Bo-Long-a time, no write...

Ciao! Wow, nearly time for exams for you guys, and we all know what that means... PROCRASTINATION! So sit back and relax, comfortable in the knowledge you are wasting valuable study time reading this. (I hope it turns out to be more interesting than youtubing Charlie the Unicorn, watching season 3 of Dexter or whatever tickles your fancy to avoid homework...)

First of all, I have the sad news that uni finally started for me... For someone with an attention span of an ADHD goldfish, I find normal lectures hard enough. Add in the Italian language aspect and I become like that kid who doesn't have enough vegemite or sultuna bran or something for breakfast and starts seeing scribbles and blobs on the blackboard. So I've been nerding it up (Almost to a Lucas level) reading for a few hours each day because I genuinely want to get something out of these courses and I know that'll only happen if I pull my finger out. This is an exciting change from the rest of my undergrad degree.

But, I know no one wants to hear about Italian political systems and neo-liberalist theories, so let me tell you about some fun stuff I've done.

Ok, so filled with a sense of righteous altruism, me and my friend Joey decided to visit the local chapter of Amnesty International. Expecting a huge hall full of angry lefties, we instead found a quiet little workshoppy room with 15 people casually chatting around a table. They seemed to be having a good time and telling lots of jokes, so we laughed along at all the right spots, though understood just about nothing. Anyway, long story short, we ended up interpretively dancing three days later in the piazza with little cardboard cut-outs of men spelling out the sentence <Io Pretendo Digniità> which I think roughly translates to 'I support dignity'. Nothing quite like protesting when you don't even understand the slogan. Even puts the tools at Socialist Alternative to shame...

Following our foray into activism, a trip to Florence was the perfect way to unwind. On the train trip down with our Gaellic friends, we learnt about the delicious concept of 'bushing' which is a wonderfully Irish word for drinking in any green space, and not the crapping in a bush that I thought it was. That night we made a reservation at a funky restaurant, and after fighting with an American in the queue (I swear, they don't visit countries, they invade them...) we had the meal of our lives. They kept bringing out food, we kept saying yes. Turned out it cost €40, but hey, you only live once. Holy crap, $80 each on a meal! But totally worth it. And I got to eat the meals that the girls couldn't finish. I love girls sometimes.

The next day we did all the touristy crap in Florenze. Saw too many churches, dodged crowds of disgusting tourists, the usual. One amazing thing though was climbing the dome. It's an architectural delight. I'm not going to pretend to know anything about it, but climbing up the inside of this double-domed structure that no one before Brunelleschi was able to build, it made me realise just how lucky I was to be in this country and to see first-hand these great moments in human achievement. The view from the top was phenomenol, and I'll put up photos when my computer gets over the fact its job is to upload photos and that if it stuffs up again i'll let it experience a windows crash of its own only this time the footpath 3 stories below will also be involved. Drama getting home, had tickets booked for a connection to a train back to the Bog, but of course because we were in a hurry, the train was 10 minutes late, meaning we had to sneak on the wrong train and dodge conducters. But all in all, a huge success.

Back home, we got up to a few other fun things. For some reason, everyone got obsessed with the Austrian word for Smurf which is 'Schlumph'. So for our Austrian friend's birthday, we had a schlumph party. White puffy pants, €1. Copious amounts of blue body paint, €2 a tub. Seeing the look on people's faces as a mob of life sized schlumphs walks down the street, priceless. For the record, the french word is Pouffes, which I also quite enjoy. Smurfing good time had by all.

We also went out to a funky club with some new italians we met in a gelati store. Wow, I just realised how stereotipically italian that is, oh well I guess some of them are true... I'm not a club connoisseur, in fact I have at times even enjoyed Room and Cheers, but this club was seriously awesome. It was kind of hidden away inside an old cavey building, with rooms for older pop classics (which Italians still think are cool) and another for some newer stuff, we danced the night away in style. Plus, we met a guy that looked like Jesus. Any club good enough for the Big Man is good enough for me.

Time goes by... Most likely spent eating buffet food at 'Aparetivo', that amazing concept of spending
€4 on a drink and getting as much food as you can get fighting off other starving students who are more proficient than you with tongs...

Anyway, our next trip was to Cinque Terre. We had a plan to catch the train at 6:15 am, and therefore get to the wonderful cinque terre by 9am. So, waking up at 6:00am, I realised that I had probably missed that train. After bidding my friends, via a groggy yet panicked 6am phone call, a safe trip, I planned on getting the next one at 9. No worries right? So, that one turned out to be fully booked. The next one came past on a different platform to where it said it would go. The next one finally arrived, only 4 hours behind the others at this point. Had to get another train to where they were. Probably should have just walked. After waiting an hour (5.5 hours behind them now) the train I caught ended up not stopping at the town where they were, and being the stupid traveller I am, I didn't notice till we were about 15 minutes past it. Got off, waited another hour and finally caught the right train and LO AND BEDOLD, actually found my friends. At 7pm. What a day...

The next day, eager to make up time, I woke up early and did the trail from the first city to the last city. Oh my god, wow. The view, the sun rising over the cliffs, reflecting off the waves as the towns slowly rise from their comfy, mountain-nestled slumber. Met some nice Americans (huh?!), and about a gazzillion Aussies, which was awesome. Gave a few people mental damage cos I ran it topless. Anyway, after getting to the last town, I did this climb to a church up in the mountains. Such beautiful views, though wow, running along rocky tracks that are practically vertical is just a bit of a challenge. I got lost at one point, of course, and ended up having to retrace my steps for 1 km, refound the trail and 1km up, discovered I was 20m from where I'd gotten lost. Stupid me. After all that excercise, had mussels and risotto by the beach and swam in the blue, warm, welcoming sea. I love the cinque terre, and will one day park my million dollar yacht there regularly.

So, once again, feeling the urge for Italian style polical activism, we tagged along with the Partito Democratico on a free trip to Rome to join in a huge demonstration against Adolf Berlusconi's further attempts to muzzle the free press. I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but essentially he's suing two newspapers (into inexistence if he wins) for trying to make him answer questions he didn't want to answer, he owns 3 out of the 7 TV channels, one leading weekly newspaper and a host of other forms of media. On the free press scale, Italy is 73rd, just above Bulgaria. Was kind of entertaining hearing the people on the bus talk about politics. If anyone is wondering, I'm now just a little bit socialist...

Ok, last thing because its 4:30am and I'm flying to Oslo tomorrow, we went on a trip to Napoli! Lovely city, well that's not true, its grimy, people are pretty rude and drivers are psychotic. But it's by the sea, which gives it a certain charm, and it's interesting to see Italy from a southern perspective, cities which didn't benefit as much as thier northern cousins during Italy's economic boom. Saw Vesuvius which selfishly didn't as much as smoulder, Pompei which was eery, plus felt I was living inside my Latin text book. Went to Capri which is so touristy (€14 for a sandwhich!) but the beach was beautiful. We found a cliff to jump off, though one of our friends nearly died by not jumping far enough away from the ledge. You would've thought that was pretty logical eh, jump towards the ocean, don't drop onto the rocks... Some people :) The trip was organised by this exchange students' group, which meant it was predominantly Germans (who just didn't understand our sense of humour) and Spaniards, who just didn't understand us at all. Nah, that's not true, they speak English quite a lot better than my spanish, plus they are fluent in Itagnolo, that hilarious blend of Italiano and Spagnolo.

And that's everything I've been doing here in Italia. Feel free to now procrastinate how ever you see fit, though I would recommend reading all my other blogs again for enjoyment....

And tomorrow off to Oslo!

Speak to you all soon,
Josh/Giorgio

---

---