I did it again: on a dark and cloudy day in Amsterdam, I foul myself thinking that the big blue cloud behind Central Station is one of my mountains in Abruzzo. The landscape gets suddenly more texture, more movement, it is so much more beautiful. Pity they never thought of making a couple of serious mountains in Holland. You may believe they can make everything here, when it comes to redesigning a landscape, but a mountain, really, it is not a Dutch thing. It is my thing.

Well, I cannot claim patent on using clouds as substitute mountains. My friend Mahtab does exactly the same. When you are born and raised in Teheran, a city surrounded by mountains, you just can't help it: mountains are your thing too. Which makes two of us, living in Amsterdam, and seeing mountains in the distance. Maybe there are more like us around.

Back to my mountains: the Gran Sasso from the side of Campo Imperatore. The Monte Camicia in the distance. Picolle (actually, a hill, the name says it all). Il Riccio, where my dad had a piece of woodland. All the small burghs climbing higher and higher, until you get to the huge plateau of Campo Imperatore, setting of all of the spaghetti-western and 3.000 years of summer pastures, and you go towards L'Aquila, where the mountain tops part, and the road goes just in between that open space and you feel, you know, that by going further you will end up driving towards the infinite, at 2000 mt. height. These are my mountains to me.