This series is a collection of my immediate thoughts on what I saw and lived through in Italy, where I moved for work in September 2025. Sometimes it's diary entries, sometimes it's poetry, sometimes just runts about everything and nothing. Enjoy.
I originally posted the logs in form of stories on my Instagram, but gave up on it because I am bored with social media. From LOG 83 onwards the series will continue exclusively on this blog.
Missed Logs 80-88? Read them here. ;)
LOG 89
It’s Saturday afternoon and we are heading to Bergamo with my colleagues. Our little teacher club expanded to four people and we decided to spend an afternoon together.
The original idea was to go on Sunday, but there’s supposed to be a train strike.
As we are standing on the platform, waiting for the train, which is more than thirty minutes delayed, I already want to run away. It looks like three people are too much for my antisocial self to handle. As usual, I don’t have anything of value to add to the discussion.
Heavens, I am so bad at this.
15-11-2025 Bergamo
LOG 90
I get a bit more relaxed when we get to our destination but as soon as we reach Citta Alta, the old town of Bergamo, it starts raining.
We are walking around the town, hidden under umbrellas and though it’s super atmospheric, eventually it starts pouring and we have to hide in a café.
I am getting more and more relaxed around my colleagues.
Miss A. is super nice and we share a sweet treat.
As we chat, I catch myself being a little too expressive and using stronger language than usual.
That’s my call to be careful and retreat.
It’s not like it’s bad, it’s part of me, but it’s usually this ‘carefree’ part of my personality that makes people leave. Because when they realize that under the surface there is something raw and real, they don’t want to have anything to do with it.
Too harsh, too sarcastic, too loud, coming on too strong.
This image usually overwrites everything good.
I wouldn’t say that I wear a mask of someone I am not, it’s just that I am more than what I let on. As a result, I am constantly holding back and controlling myself.
It’s tiring.
I hope I didn’t scare my colleagues off and that we are going to have more group trips like these. Preferably with less rain and more exploration.
15-11-2025 Bergamo
LOG 91
Do you know that feeling
when you’re using the same song in your lessons
for the third time in a week
and only then you realize
that one expression that was hard to explain
is an idiom and is actually super easy to explain if you know it?
Well, I know that feeling now.
Idiot.
19-11-2025 Undisclosed town near Bergamo
LOG 92
It’s Saturday after work and we are sitting in a café together with my colleagues. This time, there are five of us. The entire full-time team. The discussion gets pretty lively around topics like: ‘Is it possible to love art and separate it from an artist who doesn’t represent what you believe in?’
Opinions around the table vary. It’s touching, emotional, uncomfortable and too much for all of us. Just for each one in a different way. We come to the conclusion that we all perceive art too differently and that we can never agree on one answer to that question.
Our teachers group age profile:
1 x Millennial who’d never heard that term before
2 x Millennials who get the term but don’t like the label that much
1 x Gen Z who doesn’t like the label
1 x Gen Z who grew to identify as Gen Z
22-11-2025 Undisclosed town near Bergamo
LOG 93
I am getting bored of my diet. I buy the same groceries every week and cook the same food. As I am staring into the shelves in the shop I have no idea what to buy to make my diet more varied.
22-11-2025 Undisclosed town near Bergamo
LOG 94
I keep thinking about the discussion we had earlier with my colleagues.
At one point, we touched on the difference between Gen Z and Millennials and my ten years younger colleague said something like this:
‘It’s horrible, what they did to Millennials.’
I understand where she is coming from and I absolutely adore how open she is about certain topics that were taboo for me. Like emotions for example.
However, it also makes me feel locked between two generations who look at us from above. For Generation X we were too much, too emotional. For Gen Z we are too repressed.
Poor Millennials.
22-11-2025 Undisclosed town near Bergamo
LOG 95
My plan for Sunday morning was to go to Bergamo for a photo session. In the early morning when the city is mostly empty. Unfortunately, I woke up far too late (7 AM) to get there before the crowds.
As I was planning my lessons for the next day, I realised that I was craving something else than Bergamo entirely.
Fresh air, mountains and water.
So I took my camera and headed to Lake Garda instead.
23-11-2025 On a train to Peschiera del Garda
LOG 96
When I arrive in Peschiera del Garda it’s noon. The sun is shining and the air is so cold that I can feel it going through my body.
It’s beautiful.
This is the temperature that I missed when I lived in Malta. Close to zero degrees, when you need to wrap in layers to keep yourself warm and come home grateful for a cup of warm tea and a blanket.
Winter is here and there’s nothing more natural for a central European than that the seasons change four times a year.
23-11-2025 Peschiera del Garda
LOG 97
It’s a little bit funny that the first couple of people I pass by the city gate are speaking German. It immediately reminds me of what my student told me more than a month ago:
‘We call Lake Garda the sea of Germans.’
23-11-2025 Peschiera del Garda
LOG 98
The lake shore makes me feel home.
The white mountain caps on the horizon ground me.
23-11-2025 Peschiera del Garda
LOG 99
How crazy is it that the Carbonara I am currently eating is not half as tasty as the one they make in the pasta stall at the food market in Valletta, Malta?
Do I actually know what Carbonara is supposed to taste like?
23-11-2025 Peschiera del Garda
Photos from 23nd November from Peschiera del Garda:
More photos in HQ in Italy through my lens: Lombardy and Veneto.
