Advertisement
Published: December 20th 2007
View out of the bus
The landscape on the trip there was AMAZING. Lakes at the foot of mountains, with a few clouds blanketing them...BEAUTIFULI know it’s been a long time coming, but here’s my next instalment...about a month or so ago now I went on a day trip to Milan, Italy. Don’t worry I wrote it all down in the bus on the way back, so we don’t have to rely on my shocking memory! :D So this is what I wrote on November 24:
Before I start my blog on my day trip to Milan, I would first like to add one more tip to my last blog for Paris that I forgot last time. Tip #11: Learn at least how to say ‘I don’t speak French’, in French! I didn’t. In fact the only phrase I can say in French is ‘Je suis manatee’ (which means I am a manatee), which unfortunately (or fortunately, depending which way you look at it) didn’t really come in handy! :P I found it quite embarrassing, and it even caused a few difficulties. Plus the French people tend be nicer to you if at least ATTEMPT to speak their language.
On that note, on to Italy - another country whose language I can’t speak. Although I have a slightly better knowledge of Italian in French -
I can count to 10! 😊
Now you’re probably all wondering why Milan for just a day?? So let me explain...Here in Freiburg they have an organisation called ‘Studentenwerk’, which is like a ‘student guild’ - an organisation that organises all the catering on campus, student accommodation, the international club, offer counselling and assignment help, and offer some free time activities including various excursions, including hikes, visits to some nearby cities (both in Germany and in the neighbouring countries of France and Switzerland), and then the excursions to not so nearby places (like Milan, and then later I hope to go on a 4-day trip a little further south in Italy). I’ve already been on a couple of their hiking trips and they were pretty good, so I thought the opportunity to go to another different country wouldn’t be too bad. :P
Let me say to start off that it was worth the 4:45am wake up on a SATURDAY! We took a bus hired out by the Studentenwerk, which left Freiburg just after 630am and arrived in the centre of Milan at about 1230, with an all-important coffee/toilet break in Switzerland! 😊 Although a long trip, the landscape was beautiful,
so it didn’t really feel as long. And for once I actually knew someone I was travelling with, so I had someone to pass time with.
In fact it was quite nice being able to spend the day with Vanessa, a Canadian girl studying at the same uni as me. We met at a function held by the organisation that is giving us both scholarships to study here in Freiburg, and then got to know each other a little more over a weekend ‘seminar’ held for all the scholarship holders of the same scholarship across Baden-Württemberg (the
Bundesland
or ‘state’ so-to-speak, in which Freiburg and other well-known cities such as Stuttgart and romantic Heidelberg are found. The weather in Milan put a bit of a damper on things (it was raining... :P) but I still really enjoyed it. We were supposed to start the day off with a tour of the city, guided by some of the students from Freiburg who work for the International Club, but as we were such a large group (about 50 people) and because of the rain, it was difficult to hear what was being said, so after seeing the Castella and the Duomo (cathedral),
Vanessa and I split off from the group to do our own exploring for about 5 hours. Don’t worry we knew when and where to meet up again, and Vanessa is taking an Italian course in Freiburg, so we at least had a little bit of a communication medium! :P Yet that still didn’t keep us from getting lost...
First of all we wanted to find the Teatro de Scala, so we followed the map given to us by the organisers to where it said it was, but ended up walking in circles and getting further and further away from where it actually was. When we finally consulted a different map and found it (after also stalking...i mean following some British guys who looked like they had a good map in their hands) and discovered it was avtually about 500metres away from the cathedral we started from! From that moment on we decided not to use the map they gave us anymore and Vanessa bought a new one, which was really good - it helped us locate a really nice place for pizza later that evening!
Anyways, so we found the theatre in the end. If you’ve never heard of
it, don’t feel ashamed, because I never have either (or maybe I should be the one ashamed - apparently a fair few famous musicians have played there!). We didn’t actually go in, but it was quite a beautiful building anyways and right across the road (in the Piazza de Scala, of course) was a statue of Leonardo de Vinci! Quite impressive (there’s that word again!). Then we made our way through the famous Galeria Vittorio Emanuele II, with all its Prada, Versace, and Armani shops and of course McDonald’s. 😊. Normally that would be a sad face, me being disappointed that, again, in such a prestigious ‘Gallery’, fast food was to be found, however attached to this McDonald’s was a McCafé, and it supplied Vanessa and I with a much needed dose of caffeine for half the price of some of the cafes there. Sometimes stinginess (some call it being a student) overcomes the feelings of hatred to fast food chains. :P Plus a lot of the so called
milk coffees
(eg. Cappuccinos, lattés, etc, which are what I mostly drink) here in Europe are just made by sticking a cup under a machine, pressing a button, and out comes the
milk and the coffee together. Not so tasty. But at McCafe they actually make coffee the ‘proper’ way. Hmm...in case you can’t tell I used to work in a coffee shop. :D
We were then refreshed to set out and find the last thing on our
list of things to do in Milan
: pizza. We both agreed you can’t go to Italy and not have pizza. 😊 Vanessa, being super organised, had actually looked up some worthwhile pizza places in her Lonely Planet guide, and along with the handy map she bought we were able to check out a couple of the places that weren’t too far from where we were (we needed to meet back at the Castella in about 2 hours or so). The first couple looked a little too fancy for our budget, but then we found a very interesting little bakery type place where pizza is paid for per kilo! And yet it was still proper oven-baked stuff, not like some of the pizza slices you buy at bakeries in Australia! :P It was very good value - quite cheap, but VERY tasty. It was quite dangerous sitting in the shop, though, because all around us there were all kinds of biscuits/cookies/cakes...fortunately
for our figures (and wallets) we were quite full after our huge slices of pizza we barely looked twice!
As we’d done everything on our list and still had some time, we decided to slowly make our way back to the bus, wandering through whatever streets looked interesting or nicely lit and took lots of photos. Although we gave ourselves plenty of time and even got back to the bus just on time, we were still the second last people to get there! So unfortunately we couldn’t sit together on the way back to Freiburg as all the partnering seats were taken up. So we both reluctantly took our spots next to people we didn’t know. When we arrived back in Freiburg we exchanged horror stories of our bus ride - Vanessa got stuck next to a guy who just wouldn’t stop talking. Nice and friendly, but he just wouldn’t stop! Not so good when you’re tired from a long day of exploring! And the guy I sat next to had decided to buy some gin and tonic water while we were in Milan, and he and the 4 or 5 people around us drank for the first half of
the way back, and then the rest of the way he just sat miserably because he had drunk himself sick. So I spent the second half of the bus ride wondering if he was actually going to throw up (and where!) or not! Particularly as the trip was a windy one!
It’s that time of the blog again...INTERESTING FACT #5:
As you can assume, I’ve been learning a lot here - not just at uni, but also about Germany, the German people, and the language. I feel I have already taken so much away. Since I have talked a little bit about language in this blog as well as the financial strain of being a student (:P), I thought this would be the perfect time to teach you all my new favourite German word. I really do want to take it back with me to Australia and introduce it into the English language. 😊It is the word
günstig
. There is really no English equivalent. It is used to refer to the price of something if it is ‘cheap’ but does not mean ‘cheap’ in terms of quality. That’s where the English word ‘cheap’ falls short. Even though it doesn’t necessarily
PRADA
This photo's for you Kylie! :) always mean bad quality, there is always a slightly negative connotation to the word. The possibility that the quality isn’t quite as good as the price. But when something is ‘günstig’ it’s perfect. Good price, good quality. When you look this word up in the dictionary the English word it gives you is ‘favourable’. Yet I feel this word doesn’t do the German word justice. I mean who really uses the word ‘favourable’ when talking about prices? I think the word ‘günstig’ really sounds....’günstig’! :P
(By the way, if you're wondering about the title, it is what I heard a street vendor saying, trying to get people to buy his wares. He was selling umbrellas.)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.121s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0493s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
mark
non-member comment
your trip is sounding better and better with eack blog hope you can find a place for christmas that is "günstig"