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Published: October 2nd 2008
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Maggie's Opinion of my Euro-Trash Costume
I think they were a bit offended by my explanation of Euro-Trash..."you know, all that bling and labels and leapord print and white stuff you guys wear..." Back Home
I am finally back home in Bologna and comfortably settled into my lovely new room in the student residences. I have had an unforgettable summer, three entire months of fantastic adventures from Berlin to Barcelona, Scotland to Sicily, the stunning coast of Croatia to the insane Greek Islands. It was all fabulous, but I love being settled in one place again, not having to live out of a backpack, wear thongs in the shower, spend nights on trains, buses, ferries, train stations, in parks, hostel dorms with weirdos, or hiding in a hostel common room because I haven’t paid for a bed that night. To not have to wonder when your next shower will be or if it is ok to wear the same top four times without washing it, to not have an ear infection, disgusting hair that hasn’t seen a hair-dryer in months, and a selection of no more than three dresses to wear out at night. In short, it is lovely to be civilised again!
The Never-Ending 21st Birthday Party
So the summer officially started with my joint 21st birthday party with Anneliese. Jodi flew over for the weekend from London which was lovely. On
Jodi came over for the party
At the top of the Torre di Asinelli the Saturday night thirty of us got dressed up in our prettiest party clothes and headed to Riccione, a place on the coast which has the best clubs in Italy. The next day we all tumbled out of bed and into our Euro-Trash gear (all the Aussies understood the theme, but it was very funny trying to explain it to the Europeans) and headed down to the gardens near my house for a picnic. The day after, completely exhausted, I packed my bags and headed to Milan, where instead of the early night I’d planned, I went out with all the Milan crew. This was unfortunate as I had to get up at 4am to fly to Berlin. Oh well, sleep has never been a priority this year! Julian and Pete (by some miracle, seeing as neither of them had phones that worked) managed to find me in Berlin, and we had a great reunion, explored Berlin, and, over apple-flavoured narghile, reminisced about our last trip overseas together, which we realised we had left for exactly three years ago that day. My friends Anneliese, Liv, Holly and Evelien all arrived in Berlin a bit after me, and we had three
Birthday Girls
Anneliese and I as we're about to leave for Riccione days of partying until 7am, then waking up two hours later to see the amazing sights of the city with Robert, our friend from Berlin, acting as tour-guide. Having always loved German history, I found the Reichstag, the Jewish memorial, the Berlin wall and everything else fascinating, and of course we managed to organise all our sight-seeing very neatly around watching all the Euro-Cup soccer games.
Bron and Jacqui arrived, and we made our way to Scheesel for Hurricane, a music festival with 60,000 people, featuring Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Powderfinger, the Wombats and the Beautiful Girls, which Germany had kindly put on for my 21st birthday weekend. Julian, Pete, Julia, Tom, Colin and some of Julia’s Turkey friends we’d met in Istanbul three years ago were there. It was the dirtiest music festival I’ve ever been to, we were literally camping in a dirt paddock. It was almost a relief when it rained and turned to mud because it meant there weren’t dust clouds coming at you from all angles. As Australians we were very much a novelty at the festival which was great, especially because it meant we got to chat to the Beautiful girls after their set,
because no-one else knew who they were.
After being completely feral and dirty for three days, Jacqui, Bron and I managed to re-discover our girly side the moment we touched down in London, heading straight to the cinema to watch the Sex and the City movie which we had refused to watch in Italian. We had a lovely Caringbah High reunion (plus Manda!) in London to farewell Wisey as he headed back to Oz, doing all the lovely sight-seeing things, eating as much Asian food as we could, and thinking about how strange it was that so many of us had managed to meet up over this side of the world.
Moving Out and off to Greece
After the best two birthday weeks of my life it was time to head back to stinking hot Bologna for four days to pack up my apartment and move out. It was actually too hot to move, but knowing I wouldn’t be back for a while, and also because many of my European exchange friends were going home, we made the most of it and went out every night. Packing up my room was an absolute disaster. I have no idea
Only in Italy...
Apparently it was one of the classiest clubs in Italy, so of course there was a buffet filled with lobster, oysters and crab how a) I’ve managed to accumulate so much stuff when I only moved over here with 20kgs and b) how in the world I’m going to get it back to Sydney. On the first of July, Antoine came to pick me up from my house (and to help carry my suitcase) and after tearful farewells, with Maggie telling me over and over to “fai la brava” (be good), we jumped on our train to Milan. After a very crowded night at Bronny and Jac’s apartment, we rose bright and early to catch a plane and then a ferry, arriving in Mykonos in the afternoon. We had the most fantastic time, with eleven of us all staying in this gorgeous apartment, spending our days relaxing on the beach drinking frozen cocktails and our evenings either out partying, or (because there were so many of us) having our own parties at our apartment. We then headed to Santorini which was absolutely stunning. We did a tour of the volcano which apparently sunk Atlantis, which was pretty unimpressive really, no lava or even a hint of smoke to be seen. We had a hilarious donkey ride up the hill to Oia, were we
Jodi and I making our way home
Yes the sun had well and truly risen sat on a ledge drinking champagne and eating olives and Manda’s birthday cake whilst we watched one of the most famous sunsets in the world.
The Start of Southern Italy
After a week in Greece it was time for our massive crew to go our separate ways. Julian, Manda, Pete, Bron and I jumped on an overnight ferry back to mainland Greece, which was followed by an all day train trip across Greece (having heard that there was a 42 degree heatwave in Athens, we decided to give it a miss. As Mum keeps telling me, I don’t have to see all of Europe in one year!). We then jumped on yet another overnight ferry to get to southern Italy. It had now been a looooong time since our last shower, and as we always bought the cheapest ferry tickets, we didn’t even have a seat, let alone a bed (we slept on the floor…classy kids), so we weren’t feeling particularly fresh when we arrived in Italy. Bronny and I said goodbye to the others, jumped on yet another train, and made our way down to Lecce in the heel of the boot to start our amazing, unforgettable, and
Euro-Trash Picnic!
The birthday girls, looking a bit different to the night before. at times ridiculous adventure through southern Italy.
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