Mi Vida Loca

"How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little..."

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 02:01:44 +0200

““How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences - like rags and shreds of your very life.””

- Katherine Mansfield

Can't/Won't/Don't want to sleep.

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 05:37:00 +0200

I think it would be safe to say that I’ve had a cracking last few days in bella Italia.

I’ve spent a good amount of time just wandering around the city over the past weeks. As you might know, I am particularly soppy and pathetic when it comes to a) saying goodbye, and b) getting unnecessarily nostalgic about things, so I really enjoyed just making the most of being here, getting myself lost and found again, and realizing that I can now navigate my way through the vicoli rather well. One evening on my way home, I went for a little wander up to the church above Via XX Settembre just as the sun was going down, was listening to the same playlist that I had on non-stop both just before starting my year abroad, and during the first couple of weeks in Madrid, and may possibly have welled up a tiny little bit. Oh cringe.

My biggest victory over the last few weeks has involved one of my housemates. Ever since I arrived at Casa Carbonara, everyone in and associated with the house has been friendly and kind and lovely, but seeing as I moved in at a time that I was out of the house every weekday from 7am to 9pm, then had 3 non-Italian-speaking friends to stay, then promptly left the continent for three weeks, came back and went South for a few days, combined with the fact that they all have their own lives to lead as well, I’d really spent very little time with them, predominantly because I’d spent very little time with my feet touching the ground at all. My point though, is that while my feet and the floor were in contact, I’d had a dinner or two with the housemates, met a few of their friends, and was generally feeling very welcome, if completely knackered. However, since I’ve been back, and since she’s been back too, my housemate Ilaria and I have got to know each other much better, I’ve spent a lot of time with her and her friends, and have been loving every minute, particularly as she is a fun, chatty, vegetarian who enjoys dancing around the kitchen and watching a similar amount of televised crap as I do, teaches me canzoni dei partigiani, and appreciates my English humour and pronunciation of the word Facebook.

Over the past week we’ve been up to all kinds of fun activities, including showing her cousin around Genova, having a night in with her and two other friends eating Chinese food and watching Trainspotting (which was quite hard enough to follow in English so the Italian certainly added an extra level of difficulty), a few little wanders around town with various friends and acquaintances, and an afternoon trip the other day to Righi.

Ilaria’s been telling me about Righi for a little while and had promised to take me when the weather was nice, so after a couple of times having our plans ruined by big black clouds, on Wednesday afternoon we, along with Zappi and Davide, finally hopped on the funicolare which has a stop conveniently placed almost directly opposite my bedroom window, and went up the hill (although I think calling it a hill may be an understatement) to start our little walk. Ilaria was well prepared with backpack and comfortable footwear, myself less so in my ballet pumps, and we walked for quite a while, singing Bella Ciao like we were on a school trip, and generally behaving like children, finally getting to our destination, La Polveriera, where we sat playing cards in the sunshine. After a pleasant couple of hours sitting amongst the octogenarians of Genova, we walked off on another small trek to catch the bus home, putting my footwear to the test as we stumbled down a steep slope in the middle of lots of trees to take a shortcut. If you’re wondering, they did just fine.

We also made dinner at our house for a few friends, turning up the music and having lots of fun making a good old fashioned carrot cake (a concept which hasn’t quite reached Italy yet, resulting in a bit of confusion at the idea of vegetables in a dessert, and even more at the Philadelphia frosting), and then Ilaria taught me to cook a real Italian pasta course, taking my meal repertoire to a grand total of one dish, and our dinner party guests appreciated our efforts.

One night this week, I stayed for dinner at Sonia’s house (she cracked out the home made pesto again – how could I say no?) and we admired the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen from her living room window – it kills me that I chose that day to not bring my camera – and then sat watching Italy’s version of You’ve Been Framed, followed by Jersey Shore with Italian subtitles which, incidentally, do not do justice to some of the absolute cazzate that come out of their mouths. I really am going to miss having a job like this.

On Friday night, we had the festa chiusura Carbonara. Our house’s contract runs out at the end of the month, so we invited all the housemates who have ever lived here (since it became Casa Carbonara, at least) and had a party. It was a very odd affair as obviously there was such a strange mix of people from the various eras, of whom I knew a grand total of about 8, and there was one particularly lecherous and generally irritating character, but despite him and the neighbours threatening to call the Carabinieri, it was brilliant. The latter was the result of my highlight of the night; a big group of us stood in the kitchen playing assorted real and makeshift instruments (think drums that were lying around the house mixed with boxes of pasta, beer bottles, and hands on tables) and had a little jam session, which despite the photos which make it look exceptionally lame, actually produced some pretty good music, and was definitely a memorable way to say goodbye to the house, Genova, and my year abroad.

We spent all day yesterday emptying the house of all its furniture, and I’m feeling pretty sad, even though I feel I can’t show it because after all the people who are emptying the house have lived in it or at least been associated with it for 4 or 5 years, and I’ve only been here for 3 months so I don’t really have the right to be, but even so I really don’t want to leave it, and seeing it as a shell without any furniture and with all the things that made it so weird and crazy, taken away, obviously combined with the fact that I know I’m going home tomorrow, does not make for a happy Ema.

With one last opportunity for some Genovese fun, I went out for dinner with Sonia, Massimo and some of their friends who I’ve met through previous evenings of debauchery, had an incredible pizza, fell ever so slightly in love with their friends’ 8 year old son, and ended up in a club in Nervi, having a good old dance with them both and coming home at past-5, (That’s right everybody, the year abroad has made me into the kind of responsible adult who comes home after a night out 4 hours before she needs to wake up to go to the airport. Nice one, education) having had a teary goodbye outside my portone and now sitting in my empty bedroom having a final emotional moment, because I really can’t allow myself to express how upset the idea of having to go back to ‘normality’ makes me.

Now there’s just time for a very short nap (although I’m not sure I will even bother, because as much as I’ve been joking about missing my flight on purpose, I really think I’d better not sleep through it) before I take my huge suitcase, for which I hope the weight limit was more of a suggestion than a rule, to the airport tomorrow lunchtime to fly back on the very last one-way ticket to the cold and the quiet of my little Gloucestershire village.

I can’t believe it. It’s actually over. But in the eternal words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, albeit said with a slightly different sentiment; I’ll be back.

“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I...

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:27:00 +0200

“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read and all the friends I want to see.” - John Burroughs

The penultimate week

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 11:01:46 +0200

At the beginning of this week, I was in work experience heaven, spending the day in Portofino delivering bouquets, decorating chairs and throwing rose petals around at a castle. It was very tiring, as there was a fair bit to be sorted out, and I ended up running around like a total pazza for a lot of the day – especially after we’d been very Italian and missed our first train, arriving later than we’d planned to and surrounded by a whirlwind of chaos. The wedding was lovely in the end though, and everything went to plan, well except that I returned in the evening with a self-diagnosed case of heat exhaustion and looking like I’d been dragged through a bush backwards.

The middle of the week seemed to disappear entirely, merging into a blur of a little bit of wandering around in the sunshine, going to work, and doing a rather large amount of stressing unnecessarily about my YA assignment and frequently cursing the Modern Languages Department aloud, as well as cooing over Persephone, the tiny turtle which Ilaria brought home the other week and is keeping in a Tupperware container in her bedroom. Before I knew what had happened, suddenly Friday, the sneaky thing, had crept up on me again.

Friday was definitely one of those days that remind me what a bizarre life I have been leading. I woke up fairly early to finish my assignment on the day it was due in (the European experience has clearly further reduced my sense of urgency to get things done before they absolutely need to be) and found my housemate cleaning the house like her life depended on it.

It dawned on me that Stefano had mentioned that for various complicated reasons to do with the lease being up on the house at the end of September, a lawyer was going to be coming round on Friday evening. This wouldn’t have been a problem, but before I arrived at Casa Carbonara, there had at one point been about seven people living in the four-bedroom house, a fifth bedroom having been created from a study, and a couple of the rooms becoming shared rooms, with two beds and at least three mattresses in each. Since I’ve been here, there’s been a maximum of four of us, and since I’ve been back from America we’ve been in three, but the problem was that the lawyer and landlady were not supposed to see that the house had been used as an ever so slightly more up-market version of a squat. To cut a long story short, we had to move furniture around, hiding mattresses, turning twin beds into a ‘double’, and transforming Ivan’s bedroom into a convincing ripostiglio – storage room – by throwing all manner of random items into it, by the time they arrived. Ilaria’s Facebook status was something along the lines of ‘cleaning the house as if a murder has taken place’, which pretty accurately sums up what it must have looked like, both of us in our pyjamas frantically carrying furniture around, removing evidence and covering up things we didn’t want the officials to find. We must have done a good job of it though, as nothing was said that evening, and we’ve since been showing off our new junk room to every visitor to the house, with grins on our faces like proud parents.

Later, partly to celebrate our excellent transformation of the house, partly to celebrate not having to do my Year Abroad task any more, and mainly because it was Friday night, we headed off in to the centre of town to meet up with a few friends for a drink and a wander. A drink and a wander somehow turned into an episode of all of us standing in a line in the backstreets of the centro storico, playing the ridiculous Gioco di Michele, which fundamentally resulted in a lot of laughing, silly gestures and eventually Ilaria falling over landing on her back like an upturned ladybird on the floor. As usual, it was a really fun evening, ending with Ilaria, one of the boys, and myself sitting in our house at 3am watching Scrubs in Italian. Super.

The overcast sky scuppered our plans to go and sit in the sunshine yesterday, resulting in a duvet day (minus duvet – not to brag, but it’s still pretty toasty here, despite Italy’s best efforts to acclimatize me to what I’ll be in for in England by bucketing down with rain…) of watching assorted trash on the internet and baking some brownies – not my best due to some necessary recipe tweaking – Carrefour’s specialties don’t extend to vanilla extract, and the oven only has two options: on or off.

And now it’s Sunday, the last one, with only one week left even though I sometimes feel like I only arrived for the first time a fortnight ago, and I can’t even begin to explain how notready I am to go back.

Bernard, I’m going to be needing that watch of yours…

Notte Bianca 2011: Genova

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:18:00 +0200

Notte Bianca 2011: Genova

White Nights: Take 2.

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 11:30:45 +0200

Somebody very wise once said, “No one looks back on their life and remembers the nights they got plenty of sleep”.

Whoever they were, they had a very good point, and nothing proved this better than the Notte Bianca on Saturday.

As you may or may not remember, last year at around this time I was in Madrid, where there’s a similar event, the Noche en Blanco. As you might have already read here, we somewhat missed the point of the latter, so when I saw signs around the Genovese streets advertising “La Notte Bianca”with the tagline “nessun dorma”, you can understand why I was excited for the opportunity to give a White Night another crack.

If you didn’t know, these events, which take place in various European cities for no readily apparent reason, involve a lot of people, stalls, music, shops open all night, cultural sights, food, and large amounts of fun to be had by all. You can make of them what you like; some people coming out to see a musician they like playing in a piazza, some just soaking up the atmosphere, and others taking the opportunity to drink a lot and stay out dancing until dawn in all sorts of unusual places. The Italians obviously love this excuse to celebrate nothing in particular (although this year, Notte Bianca was masquerading as part of the Festival dell’Acqua, not that I have the tiniest clue as to why that exists) just as much as I do, but it feels so much more exciting for me, as things like this just don’t happen in the UK. Don’t get me wrong, I do love England, it’s just a shame that this kind of total madness wouldn’t be accepted there in the same way as it is here. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have the same attitude towards spontaneous fun, perhaps our stiff upper lips, bowler hats and briefcases would get in the way, or perhaps (in fact, without a shadow of a doubt) most of the fun would be prevented by health and safety anyway, but the fact of the matter is that the UK could just never emulate this kind of occasion, even if it tried. I’ve got no reason to complain though, as all this means is that next September, I may just have to come back here.

The serata essentially started with myself, my housemate Ilaria and her lovely friend Zappi sitting in the kitchen painting our nails and having a pre-aperitivo consisting of some wine bought using the typically English wine-purchasing technique of choosing a bottle precisely in the middle of the price range, with the nicest looking label, to try to cover up the fact that the only thing I know about wine is that it comes in red, white or pink, and to hopefully avoid purchasing any variety which tastes like vinegar, as I fear the one Euro box-wine may have done; and let’s face it, nobody appreciates wine from a box like the British do, anyway.

We had quite a civilized start to the evening, but this rapidly descended into a less refined affair as we turned up the music and started singing along, standing on furniture, dancing around using a broom as a microphone, turning saucepan lids into percussion instruments and finally sampling a bottle of grappa we’d uncovered which had been in the house for, well, I’m not sure I even want to know how long. If you’re interested, it smelt revolting but tasted infinitely worse and resulted in some rather comical post-drink faces – made even more amusing by the fact that we had consumed the offending liquid from tazzine, i.e. espresso mugs.

We did contemplate celebrating the whole of the Notte Bianca from the comfort of the Casa Carbonara kitchen as we were having a wonderful time, but ended up heading into the centre anyway, joined by Zappi’s boyfriend.

When we arrived, the whole of Genova was there to meet us. Well, only a few people were there to meet us specifically, but most of the rest of Genova was there nonetheless, out in force and bursting with energy. The streets were absolutely heaving, but in a busy, lively, lovely, as opposed to Christmas time in Oxford Street kind of way; and the grappa had gone to my head just about enough to not be bothered that I had no control of where I was being dragged by the current of the crowd, but not enough that I lost track of where my friends were, which seemed like a good balance. I spent the first hour or so feeling a little out of the loop as I was with a group of people who all knew each other very well and my Italian was, as ever, letting me down quite severely on the being a fun and interesting individual front, but within no time at all, I’d forgotten all about it. This nicely coincided with the point when I found myself dancing to reggae with everyone else in a tiny square which I’d never come across before, where a couple of people were sat on top of a VW bus watching whilst everybody else danced around care-free in the open air, and, if you don’t mind me bragging (and you no doubt do, but please bear in mind there are under 2 weeks of this to go) in the 26 degree midnight heat.

There’s something very refreshing about dancing to loud music at 4 a.m., outdoors, in places through which you would walk during the day without giving them a second glance. The entire city was filled with people of all ages just enjoying themselves, eating, drinking, dancing, and exploring in more or less equal measure, and the energy around the whole of the centre of town was incredible, it felt like music, lights and excitement were everywhere, which I appreciate makes me sound like a total hippy, but so be it, because I can’t describe it in any other way.

We spent the rest of the night/early hours of the morning wandering the streets finding all kinds of outdoor concerts and gatherings of people, accompanied at different stages by various groups of Ilaria’s friends as well as Stefano and his dog at one point too. We danced for a while in the Giardini di Plastica which are apparently usually occupied by drug addicts, but on this particular occasion were thankfully instead filled with music, hundreds of other people, and us. We went off to the vicoli and found a bar willing to give us free drinks in exchange for letting the barman go ahead of us in the queue for the toilets, which seemed a more than reasonable arrangement, and also walked around some more, passing through Piazza De Ferrari and Piazza della Vittoria, all the way down Via XX Settembre, seeing as much as possible of what was going on, and eventually ending up back to the Giardini di Plastica for a last hour or so of dancing before heading home.

We got in at 5ish, having wandered, danced, sung, drank and explored to our hearts’ content, and I am so glad that on that particular night I most definitely did not get plenty of sleep.

The Italian Supermarket Experience

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:42:51 +0200

At 7.54 p.m., you arrive at your regular supermarket looking windswept and flushed having realized, six minutes before the store closed, that you have nothing at all left in the cucina, except for four strawberries, the dregs of a tub of pesto, two litres of olive oil, a curiously large quantity of anchovies, and about eighty assorted teabags.

You walk through the shop door and fight your way through the inexplicable wall of trolleys that blocks your path, grabbing a big green basket from the impossibly tall pile, lowering it gradually to the ground, avoiding the hordes of people who are all standing in the entrance, where management has conveniently placed not only the trolley mountain and the basket beanstalk, but the checkouts as well.

This store, like many others, is set out in the form of a maze, with an unmarked, unspoken, but well acknowledged one-way system. If you pass an item and do not pick it up on the way round, don’t even think about swimming back upstream like a lone lost salmon to obtain it. This is strictly senso unico.

First straight completed. Milk, fruit, vegetables, cereal all in the basket - a far too large, probably cot-sized contraption, which you’re dragging along behind you, snaking it around the aisle to minimize the grazing of other customers lower legs, as it is too awkwardly shaped to hold as a basket, making you question why they even bothered to put a handle on the bloody thing.

Time for the first bend and oh super, there’s an obstruction in the form of a dozen shoppers huddled around the deli counter. Being as the deli is the one stop spot for olives, cheeses and most importantly, focaccia, you take a ticket. That’s right, a ticket. A system that I personally last saw in an English supermarket circa 1995, presumably because we Brits have it instilled in us from a young age that if there is any competition in a public arena such as the supermarket, the most sensible thing to do is form an orderly line. In Italy, not so much, and so you pull #6422 from the dispenser and wait patiently while every other customer is served, and little old nonnas take their time in requesting 14 different varieties of freshly cut ham, after asking the salesperson’s opinion on absolutely every kind available.

All important local delicacies safely in the basket, and with two minutes to go, you push through more shelves of pasta than you ever thought possible, pick up some biscuits and some more tea as you really can never have enough of those, stumble over a woman puzzlingly repacking her trolley just around the blind bend by the detergents, whizz down the home straight, throwing all manner of random objects into your basket as you go, and join a gigantic queue which, as always, does not indicate who will be served first – if there was supposed to be an order, somebody would have installed a ticketing system, after all.

When you get to the checkout, which has taken a while as the customer before you was paying with half a million coupons, all of which she had to sign right there; and it’s almost closing time. You’ve piled your goods on the conveyor belt, received a half hearted “buona sera” from the guy at the till, and the beeping begins. ”Un sacchetto, per favore”, you ask politely. Beep. Beep. “uh… per piacere, un sacchetto?” Beep. Beep. Nothing. “MI SCUSI? VORREI UN SACCHETTO!”.

Cue the launch of a plastic bag and immediate demand of €14.36. You start haphazardly shoving your purchases into the bag, simultaneously rifling through your purse for money, wishing you had eight arms, and finally chucking a crumpled twenty into the cashier’s palm (sorting out that change should buy you some time) and returning to the task at hand. He asks if you happen to have, mica, those 36 cents, because clearly that would make life so very much easier. For him. No, purely on principal, you do not have any change at all, so you continue packing like it’s an Olympic event. Two more items in the bag and he’s handing over a lot of coins. You shove them straight in your pocket; this is no time to be faffing around with a wallet.

Beep. Beep. Oh Jesus, he’s started serving the next customer, and your goods are still in the goods collection zone (incidentally, the case each and every time you visit the supermarket, and not in any way limited to the pre-closing-time-rush. To see that I am not the only one who feels this, please click here)

You shove the rest of the items in the bag as quickly as you can and clear the exit zone as fast as possible, praying that your peaches don’t get bruised and your hastily packed eggs stay intact until you have a chance to publicly repack on the bench outside, away from the chaos.

You’re out.

Phew.

Shame you forgot the one thing you went in for really, isn’t it?

Photo

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 19:46:43 +0200

Anniversary

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:51:46 +0200

If you hadn’t noticed, it’s the 2^nd September. Again. A whole year has passed since my first journey to Madrid, the much-dreaded first day involving blistered hands from heavy suitcases, total linguistic ineptitude, and the pathetic display of a teary breakdown on the streets of Spain; and since then so much has changed. Yes, my suitcases weigh just as much, no doubt even more; my language skills still leave a lot to be desired; and I am once again on the brink of emotional meltdown, but not because I don’t want to be here - au contraire - because I don’t want to leave.

Yesterday, I booked my flight home. Although I should have just decided on a date weeks ago and booked while the tickets were considerably cheaper, actually setting a date for my inevitable return felt like failure, like weakness, like giving in. Now that I know definitely that by 4pm on the 25^th September, I will be back on the cold, muddy island that is the UK, I can’t help thinking that I must spend every minute of every day enjoying myself as much as humanly possible. This next year in Durham, despite there being lots of people who I am very excited about seeing, is probably going to be exceedingly stressful for us, not only as it’s our final year but also due to the fact that it’s been so very long since 9am seminars, oral classes and presentations have been part of our lives. It seems so strange now that I would ever have wanted to count down the days to my YA being over (and let’s face it, to the upcoming year of stress and panic), and 3-and-a-bit weeks seems like such a short period of time to have left on this totally bizarre year-long-partially-government-funded holiday.

Since I’ve been back from America, on what is now a voluntary year abroad segment rather than an imposed one, I’ve already been putting Mission Make The Most Of Italy into action, with a daily diet of at least one gelato (more points for risky flavours and combinations, a double score for ordering a flavour without knowing what it is) and one Italian food which is much less delicious in England (think focaccia, pesto, stracchino – of which yesterday evening I must have consumed about a pound, finding myself feeling too proud of this achievement to even feel unwell…) and as I’ve tried to do since the very beginning, but haven’t been quite so successful at until more recently, the Just Say Yes motto has been in full force, resulting in many a spontaneous evening of food, drink and socializing. I’ve ended up having a much more fun and decidedly more delicious time since I’ve been back, and now want time to go a little bit more slowly so that I can squeeze in as many ice creams, Vespa rides and meals involving real pesto as I possibly can, and not even the delightful summer cold I have mysteriously picked up despite the constant heat (life is so unjust) will stop me. Carpe Diem, and all that. Final weeks of crazy, wonderful, nomadic lifestyle – here I come.

Sorrento

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:33:00 +0200

The Beach

View from Villa Fondi

Wedding

Reception

View from the restaurant

Sorrento

Update 3: Casa Dolce Casa

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 12:58:00 +0200

There’s something very nice about going away on holiday when you are already more or less on holiday to begin with. In particular, it makes coming back from holiday significantly less depressing. When I got back to Genoa, despite being extremely irate at the ridiculous organization that is Ryanair, and their shameless con artistry which meant that I had to give them forty more of my pounds to check in my hand luggage which weighed not even 2 kilos more than their measly recommendation… where was I? Oh yes, despite that, I had a warm feeling when I returned, due only in part to the foul humidity and sweltering heat.

When I dragged my enormous suitcase back through the doors of Casa Carbonara, only one of my housemates, Ivan, was home. Lorenzo moved flat while I was away as he’s got a new job, and Ilaria is back in Pisa but will probably be returning at some point soon. Almost immediately, I went to sleep to try to rid myself of the jetlag which was not thanking me for adding yet another hour’s difference for my already highly confused body clock to deal with.

The next day, I was feeling slightly more chipper and wandered down into the centre, which has become a Ferragosto ghost town, as practically all Italians use this week/fortnight/month every year to go to either the beach or the mountains, to get away from the heat and make the most of a holiday, because there are simply not enough of those in Italy already, it would appear…

While I was making the most of good old multinational H&M being open while the majority of shops, cafés, restaurants, supermarkets etc. were firmly closed until the end of the month, I got a call from my landlord/friend/previous inhabitant of my house Stefano, asking if I was up to anything. Obviously choosing a new nail varnish shade does not classify, so I said I could meet him. A little while later, we hopped on his Vespa (sidenote: I’m not sure how much longer I can cope without one of these) and went to his house to collect his dog and his car. It turned out his plans for the afternoon included not only going for a drink and dinner later on, but first taking his dog to the vet to get his prostate examined. As the vet poked his little finger into the poor pooch’s bottom, explaining all along what he was doing, I realized that there are moments when I wish my Italian had not improved quite so much. Thankfully the examination was eventually over, so Stefano, Peter the dog – unsurprisingly looking quite embarrassed and violated, and I hopped back in the car to collect Stefano’s friend Carlo to go for a drink. We ended up having a couple of drinks and then going for a meal of generic Asian food at a restaurant called Sushi Wok, chatted about an array of bizarre topics, and the typically strange but nevertheless very enjoyable day just proved that coming back was the right thing to do, and when I went to bed I was most definitely happy to be back ‘home’.

Not even having unpacked, on Thursday morning, it was time for my next adventure. I packed my overnight bag, trundled off to Piazza Principe, and got on an 8 hour train to Naples, from where I would get another to go to Sorrento for the wedding of two English people, which we’ve been organizing. I was sat on the train in a set of 4 seats with a table in between, next to a girl who was opposite her apparently boyfriend, who spent the entire eight hours either openly declaring their love for each other, snogging over the table with excessively visible tongues (this constituted roughly 85% of the journey), holding each others faces in their hands and pouting at each other, and being on the whole excessively irritating.

After another hour on the Circumvesuviana train, I arrived in Sorrento and was greeted by Sonia and Massimo who took me out to a great pizzeria, which turned out to have changed hands since they were last there and no longer served any kind of pizza at all. Nevertheless, the food was delicious, even though it wasn’t the promised pizza. We had some wine and Massimo befriended the couple on the table next to us, then deciding that we should all go out together. We headed off with our two new pals to a little bar, had some more drinks and then went to a very cool outdoor club in Massa Lubrense to do some dancing.

We ended up staying in a B&B found for us the day before by an – ahem – friend of a friend, if you know what I mean. The room consisted of Sonia and Massimo’s room and an en suite, and then my room off to the side of theirs, just confirming really that I have been adopted as some kind of daughter/little sister/pet. In the morning, I was awakened - very few hours after going to bed - by Massimo who thought it appropriate to tickle my feet to do so. We had breakfast outside in the shade, where it was still far too hot, and then went off to meet the groom, because in case you’ve forgotten – and I admit I almost did too – we had come to Sorrento for the wedding and not just for a mini-break.

After going off to meet the groom and coming to the conclusion that there was very little we needed to do, off we drove to the beach to have some lunch, then headed back to change and go to the Town Hall where the ceremony would be. Calling Villa Fondi a ‘Town Hall’ doesn’t really do it justice. It’s essentially a typical Town Hall style building, but is perched on the edge of a cliff over the sea, has a park to wander around, and looks out over Mount Vesuvius. I’d seen photos of the venue before going, but didn’t really understand the layout well, and was quite blown away that the views in real life were really just like the photos. The wedding went fairly well, although by the end of the ceremony most guests were huddled under a tree in the shade, as it really was ridiculously hot.

While the wedding party went off for their reception, the three of us went for dinner at the restaurant where the bride and groom initially wanted their reception, but which didn’t have space. We chatted with the owner, who had been very… proactive… in finding us other solutions so that the wedding could take place there, but we had decided not to take him up on his various offers involving his, shall we say, contacts. As you can imagine though, we ate very well, had some excellent Sorrento limoncello, and were even given a tour around the restaurant and kitchens, which was slightly odd to say the least, but we ate, drank and laughed a lot and I had yet another hilarious evening with my adoptive Italians.

Coming home was a somewhat less jovial affair. Sonia and Massimo had rented a car from Pescara which needed to be returned to Rome, and I was going to have to change train in Rome anyway, so I decided to hitch a lift with them. Everything was going well until we hit Rome itself; a maze of a one way system, with some of the most unforgiving traffic wardens I’ve ever seen. We were driving around for an hour, windows down with Massimo shouting all manner of vocabulary that I can’t use in my oral exam, and my personal favourite episode was when we accidentally drove down a road made exclusively for trams, not realizing that cars weren’t allowed until we drove through the station, past about 30 quite puzzled-looking commuters. At the end of this road, we could join a road made for cars, but the traffic warden at the end was entirely unsympathetic to our plight, instead making us reverse back down the same street. Two minutes before we had to be at the rental place, we arrived.

Roma Termini station in mid-August is not a great place to be. The queues are extraordinary and trains very full. By some miracle, we managed to get tickets and get on a train without as many problems as we predicted at first sight of the mile long queue for the biglietteria, and got on our train. About an hour into the 5 hour journey, we started feeling quite warm. That’s right, friends, the air conditioning was broken. Not only was the air conditioning broken, but shortly after, the train ground to a halt in the middle of nowhere, stopping for a rather long time, and we were unable to open doors or windows, it being one of those exceptionally cleverly designed trains which rely entirely on the air-con for ventilation. The journey went on for 1 and a half more hours than predicted, most of it without fresh air, stopping sporadically at stations to let everybody off to breathe, and when we finally got back to Genova, we were all slightly fed up, nobody more so than poor Massimo who by this point had decided that it really just wasn’t his day.

In spite of our slightly problematic return leg of the journey, and a stay which was far too short, it was the weird and wonderful experience I’ve come to expect of Italy, and I got back just in time to tuck in to an amazing dinner including mussels and other pescetarian treats with Stefano, Lorenzo, some of their friends, Stefano’s girlfriend, their beautiful baby and their dog.

Genova, I’m home!

The U. S. of A.

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:12:00 +0200

Santa Barbara

Santa Claus Beach

Big Bear Lake

Big Bear Lake

Big Bear Lake

Huntington Beach

Hollywood

San Diego Zoo

La Jolla

The U. S. of A.

Update 2: Gli Stati Uniti

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:42:00 +0200

Having felt so settled in Italy, going away for 3 weeks to America suddenly felt like a very bad idea. Although I was looking forward to going and to spending 3 weeks with Ben and his family - for the longest time I’ve seen him for over a year - packing up and leaving didn’t seem like the right thing to do, and there were so many things to do before I left that I had almost not thought about the holiday itself. Having said that, by about a day into the trip, I was one hundred percent happy I’d gone.

I’ll try to summarize the sequence of events, but I can’t even begin to explain how much fun it all was. We had an incredible holiday featuring lots of eating, drinking, laughing, sunbathing, hot tubbing, road tripping and general silliness.

We started off in Montecito, in a beautiful house close to the beach, relaxing in the hot tub every night and exploring the town and nearby Santa Barbara during the day. Ben tried his hand at surfing on his new surfboard; while I sat on the beach commenting on how many shark attack programs I’d seen which featured the California coastline, then tried myself for about 5 minutes, thoroughly terrified of having a chunk bitten out of me throughout, and obviously failing to even stand. We visited Starbucks – how could you go to America and not? – and also found an incredible cupcake shop, some amazing sandy beaches which were, unlike in Italy, not completely rammed full, although the water was absolutely freezing, especially compared to the warm bath that is the Mediterranean.

Next stop on our tour was Big Bear Lake, up in the mountains in the San Bernardino National Forest, within which some of The Parent Trap was filmed – fact. We were there for a couple of days, exploring a little bit and trying to avoid being eaten by bears, bitten by poisonous spiders or encountering mountain lions, but being quite thankful that there were at least no sharks in the lake.

After Big Bear, we drove down the mountain again and along the coast to Huntington Beach. While we were there, the US Open of Surfing was going on, meaning the whole place was full of people and there were some pretty impressive surfers around, some of whom were, incredibly, even better than me. We had a relaxing week on the beach, risking body boarding in the enormous waves a couple of times, resulting in a lot of bruises and scrapes, and watching the pros. Ben, Hannah and I cycled out for a high class dinner at McDonald’s, and at the end of the week we all went to the beach for a free Jimmy Eat World, Surfer Blood and MGMT concert. Brilliant.

One day, we went to L.A. for the day, to see what all the fuss was about. Los Angeles is enormous, and I wasn’t really aware of how big it was before going there. We drove around doing a tour, stopping off in Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. Hollywood is a very photogenic place; in real life it is nothing like how I imagined it and most names on the Walk of Fame mean nothing to me. The Hollywood sign isn’t visible from everywhere, and looks much less impressive in real life. Beverly Hills may well have some amazing houses, but it is also toured every minute of the day by tourists on open top buses trying to spot celebrities, which did make me wonder why the stars like living there so much. In the afternoon, we walked along the seaside and down the pier at Santa Monica to have a look around, taking some touristy photos by the Muscle Beach sign and admiring some fitness freaks at work before heading back to Huntington, and then moving on to our next destination.

The next and final stop was La Jolla Shores, where we stayed in a gorgeous place resembling a dolls house, very close to the beach which was perfect for beginner surfing so where I finally learnt, despite frequent sightings of stingrays and constant terror of shark attack. Even though the weather wasn’t great, we had so much fun, even going to San Diego Zoo one day for Hannah and I to find the meerkats, along the way seeing polar bears, a slow loris and lots of lovely koalas. After what seemed like no time at all, it was time to come home again, thankfully with all limbs completely intact, well except for my swollen foot which was sustained falling off my surfboard in a wave much bigger than I was competent of surfing on…

The trip went so quickly and it was sad to come home, particularly to a severe bout of jetlag and the knowledge that I won’t be seeing Ben for a while, but when ‘coming home’ means returning to England for a day and then jetting off back to the Italian Riviera, there’s only so much one can complain.

My visitors, and the unfortunate incident with the flower pot

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:40:00 +0200

My visitors, and the unfortunate incident with the flower pot

Update 1: July in a nutshell

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:28:00 +0200

Every day since my last blog on the – ahem – 29^th June, has flown past faster than I realized was possible. Here I find myself, on oh good gracious the twenty-flipping-second of August, with not a lot to do besides tidy up what looks like the remnants of a wardrobe explosion, as I’ve still not summoned the energy, or indeed the time, to unpack properly from my various adventures. I have quite possibly no more than five weeks of my year abroad remaining, and frankly don’t even know where to begin, as details have blurred sufficiently by now for the period post-last-blog-but-pre-holiday to seem like a tornado of contented chaos.

29^th June – 8^th July

The rest of the babysitting/English teaching experience went by without too many problems. There were so many children that I essentially let them run riot whenever the parents were out of earshot, throwing in some games every so often and spending the majority of the time trying to stop the little monkeys from scratching each others eyes out, putting anything toxic in their mouths or climbing over the balcony railings. One of the little girls, Giorgia, was an absolute sweetie, and by the final Friday I did momentarily contemplate squidging her into my handbag and taking her away with me, but a couple of the others were definitely getting more than a little bit on my nerves by then, and in the end I decided to leave them all exactly where they were. I remember the two weeks feeling endless at times, but looking back on them, I now barely remember being there at all. Strange, how that happens.

Amidst the sleep deprived couple of weeks when I had two jobs to go to, I also dragged my many kilos of belongings across town and moved house, into Casa Carbonara, the oddly decorated flat which is almost embarrassingly close to Sonia’s, meaning my daily commute is now about a 6 minute walk, albeit up an atrocious series of scalette. The housemates are lovely – I don’t see them an awful lot as they’re working/off on their own little adventures, but there’s usually someone in the house to talk to if I want, which is nice, and I feel very much at home. Living here also means that I get the amazing view from Spianata Castelletto every time I go into the centre of town, which always brings a smile to my face.

9^th – 15^th July

Sleep deprived and with a bloodstream comprising at least 60% espresso, I hopped on a plane the morning after finishing with the bambini, to head to England for Cat’s beautiful 21^st party. Although when I left, I wasn’t desperate to be back in England as I have been before visits home at other points during the year, I had such fun and I undoubtedly previewed what I’m going to be like next year in Durham; spouting a monologue to anyone and everyone about how I’ve fallen in love with the Year Abroad, very much regardless of whether or not they want to hear me tell them. A couple of days later I returned to Genoa, but not alone. Molly, as well as Charlotte and Rachel, who featured in the Galicia portion of my year, flew back with me to stay for a few days, which happily coincided with my birthday.

Thanks to my flexible timetable, we managed to go on a couple of little trips; to the beach in Bogliasco on the first day, and then to Nervi on my birthday, where Rachel managed to slice her foot open on a rock, resulting in an opportunity for me to practice my ‘medical emergencies’ vocabulary, and a painful few days for her. Thankfully we still managed some dancing, drinking and a whole lot of eating, and were joined by Liv, who shares my love for food generally, and Italian food specifically; and her friend Lottie, who also joined in whole heartedly with our – and especially, my – seemingly non stop gastronomic tour of Genoa, which featured my two favourite aperitivo spots, as well as a pizzeria into whose flowerpot Liv took a little tumble one evening, much to everybody’s delight. Having the girls around was great; I had a good catch up with them all; even watched a bit of Green Wing with Molly like we used to do back in the day; loved going out for a little dance with other people who know the words to the songs to save me from singing along alone, watched by confused Italians mouthing na-na-na-na-na; and I really enjoyed showing people around here, even though I know that other people won’t see the city in the same way; it’s definitely not a very easy place to get to know, and I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what is here after a few months, so can’t imagine how confusing visitors find it when they’re only here for a couple of days.

18^th – 22^nd July

After a whole two days of relaxing, my next visitor, my Mum, arrived. She’d wanted to visit me for a while, and we’d finally decided that she could come right at the end of my time in Italy in order to help me transport my luggage back to the UK. By this stage though, I’d inconveniently decided that 3 months in Italy was just not long enough, so our careful planning was wasted. However, having her here was great, especially because she and I share the same views on what makes a good holiday, so we spent our days wandering around from café to café, drinking a lot of coffee, and filling the gaps with ice cream from Genoa’s incredible gelaterie. We saw American Ben, had an ice cream and a catch up, and said our goodbyes, as he went back to the States while I was away. I had what was supposed to be my last day at work, feeling extremely bad for abandoning Sonia to deal with the wedding of Bridezilla on her own, but glad I was going to come back. After what had felt like the fastest 3 weeks on record, I hastily shoved most of my belongings into my suitcase and we went to the airport on our way home and it was confirmed that I’d made the right choice to extend my stay…

A week in the life...

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:56:00 +0200

THURSDAY

Failure:

I spent several hours on Thursday evening with Sonia and a not particularly pleasant Russian bride in the office of an extremely patient florist, while the bride-to-be turned her nose up at each and every one of his suggestions until finally giving in and making a flipping decision several hours later, being altogether less than courteous the entire time.

Success:

After that rather unpleasant encounter with the Russian, Sonia invited me for an aperitivo with her, Massimo and some of their friends. An aperitivo turned into a long drink, which turned into dinner, which turned into a small bar crawl until 3.30am. It was excellent, professional boundaries have now been well and truly crossed, and I am not ashamed to admit that I had fun with people who are old enough to be my parents, even if I was referred to as a bambina on more than one occasion.

FRIDAY

Failure:

Now, this one’s the real kicker. At 3.45am on Friday morning, I was getting in to bed, after the excellent spontaneous night out with a lot of grown ups, and had a quick check of my emails. Awaiting me was a message from the landlord/housemate of the house I’m supposed to be moving in to on Friday. Being as it was that I’d just emailed before to ask if he wanted to meet up some time to go over what he wanted as a deposit, when I could move in, getting the keys etc. etc., when I saw an enormous chunk of text as a reply, my stomach jumped promptly into my mouth and I already knew something wasn’t right. Intuition was indeed correct, and the email was sent to tell me that for some very complicated reason involving lawyers and an angry current tenant, I can’t move there. He did sound fairly apologetic, and it was a very polite email and all that, but both of those things did not manage to disguise the ugly truth that I had under a week to find somewhere else to live, as my current landlady has found somebody to move in here on Friday morning. Hmm.

Failure:

In my panicked state, I decided to make a call to the landlady of approximately 90% of the properties on easystanza.com, good old ‘Sara’ who made me cry on Day 1, when I phoned to ask if I could look at a flat and was shouted at in fast Italian for not knowing the precise address of where I was working, and then for not understanding what she was shouting at me for. Desperate times, though, so I called her back and miraculously managed to arrange a visit to a house in a relatively nice looking area that very afternoon. I arrived at the meeting place and was greeted by a maroon-haired, badly dressed, rather chunky, middle-aged Italian lady who kept starting sentences with “Perche io non sono la signora che….” but then talking so fast that I didn’t know what kind of signora she was or was not. I was, however, about to find out. We waited for another girl to join us, who was being shown a flat on the way to my one. The three of us went inside, and were shown an enormous but extremely sparse 8-bedroom apartment with, as far as I could see, one bathroom… Anyway, she showed us around and prattled on for a while about how she’d evict someone if they left a plate unwashed, and then started saying that if you have a boyfriend, they are most definitely not allowed to sleep over, and in fact that nobody is allowed to sleep over, and that tenants may have friends over in the evening once a week. I, having already decided I wasn’t going to live in an 8 person flat anyway (particularly one owned by this lunatic), asked her if this meant that my 3 friends coming to stay for my birthday would be a problem. She then proceeded to screech back at me with phrases like, “why should my property be used as a hotel?” and, “what do you think the other people living here would think if they woke up in the morning and saw a stranger going in to their bathroom?!”. Well, lady, I’m gonna say that with 8 people already living there, they probably wouldn’t even notice. “And”, she went on, “where would you make them sleep? The floor?!”. I really thought that wasn’t her problem to worry about, and was about to leave anyway when she left me with this gem, “Well, if it’s going to be like that, I’m not even going to show you the other apartment”. Ciao, Sara. Ciao.

Success:

At work on Friday afternoon, I was super-dooper-extra-mega lazy. After sending one only ever so slightly important email, I started having a chat with Sonia about the Mafia (as usual, she talked a lot while I found it all very interesting but could only pipe up with little noises of agreement every so often). This chat was then relocated from the table on the terrace to the sun loungers on the terrace, and the topic changed from the quite serious matter of organized crime, to the somewhat more trivial topics of where we want to go on holiday, Gap years, and how I don’t know any Italian grammar. We remained there for a good couple of hours until 7pm when it was decided that the arduous day of work should end. Not a particularly interesting story, I appreciate, but I came out of *ahem* work, feeling a whole lot less stressed about my imminent state of senzatetto, and probably a tiny bit more tanned, which I think can only be deemed a success story.

Failure:

Friday was also John the Baptist Day or something similar, which meant it was a bank holiday, everything was shut in a way that only happens on Christmas Day in England, that is except for a Carrefour near to work. I popped in to get some essentials (bottles of water, yogurt, fruit juice, cereal etc…) and was about half way home when the handles fell off the shopping bag and I had to carry my goods home in my arms like a particularly angular infant. When I got back, rather irate, American Ben cheered me up slightly by telling me that there were fireworks that night for San Whatever-his-name-was Day, so we walked off to Spianata Castelletto, where there’s a pretty good view over the port and the centre of the city, where the fireworks would be. He’d read on the Internet that they would take place at 11pm, which came and went, but we thought they were probably just being Italian about it, and hung around until half past, convinced they would start. But they didn’t. At all. We got back and checked on the website, and it turns out they were in Voltri, not Genoa city centre, absolutely miles away, just putting the cherry on top of somewhat rubbish day. I did guilt Ben into buying me an ice cream on the way home, though. That helped.

SATURDAY

Failure:

Apartment search, onward. I arranged a couple of viewings for Saturday afternoon, and went off to the first which was in a slightly inconvenient location, but wasn’t down any dodgy alleyways (of which there are plenty…) and was on a good bus line at least. The house itself was very nice, spacious, clean, etc., but I was told by the landlady that the other bedroom in the house wasn’t going to be ready until mid August, so I’d be living alone until then. Not ideal. I mumbled something about calling her and letting her know, and went off to catch the bus to apartment viewing number two, which was about 100 metres away from my current flat. I was greeted by a frizzy-haired, middle-aged lady whom I presumed to be the landlady, until it became apparent that this was her family home. Obviously I couldn’t leave right away, so was shown around by this odd character, who talked to her cat as if it were a person the entire flipping time. Not even just, “what a nice kitty”, but rather, “Why are you not saying hello to the guest? Why? WHY?”… You get the idea. I politely told her I’d ‘let her know’ as well, because I’m too much of a coward to tell people I don’t like them, their homes and/or their eccentric animal-whispering ways, and promptly sulked off back to my flat to ask Boring Ben if he knew anybody locally in whose doorway I could sleep for the next 3 months.

Success:

During one apartment viewing, Sonia texted, asking me to come for dinner, and to invite Ben to come along too, so a couple of hours later, off we went. We were in the office (a.k.a. the roof terrace) with its amazing view which I’ve only ever seen in daylight but which is even more beautiful at sunset; ate very well (homemade pizza really is the best kind of pizza) and drank and chatted and socialized with my new middle-aged acquaintances, including the barman, and the daughter of the venue owners, from the party a few weeks ago, both of whom I liked a lot, with the people I’d met a couple of nights previously, and with a somewhat odd man called, as far as I could tell, ‘Jobby’, who gave us a long, detailed, description in broken English of how he thinks humankind is comparable to a sunflower… Once again though, I managed to thoroughly enjoy an evening of grown up company, and stayed until 3am, having not realized how late it was, on the lash with my boss for the second night in a week. Excellent.

SUNDAY

Success:

To take my mind off not having found a house, I decided to still go to Piemonte with Luca, Francesca, Davide and two of Francesca’s friends, Tiziana and Francesco, on Sunday, as it had been organized before Marco had told me the bad news about the flat. I was picked up in Davide’s car, and was driven to there with everyone, except Luca who was already at his house in the little town called Viola. The drive was beautiful, through an endless number of extremely green hills and stunning views, and after a couple of hours, we arrived and tucked into lots of delicious food, sat around, chatted, laughed, and obviously ate. We spent the afternoon walking around the town, which is very cute and looks almost like a French ski resort except obviously much greener as it is, after all, June, playing in childrens’ playgrounds and being juvenile. I did a lot of laughing along and contributed very little to conversations, but did genuinely have a great time, and understood pretty much everything that was going on, which I was pretty pleased about because I know that a couple of weeks ago this wouldn’t have been the case. It was essentially an afternoon of being silly, making friends and practicing Italian in a beautiful, beautiful place. I don’t think I could ask for much more than that…

MONDAY

Failure:

I started an additional job on Monday, looking after Massimo’s sister Sabrina’s, and her neighbours’, kids, from 9-2 every day for the next two weeks, as their au pair has gone on holiday. I agreed to do it right when I first arrived, when I was convinced I’d be bored out of my mind and desperate for something to do, but now feel far too busy to be spending 5 hours of my day looking after children… I was anticipating 2-4 of them, but turned up to find a grand total of 5. They’re individually all quite well behaved, but as there are so very many of them, they can be pretty wild. Essentially, they are wearing me out a lot, and I’m kind of just letting them run wild, safe in the knowledge that after next Friday they will not be my problem. The littlest girl, Ilaria, is pretty cute though, and wants to cuddle me all the time, the second littlest girl, Giorgia, is a cutie - quite naughty, but adorable, so I let her get away with it. The littlest boy, Mario, is pretty irritating at times and is an answerer-back, which drives me insane, the older boy, Gabriele, is sometimes very good and sometimes does precisely the opposite of what he’s told to do, and the eldest girl, Silvia, is lovely (maybe I am just destined to have an 8 year old as a best friend?) and well behaved and as a result is probably my favourite. I’ll keep you updated.

Success:

After my childcare job, and my afternoon wedding-planning job, completely exhausted, I went to see another flat. It’s pretty close to work, in a fairly nice area, and it’s easy to get to the town centre and to Sonia’s from there. The flat itself isn’t especially nice; the bedroom is bright orange, it’s all a little bit run down, and there’s only Internet in the dining room, but the people living there all seemed very nice, complimented my Italian, and seemed pretty fun, but all work, so it hopefully isn’t like the student flat I had in Madrid. The girl whose room it is is absolutely lovely, we had quite a long chat about various things in Italian, which I love doing just to prove to myself that I can, and I wish she was around to be friends with rather than going home, but the others seem pretty lively and fun, and it costs a lot less than my current flat, so I said I’d take it, and consequently have a roof over my head guaranteed for Friday. I then went for aperitivo with Daphne and ranted on for quite a long time about how much I like Italy. What a productive evening.

TUESDAY

Very much like Monday, minus the joy of finding a flat. Tired, because it’s too hot to sleep at the moment, and because of spending my mornings herding children, but oh so awake thanks to substituting several hours of sleep for several espressos. Oh dear.

WEDNESDAY

Success:

I spent the morning trying to stop what felt like 9 billion children from destroying a perfectly nice house, and was then picked up (early, phew) by Massimo and Sonia, in Massimo’s fast, shiny, lovely Porsche – and bundled myself into the decidedly unglamorous back seat – to go for a very quick visit to the Eremo della Maddalena near Monterosso, to sort out a few last minute things like fireworks and sound systems for the Russian girl’s wedding, which is annoyingly happening the day after I go on holiday to America so which I won’t be able to see. Everything was sorted out, the venue was beautiful, and the transport there and back was equally so. Yes, I returned looking more than a little bit windswept, but the amazing views, and how cool I felt whizzing around at 170km/h made it worth it, and I now don’t think my life will be complete until I have a convertible sports car.

Overall verdict:

Despite everything, a weird, wonderful, surprising and amazing week.

Oh Italy, I love you. Can I stay forever?

So, YA... I think we got off on the wrong foot

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:21:00 +0200

Excluding one sole photo of a piece of delicious and utterly artery-clog-tastic focaccia, it’s been a little while since I updated you on my Ligurian exploits.

Life is just plodding along nicely, as life tends to do. Genoa continues to present me with such delights as some of the fattest sausage dogs I’ve ever seen, and gelato so delicious I feel the need to consume a small mountain of it every day and consequently wonder if I’ll even fit through my own front door come September. Despite the threat of imminent and morbid obesity, I’m extremely happy here. I don’t really know what’s happened, but since a couple of weeks ago, it’s like the year abroad and I have resolved all of our issues and are now ready to spend the rest of our lives together, gazing lovingly into each others eyes over a plate of trofie al pesto. Unfortunately a) the year abroad is rather more abstract than that, and b) just to wake me up from my dream of a lifetime of sunshine and gluttony, October, fourth year, and the promise of having to read more intellectual materials than Italian Glamour and write more intellectual content than my Italian phone number on my own hand in felt tip pen seem to be approaching horribly quickly. If I’m honest, I’m already getting quite sad at the idea of YA ever ending, in much the same way as I was just before going to Madrid when I thought it never would…

My espresso addiction is officially back with a vengeance; I’m on at least 2 a day, have also developed a penchant for frozen, coffee flavoured yogurt (don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it), and Sonia now times her own coffee fix in anticipation of my arrival through the door. I think this is what the ‘learning about other cultures’ part of all those year abroad talks was about.

I still don’t have a friendship group in the same way as I did in Madrid and Ourense, but I’m happy anyway (if I’ve learnt one thing this year it’s been to enjoy my own company). My friend Luca who I found in this blogtakes me on little trips in his shiny car, and is generally very nice, introducing me to his friends and providing me with much needed human interaction. I’ve met up with Catherine, my ‘friend-of-a-friend’ and her boyfriend again, who are also very lovely but who I haven’t seen much of, I see my old housemate Daphne occasionally, and I’ve also slightly changed my mind about Ben, my newish American housemate. I think I’ve succeeded in annoying him so much that he has just decided we can be friends now, and when he’s not standing in the kitchen watching the washing machine go round, drinking his Scotch, or telling me it’s way past his bedtime at 10:30pm, he is interesting, and makes me laugh. I would say he’s ‘fun’, but that, he is by his own admission, not.

My job is still super, I still spend my afternoons sitting on a roof terrace having coffee and conversations (she talks, I nod and say ‘si’ a lot), and last week I had my first experience of a party which we (Sonia) had planned. I went down to the venue in Bogliasco – a nice little village, pastel coloured houses, cute little streets, I imagine you have got the jist of Ligurian towns by now – at lunchtime on the day of the party. When I arrived, the venue owner was slaving away over a hot stove preparing all the delicious smelling food for the buffet, the sun was shining, Sonia, Massimo and the rest of the family who own the amazing villa were standing outside having a chat and a cigarette and looking very much unconcerned about the boxes and bags of candles, lanterns, tablecloths… lying around. We started setting things out at a very leisurely pace, and lo and behold a whacking great black cloud came over the beautiful terrace where the whole party was supposed to take place and poured rain all over it until several hours later, just 30 minutes before the guests turned up. Obviously during the rain all we could do was stand around talking about there being nothing we could do, until panic stations were assumed and the three of us and the family had to run around like headless chickens setting everything out, finishing just as all the guests started to arrive. Just to add insult to injury, the waiter didn’t turn up for a good few hours, and there was so much more to do than anticipated, so we all worked our little bottoms off putting out food, collecting plates, cutting cake, pouring drinks, telling guests where to go, and everything in between, until finally finishing at… 1.30am. Even though walking up the famous Genoese stairways the next day was a bit painful after 11 hours on my feet, the whole thing was surprisingly enjoyable (because as anyone who’s seen me the night before essay deadlines knows, I just love the stress) and I’m looking forward to the weddings now!

A few days ago, Ben came to visit, which was great – except I think I spent half of the time he was here endlessly ranting on about how much I love Italy and varied descriptions of the many reasons this is the case, and the only reason this monologue stopped at any point (i.e. the other 50% of the time) it was because I had so much delicious Italian food in my mouth that I couldn’t speak.

We had to go to Portofino as I needed to talk to some restaurants there about a wedding I’m helping plan for work, so that was a pretty good excuse as I’ve been wanting to go there for a while anyway. Despite uncharacteristically horrid weather, ridiculous prices for everything and rather too many American tourists for my liking, I got my ‘work’ done, and it is lovely there. At the weekend we just wandered around Genova for one afternoon as I’ve realized I don’t actually know what there is to do here except my 3 weekend activities: spending several hours in H&M and/or Zara, eating ice cream from every gelateria I come across, and drinking enough coffee that I shouldn’t be able to sleep for weeks on end, but somehow always manage to anyway. On Sunday, we took the train to Camogli – definitely one of my favourite places ever, it’s just beautiful, pastel coloured houses, pretty coastline, blah blah blah – to top up my horrible skin damage cracking tan, and generally do the tourist thing, which I’ve not really done yet what with being on my own and desperately trying to appear to be anything but a tourist. On his last night here, we went out for a nice dinner to celebrate his degree results (wooo!) in a tiny little fishing village (yes, yes, cute fishing village again, I know, but this kind of thing really will never get old for me) called Boccadasse, which is technically part of Genova but feels like another world. I’d been there a few days before for ice cream with my new friends and it was so cute that, just like everywhere else I’ve been in Italy, I just needed to take somebody there to show it off, like a proud mother or something of the sort. We had amazing food, I got some fairly severe food envy at Ben’s chocolate cake (and subsequently ate a significant proportion of it myself) and we were ready to wander home when we saw people putting little tea-lights in cupcake cases, and walking them into the sea (some old men taking off their trousers and trotting on into the waves in their underwear… yum). It turns out this is a little thing they do every year in Boccadasse to end the annual poetry festival – people write a poem down, put it in the case along with the candle, and take it into the sea, so the beach is quickly lit up by hundreds of floating candles. It was so beautiful, and the photos just don’t do it justice.

I’ll stop banging on about what a great time I’m having now as I feel I’ve just turned into the quintessential Year Abroad bore, but rest assured I am now enjoying every last minute here, and am trying to come up with some clever way to squeeze all the fun things I want to do into the next couple of months, or failing that, composing some kind of 5-year-plan incorporating a long stint in Liguria to get this newfound Italy infatuation out of my system once and for all…

Dear Focaccia, Thank you for being so delicious, inexpensive...

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 21:02:07 +0200

Dear Focaccia,

Thank you for being so delicious, inexpensive and most importantly, plentiful.

Love,

Your biggest fan.

Il tempo viene per chi lo sa aspettare

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 13:24:00 +0200

This week, I’ve been sorting out my scrapbook. When there’s so much bizarre new stuff happening all the time, I like to stick all my little mementos in a book and write about memorable things which have happened, so that I can look back on it, forget all the times I wanted to go home, and appreciate the good stuff. I made one the first time I was in Italy, and when I lived in Madrid, and the Genova edition is now, a lot of glue and felt tips later, well underway. Anyway, while flicking through some magazines to find things to stick all over my craft project, I came across the perfect thing to sum up the whole experience: La vita è piena di momenti indimenticabili. I guess these unforgettable moments don’t have to be all good, for example, I will never forget the pit-of-my-stomach feeling when I first arrived in Italy, completely alone and clueless, or being stalked twice in as many days, but likewise recently a lot of things have happened which are unforgettable for better reasons.

At the weekend I went to see Liv in Modena. I had a first taste of Italian nightlife, a not so first, but nonetheless delicious, taste of Italian pizza, and we did a lot of walking, sightseeing, eating, drinking and chatting. We visited Parma which, although not unlike a lot of Italian cities, felt so friendly and lovely, and I was quite surprised that more people don’t visit it, because it’s so beautiful. Modena too is very pretty and, especially on a sunny day, those kinds of places remind me why I like Italy so much as a whole. Essentially, it was the perfect weekend away, and great to see a friendly face, especially a friendly face who’s been in Italy for longer than me and who can’t stop talking about what a great time she’s had, and I came back feeling much more cheery and optimistic after what’s been a generally fine, if slightly shaky, first month here.

When I got back, my housemate, Daphne, was moving to her new apartment as her plans had changed and she’d decided to stay in Genova, but our landlady had already found a replacement for her. ‘New Daphne’ is a perfectly nice but somewhat less talkative American, who decided it would be fitting to tell me on our first encounter that he doesn’t like to have fun - his words, not mine. This revelation, so early on, was a slight shame, as I’d been mentally planning all the ways in which my new best friend and I were going to go out into the city and make lots of other fun new pals, but obviously this dream was shattered rather earlier than I anticipated.

My job is still going really well, and despite the obvious disadvantage of not having lots of other people at work to be friends with (and the mountain of paperwork which is still not completed, sigh), I’m really enjoying it. Sonia is brilliant, accidentally teaches me a wealth of Italian bad language, has little chats with me about anything and everything, and even took pity on me this week and had me stay for an amazing lunch of homemade pesto. The cooking situation was pretty sublime as a couple of days before, we’d had a conversation about how neither of us know how to make anything more adventurous than a boiled egg, and yet she was convinced that she could make pesto without the help of her better culinary trained boyfriend, who shouldn’t really be cooking as he’s injured his hand in a, by the sounds of things, slightly outrageous night of football-fans-gone-wild, so up we went to the roof terrace to pick the basil. In the first 2 minutes of the sauce-making proceedings, problem number one: she couldn’t switch the blender on. This was followed by not being able to open an oil tin, which in turn was followed by a lot of laughing and her boyfriend pretty much just making the whole thing, quite literally single-handedly. However, despite a few minor hitches, it was great (how could home made pasta sauce not be?) and both Sonia and her boyfriend have been really lovely to me, which I appreciate a lot.

This week I’ve also, with the help of Daphne, found some aperitivo spots in Genova (one of them unfortunately overrun with the most fearless pigeons I’ve seen in my life), a cute little Mexican restaurant owned by the sweetest little Mexican-German-American-Italian lady, and a great little bar boasting 1€ glasses of (surprisingly) very nice wine, even if the patrons do include the hawaiian shirt clad Creepy Stefano, a character in at least his late 30s or early 40s, who saw a snide comment about English Public Schools as an appropriate conversation starter, before hanging around being somewhat peculiar for quite a while longer.

Yesterday though, I definitely had a small breakthrough. As you are no doubt aware by now, I’ve spent a whole month only hanging out with my housemate, who isn’t even here most of the time, and spending a lot of time thinking of completely unrealistic ways in which to make friends. A number of weeks ago though, I met a friend-of-a-friend, and a couple of friends of hers. She has what sounds like a pretty time consuming job and not a lot of time for a social life, and I was more than a little bit lost when they were all speaking to each other in very fast Italian, but they were all very nice and it’s a bit of a shame that I’ve failed to pin her down for the last couple of weeks. However, one of her friends got in touch and we were planning on going out with some of his friends at the weekend, but plans fell through due to a lack of car space, so he suggested we do something the next day instead.

In the year abroad spirit of making friends with people you don’t really know, ignoring what your parents told you about not speaking to strangers, and forcing yourself to say yes to things that you’d normally be far too sensible to do, I agreed to a motorbike ride. I know, highly out of character and against all my better judgement, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Having stupidly told my mother my plans for the afternoon via text and receiving a frosty and disconcerting reply outlining the importance of well-fitting head protection, my new potential friend and I went (very slowly because let’s face it, I am completely pathetic) off to Nervi, the little seaside village I went to a couple of weeks ago. I actually had a really pleasant afternoon, we had a nice chat and I practiced a very small bit of Italian between much more fluent conversations in English, and it looks like I may finally, at long, long last, have made a friend. And of course, most importantly, I felt very cool on the back of a motorbike…

Paperwork Shmaperwork

Fri, 27 May 2011 15:39:00 +0200

It’s just as well I know the Italian word for bureaucracy, because there’s certainly plenty of that to do at the moment.

For my internship, which as we all know very well is just the official word for my sitting on a sunny roof terrace with a very nice lady, drinking coffee, chatting, looking at photos of beautiful weddings, and sending the odd email, it appears there is actually rather a lot of official paperwork which needs doing, obviously completely unnecessarily as this is nothing like one of those proper, formal, real-life internships.

Basically, as my ‘boss’, although it feels bizarre to call her that as she’s more like a… cool aunt, or something, isn’t technically registered as being able to have an intern, as the business is hers and only she works there, and for insurance purposes, or something, it seems that she and I have to go to various inconveniently located offices to fill in forms, obtain codes and numbers and, if you’re lucky, clues and instructions for the next step. The process is rather like Fort Boyard - if you ever watched that fantastic example of broadcasting - except loads less fun.

Somewhere in the proceedings, I also managed to accidentally lie on official paperwork. In the first office, while filling in my place of birth, I realized I didn’t really know how to say Northern Ireland, so instead of guessing, I wrote “Lisburn, Ireland”. Not wrong. After my handing the form in, the lady swiftly crossed out “Lisburn” and printed me an official document, my codice fiscale, which said “Stato Estero di Nascita: IRLANDA”. However, it didn’t say Republic of Ireland, and Lisburn is in Ireland, so I decided to avoid yet another hour of waiting in the Ufficio di Whatever-it-was, and leave it. However, today, in another office for the next step of the endless proceedings, they asked me my place of birth, and so that all the forms matched, I had to go with “Irlanda”… As a result, I have a document from the employment office stating “Stato Nase: Irlanda-eire”. Which most definitely means Republic of Ireland. Woops. Hopefully nobody checks these things, or that’s probably in some way not so legal.

Yet, after trips to two offices in two not-particularly-convenient places in Genova, on two consecutive early mornings, the episode is by no means over. Oh no, next up, I get to (more specifically, am obliged to, apparently) go to a four-hour safety in the workplace seminar, on top of numerous other office trips to get things stamped and signed and filled in in triplicate. I think it is safe to say this is entirely unnecessary, as my only real risks, as identified by Sonia while filling in forms for Durham (“Has the employer carried out a risk assessment?” “Um… si?), are; too much sun, a coffee overdose or perhaps a bee sting or hay fever, sustained while we lounge on the terrace.

On the plus side, all this unnecessary administration is giving me a bit of Italian practice, even if all officials will insist on speaking to foreigners as if they are 4 years old. Furthermore, the other day, while feeling particularly proactive on the Italian learning front, I popped into a bookshop and bought a little something to read in Italian. What was it? P.S. I love you, in Italian, ovviamente. I have to say I kind of only went for something so shamelessly trashy because I love the irony that it is actually helping my education, but will be reading it and feeling smug nonetheless.

I will be popping this literary triumph in my bag this afternoon, along with my iPod, fully charged and updated with an album by an Italian girl, which had a nice cover, so which I blind bought and which pleasingly turned out to be quite good, and I will be getting on a train to Modena to see my friend Liv, who’s at uni there. I’m really looking forward to it, mostly because I think it’s going to be really fun and obviously my social life has been pretty much non-existent for a few weeks and I know there will be plenty of fun to be had this weekend, but also in a small way to satisfy my curiosity about how other Italian year abroad-ers lives are, because I’ve not visited any other ones. For now though, I need to pack. According to Sonia, I should be packing for roasting temperatures and swarms of mosquitos, which doesn’t sound like such a treat, but I am so excited about seeing a friendly face that I don’t know how much I care. I will fill you in next week…