He goes outside for a walk, buys a sandwich and heads for the riverbank. As he arrives there he takes a seat on the wall that separates the city from the river. He eats his sandwich and looks around. He sees all the contrasts and decides that he's got to write about this. When he finished his sandwich he took his notebook and tries to get hold of the pencil that's in there. Though, the pencil is to slippery and he can't get a grip on it. He looks around and sees a gift shop. 'In that case I'll get a pen over there.'

As he walks into the giftshop, the woman starts speaking English to him. He responds in Italian. She asks what she can do for him. He asks for a pen. Since the conversation language has changed into Italian she asks him if he wants a normal pen or one of those on the counter. The ones on the counter have Firenze written all over them. He answers he wants a normal pen. That answer leads to cleaning the counter and her saying 'I should have some normal ones over here.' Then she finds them, tests them and lets him choose. He buys the pen and heads back to his place next to the river. He starts writing, and he writes this:

'On my left side the traffic drives like crazy. There's a hotel, the doorman stands outside, he's probably calling a friend.

Ahead of me I see trees and the hills that surround Firenze.

I look slightly to the right and see the rowingteams practice.

On my right side the seagulls fly and are searching the water for food.

I see the old watchtower and the piazzale Michelangelo.

In my back the sun is showing off it's powers, but it's also saying goodbye.

Back to the left side again, there I see the first tourist groups heading back to their tourbusses.

The city is vibrant.

I'm sitting on a wall that's just on the north bank of the city. A couple of times a week I come here. It's a place where madness and nature meet. I come here to relax and to get an idea of the season. In the treeless center of the city you can just determine the season by temperature. Here I see brown trees that are losing ther leaves. In about a week they'll be leafless. Leafless trees can during winter still be elegant though.'

As you see he underlined the 'Elegant'. He probably did this to remember himself that he wanted to write about this theme. As I look back I remember that in one of his lessons in the past few months, one of his teachers asked the class what they think of the Florentine winter. The answer was basically: It's nice, it gets colder but you can assume that the sun shines. One girl said however: 'It's slightly depressing that everybody dresses in black though. I miss the colours.' His teacher answers: 'You're right. Most people dress in black during winter. I think they do that because, in their opinion it's elegant.'

In first instance he forgot about it, but the last couple of days the theme returned in his head. He had a couple of things where he head to go to and for which he wanted to look slightly elegant. This resulted in wearing a dark sweater instead of the screamy red sox one he was wearing earlyier that day. The jacked that he was wearing that evening changed from bright red to black. I think his teacher was right. People assume that black is elegant. When people have to look elegant they often dress discrete, though they sometimes prefer to dress slightly extravagant. Elegant extravagant leads often to a reaction of doubt. Doubt if you take the occasion where you are serious. To prevent this from happening people prefer to be discrete. At this point he's in doubt. In doubt if he agrees with what I just wrote. He doesn't know, but I think he won't object if I publish this.

So that's what I'm going to do as soon as I've got internet, I'm going to publish this.

(Written Saturday 19-11)

Since I don't have internet at home I'll post some stories later than the date of writing. Everything will be here in chronological order though. The story I wrote today might be uploaded somewhere at the beginning of next week. (Thursday 24-11)