall at 8:58am. Just on time, a little sweaty and gasping, but I was there and ready to assert myself to get the job, which meant much more to me than just a workplace. It was the chance of a new life, the gateway for a new world that I wanted to enter thoroughly. I didn’t want to go back defeated to Italy and with bitterness in my mouth, resume my usual routine of spreading CVs without getting any answers and getting depressed in that existential nothingness. It was time to get serious. I finally had an opportunity. It was in or out, and I felt like a winner. My energy and my will to live were a powerful engine that wouldn’t stop at nothing. I was absolutely resolute.

Before the actual interview, I had to sit this weird writing test in Italian and English, because the position involvedassistance to customers in both languages. Together with me, some peers. There were five or six of us. I started my test. We had half an hour to complete it and answer the questions in both languages. I couldn’t understand one of the questions and I completely panicked! “No, what the fuck”, I thought. “Right now I cannot... What shall I do? What the hell am I supposed to write?”

My mind was blurred, I wasdistressed and only a few minutes were left before the end of the test. I don’t know how, but I began to write something that could someway approach the topic of the question, but I wasn’t much aware of what exactly I was writing; I was like in a trance.A minute later we all delivered the test and I couldn’t remember anything at all about what I had just written. Nothing, I hadn’t the slightest idea. I interpreted it as a divine sign. It wasn’t the first for me, and it would not be the last. I felt something or someone had guided my hands on the keyboard. I had no other explanation.

I underwent the following interview still packed with adrenaline. Yet, I managed to dissimulate it and I appeared just like a relaxed and easy-going guy. My answers seemed good and convincing to my ear. Everything seemed to be fine, still I had doubts about the written test.

A few days later I received the longed phone-call, confirming that the job was mine. I was overjoyed. It was like a daydream: in no time I waspermanently employed in a multinational company and a net salary of about 1700 Euros per month. Furthermore, I was also given a contribution of about 1000 Euros as a transfer indemnity because I came from Italy (things that never ever I could imagine being possible even with my mostfertile imagination). In a couple of weeks I had a job and more than 1000 Euros in a bank account. Me! In Italy, I had never had a current account.

I came from years filled with emptiness, experiential void and dreams ofescape. I had never had a job, no money, and, most of all, no girlfriend. I had to confront myself with growth, with the world outside my country, with foreigners, stranger women, and sex. I wanted to challenge myself. I was still a virgin for life inso many ways. But I didn’t want to die as such. I wanted to bring something with me in the grave, to fill it one way or another. I was ready to suffer, to sleep wherever, to eat whatever, to endure the cold, to suffer lack of friends. I had a precisegoal, and namely to experience life in its unpredictability. I was full of desire to live, yes.

Maybe, things were about to change. The chance had finally come. Dublin was calling me.

In fact, the early days were wonderful, just like when you starta new romance. Everything was new, stimulating, exciting, funny, charming. Everything had an adventurous and romantic aura, as if I were the main character of a film, and I knew how to enthusiastically fit in every situation with a great desire to live,to experience and assimilate that new trip of mine on northern roads. The road, since I read Kerouak’s book, was a constant inspiration to me: to write, to live, to breathe.

Life in Dublin went on fast-paced. And mine sped up consequently. Everythingwas fast. Maybe too fast. I didn’t know whether I would fall, get hurt, and finally get up again. I was jumping on a roller-coaster for a long and amazing ride and that made me feel alive.

My professional debut happened when I was staying at the hostel. Here I had immediately realized that my dream of a new and fulfilling life was shared by so many other guys coming from Italy as well as France, Spain, Eastern Europe, etc. A cauldron of faces, languages, accents, voices and different experiences whichmingled and magnified in the Irish capital city.

The job was somehow stressful but I didn’t mind. With so many young people around we had fun and supported each other. And furthermore it was an international and multicultural environment. I used to go to work with pleasure and enthusiasm in spite of terrifyingly early shifts. I had to get up at 5.30am in order to commute by two different buses and be ready at my desk at 8 o’clock. That was the moment: the “time of your life” you won’t ever forget.

Not to mention the hostel, this gave me important moments of aggregation and socialization. An essential starting point

We all felt close to each other. We shared hopes, fears, expectations and concerns. All of us were on the same boat, sailing a faraway and engaging sea. A primary hub, the hostel.

There, during my half-and-a-half staying, I met people passing and friends who would remain to live with me even after. Real friends, new and important friends like Antonio, who came from a village near Salerno. He was an IT professional. We had checked-in at the hostel on the same day and we had immediately become friends. He had come from Italy with the goal of finding a job and changes his life, as well. He was very nice and made my first buddy. Andwhat adventures we had!

At the same time I began to deal with homesickness in the practical way.

I had immediately started to notice the differences between Ireland and my country. First of all, the annoying lack of the bidet. Even here, as in othercountries, the Italian habit of washing one’s ass after pooing doesn’t exist. Other cultures. The lack of shutters, how we Italians understand them. Blinds never reached Irish shores and in their place there are curtains that apparently only and exclusively serve the purpose of hiding you from nosy neighbors.

I noticed that eating, for the Irish, is often a pure mechanical operation, exclusively meant for the survival of the organism. Here, they can swallow everything edible, be it different kinds ofburgers - typical dish as well as the “chicken baguette” -, and potato dishes. So many potatoes. They are potato junkies, like we are pasta junkies. They also have iron-stomachs that I envy.

Famous “Irish breakfast” is so energetic to result bearable just once or twice per year, and at some month-distance one from the other to allow digestion.

Still, I can’t get over the fact they drink huge glasses of milk while consuming their lunch or dinner. Or, alternatively, sport supplements like Gatorade.This, I just don’t get. Someone should explain to them that such drinks are meant to be consumed only after intense physical activity, not during a meal. Furthermore, I had never seen before toast filled with banana chunks or chips. Tasting overcookedpasta soon became a sad habit.

These are relevant issues to whom the Governmentshould possibly seek a remedy. Perhaps, by requesting some Italian guru to come here and give general training on nutrition for the entire local population. For their sake. For their kids’ sake. For our sake, as we live here.

Nonetheless, there is something good for our taste buds, as well, such as the stew: pieces of lamb or beef in hot broth. And some nice sweets. Obviously nothing getting any close to the Italianlevel. At least in this we are still the best. However, my concept of “good” was gradually changing while adapting to the new lifestyle. Sacrifices of emigrant life.

Then, of course, they send down beer as it was fresh water, every hour of the day ornight. They are different because they grew up differently in a different land. That’s all. Just like any other part of the planet.

But the Irish win for pleasantness, kindness, simplicity, the climate at the office. Not to mention working conditions and salary, which are light-years away from the Italian ones - results are often disturbing. You won’t sleep at night to think of it.

The Irish know how to have fun, they are often in a good mood, they know the “craic” (pure Irish fun) and they are honest, loyal.

If the Government owes you something, you just need to fill in a request and a day later, you get it with no delay or further issues. They should give us some lessons on how to manage in an easier and diligent way public administration andbank services. But the average Italian, that’s known, doesn’t like to be told they’re wrong andwill hardly have the humility to learn from others. That’s Italy.

Also, permanent jobs in Ireland do not apply as they do in Italy. Here, your employer can kick you out anytime for whatever reason and without notice. And good-bye to your permanent position. I have seen cases where people would be kindly accompanied out of the office after picking up their stuff from their desk. In the middle of their workday.

One thing that greatly surprised me in my early days there was that in many homes you could see Padre Pio’s holy pictures. Outside the houses, as well, you could spot them next to the street numbers. Our saint is very well known and revered heretoo.

On the buses, an unpleasant stink could often be smelled. An indecipherable stink. I couldn’t say of which type, only people who smelled it can understand. In the streets, men and women walked in their t-shirts and shorts even at winter and I wasnever able to rationalize how the hell it was they didn’t catch bronchopneumonia. These are mysteries that modern medicine should investigate.

Over the months, I began to feel less and less Italian, yet anything but Irish. I was in that “otherness” identity phase, which every expat experiences sooner or later. A limbo in which you try to keep good things of your home-country, while adding others of your host country. You enter a new dimension as a citizen of the world and of nothingness, if you like. Stateless to a certain extent, but owner of a valid ID.

Weather was cold, the air was so different from the warm and welcoming air of my South. There were severaldownsides, but the excitement of that new beginning helped me overcome them. They stilldidn’t weigh on me. And the scale was all for the best.

The fun we had, hanging out with friends, house parties, Irish half-naked girls, foreign women and the first damned and inevitable sexual cravings caused by such skin in display. A tormented pleasure was to begin and it was meant to last for long.

The city almost seemed normal at day, with professionals’ coming and going from their homes to the offices, people running errands and shopping, city traffic. At night, instead, and not just at weekends, Dublin showed all its indomitable and bewildering madness.

They drink so much in Ireland. This is common knowledge and I can confirm that. Walking through Temple Bar, along Dame Street and Harcourt, you could come across life scenes unknown in Italy. Kids, throwing eggs at passers-by and fleeing in seconds. Drunk brutes and sluts stumbling on the sidewalk, yelling at cars and repeatedly falling down in their walk - which, possibly, complications apart, would take them - home. People bleeding to their face and hands coming from some brawl erupted out of the bars. Little girls dressed as super-models, some posh, some “bad-taste-exhibition”-like walked barefoot in the wet and dirty streets. They would stop crying on stairs of some buildings lacking of compassion for the tragedies which were being consumed on their steps. Masses of kids and young men, their bellies full of beer and alcohol, going around with no shirt in mid-winter while singing hymns, who knows to whom.

Upheaval, a huge mess.That was exactly what I most needed that moment.

If some snowflakes fell down on a Friday night, people seemed to go crazy like dogs and would come out of the pubs, making noise in the streets. Once a guy took his shirt off and pulled out his cock in front of mature women, who were probably celebrating a bachelorette party. One of them didn’t wait to be asked twice and grabbed his cock while the others shot souvenir pictures of the event, perhaps to tell their grandchildren one day. The guy would thenslap her with it on her flanks. Such scenes were as amusing as petrifying for someone coming from a stylish country as mine.

All women, from teenagers to mature ones, went out at night to have fun, to drink and party until morning, so crazy and uninhibited in my eyes. I was still used to the idea of the manageable and distinct Italian woman. In Italy, I was quite shy with the opposite sex, while in Ireland I succeeded in just being myself, more spontaneous, more talkative and that, I really liked. It excited me. I was becoming what I already knew I was, but in Italy, my home, I wasn’t able to exhibit it. My real self was slowly coming out. I was aware of that, and happy.

You have to get out of your fence, for a certain period of time, to understandyourself and the world. I was beginning something like a dimensional path. I traveled every day by bus back and forth to work, I walked in the streets, I hung out by pubs and discos, and meanwhile, I marched within myself to get to my real self, with nofears or inhibitions. That was only possible by living new adventures. On the roads, not in the living rooms. I was hungry for life and emotions like a dog that had beenstarving for days and had been kept at leash for too long. My future had to pay meback the arrears and I was ready to redeem them. That was the time I wanted everything back, everything.

Looking for a house-share was hard, so hard that the chances of success looked equal to a won at the lottery. Dublin was packed with migrants, workers, students who, like me, were looking for an accommodation after lodging in a hostel. I was looking for a home through the internet and after booking an appointment with one or more tenants, I found myself accompanied by another ten, twenty, thirty people who had already applied and given their name, telephone number and nationality on the magic “applicants” paper.I had big doubts on how the choices were being made and perhaps they just chose someone by the sound of their name or by a less or more exotic nationality. In fact, it always resulted in a defeat and for those rooms never came.

I stayed in the hostel until one day an Irish girl, maybe moved by the fact that I had been sleeping in a hostel for more than one month and a half, accepted meat her place and called me to rent a room in a shared tenancy. There were four of us: two Irish girls, a Brazilian and me. All nice, good people.

The house was located north of the river, yet very close to the city center. Mine was a very large room,which was indeed a half of the former salon then turned into a private room. My desperation and desire to have some privacy made me bypass a feature of the house: it was freezing cold!

In the winter, you couldn’t stay in the house without turning theheating on or wear a coat.

You must make sacrifices, we are told so.

At 6.30 in the morning, when I woke to go to work, I realized how north I was and how having breakfast was a daily torture, the shorter the better, to avoid my blood freezing into my veins, shivers - as if I was in a forest - and

repeated teeth rattle. That surely wasn’t among my fondest memories but it is said that what doesn’t kill you strengthens you.

I had been a single for years or maybe more, I couldn’t remember since when.Bad beast is loneliness, nothing to add.

At nightclubs, just passing by women dancing in the crowd and smelling their hair opened emotional chasms and endless adolescent desires for a hug, a contact, a real kiss, not only imagined. I was single, then, shy and insecure enough in dealing with women since I had been a teen, despite an open and fluffy temper. But with women, everything gets complicated.

Until was about 20-25, the years I was expected to have thoughtless fun and make my experiences. Missed by a good lot, instead and it was also my fault. I made up psychological issues that wouldn’t help me get laid back. I know that some mental blocks are hard to die.

Getting out of my country, instead, helped tremendously and I could finally express myself in an extroverted, natural and funny way. I had become “easygoing”, as they say in English.

It was then that I began to flirt with some girls, get some phone numbers and talk to them confidently. I was starting to feel a strong attraction for these northern women with their clear skin, white as milk. I don’t know why. The blond hair and bright eyes made the rest, greatly affecting my carnal desires.

I remember so many times I could hear my roommate “sexercise” with her boyfriend upstairs: thebed squeaking, rhythmical movements and her sweet moans. Good for her, for him, but for me... I was there alone, in my cold bed on a Sunday morning, dreaming white curves and bellies and hands of northern girls willing to do anything to stay with me, a nice Italian guy whose eyes were a different color. I’ve always been a dreamer.

I also remember the day an Irish girl - Deirdre - knocked on the door asking for my roommate. I told her she wasn’t in. She stood ten seconds on the threshold and then walked away. She had a very clear complexion and a soft and sweet voice.

I don’t know why, but a few hours later, while I was in the bathroom, I thought of her and how I would love to grab her instinctively, bring her to my bedroom and make love to her, without her saying a word. I had the most powerful erection of my life. Alas, useless.

We held one of our first glorious house parties at Sabrina’s place, a friend from Naples who lived in a tiny apartment in Jervis Street, not far from the Jervis shopping center. It was so small that the tenants hung bed sheets on a pipe just in the middle of the living-room to dry. Everything was condensed. Next door lived two Irish women that, we would later discover, were prostitutes: they received their customer’s right there,anytime of day and night.

One Saturday evening we organized a party, I can’t remember its purpose, a leaving party, maybe. There was always a leaving party “to join” somewhere in town. The evening was hilarious. At one point we noticed that our Spanish friend, Manola, had kept apart with a guy and they had locked themselves into Sabrina’s room. Of course we were all guessing what they were exactly doing in there. After a while we started to knock the door, yet no answer. The party was almost finished and many had left their jackets, handbags and belonging into the room, so they were getting nervous. We knocked on the door again and still nothing, after two hours or so. Sabrina couldn’t find the key to unlock the door from the outside. Eventually, a guy who had joined the party stood up and defiantly claimed: “I found the key, eh”.

When he went to open the door, the two of them were trying to quickly clothe themselves and considerable embarrassment could be seen on their faces.Kid stuff...

Other parties followed at a dizzying speed at a friend’s house or at places of people we didn’t even know. They were friends of friends of acquaintances or onlookers... who knows! We crashed parties all the time looking for fun, alcoholand maybe pretty girls to approach.

At the place of our Belgian friend, Benjamin, there was a very nice party, worth being remembered for Antonio’s heroic deeds. During that party, he gave his best to create a hot atmosphere. It’s worth a note in a book.

Antonio was the best person you could bring to a party. His inbred and spontaneous pleasantness made us getright to the core of the party and he quickly became the main character of it.

A little alcohol was enough to ignite him as fuel does to fire and he was ready to explode in the typical attitudes of every party that could boast the adjective of “wildest”.

He would start with imitations, ongoing jokes, proclamations to the audience, colorful expressions and nonsensical stories that always ended up having something to do with sexual organs of boys and girls. It was a real show! A free show for the ones lucky enough to assist him. One time, he kissed two girls in the same evening, same party, and same house. Then, he would come up to meand say things like: “Mate, I’m a little drunk; I kissed two different girls, fuck! What shall I do now?”

Then he would disappear. I saw him again at the end of the evening, when he rushed out and threw up. The party was over and people were leaving. Few of us stayed with him as we noticed he was in pitiful conditions and wasn’t surely able to get back home alone.

Sabrina eventually took charge of him and accompanied him to her place. He slept there and when he awakened the following morning, he didn’t’ even realize where he was. In fact, he texted me something like:

“Mate I woke up in a house but I don’t know whose house is this... Holy crap, I can’t recall anything!”

I smiled.

Antonio was my representation of Neal Cassidy in “On the road”. To seehim in action was an expression of all our joy of living in those years - the last of our twenties - which we wanted to grab and not to let go of for anything in the world. He had a fertile intelligence and he knew how to capture the nuances in each situation. By eachcurl of his hair a new thought seemed to be born every moment, so swarming and crackling that it couldn’t wait to come up, materialize, go public and manifest, and possibly make some damage in the end. He soon fell in love with a Spanish girl of our party. I remember we met Arantxa during the very first trip to Belfast of our new group. Same-day round-trip via bus. It was Antonio, his new flatmate Alessandro, me and some other foreign guys: from France, Belgium, Spain, and Czek Republic.We went to visit the famous murals that divided the two parties in the city, the Catholics and Protestants. We then caught a tourist roofless coach for sightseeing the town and we could taste the typical climatic conditions of those places: so much cold, wind and rain that we ended in swearing, as usual, in our peculiar dialects.

While we walked in the streets we were talking of that Spanish girl, Arantxa indeed, who wore boots with images of cute animals on them.

“The Spanish girl is pretty, isn’t she?” someone said.

“My, yes, pretty. Those boots, though... are quite childish”, Antonio added.

Some guys of the group - me included - came back at night by bus, after some drinks at the pub. Some others stayed longer.

At that time, my first foreign girlfriend arrived. The mere fact she was a stranger turned me on, as it often happens to those who are exploring a new and strange world. I was very excited. She was Dutch, Candice. Blonde, short hair and eyes blue like the sea of Salento (that’swhat I used to tell her to make her smile). I met her in abus, one afternoon in December.

She was sitting next to me and I asked her where she came from:

“Holland”, she said.

“Oh, ok, from where exactly?” I asked her again.

“From the South”.

“Oh,I come from the South as well, of Italy though. Maastricht by chance?”

“Wow! Yes, exactly. How did you guess?” She replied in amazement, and in perfect English.

I told her that I had “applied” for a job right there earlier, when I still lived in Bolognaand I had been impressed by the town. A small coincidence, which surprised the pretty young woman and made her smile. My approach seemed to succeed and be a harbinger of positive implications.

“I’ll get off next stop,” she said.

Oh, me too. My hostel isnot far from here, I can walk a bit” (that was a lie; my hostel was at least 20-minutes walk from that bus stop...)

We got off the bus and I immediately asked for her cell phone number, so as not to give her the chance to say good-bye and run away.

“Hey,if you wish then we could catch up for a drink in the coming days, perhaps next weekend. What do you say?”

“Yes, sure. This week-end a friend of mine from Holland is coming to see me, though...”

“Ah, I understand. But let’s meet up all together then...I can ask a friend of mine to join us, so the more we are the better, no? Give me your number if you please.”

“Ok, it’s fine!”

I took her number and we suggested meeting during the week-end. That, I really hoped. I dreamed of it. And I made it.

Firstdate: a disaster. She was with a friend of hers who had come from the land of windmills and therefore I asked Antonio to come and support me in a match Italy-Netherlands in neutral field, years after the semi-final won on penalties at their home.

We were enthusiastic, doping level. But they were, no less, a clash to be fought until the end.

We met at a pub, first, and Antonio, less shy than me, made friends immediately. He pulled out his camera and started to shoot pictures. The girls seemed amused,yet a bit scared or surprised by such passion and Italian verve.

Often cultural differences among Southern people and Northern people are very clear.

We talked a bit, I can’t remember about what. Besides the usual questions like “Where are you from exactly?”, “What do you do here?” and similar stuff, I can’t imagine what else we should have talked about. The two of them then decided to move to a nearby place, a club where we had never been before, probably for the fact that the entrance cost itself 15 Euros. For them, it was normal.

Antonio and I stared at each other: “Fuck... Fifteen Euros?! Okay, let’s sacrifice!” we said.