Favorite Gelato Flavor of The Week: Nocciolo
Today marks the 31st day since I’ve arrived in Milan and I just received my Certificato di Attribuzione del Numero di Codice Fiscale, which is basically an Italian social security number. Yay! I have officially passed from the ugly tourist into a permanent resident of Milan. AND, more importantly, I can finally fill out the application for the grocery store club card. haha. Discounts!
Perhaps the month-stay has worn off on me somehow cause I’ve been mistaken as a Milanese twice already when using the metro. Since the traffic here is psychotic with their lack of any logical order, most people use the metro. (On a side note, there is literally a traffic block at my intersection every morning with 7 different cars getting stuck by trying to go in different directions at the same time. The other day I literally rammed into the back of a car while crossing the street on a pedestrian light because a car cut behind me and another one cut in front of me then stopped in the middle causing me to run into it – and ya’ll think I’m the bad driver.) Businessmen, grandmas, teenagers in the punk scene and even models during Fashion Week all use the metro. Using the metro is a Milanese way of life. Thus to be asked for directions on the metro by actual Milanese people (and to give them the correct response) is to pass the quintessential Milanese test. And I succeeded. Hooray!
It’s fabulous to be mistaken as a Milanese in Milan – especially considering how the American tourists that do pass through Milan are unbearable eyesores with their obvious eurotrip backpacks and their cargo shorts and tennis shoes walking through the Duomo piazza. It’s almost sacrilegious.
Coming home to Milan though is still a very weird feeling indeed. Living in Milan is a mixed life with its ups and downs. Up: Eating gelato every day and home-made risotto/pasta every night. Down: Commuting on the metro for 3 hours every day and nearly getting run over when not. Up: Being able to say “Maybe I’ll go to Venice this weekend.” Down: Not having a Target or a Rite Aid to buy cheap nail clippers. Up: Getting to know the cute barista at the cafe across the street who knows my drink order when I walk in. Down: Not being able to communicate with the cute barista across the street more than “How are you today?”
Though I do believe the final test that marks the passageway into becoming truly Milanese is getting an Italian haircut.
So I got an Italian haircut.
You know in the movie, Roman Holiday where Audrey Hepburn’s character has really long hair because she’s some Austrian princess and she escapes in Rome and goes to some random hole-in-the-wall salon and comes out with a chic new haircut that becomes the iconic Hepburn do?
This is Audrey with her long hair.
And this is her at the salon with her new super short do.
Very cute, no? And so as we are walking towards the salon, I make a joke saying how funny would it be if I got the Roman Holiday hair cut. It looks great on Audrey but I would walk out of there looking like a very ugly, ugly boy. The girls laughed saying, “oh, haha, that would be ugly.”
-____-
Let’s just say she grabbed my front bangs and just went WACK. I looked at it and was like, hm, I can work with this. This is good. Then when I started to relax she suddenly went back to my bangs and wacked them again making them HALF the length they were just a second ago and then started to WISP them. WHO WISPS BANGS?
Anyhow my mouth and my eyes turned into full O’s in front of the mirror. I couldn’t believe that I actually ended up getting the Audrey Hepburn haircut without wanting it and of course it looked AWFUL. But, certo, to the Italian hairdresser I nodded and smiled and said, “Mi piace, mi piace molto,” while I shriveled up and just died inside. Instead of the Roman Holiday, I got some grotesque mix between the Saw and the Hairspray musical gone very wrong on my forehead.
Imagine this movie cover with my face over Audrey’s.
Then take out the handsome man and the Vespa.
In the end I came home and took out my eyebrow scissors and did the bad-bang-haircut trick: repart and recut.
If a bad Italian haircut doesn’t make me Italian then I don’t know what will.
…Maybe an Italian man and a Vespa.
