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Diary 2013

26.12 @ Scarlatti Garage concert in Torre del Greco - I have a bit criticised the choise of the new single from the new Album, as I was more oriented for the easy-listening of "Dimentica l'America". But "Il Freddo Addosso" is not only a good one; it is better representing the latest shift of the band to a more impacting and angry rock sound. It is a good choice, the best one.

21.12 Trauzeuge - I am proudly the Best Man of my friend Matthias

Yes I have followed The Voice of Germany, yes I like this song and I have liked this moment

23.11 @ : Most of my internet activity during these weeks is about Lou's legacy. This is a kinda lost VU song, I guess never recorded in studio by the VU, here covered by Dean & Britta (from the '13 Most Beautiful... Songs For Andy Warhol's Screen Tests' soundtrack).

05.11.2003 - 05.11.2013 10 years of Magic

Timeless Noise

Saperlo in qualche modo presente ad occupare uno spazio fisico nel mio stesso spazio fisico mi dava sicurezza, non so come dirlo, ed avverto un senso di solitudine adesso. Ma la sostanza, anima, universo che conosco ed in cui e con cui mi muovo, che Lou contribuisce ad illuminare e modellare, sempre la’ sta’, sempre dentro di me e’, nelle azioni che compio e nelle gioie che vivo.
Qualcuno che amo mi ha detto che Lou lo sa e ne e' contento, ed io ci credo.
Knowing that somehow he was occupying a physical space in my same physical space gave me a sense of security... I do not know how to say it... and now I feel a sense of loneliness. But the essence, the soul, the universe that I know and in which and with which I move, that Lou helps to illuminate and to shape, is still there, always inside of me, in the actions that I make and in the joys that I live.
Someone I love has told me that Lou knows it and and is happy about it, and I believe it is true.

Upon my return from holidays, I was so enthusiastic to start again with my habits and routine....but this is the surprise that I've found: my gym closed for insolvency! One can hardly guess that things like this happen also in Germany nowdays.

It is the end of an Age for me, so used I was to that little walk through Kastanienalle, that little time in the Kulturbrauerei. I have just found (after a little Via Crucis) a replacement. I hope this new place will work (and I am confident it will after the first visits that have positively impressed me), becoming important and good part of the autumn/winter season in front of us (the Berlin's romantic season) - after a summer full of Sun still alive in our memories.

Sardegna! (8-27 September 2013) #Murávera or Muravéra?#Porto Cervo Marina#La Pelosa beach#Montalbano#Napoli vs Borussia Dortmund#Alghero#Vento di Maestrale#Arcipelago della Maddalena#Incredible blue sea#Napoli vs Milan (@ pizzeria Dante in Porto Cervo...)#my 39th birthday#Marco & Mariangela & Lara#Rossopomodoro#The little port of Stintino#The boar!#The beach of Capriccioli#etc... And we stayed @ www.4mori.it - www.lapelosetta.it - www.bougainvillae.com

It's been great to have some of my Italian colleagues and my friend and mentor A. here in Berlin during the first week of the month. The office has been extra-populated and noisy and the evenings have been relaxed, hilarious and cheerful, like the good old times in Rome.

I am spending these splendid sunny days of mid August in Baden-Württemberg with Regine, M.L. and C.. I feel very good here. Pics: Herrenberg 1 - Herrenberg 2 -Herrenberg 3

04.08 @ posted on Derrick Fanclub's page. QUIZ: Welche Zimmernummer hat das Büro von Derrick? What room number has the Derrick's office? (solution is: 311)

Swimming at the Liepnitzsee, Pizza, BBQ, Karaoke: starting August with the right attitude.

24.07 @ : If you ask me where I come from... I come from a place where people are able to write things like this

11.07 @ : When I think about this song I think of this picture, and viceversa.

I had to wait a few months...but finally this was the perfect time to redeem my 2012 birthday's present.
A trip to Warnemünde, a sunny day, with Regine and ... Anna and Ugo! in this beautiful little city on the Baltic Sea during one stop of their cruise through the Nordic Countries.

Japanese food is after me this month. But this time with very good intentions: Nagashi-Somen, home made Sushi, BBQ and good company at the birthday party of my Japanese friend M..

Hey, it looks like I managed to embed my 'Gfont' on my website! Thanks to Johannes T.

Well, I've tried. Too extreme for me, sorry. (Sushi)

The Ping Pong season has just began... and these on the right are 2 of the public places in Berlin that I visit more often, at Weinsbergpark and Arkonaplatz. There are so many free ping pong tables that one can discover in Berlin; they're mapped at a Worldwide level at pingpongmap.net, where we've recently submitted registration for the one that has been for long time our place in Rome...

Berlin-by-the-(Wann)See I like complaining and I am so conservative sometimes. But Regine is so patient and she is often pushing for something new to do or to see. This time was the time for me to discover something about the beautiful Berlin' surroundings: the Wannsee lake (beautiful) and the Strandbad Wannsee, an open-air lido which was probably built without a great sense of aesthetics but is very efficient, practical, essential and affordable... very German. We have spent a beautiful day and have enjoied, for the first time this year, the pleasure of walking barefoot on the sand, of lying down on the beach, feeling at the Se(e)aside. Some more pics.

Gnocchi night! We invited some of our friends to spend an evening together in our apartment on Friday 10.05. With the gnocchi coming directly from Naples, from the family pasta company of my mother's uncle, I prepared 'Gnocchi alla Sorrentina' for 10 persons (which was a real challenge), and Regine made antipasti and Tiramisu' for everyone. Friends, multiple cultures, food, wine: I like this things

...Inn Berlin @ Zionskirchstrasse, latest arrivals

(Flashback, 1993) This is a story about betrayal and about falling in love.
I went out for a date with Bono and U2 at San Paolo stadium in Naples...and there I met Lou Reed, and I fell in love.

07.05 ... but instead the weather was fantastic! Three full days of sun and warm temperatures, and we could enjoy the places and the holidays of my relatives in the best possible way. I hope they had a good time, like we had. And everytime I meet them I realize how lucky I am to have such fantastic parents. And my previous post, below, will remain as a witness and example for me on how useless and wrong it is to worry about things that have not yet happened and that anyway I can't change.

02.05. My parents and my aunt will come to visit us in Berlin these days. And obviously the sky is turning from that sort of shy and pale blue to gray. I don't think I can stand another 'Berlin spring/summer weather' like the last one...
"...maybe I should get a farm in southern France, where the winds are wispy and the villagers dance..." (Modern Dance, Lou Reed)

Post Scriptum. 77 consecutive days! ended on 31.04 (this is a sort of a coded message)

25.04 Element of Crime concert @ Lido Berlin. One cool evening.

YelLou!!! Now in my living room.

16.04 Temperatures are rising, finally, also here in Berlin. We've had a sunny weekend (that most of the people here have defined 'wonderful'...), but this morning it started raining. It's anyway warmer, we've had lunch and dinner outside after many months and we start feeling confident that Spring is here (or somewhere near) or that, in any case, Winter stands now behind us being defeated also this year.
Doesn't seem that big news, I know. But sometimes one needs to redefine the scale of values his life.

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March 2013

March 2013 has been concluded in Herrenberg, swimming, walking, eating, being lazy, visiting friends and the Ritter Sport Museum....and spending Easter time with Regine, P., C. and M.L. ... Peace. Another icon has disappeared. Franco Califano has given me good emotions with some of his songs. Introduced by my Indian friend C., I am attending some of the events organised by Internations in Berlin.

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We love singing. Me, Regine and friends singing and having fun at Monster Ronson's Ichiban Karaoke. And me and Regine repeating this last Saturday, with 3 hours of non stop singing, countless songs and just one drink each: challenging people like the Rolling Stones or the so called great performers who would have at least asked for a bit of more alcohol.

Strike a pose! My friend and former German teacher S. is photographer, and she asked me to pose for a project she is working at on immigrates living in Berlin and their stories. And there I was, like a movie star, in one of my favourite bars (Hilde) which so much represents my first intensive times in this city.

04.03 Tzunami something. I am in Italy these days for my brother's birthday. There is a Tzunami something going on here and who knows if this could be a right path to salvation. Just after reading the political election outcome last week I felt desperate, afraid, incredulous. But warm, hot blood doesn't help a good thinking. The bunga bunga part is still strong. It exists, you cannot kill them. But it could be made powerless now. And the other part is stronger, but disunited. I hope they will be able to make the right choices.
PS. One year ago my idol and guiding star left our World. Lucio Dalla is up there now, where I look at.

This one is the most dangerous period here in Berlin. First glances of sun and all the desperate people after a 5 months of grey sky invade the streets. And you are tempted to go out and enjoy the light. But it's cold. Damn cold! And you get a cold.

Bildungsurlaub! (11.02 - 15.02.13)
One week intensive Deutschkurs @ GLS Sprachen Zentrum in Berlin. An entire week all for myself, immersed in a high school feeling and environment, and with my mind focused exclusively on learning and enjoying at the same time.
It has been fantastic!

ROMA. I have spent some few days in Rome at the beginning of the month. It was the occasion to see again some of my old friends/colleagues and the Urbe. The lights of Rome are always taking me, I don't know, there is something special in that brightness during the day and the atmosphere of the city center at night. I remember I wanted so much to go to live there, I said to my cousin that I would have accepted every job that would have been offered to me just to be and live there. In Rome. Sometimes, during those 10 years I had been daydreaming of living in a city that was there since thousands years. Actually, the feeling was that it had always been there. Still today sometimes I close my eyes and think of Rome, especially of those warm summer nights in Rome wearing my shorts and walking through the old town streets, especially of the bright sky and colours of the EUR. Rome is my second hometown. I have lived there for 10 years. While Naples is the city where I was born and where I grew up, Rome is the city I choosed at a certain point of my life. It is like family, that you love but you did not choose, and wife/partner, that you love and did choose. But me and Rome we never really divorced or split. It is just that things sometimes go in a direction that you cannot forecast, or they simply do not last forever (only Rome seems to do), or that every now and then I need a change, move away, leave things and persons behind me and try something new. But I will always love you Rome.
I am sitting in my room and watching outside the window. It's snowing here. Looks cold and white. I find the scenery very romantic. And solitary.

(Flashback, some time ago) Me and Max in Berlin This picture was taken more than one and a half years ago. I like it, and wanted to post it sooner or later, but I forgot. Accidentally I have seen it again on my desktop, and here it is finally. It is me with Max Raabe, and it was taken in Metzer strasse, just outside the building where we lived. It reminds me of the first times in Berlin. PS. I went to that concert in the Waldbühne.

Jules Winnfield!

After the short conversation with Reservoir Dogs' Mr. Orange in June 2010 (a.k.a. Tim Roth), my occasional encounters with Tarantino's characters continue. This time there was no great conversation, but I've been just few meters away from Pulp Fiction's Jules Winnfield (a.k.a. Samuel L. Jackson), Inglourious Basterds' Col. Hans Landa (a.k.a. Christoph Waltz) and Django Unchained's Django (a.k.a. Jamie Foxx). And I saw Tarantino too, from longer distance though. ... I am so lazy, we were in Potsdamer platz the other evening, I only wanted to go away since we had decided to have dinner at home. Regine had to insist 'come on Gianni, don't you want to have a look?. They must be around here, I hear people screaming'. So we went. I was happy we went. It's always like that, Regine always needs to insist with me. I am too conservative, she is the explorer in our family... It was at the Berlin premiere of "Django Unchained". They were on the red carpet signing autographs. I wasn't able to catch their attention, though I was waving my hands and almost breaking my sternum again reaching out from the protection fence. I guess Jules noticed me, even for just a second, I crossed his look: I felt awe, really, for that second. He does not need to point a gun on you in order to scare you, that look is enough. "Jules Winnfield!, our man in Inglewood." I took some shots of this encounter, bad pictures. But the red carpet is clearly visible.

One important note. Schrippen sind teurer geworden! Local 'panini' here in Berlin have become more expensive from January. That's what I've just learned as I bought some at the usual backery 'round the corner before coming here where I sit now, at the table by the great window of one of my bars 'round the same corner between Kastanienalle and Zionskirchplatz. Last year schrippen price was 20 cents each, now is 23 cents.

Cornflakes and classics

Christmas Holidays in Naples, and I'm having breakfast every morning with the movies of Toto' and Vittorio De Sica, thanks to local TV channels which transmit these classics all day long. Wonderful.
Actually I have muesli for breakfast, not cornflakes. But the title sounded better that way, "cornflakes and classics", a Bernie Taupin quote from Elton John's "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy".

PS. My Timeline (the original one, not that cheap social network stuff) is now updated with year 2012, a good year.