Barbara and Christof from Merano, South Tyrol, stayed with us.
They were having an espresso when we dropped by their apartment for a chat.
Whenever we say we're from Tyrol, everybody says it's weird that "you're speaking German but you're from Italy but then you're not really Italian so what, are you Swiss? Are you Austrian?" But it's ok, it's really difficult to understand. It's a very particular place, that people don't know a lot about.
We grow up with two languages, sometimes the families are mixed, and the whole country just expects you to speak both Italian and German. But for instance, the police officers only speak Italian, I don't know why.
So some people that live away from the cities, like farmers, they only speak German... and when they come to the city, they expect their people to speak their language but then not everybody does. It can be very confusing.
Our main source of inspiration is travelling. But also cooking! I find cooking very inspiring. When I'm cooking, that's when I get really creative and ideas come to me. I always keep a pen and paper with me when I cook.
We want to see inspiring things, so we plan to go to this place or that place. And it was our plan to come to Lisbon, but we didn't know anything about the city. We just bought a good guide and read it on our flight. But anyway, you can read a lot of travel guides and so on, but you have to meet the people and just let them surprise you. And it's much more fun to be surprised than to be prepared for everything. Also in life.
