Ho Sentito gli Angeli in Dolby Surround – Romanian Style (or: Yet Another One of those Things that Can only Happen to Me!)

I was planning to stage a massively funny, witty and spectacular comeback for this blog, after having abandoned it (for lack of time, not inspiration!) for so long. However, what happened to me on a Thursday night in Palermo surpasses any fictional effort I could make. Isn’t always life stranger than fiction?!

I was flying back home on Friday, so two friends took me out on Thursday night. We had a couple of unrepeatable cocktails in a student bar (unrepeatable because we didn’t know what to ask for – there was no menu or price list – and the bartender didn’t know or care what he was pouring into the glasses – apart from the fact that he was missing one eye and would have probably felt more comfortable in a Johnny Depp pirate movie than in the Champagneria of Palermo!). The dubious elixirs did their job, whatever was in them, and we were soon merry and gay (hm… actually, one of the girls was actually called Mary and both were gay), ready to party all night long.

We were searching for a karaoke club on one of the main avenues in Palermo, when I remembered I had bought some underwear that evening, and it struck me how funny it would be to wear it on my head or over my clothes. I equipped the girls and myself with colourful thongs and bras, and we were messing about, taking photos of each-other, when I spotted a huge poster across the street depicting a Catholic nun who was proclaiming she had heard the angels in Dolby surround. We crossed the street and started taking photos of the nun with my newly bought knickers.

As we expected, this turned some heads and prompted some comments from passers-by, some even stopped to take photos themselves. But one particular individual looked at us disapprovingly, walked on, then stopped and turned around to give us a piece of his mind IN ROMANIAN!!!!!

He started swearing at us in Romanian and calling us whores and prostitutes, not expecting for a second that one of us could actually understand and reply in the same language. I politely asked him if, by any chance, he was Romanian (although I already knew even the region where he came from, judging by his strong Moldavian accent). He was taken aback, but only for a few seconds, after which he launched the same verbal attack in broken Italian, obviously thinking all three of us were Romanian and therefore he was safe swearing in Italian. Wrong again! My two friends replied, still in a polite tone, that we were not mocking a nun, but an advertisement for which a model was used to pose in a nun’s clothes, and that it was none of his business anyway.

By now he was somewhat confused, so, to fully understand his situation and to plan his next move, he needed to make sure who was what nationality… obviously. He pointed at one of the girls and asked: ‘are you Italian?’ She answered ‘yes’. He pointed at the other one and asked the same thing. She said ‘yes’. He pointed at me and asked if I was Romanian. I said ‘yes’. So, to be absolutely crystal clear, he pointed at the girls again and asked: ‘so you two are Italian and she (me) is Romanian?’ Again the answer was ‘yes’. He politely told the two girls he had no problem with them in that case, but turned towards me and informed me once again I was ‘a whore’ and that ‘God would help me with his dick’ for the rest of my life as punishment for mocking a nun, and, just to make his point even more clear, he struck me with the rolled-up Giornale delle Pulci he was carrying with him, and walked away, quite content with himself.

I was obviously shocked for the first few moments. I couldn’t believe that on the main street of Palermo this could happen to me, and that the low-life who would do it had to be Romanian!!! What are the chances of that?!

However, I quickly snapped out of shock when I tasted blood in my mouth, from the blow I received. I had one of the girls phone the carabinieri immediately. As we didn’t know the guy’s name and he had wandered away, we gave the police an approximate location and went searching for him. We found the guy strolling happily, gazing in shop-windows, having a relaxing evening on Palermo. So we followed him for about 7-10 minutes until we could flag down the 3 police cars that arrived to deal with the situation.

Did you think he would try to run? Or that he was at least trying to seems like he hadn’t done anything? No! He animatedly explained to the carabinieri that we were whores mocking God and he punished us in order to defend the good name of the Catholic Church. He was taken to the section because he had no ID on him (although there was a slight commotion over both of us being Romanian and the carabinieri just couldn’t understand how it was that we didn’t actually know each-other).

I was determined to press charges against the Neanderthal Moldavian, but when I got to the pronto socorso to obtain an official medical certificate to use against him in the trial and realised I would be there until 6 in the morning waiting my turn to be seen by a doctor, I gave up.

My only hope is that he idiot was overstaying the 90 legal days he is allowed in Italy without a residency permit, and that he was sent home the next day and will never again exit his cave in order to defend the ‘good name’ of anything else than his chicken and geese in front of his den.

And still, the whole country wonders why on Earth do Romanians have such a bad name outside the country’s borders. That’s why! They give themselves the bad name!

And just to make my point, I will delight you with yet another photo of us staining the good name of the Catholic Church and mocking God Himself!