my little slice of heaven in Milan

It's about time I made a little piece about where I live.

I've spent years living in Costa Rica, where every house has bars on the windows, high iron fences and gates with barbed wire on top. Petty crime is common in the streets.

Then twice as many years living in New York, famed for its crime, street shootings and hookers on the street--although, truth be told, Giuliani did clean a lot of that up.

In both countries I knew where I could go and where not, and felt relatively safe walking about at any time of the night on my own.

In Milan, I feel a different kind of unsafe. Perhaps it's me still adjusting, and more scared about the situation out of general insecurity in my personal life than I should be. Ignorance generates fear.

The more common bad elements here are the eastern Europeans and the Africans. I was used to the latinos, their sexual harassment, the desperation of an immigrant culture... but now I am dealing with new cultures I know nothing about. And are unable to measure.

It doesn't help that I decided to move to an area where they congregate. I thought living next to a major train station would be all sorts of useful for traveling (not quite used to being settled down yet... lol) and the street looked nice, and the apartment was huge, and the guys living in it had been here for years, and they were all artistic...

I didn't calculate all the details, though.

You can check out a little photoshoot of my street to see what I mean.