House hunting

by Yoldyz Khaliullina (Russia)

A leap into the unknown Italy

For the first time ever I was crying bitterly in front of my friend. The phrase of a young Italian woman was pounding in my head: “There is nothing for you”. No rooms, no apartments, nothing. We came in full confidence that they would take care of us, as was written in the letter. We were calm, cheerful and impossibly careless. We agreed to a room-box in an industrial area, smelling of marijuana, and to a hostel-den on the other side of the city, where some drunken man was sleeping on one of the beds during showing of the room! We were ready for anything. But somebody beat us. It seemed there was a real fierce war for rental housing in the streets of Bologna. Scattered on the ground shards of bottles and debris on square of Giuseppe Verdi after a tumultuous weekend strengthened that impression. I made hundreds of calls during that morning. I think I learned all the Italian phrases about renting accommodation, although I didт’t even know Italian! Uselessly. Never before I was left homeless. Before that day we had often seen at sunset how migrants dragged out mattresses under the galleries, of which almost completely consisted the center of Bologna, and prepared to sleep on the street. We had seen how they were kicked out of the station after three o'clock in the morning, if they hadn’t had tickets. But I had never thought that we would be ones of them. The sun was burning the skin, it was difficult to concentrate. At some point, all the offers were gone. Immediately. And it was only noon. - "I can’t find at least some hotel, everything is already booked everywhere," - I went through the list of hotels. My neighbors in the library were angry at me demanding silence. The library was located in an old magnificent building, with huge arched windows, and with all the benefits of modernity inside. But at that moment we couldn’t appreciate the beauty of the local libraries of the city-university. - “I called other hotels, but they can’t accept you,” - the hotel manager only made a helpless gesture, like the others. - “We need to pick up things and go ... somewhere,” - I already had a stomachache from hunger, and the day was drawing to a close. During these two crazy days we had no time for food or anything else. The Italian looked at our tear-stained faces. “- Chinese students will arrive only tomorrow, you can spend the night here,” he put out his cigarette, - “One night”. At that moment we didn’t care about the smoke from cigarettes, which entangled the apartment, smells, tightness and stuffiness. We had place to sleep! All night long I was continuing to write and call hotels and apartment owners. My friend was looking for tickets to Russia. Our mothers somewhere in a distant and cold Russia were arguing about our fate in Italy, and no one could make a decision. That night I barely slept and already at six in the morning I opened the e-mail again. I received an answer to only one of the hundreds of letters. After a couple of hours, we were near the central towers of the city of Bologna, known as Due Torri. One of them was so skewed that it seemed to be about to fall on us, and the second one, straighter, went far into heights. - “Is this the correct address?” - We both were walking in circles, looking for the street called San Vitale 1. We found a dark door on the side of the small third clock tower, right behind Due Torri. It was our new home, just for a week, and there was no hot water and it shuddered from any noise outside. But it was a real home! In front of us were the Maggiore square and the whole historical center. I finally saw all the charm of the city of galleries, red roofs and slanting towers. And the last thing I could expect was that we would live in one of the towers, like princesses! That was the beginning of an unforgettable journey through diverse amazing Italy.