Wintery wonders.

Christmas holidays at home in Whitby was brilliantly, wonderfully, amazingly nice and leaving was not something I was looking forward to at all.

After a delayed flight, annoyingly due to technical problems, not the huge amounts of snow blanketing Europe, the eventual return to a cosy living room with endless supplies of tea, food, and family love was very much welcomed! Cute as my family are, they’d saved the decorating of the tree until I got back, so that’s what we did on the first morning. Then in the last week before Christmas we played in the snow, sat and chatted, played a lot of scrabble, went out for coffee and cakes and visited family; nothing spectacular but just what was needed.

 Of course Christmas day being Christmas day, me and my sister ate far too much chocolate including before breakfast, surrounded by wrapping paper and new gifts! Santa (and my parents) were incredibly generous with me this year, and gave me a shiny new camera to take photos of all Erasmus antics from now on, along with a lot of nice little things like books, CDs, perfume and the like. Dinner was, as usual, epic and scrummy, even the sprouts!

The next day we had a bracing boxing day walk along the clifftop to watch the boxing day dip, where all the crazy people run into the sea for charity, followed by breakfast at Nana’s house, quickly becoming one of my favourite traditions!

After a few more relaxing days at home, I headed up to Newcastle for New Year celebrations! It was so nice to see Rhona, Vicky and Jim for an afternoon catch up, friends that I haven’t seen in a long while, especially seeing as two of them have just finished/are just starting semesters abroad! For the first time since leaving Italy, I got slightly excited about coming back and saw that actually it’s pretty good to be living here doing all the things I do. The weekend then consisted of meeting up with Lorna and Mark, shopping for the new year’s roast dinner feast, getting ready for the party at Caitlin’s, cooking said feast, catching up with all the girls and guys there, drinking copious amounts of wine, celebrating in the street at midnight and playing pictionary with lots of questionable drawing skills! I had the best time chatting to everyone, friends that I have only seen a couple of times in the last two years due to both years abroad, and friends that I spent a lot of last year with! Had lots of encouraging words from those on Erasmus last year, which was lovely.

And the last of my three weeks at home were mainly spent relaxing and trying not to let myself slip into the trough of despond called ‘I hate Italy, I want to stay at home, don’t make me go back!’ Luckily somewhere in there I was inspired, or probably just came to my senses, and decided that actually it’s not so bad, in fact it’s rather good most of the time, and if I survived the last three months I can definitely do the rest of it! The promise of better weather in a couple of months and having friends and a house to come back to made it a lot less stressful than my previous experience of coming here, and I don’t think I quite realised how much easier it was going to be! Of course, I still miss family and friends back home, and others that I didn’t get to see, but ultimately, being back is good! It’s a lot calmer, less stressful (so far), and less extreme at the moment; I’m starting to feel like I know how to live here, how to live my version of la dolce vita, you could say.

17.12.2010

 Today I have been in Italy exactly three months. Well, three months as in it is the 17^th December and I arrived on 17^th September, so actually 13 weeks. I can’t quite believe it. That’s the longest I’ve been away from home continuously in my life I think. And for it to be in a foreign country makes it feel like even more of an achievement. In the last week or so things here have got better, or rather I feel better about things. Seeing as it’s the last week now I’ve automatically started reflecting more on how everything has gone, and how much it has all been up and down, from brilliant to terrible in such short periods of time. It’s crazy how much things can change and how trying to get to know the Italian culture has both challenged and confirmed various stereotypes I had.

Being thrown into another society with completely new ways of doing things has meant that generalisations I made at the start have been ripped to shreds but now I make new generalisations about different things, some good and some not so good I think. One thing that I often wonder about is whether I would have felt any different if I had planned to move to Italy all along and it hadn’t been such a shockingly rushed thing but I’m glad of how things turned out; I’ve got to learn a language that I had no experience of at all, so being able to have a conversation is really good, with very little formal training.

Of course the other major advantage of being here is being able to spend time, get to know, and share things with Jenny and Lydia.

There are plenty of things I would often like to change about Italy, but I know that that will never happen and I wouldn’t really want to, I should learn to get used to things as they are more. Having quite a lot of time to sit and just be and think has been really great most of the time, and I’ve had great conversations about things that I wouldn’t have known or thought about if I hadn’t been here.

Having said all of that, I’m very much looking forward to going home tomorrow for three weeks. To Britain, to Whitby, to my house, to my family and friends, to complete familiarity, to the English language, to a lot of things! And hopefully by the end I’ll want to come back here. We’ll see.

Ciao, Parma

More Christmas markets, lots of lights and our best attempts at bartering

Blagging; something it’s fairly easy to do in Italy, partly because of the lack of rules and regulations for some things and partly because we’re English. Luckily we didn’t have our tickets checked on the train to Florence after getting on the wrong train because it took less time and had no changes and having not validated our tickets seeing as the machines were broken in Parma station.

So, we arrived in Firenze feeling rather smug with ourselves for saving both time and money!

There are so many famous things to see in Florence and the great thing is that they’re mostly in quite a small area so it’s easy to get around and see lots. Another great thing was that Lydia had found us the ‘Queen’s Hostel’ just on a side street off from the Duomo, so basically smack bang in the centre of the city, for only 10 euros a night! It was so sweet, and just looked like a big house with extra beds in, a lovely little kitchen and definitely somewhere I’d recommend. The only drawback was a guy there who sadly didn’t have the greatest social skills especially with non-fluent Italian speakers and who invaded our personal space and time a little too much for our liking, slightly freaking us out a little!

We spent Saturday evening wandering round and seeing things like the Ponte Vecchio where many a couple has got engaged and/or bought a ring, Palazzo Vecchio – which was in the second Twilight film, and had a Damien Hirst exhibition on when we were there – the markets and the outside of the Duomo and the Baptistery. The stall holders at the markets are so used to English speakers, we heard so many American voices over the weekend, and come out with some hilariously bad chat up lines as you walk past. We were told ‘You’ve dropped something…my heart’ and ‘Smile again and I’ll give you a discount’ amongst countless calls of ‘Hi English’ and ‘Hey baby’. Pretty good for comedic value, I’ll give them that!

Ponte Vecchio

Strangely we found it really hard to find somewhere that had a varied menu with pasta, pizza and salads etc. and apparently in Florence if it’s not a Pizzeria it does no pizzas at all! After searching we came across a really nice place and sat in the cellar room, lovely and cosy with candles and red walls, and to our delight a family on the next table with the most adorable kids! Working our way through our litre of wine we chatted about many a thing, including lots of reminiscing about childhood toys and odd things like what lunchbox we had, and lots about our parents. The closer it gets to Christmas and going back to England the more we talk about home and how much we cannot wait to get back, even when we’re having fun!!

We ended the night in a bar called ‘Shot Spot’ unfortunately with a pretty rankly strong White Russian, then chatted to some Australians and a Brazilian travelling Europe for their summer back at the hostel.

My description of Sunday will be quite short because if I expand any more than saying ‘Christmas shopping’ all surprises will be ruined! Had a brilliant breakfast of sausage and egg bagel to start off the day and then we caught a bit of a service in the Duomo. Turned out not to be as grand inside as we had thought, and although it’s huuuge it’s quite plain with just small stained glass windows and one painted ceiling, definitely more exciting from the outside! Then the shopping commenced…the day included

-          hilarious haggling skills

-          a ‘genuine handmade, I should know, I’m a designer’ leather jacket breaking on Jen; the guy’s face trying to sell it was a picture

-          many hours spent deliberating over what to buy for who, who to give things to and finding excuses to buy for ourselves at the same time!

After a rather materialistic day we were treated to one of the little wonders of nature…stood outside the station we saw groups of small birds (not sure what kind) all fly around and split off in waves then join back up again, making different shapes in the sky and following each other, like a shoal of fish when they all suddenly turn the same way again and again. After a while they started to settle on some trees near to where we were stood then really suddenly all at once emerged back into the sky with a burst of noise of beating wings and squawking. None of us understood why they were doing it…if anyone can shed some light on that please do…but it was amazing to watch!

Feeling rather exhausted we went out for an aperitivo tea and a non-alcohol cocktail and then an early-ish night. Paranoid hysteria set in for a few minutes after we found out the aforementioned creepy guy in the hostel was getting the same train as us the next morning, before we calmed down and got to bed! 

A successful second weekend trip in a row and another planned for next, the last weekend left in Italy before Christmas holidays…Erasmus life is good!

Lakeside Ramblings

So instead of a weekend in Verona and Lake Garda, we ended up in the less touristy versions; Bergamo and Lake Iseo. A brilliant alternative it turned out. Although it was in some ways a weekend full of small failures - not being able to go to the originally planned destination, missing buses, therefore missing other buses, and getting on the wrong bus – it was still brilliant! Some things we did/liked/loved…

·      Got very excited on the train travelling northwards and seeing snowy topped mountains and frosty fields!

·      Got even more childishly excited at the Christmas lights all up the street outside the station in Bergamo and the Christmas market. To our great delight there was also a stall selling mulled wine, a perfect addition to the evening.

·      ‘Città alta’, the old city on top of a hill looking down to the rest of Bergamo. So nice to wander around the little streets, all decorated with lights, and look in the cute shops and restaurants, and eat scrumptious pizza.

·      Got up very early to get the bus to Sarnico at the Southern end of Lago d’Iseo. Unfortunately the timetable we had wasn’t actually when buses to the centre ran, so we missed the one we needed and therefore missed the one to Sarnico. However, managed to get one to Lòvere at the North of the lake instead. It was a lovely bus ride, through lots of little towns and villages and then alongside the lake for a while, so nice to see lots of water and some actual scenery! Typically, the tourist information office was shut for a holiday so after consulting a very basic map we set off walking…

·      At the next village up the lake, Costa Volpino, we started heading upwards and just carried on ascending for a couple of hours on roads, cobbled pathways, muddy trails and snow covered tracks. Amazing to get past the height where the snow had settled and stayed on everything, and the views over to the other side of the lake and downwards more then made up for the fact that we had cold wet feet! We met a really cute old woman in one of the churches on the hillside who chatted to us for a while about how it’s great to be young and what a great age 21 is, and how she had grandchildren our age and that we should make the most of everything. Wise words from a wise little lady.

·   Hot food and drink was needed when we had got back down to Lòvere and coffee and waffles fitted the bill.

·      Next transport error – no thanks to the complete lack of information at the bus stop we got on a bus that went past but didn’t stop in Bergamo and just went straight on to Milan. Nightmare. Thanks to a nice young man we managed to get off at the stop nearest to Bergamo and told us how to get back, very kind of him.

·      After expending more energy in a day than we have in a while we were perfectly happy to get a nice warm shower and read back at the hostel, then seeing as it was Sunday there were no buses to the city and no places to go out, so pizza order was on the cards. They weren’t brilliant but filled us, and I definitely took advantage of the coffee/tea/hot chocolate machine.

·      Met some cool people at the hostel, a Syrian medical student living and working here in Italy, and a classical guitarist from London who travels and busks all over the world. It was kind of nice to chat to a stranger with a ‘real’ English accent, and he picked up on ours as soon as we walked in! Delightful end to the evening when he started playing quietly in the common room type area where we were sat reading on sofas. Made for the best relaxing ending to a tiring but exciting trip.