weird hobbies alert

I somehow seem to have gathered a lot of followers (?!) so I thought, why not trying to make my pinned post fancier

⊱ LACE COVEN INFO | LACE COVEN POSTS

⊱ TATTING POSTS | MY TATTING | ALL LACE POSTS

⊱ MY SPINNING | SPINNING LOG | ALL SPINNING POSTS

⊱ JUST BLOGGING | CHEMISTRY | MUSIC

and don’t you dare vote for bowie/jagger only because you don’t know the other ones

i hope i did not forget any important version but anyway there are only 12 spots

spontaneity - you can organize things with people last minute while in germany you need to warn people four weeks in advance

it’s generally easier to connect with people and become friends

shops open on sundays - i know there’s discourse about that but as someone who works almost 60 hours a week i do appreciate the opportunity of buying eggs on a sunday if i couldn’t make it earlier

coffee at the counter

THE PRICE OF COFFEE AND CAPPUCCINO GODDAMMIT

never having coffee breaks alone at work

trains, i can’t believe trenitalia is on this list but that’s the deutsche bahn effect

henna availaibility (see my henna posts)

surprisingly, the digitalization of things - somewhat more advanced than in germany (not in all aspects though)

now the food list because you expected it:

CROSTINI SAN CARLO no. 1 sin of germany for not importing them

the mulino bianco variety (only few specialties make it across the border)

ricotta, difficult to find

STRACCHINO, impossible to find

the may-june asparagus craze

rhubarb and any use thereof

public transport in big cities, can get you to many places and it’s quite surprising considering how germans love their cars

safety, at least in the city where i live

sounds like a stereotype but trust me when i say that german potatoes play in a different league

DM MY BELOVED

pfand, a very nice concept we don’t have in italy

package and postal services, way above italian standards

the multitude of milk products i don’t understand

workers’ rights and work culture, even if my specific position is somewhat outside these rules, but i do appreciate the difference for other workers as compared to the italian awful work culture

honestly, ehegattensplitting (there can be serious tax advantages if you’re married)

take-away coffee of any size, sounds silly but it’s not common in italy where you’d have an espresso at the counter in 3.4 milliseconds so there’s no need for take away

Cloro died ten years ago after having lived a very happy life, and I’ll never forget the experience of having a bunny as a pet. They are amazing creatures, often misunderstood and even more often not taken care of properly. There is still the idiotic practice of randomly gifting bunnies to kids thinking that they’re just little plushies that sit in their cage and don’t need anything other than mangime. Those bunnies end up in shelters or worse, they die of ugly conditions due to improper care.

Having a bunny was an incredible experience but extremely demanding. Extremely more demanding than having a cat.

A bunny is not a mouse. Bunnies suffer when confined in a cage, no matter how big the cage may be. A cage may be useful to have because that’s where you may want to store the litter box and hay, and occasionally, for very limited time, it may be useful to confine the bunny while you are doing something he should not be messing with for a few minutes (like, cleaning the room where he lives). Bunnies do not necessarily need to have access to your entire apartment, also because making an entire apartment bunny-safe is not so easy, but they should have at least a room where they can run free.

A bunny is not supposed to eat mangime. He’s supposed to eat mostly hay, and you’ll have to accept that wherever the bunny has access to, there will be hay everywhere. He also eats fresh vegetables. That’s another thing that makes bunnies slightly more demanding than cats - with cats, you can buy dry food or canned food that you can stock and store for a long time. With bunnies, you can stock some hay but will have to regularly buy fresh greens every week.

A bunny needs a special vet. Not all vets are knowledgeable about bunnies. Perhaps this has changed in the last few years or is different in other countries but back then and where I lived, there was only one vet in the city with credentials for treating bunnies. Generally, whenever something’s off with a bunny, it is a medical emergency. It’s almost never something where you can just wait and see for some hours or half a day. And for those things you need an available vet who knows how to handle bunnies.

A bunny needs a bunny-proof environment. Some bunnies like to chew on electricity cables. Most bunnies do not understand the difference between what they can eat and what is poison for them. If they have access to a garden, they’ll have the best time in their lives but only as long as their outside environment is safe from plants they should not eat and protected from predators.

Speaking of which - a bunny is a prey. This is the key difference between bunnies and cats/dogs. Being a prey is what makes their behavior feel odd to us, humans used to deal with predators as home pets. The most skittish cat will still be more confident than a bunny when it comes to new things and people in their environment. Bunnies don’t even close their eyes completely when they doze - I caught Cloro sleeping with his eyes completely closed only a handful of times.

A bunny also needs a bit more care in his environment. I mean, a cat litter box needs regular cleaning, too, but you can generally clean bits of it regularly and then do a major cleanup less often. Bunnies have this odd habit of liking to eat hay while being on their litter and doing their business, making things very messy. And their pee stinks, oh does it stink. So basically you’d spend a lot of time always cleaning the litter box and hay corner. Assuming that the bunny is perfectly litter box-trained - it’s more often not the case even with the best intentions and you’ll have to clean more than just the litter box.

The bunny language is something that always fascinated me and it’s incredibly different from the language of cats and dogs. Bunnies are not very vocal. They emit some sounds but they are rather subtle. When happy to see you, they will run to you and start running in circles around you. They show you their love by licking your hand or your face. But they don’t want to be picked up. They also don’t like to be touched everywhere. They are unlikely to come sleep on your lap. They have zoomies but they look different from cat zoomies - they would run back and forth or in circles at lightspeed and do binkies (like, little hops while they twist) and flops (they suddenly roll to their side and pretend they just died of excitement). Here’s a short demo:

However

The beginning of the season when married German ladies in their thirties wear dresses all with the same unflattering shape and ability to add two decades to their real age, patterns that look as if cut from old curtains or table cloths, with the non-negotiable pastel flats, is a hard test for my fight against the stereotype that Italians tend to dress with a little bit more taste and personality

henna update - before and after (it’s just the first application, bear with me)

also, i’ve trimmed a little

here’s how i prepared it and applied it, for anyone interested:

about 1/3 rajasthan henna

about 1/3 lala menana henna (the super dyeing henna i was talking about in the previous post)

about 1/3 zarqa henna (the other super dyeing henna that is also a bit shady and i mentioned in the previous post)*

powders were mixed with room temperature water and a tiny bit of vinegar to make the environment slightly acidic

i prepared this mixture in the evening and since i was not planning on applying it for before 12 hours later, i put it in the fridge overnight; took it out in the morning, with the idea of using it after lunch

before applying, i added a little bit of the useless plant extracts i talked about in the previous post (rootbeet, rubia cordifolia and hibiscus - totally worthless but look so nice); these were added with some hot water

also, before applying, i washed my hair, without using a conditioner, and rinsing with diluted apple cider vinegar to hopefully remove any buildup

applied the paste brutally by slapping it on my hair (with gloves!) and covered with stretch film; had it on for 4-5 hours, then washed it with water only.

*i don’t think it’s necessary to use this mixture of different henna, let alone add the useless plants i add later. i do this mix only because it’s the one i’ve been doing for many years before i switched to indigo, but if you are on a tighter budget and don’t want to have six different packages of herbs lying around at home, i’d go for only one, maybe rajasthan henna which has high dyeing power and generally good availability

i’ve been doing monday fm for weeks and haven’t posted david byrne in the giant suit yet, time to remedy