Síne, without trying, convinced me to update this again.

So I will just start writing. I must start by apologizing to people who had been reading this when I stopped updating. Sorry. I did some really neat stuff that I didn't have the chance to write about right after it happened. It would have made for some good stories. I wrote about most of the cool things very briefly, but I wish I could have done more.

That being said, I've been home for about two months now. It's not the same. I have wanted to write a big long passage reflecting on my time in Italy for a while now and I haven't been able to have the motivation to do so. This update will most likely not be that long, drawn out summary of my emotions and sentiments about being home either. More likely, it will be just an update. What's been going on back home. What's good. What tha dillio. Yaw'mean?

I've moved into a great, big apartment with my friend Colin. It's in an interesting area in the city that I really like. I've started up school again, much to my chagrin. I'm taking one challenging class and a three other incredibly easy ones. I've been working at Tom French: Flowers as the Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday delivery boy. It's a great job that pays pretty well and doesn't require much effort. When I got back, I was holding off on actively looking for a job because I wanted to "get settled", I told myself. I feel kind of guilty for the ease of my job hunt. It went a little something like this.

Me: "ZZzzZZzzzzZZZ"
-phone rings. It's a text from Chris
Chris: "Hey. The flower shop next door is hiring a delivery driver. You should come by if you're interested."
Me: "I am interested.""
Chris: "Well you should come by today. I think the job is from 11-3. He will be around until 5"
Me: "Ok"
-after a shower
Me: "Hi. I'm Chris's brother. He said something about you looking for a..."
Tom: "Oh hey! So you'll start Monday."

I just had a feeling if I didn't actively look, something would fall in my lap. I wish it hadn't woken me up though. Geez...

The issue that I've had to confront however is that I am not over Italy. Still. I feel like a fool. It doesn't make sense. It's over. I can still reflect on the experiences, but I need to move on and start living now in the country of my real life. I just can't do that with my whole heart anymore though. I can't get used to being on time and being stressed about being on time and I can't make myself think about setting anything up for the future like a career or...well just a career. Italy brought me no where closer to having any sliver of an inkling of what I want to do with my life. I want to be perpetually content again. That's what I want to do with my life.

I have lost much of the interest I had in politics as well. I have a lot of trouble stomaching all of dry theoretical jargon and I've decided that I can't make value judgments for other people so being a politician is seeming less and less like a good idea for me.

I don't know. Enough of that though. This is getting to be a downer. I've been making some good food lately. That's always nice. Alex and I constructed a much needed counter for my kitchen in my apartment and since then, I've been cooking pretty often. I've made some amazing meatballs and sauce which I used to make a baked rigatoni, see facebook. I've made some cool stuff with sausages Chris makes at the shop. I like cooking. And food. See prior posts for more mentioning of my love of food.

I'm taking a course in sculpture this semester to fulfill my art credit. It's a great class and I enjoy the opportunity to do something creative in both a mental and physical way. It's also contributed to my dislike of my current major. I need to do something creative. It can also be frustrating I've found. Again, I'm stuck with this stupid curse of being able to think of great vivid ideas but not being able to execute them. Like my idea for the sad clown in the style of Rembrandt. I know something exists like what I'm thinking but it's not quite right. It's so clear in my head. Stupid art. I just really want to be creative nowadays. It almost killed me to read my first book for my senior seminar class. It was about 250 pages of the driest reading known to man. I now have about 400 pages left in my next book. Due Tuesday with a 3 page paper. Oopla!

Allora. I think that wraps up my thoughts for this evening/morning. Work in the AM so I must be off. But yeah, Síne, this was a good idea. We should do this again. The Royal "We".

Until...later?
-David

Briefly...

I just wanted to take this rare opportunity on a computer to check in. We, Theresa, Sam(the girl one) and I, did indeed go to the aquarium yesterday. It was very interesting and surprisingly big. They had three large sandtiger sharks which were impressive and a number of other beautiful animals. My favorite parts were probably the 3d movie about plankton called <> which featured a dance sequence with microscopic organisms. The seafaring museum was a creep and confusing quasi-interactive view through the history of boats and stuff. Around every turn and through every drawn curtain was a terrifying statue and a motion detector which activated a story about what you were seeing. Really, very scary. We had a nice day and it was good to get out of Urbino for the day when people who are not as fortunate and have not finished their exams could get a chance to study without us distracting them.

Tomorrow I leave for Rome to meet Andy and do a bit of tourism before the last few weeks of living in paradise. I leave tomorrow and don't return until Saturday, which means that I will be missing Danielle's departure. It is upsetting to see her leave and even more difficult for her but I'm not too worried as I will be meeting with her when I get to Brooklyn on July 2nd.

That's it for now. I will try to check in in a bit. Hope all is well. It is for me.
See you soon, real world.

David

Incase you hadn't noticed, my computer has died

So I've been borrowing friends' computers for the last little while and I haven't had an opportunity to update anything until now. Even still, this update will be brief.

What's new, you ask? Welp, Andy is coming to visit in a few days. Since my last post, it's been almost a month. I have been maintaining my tan that I got from the Greek sun. The Villanova crowd (Leanne, Allison, Taylor and Nicole) have since left. We've been having beautiful weather for the most part.

I finished my last exams. They all went swimmingly. In total, I mustered out two 30s, a 28, a 25 and a 24. Nothing that would translate to below a B in US standards.

I've gotten even more attached to the friends I've made here, making it even more difficult when they leave, which has started to happen. I've had tons of food and wine and been enjoying life like there is not tomorrow, etc, etc,etc.

Tonight, I plan on going to the piazza after a digestivone and tomorrow, maybe to Cattolica for the aquarium. Monday I need to get something signed and then waste away the day until Tuesday when I'm off to Rome to meet Andy and then to Naples and back to Urbino. I really don't want this to end and I really hope that I am strong enough to maintain this feeling against all of realwordness at home.

I wish I had more time and things to talk about. I've been having a good time still and I can't wait to see everyone, but I realllly don't want to leave these people who I've been with and grown so incredibly close with over the past few months. No saying when I'll write again so until then,
Yours,
David

Greece. Eh. I've seen better*

My schedule (see last post) turned out to be pretty accurate. Here is what happened on my trip:

We did indeed get on the last bus out of town for Pesaro, arriving there before midnight. Angela, Danielle and I figured out how the train would work and bought our two sets of tickets; one set to Ancona, the other from there to Milano. After more than an hour of waiting on the platform, our train arrived and we got on to find that our seats were in a humid little box that was almost full. We put our stuff on the racks above and tried to get some sleep. I sat across from a stranger and found it very difficult to get comfortable. As I had predicted, I got about 15 seconds of sleep for the five-hour ride. Stiff and groggy, we disembarked the train at Milano Centrale, which is a very impressive station. We found our way outside to the Malpensa airport connector bus, €7. An hour later, we were in the EasyJet terminal at Milano Malpensa, brushing our teeth in the bathroom and looking for a brioche and a coffee. Our flight would not be for another several hours, so we waited and played Scopa, and waited some more. And, to make a long story short (too late), we got back to Urbino at 2:00AM on Tuesday. Greece was great.

I kid, I kid. We got to Athens at around 4:00PM local time, which is 3:00PM Italian time and 9:00AM EST. We got out of the airport and walked into an oven. Greece has a dry heat, almost like Las Vegas or, as Alex may recall, Kingman, Arizona. We found our way to the Suburban train, which took us to the metro, which took us to a station down the street from our Hotel. Athens is a dirty city. I would be lying if I said otherwise. Everything looks wet and the sidewalks are darkened with grime. We got to a shady (in the sense of no light, not unsafe) neighborhood to a big building with a long sign down its side reading “Hotel Aristotle.” We checked in with a friendly man at the desk. Room 415. The room had a very urban view without much scenery, but it was cheap, quindi non m’importa. After a brief regrouping, we went downstairs to see what we could see. It had been decided that we would just get something to eat and not try to see anything that night and we would come back to Athens in the morning of our last night, get a hotel and see the sights before we left to return to Italy. As I will explain, some things stood in the way of that plan. We went downstairs to ask the man at the desk what we should do in Athens and if we could book the hotel for our last night in Greece. No vacancies for Sunday night. There would be time to figure it out. We went out to eat at a slightly touristy restaurant. Everything is cheaper in Greece so we went a bit nuts with ordering food. I took pictures of all of it. Our menu is as follows: red wine, Greek salad, artichokes in a Greeky sauce, gyro pitas (each of us had one), roasted feta cheese, and stuffed grape leaves. The total was about €10 each and our stomachs were content with us. We set an alarm for 6:00AM and went off to bed.

I woke up to light pouring through our windows. ‘This does not seem like 6:00AM to me’ I thought. It was 7:something. We packed our things and went down for a continental breakfast. Cereal, yogurt (a famous Danielle line: “What is this? Oh. It’s yogurt…Oh my God. GREEK YOGURT!”) The breakfast was nothing special but it wasn’t terrible. We returned our keys and made our way for the station to get to the port for the next boat for Mykonos. After a 20something minute metro ride, we were at the port. We went to buy tickets for the next boat. We had missed the first boat, figuring that the islands would have tons of boats to and fro throughout the day. We figured incorrectly and the next boat was not until 6:30 that evening. What else could we do? Well why not use today for Athens and then decide if we like Mykonos enough to stay there for an extra night or find another place in Athens for the night before our flight? We locked up our bags at the station and headed for the Acropolis. We had perfect weather. We hiked up to pay for tickets to the Acropolis. “Is there a student discount?” we asked. “Yes.” So we showed our Urbino student cards to the woman at the booth and she nodded. “It’s free.” We saved €12 each for pretending to be EU students. We started the hike up the top, stopping to see the auditorium and the theater along with marble ruins. We were led by a stray dog who seemed to live at the Acropolis. I named him Tsiziki. The first building we came upon as the temple of Nike at the top of the hill. It never really settled with me how old these ruins were. Older than the Colosseum! We sat and rested in front of another temple under the ancient sun and the blue sky. Athens was all around. It’s really a huge city that goes on for pretty much as far as the eye can see. The buildings glistened through the smog and haze. But I have pictures so I’m going to stop describing this. We walked through the old town, which is just tourism now and little shops that sell Greek things like statues and postcards and cups. After a good long while looking over the city and at all of the ancient marble, we decided to go get a drink at a little café. The Greeks, unlike the Italians, understand that their country has a warm climate and that wearing less clothing is a good way to deal with the heat. Not only is that true, but they drink coffee with ice! Imagine that! We relaxed and drank our espresso and cappuccino freddos and played Scopa. After our coffee break we found a posh looking place to have lunch with prices that didn’t look too unreasonable. I ordered a Greek meatball dish with rice. It was terrific. I love food. It was getting to be afternoon so we made our way to the port to catch our boat. We got lost in the sketchy looking part of the port but eventually got to the deck of our huge ferry. More Scopa and coffee and relaxation. The sun set over the Aegean behind us as we cruised along like Odysseus. We arrived at Mykonos at 11:00PM, after four-and-a-half hours on the boat and almost missing our stop. George from the Hotel Argo was there to meet us. We got into his van and he took us to our home for the next four nights. Our room was absolutely beautiful. It was an apartment style room with a kitchen, a room with two single beds and a master bedroom with a queen. We went to bed to wake up early for breakfast and a day of lying under the Aegean sun.

As spectacular as the hotel and the island had seemed the night before, we couldn’t seem much of anything then because it was dark. With the background of the bright blue clear sky, the uniform white washed cube buildings with blue shudders were stunning. Looking back on it, I feel like I spent three days in a post card photo shoot. We went down to the pool for our breakfast. Now, this was a breakfast! Again Greek yogurt, but also pound cakes, toast, fried eggs, good coffee, juice, cheese filled filo dough pastries and chocolate filled brioches. It was hard to stop even after reaching full bodily capacity. We managed to stop only with the prospect of spending the day at the beach. After lathering up in sun screen (I was able to get a small bottle of sunscreen although the security people in Italy were less than attentive and didn’t ask or check about liquids at all) we walked to the closest beach, Platy Gialos. As we walked in front of the rows of empty sun beds, we were accosted by a man speaking broken English who asked us to sit down and take some beds. We were an easy sale and agreed to pay the €5 each for the beds. He gave us a €15 coupon to the restaurant where he worked in return for our business. The rest of the morning and afternoon were absolutely uneventful, as planned. We got in the frigid water a few times and lied out in the sun until the sun was starting to get low. After we felt we had gotten our money’s worth at the beach we went to the pool at the hotel. The water was much more reasonable there, but still cool. A few more hours passed and we decided that breakfast was finally becoming old news enough to get some dinner. After showers and dressing, we made our way back to the beach to decide which restaurant we would go to. We landed on the one where we already had bought a discount, which had prices comparable to the other restaurants after the discount was included. The food was only decent. We went back to the room after a quick game of Scopa.

I woke up to find that my stomach had turned a dark reddish purple tint that would more likely be exemplified as a lip color than a stomach color as a result of sitting in the sun for an entire day. I used sunscreen but apparently not enough. We decided it would be a good idea to go to town in the afternoon. But first, we’d try another beach. We went to talk to Thinasis, the owner of the hotel and the most perfect example of a unibrow that I have ever seen. This thing was a real single unit, like a huge caterpillar sprawled out between his forehead and eyes. Thinasis and his staff at the Hotel Argo really made our stay perfect. We asked him about other beaches other than the one we had gone to the day before and he told us where to go and which beaches were good and which were expensive, etc. He noticed Angela’s burnt foot and gave her some of his own special sunburn cream from Germany. I felt like we were the only people staying at the hotel. We walked for a while along the beach up a rocky hill with a small beaten path passed several hotels and an enclosure of roosters and peacocks to another totally uninhabited beach. Well, we thought it was uninhabited, but as we turned to the right we saw a completely naked, uniformly tanned (head to toe without the usual pale exceptions) older man perched on a rock like he was a piece of the scenery. We stayed anyway and lied on the rocky beach for a few hours. After another brief stay at the pool and some showers, we made our way to town by way of the bus. Mykonos town is a serious a winding alleyways. Everything is typical Greek isle white washed, resembling carved Styrofoam. We got another Greek cappuccino freddo and walked around. The girls looked at jewelry while I rolled my eyes and tried to seem manly (Mykonos is the gay Greek isle). We walked to several different restaurants looking at the menu to see which seemed the best. We landed on one with a view of the notorious Mykonosian windmills and of the quickly approaching sunset. I had a traditional Greek beef stew. Soon after dinner, we got back to the bus stop to head back to Platy Gialos where our hotel was. While we waited, two little girls in the back of a parked car played peek-a-boo with us. With these two girls and the two little boys of the lesbian couple at the hotel, Greece proved to have no shortage of cute little kids. We got back to the hotel and asked our new Greek friend, Thinasis if there would be a ship out of Mykonos on Monday morning that would allow us to catch our plane. There would be, and he booked it for us, took our credit card info and paid for the tickets and had his driver pick up the tickets at the port so they would be ready for us. We asked about booking another night at the Argo. He would let us know the next day. The heat from the day had made my stomach much sorer. I slept well until I tried to move and felt my skin resisting.

The next day we decided to do almost the same thing as the day before; the morning at the beach and the afternoon/evening in town. Breakfast was delicious once again. We went back to the Platy Gialos beach like the first day. We went to the same beds as the first day and spent a good four hours under the sun again. I stayed under the umbrella with my shirt on to prevent any further purpling of my belly. More poolside shenanigans with the two little kids of the lesbian couple as was the case the day before. This little blond boy with glasses was explaining to me that the foot prints on the poolside were actually dinosaur tracks and that we had to be very still or they’d get us. I didn’t buy it for a second. After the pool we packed our bags and went to town. It was evening now. We decided to take it easy on the food and only got some gyros and flakey honey pastries. The girls perused the jewelry again and I toyed with buying a speedo as a joke. I didn’t. At the end of the night, I tried ouzo while we waited for the bus. It was not too bad but after a few sips, the flavor really sticks with you and you can’t taste anything but licorice. We got back and paid our outstanding bill for the hotel. Keep in mind that this was probably the nicest hotel I’ve ever been in. After four nights, the bill for each of us was €111. Breakfast alone was worth probably one quarter of the price. Thinasis said that the driver would be ready to take us to the port at 6:45 the next morning.

We woke up on time, by some strange miracle and got dressed and out the door. Once on the boat, we all tried to get a bit of rest. Only Danielle was successful. We were back at the port by noon, we had to wait for the bus at 1:00. The next day was travel. We were traveling from 6:45 until 1:00 in the morning the next day. The train ride home was much more comfortable. Danielle almost broke my cell phone but didn’t. Other than that, all’s well that ends well and I am back in Urbino now so all is well.

Since we got back, I went to Pesaro again, the next day. Obviously three days on the beach in Greece was not enough and I needed one more. I’ve forgotten what clouds look like by now. All we’ve had is clear blue skies and heat. My stomach is still a bit pink but I was very careful at the beach in Pesaro to not get too much sun on it or the other burns on my feet. The next day, Wednesday, one of the 600 Spanish had a birthday party in the afternoon. Most of Erasmus was there, drinking Sangria and beer and eating hamburgers and sausage. A combination of the scorching sun and plentiful sweet tasting, deceptively alcoholic beverage was somewhat destructive to the demeanor of the group and the tranquil gathering deteriorated into a water fight, as was somewhat expected. I hid inside and avoided any direct soakings, only getting hugged by dripping wet people a few times. At night, after an accidental nap, we all went to the piazza and had few bottles of digestives. Emma and I got ice cream after we failed to find hot chocolate and she and I and Taylor, Annie and Síne all walked back to the collegi. I woke up this morning at around 9:00 being superheated by the sun pouring into my room and got to work on schoolwork, committed to the goal of finishing my essays for Intercultural Management Competence. Almost done now. When I’m done with this, which is pretty much now, I’ll get back to work on the essays. This blog is a form of procrastination but I feel like I should update my family about what’s been going on.

Allora, quindi, dunque, communque… I should get back to writing my other essays and then post this blog, call my parents, maybe go up to the fort. Non lo so ancora che cosa il giorno tiene.

I miss everyone at home and I can’t wait to be there again and see what’s different and what’s the same. I’ll be back soon, but until then I will continue to allow you all to live vicariously through my blog posts and my pictures, which I remind you, are on Facebook.
Love all of you and see you soon,
David
PS. I didn't proof read this post so it's probably full of spelling errors.

*PSYCH! It was good. GOTCHA!

Let's get ready to STUUUUUUDY...after vacation.

Okay my friends and family, it’s business time now. I finished my last class for the semester today and from here on out it will be studying and exams until I come home. I have my first exam on May 25. After that one, there is one on the 28th, the 29th, the 4th of June and the final final on the 12th. But first, off to Greece!

And also, my first exam will be me explaining, in English, five short essays that I have to write, in English, about Intercultural Management – the class of which Taylor and myself, the Americans, were the stars. It looks like I can put off any serious work for a bit longer since my hard exams, Institutions and History of Latin American Countries and Analysis of Political Language, won’t be until June. Most people here with Erasmus don’t start really studying until the day before exams. I won’t be THAT irresponsible, but the fact that they manage to pass is somewhat comforting.

The last few days have been wonderful and relaxing. I visited an organic pasta factory with my Agrarian Economics class and got to eat there and see how the pasta is made and such. It was incredibly interesting. We met the man who started the company and he is very crazy looking and exceedingly passionate about organic food. Turns out that this tiny pasta factory, just 10 minutes down the road from Urbino central sells pasta to every WholeFoods in the US. If you go to WholeFoods, look for Montebello pasta. It comes in a brown bag. It’s good stuff. I saw.

On a normal day, when I’m not touring local, organic, food factories however, I sit in the sun and Mensa twice-a-day (by the way, Mensa, which means a set table or a dinning hall has become a verb. “Vuoi mensare presto? Mensiamo mensieme? Ecc.”) Today, I went to class, sat in the sun and contributed some paper farm animals to Katy’s farm mural on her side table in her room. A very productive day “secondo me” (“y’aks me” in English”).

It’s 6:11 (18,11) here now. My schedule will be as follows:
18,30 – try to find someone to go to the store with me so I can buy little bottles to put sunscreen into because taking big bottles is not allowed on airplanes unless you check a bag and I don’t want to check a bag.
20,00 – Mensa for the last time until I come back. While I’m gone, I’m going to pretend I am sick and that Gudi is my caretaker so that she can take my Mensa card and pretend to be bringing me my meals while I am bed ridden all the while eating my food since it would be going to waste because I won’t be there and it’s already paid for for ISEPers like myself and Katy.
22,55 – Get on the last bus out of town to Pesaro with Angela and Danielle
01,00 – Get on a train for Ancona
02,00? – Get on a night train for Milan. It seems counter-intuitive to go south to go north, but it’s Italy so that’s how it works
07,00? – After approximately 15 seconds of sleep, arrive at Milano Centrale and find our way to the airport
10,40 – Check in with EasyJet
12,40 – Depart for Athens
+1 hour
16,00ish – Arrive in Athens. Find our way to our hostel and eat something and then collapse

I don’t know the hours after that but the next day, we will find a ferry to Mykonos from Athens and check into our hostel there and the next three days will be spent in the sun on the beach eating spinach and feta cheese and filo dough. Don’t worry parents; I will have sunscreen, if I can get someone to go to the store to get a little bottle to transfer it into.

I’ll let you know how it goes.
Until Tuesday (almeno),
Davie wavy.
What?...You don't give yourself pet names?

Modena and girante

It’s been a few weeks since I got back from Budapest, Vienna, Rome and Ischia. In my last post, I said I would choose to either update more often or do less interesting things so there was less to write about. I chose the latter. I found out, after begrudgingly walking to a class in the rain, that the class sessions are over and all that is left is the exam. It’s a bit worrisome for me seeing as that I haven’t done any work yet. I thought that putting my Facebook status as “Today begins scholastic David” would make me do work. It did not. Well, that’s not totally true. I did do a bit of reading for my Analysis of Political Language class and a bit for Latin American institutions and history, the class I took “non-frequentare” and the one that is now over, respectively. Tuesday, I’m going on a field trip with my Agrarian Economics class to an organic pasta factory and we’re having lunch. It should be very interesting and hopefully tasty.

This week, after I found out that I would not have any classes after Monday, I decided it would be a perfect time to travel and see a bit more of Italy of Europe. I emailed my cousin, Giulisa to see if she would be around to host me in Ischia or Naples. She said she would and that I should let her know if I needed a bed made up for me. Meanwhile however, I was offered to join a trip that Annie had planned to Lucca, Siena and a little “giro” around some really interesting cities. I said I would go with them instead of to Naples. To make a long, incredibly frustrating story short, we couldn’t properly plan a trip because no one was committed and in order to make arrangements for hostels and such we needed total cooperation. (An aside: I say “proper” now, in the sense of “Your feet hurt? You should buy some proper shoes,” because I spend so much time with the Irish and English. It’s a good word. I think we should adopt it in the US. It would bring a bit more colour, a bit more flavour to our language.) We toyed for a bit with going to Slovenia or Croatia for a short stay either at the shore in Croatia in an Italian area of going to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Nothing worked and I missed a chance to go out on a Thursday night with everyone else. It was the most upset I have been since I got to Italy (which is absolutely saying something about how I can’t get too caught up in anything here since it was just very intensely frustrating and I went to bed and woke up happy).

We ended up settling for day trips instead of one big trip and on Saturday morning, we woke up and got on a bus to get on a train for Modena and Bologna. Modena is about two-and-a-half to three hours north of Pesaro so it makes for a great short trip. It is an incredibly beautiful city that mixes modern elements with moderately old buildings; nothing Roman that I’m aware of, but maybe Renaissance. Modena, famous for balsamic vinegar, of which I would end up buying a miniscule six-year-old bottle for more than €6, is mall enough to remain quaint but big enough to offer things to do. It is very archetypal Italian. What I liked most about it was, not only that it still had its own culture and was not crowded with tourists, but also that people were riding bikes everywhere in the streets without seeming to risk life and limb as is the case in Rome. BIKES! I miss my bike and bikes in general. After a short look around Modena, which included lunch, we got back on the train and went to Bologna to look around for a bit. I would have liked Bologna more had I not just been to it’s smaller, cleaner, less touristy and less crowded cousin only 30 minutes to the north. I would also like Bologna more if I were a girl who loved shopping, like the other 9 people accompanying me. That being said, I did like Bologna. I would love to go back when I have a bit more time to look around and there is no one there. Maybe when my cousin studies there next year!

Other than that, the past few weeks have been pretty ordinary; days full of coffee, sunlight, tea, Mensa, walks to the center to get coffee and a bit of sunlight, night full of wine and joking and…boh. Yesterday was Sunday, and thus, FUNday and, as it was the first Funday of the month, it was the antiques fair in the piazza. Once again, it was full of heavy, fragile, sharp, expensive, old things, which presents a problem for bringing back home anything, were I to buy something. It was still nice to see people in the streets. It’s like First Fridays in Richmond. I don’t find the art that great and I often feel like everyone is there to out-artsy each other, but on the other hand, it’s nice to see people doing something in Richmond. My parents called me successfully for the first time since I’ve been in Italy. Not that they aren’t trying, but I inadvertently bought a SIM card of the worst cell phone brand in Italy. It was great to hear from them especially since the Internet is so flaky here and hasn’t been working for the past few days so I can’t properly Skype them (See? It works). After I got off the phone and had my second walk through of the market, I had a gelato and after another walk through the market, my third, and an aperativo with Romain (by the way, the Godfather is big here now. Thanks Celena and Alex), we went back to the collegio for a hookah and eventually dinner. I planned to read after dinner, but I got distracted by trying to figure out what to do with the night.

This week, I have a grand total of two classes to attend plus one aforementioned field trip. My intercultural management class is cancelled for the second time in a row and without Latin American history and institutions, all I have is three hours of Italian language, spread across two days. This huge scheduling gap will give me plenty of time to read. Right? Vediamo.
With love and coffee from Italy,
David

Ischia for Easter, Rome, Vienna, Budapest and back!

A brief disclaimer: This blog post is very long and probably overly detailed. When I wrote it out on Word, it was about eight pages and it took me three days to write, so it may take a bit to read (although, now that I think about it, it is probably a general rule that it’s quicker to read than write, so it may not be as long as it seems to be). My picture albums from this trip on Facebook are only a fraction of the pictures I really took. I may have made spelling errors, but I think you’ll get the point. Comunque…Iniziamo!

It was late one Ischia night, by the rest of the house’s occupant’s standards, and I was on the computer talking to my friend Gudrun Müller from Vienna, Austria. I know Gudi from school here, in Urbino and she was at home for the break as was the trend for most Europeans studying in Italy since it would be the equivalent of not going home for Easter if I were studying in Kentucky. I was saying to her that I hadn’t decided where to go and what to do after my parents left, whether to go to France to see Julia or Germany to see Jan or somewhere different. She responded, “Well, come see me in Vienna” or something. I said, “Give me two minutes to find a cheap way to get there.” Two minutes later and I had found a train from Rome to Vienna, overnight for €50 (it would later turn out that that was a typo and it was €99, but s’whadev). Great! I had a place to go on Wednesday instead of back to an empty Collegio Tridente at Urbino.

But rewinding a bit, the rest of the time in Ischia with my parents was great. We ate and ate and walked and saw more pretty things and then ate some more. On Easter day, Franco and Paulette (my father’s father’s brother’s wife’s brother and wife) and their grandson Antonin went with the three of us to the other side of the island to see a traditional Easter performance where men hold statues of Jesus, one of an angel and one of Mary and sing and run back and forth. It is supposed to represent the process of convincing Mary that Jesus had returned. When she was finally convinced, the Mary holders ran down to Jesus at the end of the street and everyone threw confetti. It was quite charming and festive. I’m glad we did that instead of Easter morning mass. Easter lunch was unending and on the verge of button bursting, as was expected. We started with two types of pasta with cheeses. After that course, which could have easily been a meal at home, we moved on to the rabbit. So cute, but so delicious. Giulisa made a huge pan of coniglio cacciatore. After another full meal-of-a-course we moved on to small potatoes grown right outside in the yard and a bit of lamb. Belts were straining all around the table. Wine and digestive biters and limoncello and more of the traditional Napolitano Easter cake and fruit and salad later, it was difficult to move. It is always interesting to me that we live in such a way that it is possible to get physically exhausted from just the motion of eating and the strain put on one’s organs to digest such inane amounts of food. After lunch, we took a walk and a nap. That night, we went to church. We were told it would be 20 minutes. It was an hour. But whaddayagonnado?

The next day Uncle John showed us the old house. It’s like Richmond in a way; so much potential but everyone just sits on their hands and doesn’t want to put up the money or effort to do anything about it. After the tour of the old house, we took a nice long walk over toward the castle Aragonese. The weather and the sunlight were incredible (See Facebook pictures). We stopped in and said hello to Aunt Libby’s sister and family (my father’s father’s other brother’s wife’s sister and family). It was nice to see them and know more about my roots in paradise. We came back to the house for a barbeque. At this point, it was beginning to get ridiculous with the amount of food we were eating every day. We had barbequed chicken with a lemony sauce that Giulisa had prepared. The meal was never ending again with a full cheese course and more wine and bitters and salad and fruit. We were all sleepy again. My mother and father and I went out a bit later and walked down to the beach where my mom was able to fulfill her goal of dipping her feet in the water. It was very pleasant.

The next day was our last. We had planned on stopping by Ercolano to see the ruins, but my dad’s back was being a bit apprehensive and was threatening to make it not such a good time, so we decided to lay low and go back a bit later. We had a beautiful breakfast of cakey things and coffee. Anthonio, Giulisa’s husband, is the captain of a Hydrofoil, or Aliscafo, and said that it would be possible for us to get on his boat for free despite his being on temporary disability leave with a broken arm. We said our goodbyes and I was strongly encouraged to come back to Naples so Giulisa could show me around the city and offered a free place to stay in Ischia. I made sure not to buy a postcard so I’d feel even more obligated to come back. Anthonio took us down to the port where he brought us on a ship and talked with the crew (in unintelligible Napolitano dialect) and said we could sit in the cockpit. It was awkward but incredibly cool. One of the crew made coffee for the three us. It’s all about who you know it seems. We got to Naples about an hour later after a brief stop on Procida and found our way, once we had almost been killed walking through traffic, to Pizzeria Brandi, the place where the Margherita pizza was invented. It took quite a while to get our food, but it was nice to not have a strict schedule for once. The pizza was very good, but honestly, not the best I’ve ever had. The mozzarella in carrozze was delicious though, made with milky, fresh mozzarella and fried in vegetable oil. All of the fresh, hot cheese paired well with my Peroni. Food and drink are a good thing. We caught a cab back to the station and in the process found out that we had been ripped off on the way to the port when we first arrived, having paid €25 before and only €10 on the way back (whaddayagonnado?). After a brief wait, we boarded a regional train for Rome. This train was €100 cheaper than the faster, more direct train, but about 45 minutes longer. It felt like forever. I think it was only just over two hours total. We got back into our hotel in Rome and found some touristy place to eat and I bought my ticket for my trip to Vienna at the station. We went to bed after packing our bags and having our room changed for a bigger one after it was deemed impossible to put an extra bed in the room to which we were originally assigned.

The next morning we got up and had brioches outside of the hotel, checked out and walked over to the train station. We were a bit behind schedule so we ran to the train and I hugged my parents and said goodbye and thank you for visiting me and they jumped on the train. I was independent again. When the train pulled away, I had to do laundry and meet up with Mia so I would have something to do until 7:00 that night, when my train for Vienna would leave. I looked for a Laundromat, but the one near Mia’s apartment was closed so I went back to the station and wrote in my journal (which almost exactly mirrors this blog) about the time I had just had with my parents while it was still very fresh in my mind. When I finished, I went back and checked the Laundromat. It was open so I put in my laundry. About an hour and €11 later, when that was done, I called Mia, but she was still recovering from a migraine she’d gotten the day before, so I walked around the block. She called me not too long afterwards and I went to her apartment to put down my things. We decided that, since she wasn’t feeling too well, it would be best to just go to the Villa Borghese and lay low, so that’s what we did. We stopped by a restaurant that makes specialty salads for a nice, cool lunch on a hot, sunny day and then spent between about 1:30 until 5:00 sitting out in the sun. It was a fantastically uneventful day. We finished our time together with a gelato and both had three flavors and then I gathered my things and got to the train station to board my train/hotel room for the night.

The train ride was very, very long. It turns out, much to my chagrin that Vienna is not close to Rome. What’s more is that from Rome to Padua, people would get on and off at each stop. I didn’t get to have any quiet until about 2:00 and even then, the lights were not off and I was in a seat and not a bed. I can’t complain though. I traversed many, many miles and spent the night without paying for a room for under €100. I left Rome at 7:30 and arrived in Vienna at 8:30 the next morning. When I arrived at Vienna Meidling, I got off the train and walked apprehensively toward the “ausgang.” I hadn’t gotten a hold of Gudi yet and I was getting worried she’d slept in. I walked downstairs and was immediately met by Angela, Samantha and Adrienne; the SUNY New Paltz crowd (with the exception of Adrienne who doesn’t go there but is studying with the same program yadda yadda yadda). They were waiting for Gudi too. The three of them had gone to Budapest and had been in Vienna for a few days already. This was their last day and they would next go to Prague. It was great to see them, some familiar faces from the Erasmus family. Soon thereafter a smiling and apologetic looking Gudi came from around the corner. Apparently, much to my surprise, buses and trains are late in Austria like they are in Italy. She took us back to her house and I took a shower and we played with her wonderful dogs, Cleo and Fruli and got comfortable and then she fed us an incredible Austria breakfast of dark, grainy breads and spreadable cheeses and Austrian meats and cheeses and juice and coffee. It was such a wonderful break from the Italian breakfast of simple starch, sugar and caffeine. After that, she took us to the Vienna zoo, the oldest zoo in the world. Gudi’s friend’s sister met us there and we had another coffee together, my third that day, and then she pulled some strings and got us into the zoo for free. It’s all about who you know in Austria too. We saved €15 each, so not too bad. I got to see my favorite German word, the schildkröte and numerous other enslaved animals. It was a little sad. The elephants had such sad eyes. One of the female elephants had a little frustrated tantrum and tried to break the fence that was keeping her away from the male elephant. They could only touch trunks through the fence. The orangutan was trying to kill children who were too close to the glass. I could feel his frustration that he couldn’t ring their little blonde necks. After the zoo, we met up with some more of the Gudi’s friends and got a bit to eat. On the way to the biergarten, Gudi received a phone call. It was Éva, a member of the Erasmus family who had studied the semester before me but with whom my stay in Italy had overlapped (I’ve mentioned her before in this blog. She’s great. You’ll see), and she had decided to come visit the next day! We jumped for joy. At the biergarten, I had, what was so eloquently translated for me as pig fat bread with onions, or in German Grammelschmeizer – or something. Boh? How could you go wrong with pig fat smeared on dark, dense bread with red onions on top? I had two Austria beers. I mention that they are Austrian not only to emphasize that they were delicious, but also huge and strong. The girls, who would be heading for Prague the next morning, left to go pack up their hostel room. I had an interesting and semi-inebriated conversation about global politics with Gudi’s friend Jimmy and his friend Reinhard. It was then decided, unbeknownst to me, that we would go somewhere else. We hopped in Reinhard’s car and headed for a party that was under some party tents in the shadows of the Vienna Rathaus, or city hall. I was fed more alcohol, this time, in the form of traditional Austria wine. It was good and as soon as my glass hinted at being empty, I was topped off. I couldn’t be rude and refuse their hospitality. After a nice conversation about how large Gudi’s friend Georg’s boss was, and how he once drank 56 wine spritzers in one night, we moved to another pub. Georg bought me another beer, this one to ceremonially thank the United States for Austria’s freedom. How could I say no to such a gesture?

Let me pause for a moment to better explain the current situation. So far, I have slept maybe four hours on an uncomfortable train seat, not eaten anything since breakfast except one piece of bread with pig fat smeared on it, walked around the zoo in the heat for three hours and now I’ve drunk probably 5 beers and 3 glasses of wine.

That being said, the girls came back and met us at the pub. From here on I don’t remember much other than short clips of my journey home. It’s not that I was black-out drunk or anything, but much more embarrassingly, I fell asleep. Many times. First time, at the pub, most likely while someone was in mid-sentence talking to me. Georg and Jimmy and the others who were there, apparently, were trying to tell me that Gudi was boring and that I should go to a club with them. “I’ll do whatever. I’m fine to do whatever.” I’d keep saying, probably between snoring. Gudi finally resisted everyone’s peer pressure and she and I and her friend Julie got on the night bus to take the tram back to her home. I remember bits of conversation and holding on to the plastic loop while standing on the bus. In all honesty, I think I would have been in a similar state had I not had anything to drink after my 13-hour odyssey by train the night before. It was about 2:00 and I was asleep for the night as soon as my head hit the pillow. We’d wake up at 10:30 to meet Éva at the train station.

Gudi uses total blackout shades in her room, making it nearly impossible to motivate one’s self to wake up at any reasonable hour. Against all odds, and fighting the headache that would last through the day, I got up and took a shower and we headed off to the station to meet Éva. We were sure we’d be late, but by some miracle, every train or bus or tram we got off of was perfectly in-line with the next one we needed to catch. Éva arrived about five minutes after us. It was great to see her. She looked so happy to see Gudi again, who shed a tear or two, and to have made such a spontaneous decision to travel the three hours from Budapest to Vienna and stay the night. We were all starving but also tired, so we went to a Viennese coffee house for a spot of coffee and a Brezel. We briefly caught up with Éva and then headed towards the sights of Vienna. It had started to drizzle. We walked through the touristy area to the international food area. We settled down to some Döner Kebab and a coke. Food is a wonderful thing. The sky cleared up then and we made our way to the Dome and all of the beautiful sights of Vienna, which are more numerous than you can imagine. Every time I’d take a picture, I’d see something else, take a picture of that, turn off my camera and put it in my pocket and then turn around and see something else. I filled an entire memory card over three days in Vienna. (See facebook pictures). That night we went back to Gudi’s house, which, by the way, is beautiful. She lives in an apartment that is attached to her parent’s house. Her apartment is incredibly comfortable, not only because it’s well decorated and physically comfortable, but also because Gudi is such a supremely awesome hostess. Coffee at any beckon call, a comfortable couch and a huge beautiful yard with fun dogs. What could be better? Comunque, Éva, Gudi and I went next door to her parents’ house where we had Wiener schnitzel – in Wien! It was fantastic, complete with a side of vinegary potatoes and onions. I don’t know what to call it but it was very Austrian and thus, delicious and potatoey and sufficiently heavy. Her parents are very sweet and elegant people who both look incredibly young for their age. After dinner, we went out again, this time to a bar where Gudi’s friend tends bar. It was a fun night with Gudi’s friends and a great opportunity to catch up with, and better get to know Éva, who, as I’ve mentioned, left only about a month into my stay in Urbino. I had two small Austria beers and it turned out to be just the cure for my headache, still present from the night before. This time I remembered, and stayed awake through the whole trip back home. We went to sleep without a set time to wake up. With blackout shades, this is a dangerous proposition.

We woke up at around 10:30, if memory serves me. After showers, we went to Gudi’s parents’ house for some traditional Saturday noontime pancakes filled with cheese and ham or marmalade. Food is really, very wonderful. Gudi’s father, who has strikingly bright blue, kind eyes, is a doctor and, more importantly for me, a pipe smoker. We spoke briefly about pipes and Virginia tobacco heritage (which I fake well now seeing as that most people in Italy and elsewhere who don’t know much about states in the US know Virginia for the popular tobacco with which it shares its name). He gave me a bit of his favorite pipe tobacco, made in Denmark. I look forward to trying it. We packed, Éva and I, and then she proposed an interesting idea. “If you’re not too tired of traveling, you could come home with me tonight and stay a few days and I’ll show you Budapest. I asked my mom and she said that’d be okay.” I faked like I needed a second to think about it. I love spontaneity. I brought my stuff with me so we could leave that night and we met Jimmy and went to a café for a coffee. I had had too much coffee already, so I had a big girly chocolate frappe. We then walked to the Belvedere, the Viennese castle/art museum where Gudi works as a cashier in the gift shop. It was beautiful and somehow very Austrian. After the Belvedere, we made our way toward the train station. We made sure to give ourselves plenty of time to visit the sausage stand and get some Käsekraener(sp?). Tell me if this sounds appetizing – Austrian sausage stuffed with melted cheese dunked in mustard and a cold beer from the tap. Again, let me reiterate, food is really a very, very good thing. We made a brief pit stop at the Opera toilet, a public restroom in the trainstation that plays Strauss’s waltz and is designed to look the opera house, which is just outside. We got the station, bought my ticket for Budapest, €30, and waited for the train. Gudi’s friend Martin and Sarah, also Erasmus in Urbino and a resident of Vienna, met us there. Éva and I boarded the train and waved goodbye to the foursome. They tried to surprise us by getting on the train and taking it one stop to the closer station, but Éva accidentally discovered them and foiled their plan. We were off to Éva’s Budapest! I was very excited to see it and compare it with Vienna since both have so much in common, but also such a different history. Éva and I talked the whole way back to Budapest about her potential job (which, in the time it’s taken for me to write this post, has become her real job) and about the US and Hungary in the world and the fall of communism and its implications on global politics and economics with regard to Hungary. These conversations I’ve been having – what’s going on? I’m like an adult or something. Like Gudi, Éva lives outside of the center of town. Budapest is actually divided into Buda and Pest. Buda is more residential and on the other side of the Danube from Pest, the city center. However, Éva and Gudi’s respective neighborhoods are very different. We got to the station and took a short bus ride to her neighborhood. It would be a scary place were we in Richmond, but there is no threat of gun violence or mugging in Buda. Her house is cute and small, with thick walls, which shows that it isn’t new by any means. Each room has its own living area with a couch and a TV. There are two bathrooms, one with just a toilet. The kitchen is small, but certainly usable. I was so happy to be there as her guest. We went to bed as soon as we got in after she showed me her house. She promised a traditional Hungarian breakfast in the morning. I thought, ‘Food? I like food!’ I felt bad that I got to visit Éva before others from Urbino who have much more history with her, especially Katy, but if I hadn’t gone then, when I was in the neighborhood, I didn’t know if I’d have the chance.

We woke the next morning at a semi-reasonable hour. I didn’t feel dirty and breakfast seemed like too good of an idea to take the unnecessary time to shower so I just put on some clothing and Éva showed me to the garden, which it had been to dark to see the night before when we got in, for the traditional Hungarian breakfast. It was good that we were eating. I was… Hungary…get it? Like hungry..but it’s the country not the…
We had some long rolls that had cheese baked into the top of them spread with butter and filled with salami, ham and, what we would call pepperoni, or in Hungarian, Kolbász, and peppers, tomatoes and radishes. Another roll was spread with liver pâté, which, against all odds and my upbringing, I found delicious. We had coffee and juice and beautiful weather. The garden was lovely and temperate and in bloom with flowering bushes and a large cherry tree that drops cherries when it’s the season. Her hosting was giving Gudi a run for her money! Soon after breakfast, I got my camera, and headed for the center of town. If I were to name all of the places we saw that day, I would probably need another five pages. We saw a church built into a cave, the Hungarian statue of Liberty – like ours, also a gift from the French. We crossed the river and she took me to the sights in Pest. Éva is also one of the most well educated, intelligent people I’ve ever met so her guided tour was complete with historical background and the local knowledge you can’t get from exploring on your own. We stopped by a cheap Chinese place for lunch and ate outside in a park with hundreds of bicycle riders all around because it happened to be the weekend of a major bike gathering called Critical Mass. We took a trip on the second oldest underground line in the world down to the Heroes’ Square where statues of important figures in Hungarian history are displayed. Èva was able to tell me exactly who each one was and why he was so important. There is no way I could do that with important founding fathers of America. She’s so smart. After seeing the Turkish bath we ran into her cousin and his girlfriend by coincidence. We went to a little festy tent thingy with a guy singing and people dancing and her cousin and I had a beer each and Éva and her cousin’s girlfriend had cokes. It was really pleasant to be outdoors on such a beautiful day after so much walking and to meet her cousin. We had seen so much and I felt accomplished with that day’s history lesson, so we headed back to her house where her mother had prepared a potato casserole with kolbász and hardboiled eggs and sour cream. It was so incredibly good. I love food. We watched the movie Milk and then went to bed. We decided we should wake up early to get to the Parliament tour in English at 10:00 the next morning.

I woke up to a beautiful sunny room and Éva made coffee. I took a shower and we ran out without breakfast to try to get there on time. We were running a bit behind so we decided to see the castle district before going to the Parliament tour at 12:00. The castle district is the huge palace and surrounding residential and government buildings all encircled by a fortifying wall and perched on a hill that overlooks the river and Pest. Next to the castle, a few blocks away, is the Dome. I found this incredibly interesting, especially when compared to the Dome at Vienna. What is so amazing about Budapest is that, through time, it’s been passed from one culture to another, being on the boundary of east and west. The Dome reflects every part of these overlapping cultures. The walls are thick and the windows on, what would be the ground floor if it weren’t just one big room on the inside, are small and round, reflecting Classical Roman building. The windows directly above however have sharp arches in the Gothic style. The roof is decorated, like the Vienna Dome, with colorful tiles. The inside is strikingly different; every inch is painted with intricate designs in a traditional Hungarian style. It’s almost as if you could take it apart in your mind like one of those books about the way buildings used to look in the past with a different layer cellophane layer for each architectural influence over time. (See my facebook pictures of the Dome. I’ll show you more when I get home). After the Dome, we rushed down across the river to the Parliament building to catch the tour. We jumped on the tram and got there just in time for the noon tour. We arrived at the entrance to read, “Due to an official programme today the Parliament building is not open for the visitors.” Whaddayagonnado? We had more time for food now, which is always an upside for me. We took our time now and got to the covered market, just over the bridge in Pest. It is huge and smelled wonderful, full of all sorts of peppery things and sausages and - lace, which I’m sure smelled good too. We looked around a bit and then headed upstairs for the restaurants. We were both starving, having not eaten yet that day. Everything looked so good and spicy and flavorful. We decided it would be best to get a bunch of things and split them. We decided on Gulyás, stuffed pepper, stuffed cabbage, sauerkrautishy stuff – everything spicy and wonderful and topped with sour cream. (I’m having trouble talking about this right now because as I write this, I just woke up and I haven’t eaten lunch yet. I’m really practicing restraint to not look at the pictures of these foods I’m describing right now, but you should, again on facebook). We had enough to feed, I would say, four or five people. We didn’t finish it obviously and after we had all we could muster, it was hard to move. After this feast, we walked a bit around the market and I bought some traditional kolbász and some of the Hungarian equivalent to grappa, called Pálinka. We made our way, still stuffed full of meaty spicy goodness, back to her house to get my things. After a brief stop there, where Éva, insisting on being an amazing person and exemplary hostess through the last moments of our time together, made me some sandwiches for the trip of the same meats and liver pâté we had had for breakfast the day before, we got back on the buses and trams and to the station, rushed to buy my ticket and I said a rushed goodbye and I was in my room for the next 16 hours, from Budapest to Venice.

I had such an incredible time in Vienna and Budapest. I can’t express how grateful I am to have had such amazing hostesses and friends. Éva and Gudi, if you’re ever in the US and you need a bed and a tour of my city, you know where to come! Although, even though I do love Richmond, it’s not quite Vienna or Budapest when it comes to history or awesomeness or cuisine. Just be warned. I’m so happy I actually did something with my break before I have to get down to reading and doing schoolwork in the coming weeks. I could not have done it without you two. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I had plenty of time to reflect on my journey on the way home on the train. The train car was occupied by myself, an elderly, but energetic Czech couple and a Hungarian woman who had been living in Italy for 30 years. The common language was Italian, so it was not only an interesting conversation, but also some needed language practice. I paid a little bit extra for a bed instead of just a train seat, which I had on the way there. Even with the bed, it was only €69 from Budapest to Venice. It’s like a flight plus a hotel room for €69, so I can’t complain. I had my passport stamped about 20 times while crossing from Hungary to Croatia and Slovenia because they aren’t part of the Schengen area. Finally, I have some stamps and it looks like I’ve actually done some traveling! In the morning, we arrived at Venice and I bought my ticket to Bologna. It was a moderate wait but I got a seat and in about two more hours I was in Bologna. From there, there was another two and a half hour ride to Pesaro and then an hour-long bus ride. I had traveled from 4:30 in the afternoon until 3:30 the next day – a full 23 hours.

It started raining as soon as I got to Urbino. It felt like coming home. After a shower, I came down to the 700-block to say hello to everyone and I was met with warm embraces from Katy, Danielle and Gudi. What a relief it was to be back in a non-moving room after so much trekking, although the rain was a very real reminder that the sunny days of my vacation were probably over and that it was time to get to work.

The past few days have been pretty relaxed, just getting reacquainted to Urbino-life and the Erasmus family. I re-hemmed a sweater that was mal-fitting and made brownies. On Monday, student life will resume for me. I started reading a bit for school and it has been taking a bit longer than I would like it to, but whaddayagonnado? I’ll get better the more I do.

I hope this post has not been too much of a strain to read and I will most certainly try to update this more often. Either that or do less interesting things worth talking about.
Until there is more to tell you about, and with love from Urbino, my home away from home,
David