What I Live In

This is the main door for the building.
The name of my street is on the wall in the upper left - via Indipendenza
The building number is in the upper right - Number 4.
Ironic?

This is my street. Those are scooters.

I rent a room in an apartment. The apartment belongs to Dr. Michele Caruso. He used to live here with his family but moved to a new place further from downtown and now rents out the rooms individually, mostly to students due to its proximity to downtown, the buses, and the schools of Economics, Business and Management. I ended up here because Lothar is friends with Michele and got me a good deal. The building is a four minute walk from my office if I hurry, eight minutes if I stroll, and fifteen minutes if I stop for a macchiato and brioche at any one of the dozen or so cafes between here and the office.

My building is behind the van. My room is at the very top.

The apartment is a fifth floor walk-up in a five story building. The building itself is quite old and was constructed over the ruins of a Greek cemetery that dates from the 6th century. Those ruins can be viewed through glass walls at street level. I already take them for granted. Michele renovated the entire space when he lived here with his family and is now quite modern by local standards. Don't tell anyone, but I have my own wireless signal even though all my roommates pay a share of the bill. It just turns out that none of them have a computer. I also have air conditioning in my room. And to top off the luxury, we have a refrigerator that could be called extravagant by European standards, and a fairly large washing machine.

Left-side of kitchen with view of extravagant refrigerator.

Washing machine in upstairs bathroom.

Upstairs bathroom.

1/2 of downstairs bathroom.

Other 1/2 of downstairs bathroom.

The main entrance opens directly into the middle of long, narrow hallway which runs the entire length of the apartment. All of the rooms open onto the hallway from one side or the other. The kitchen is at one end, on the same side and to the left of the front door. The girls' bathroom is at the opposite end of the hallway from the kitchen. Michele keeps a room in the apartment. It's the former living room but he keeps it locked when he isn't here so there isn't a communal gathering area outside the kitchen/dining room. Deborah's room is next to the kitchen and across from Michele's room. Alice's room is next to mine and we are at the end near the bathroom. Raimundo lives upstairs and that is also where the second, boys' bathroom/laundry room is. We don't have a dryer so everything is line dried.

The long narrow hallway.
Notice the doors that open onto it just like I described.
You're looking from the bathroom down to the kitchen.

Right-side of kitchen.
It has a door that opens onto the hallway.

My room used to be the parent's room and is the largest. It's yellow and has 15 foot ceilings. For some reason, I am the only one with my own TV in my room and it has fifteen channels of basic Italian cable. (I've now seen the same Simpsons episode in English, French and Italian. They also aired all 6.5 hours of the men's world championship road race live.) The exterior wall of my room is all windows and a glass door that opens onto a very narrow, largely non-existent balcony. It's west facing so receives plenty of light. It also faces one of the main streets used to leave downtown. It gets fairly busy and can be quite loud. Especially on garbage day when they are emptying the dumpsters right beneath my window. The room came completely furnished. Alice's room was the daughter's room and is pink and Deborah's belonged to the son and is green. Raimundo's room was added on during the renovation and is built into the rafters. The entire apartment has custom granite floors with different stone in each room. There is a balcony off the back of the kitchen that is used for smoking and looks over a courtyard that is surrounded on all sides by other apartment buildings which makes for nice smells at dinner time and interesting people watching. There is another, much larger patio on the the roof of the building with amazing views of the city and the port.

My bed.

My room furniture. My TV.

Rooftop patio.

Another shot from said patio.

Right now I'm reviewing my Italian lesson from today and struggling to make my mouth pronounce "un cameriere" (waiter) and "imparare" (to learn).

I wonder what Eric is doing right now.