06

Mar

Vespas and the Rev. Horton Heat.

So today had to do something with my health insurance. Always an adventure to do beauracracy in a country where you don’t speak the language. The staff was quite helpful even though they didn’t really talk to me. They were not nearly as helpful to the homeless guy who came in right after me.

btw…why does everyone giggle after they say “American boy”. I feel like there’s some inside joke I’m missing out on…
As in “oh…so you are an american boy <giggle>”.

I also picked up the Vespa today. Thanks Piero!
Bit scary to ride at first, but after a few minutes not so bad. At least I didn’t kill it while trying to start from traffic lights. Did have to make my way through the crowd of youngsters hanging out near my flat. They didn’t seem to know that not getting out of my way was putting their own lives in jeopardy, but hey that ones not really my problem is it 😉

…and tonight was listening to the Reverend Horton Heat. Great guitarist. If I had a guitar with a tremelo would I be good? Is he the only guitarist that actually uses a tremelo these days?
He never looks like he’s concentrating or making any kind of effort.



15 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

Italy/music/ramblings

30

Dec

The half italian-half romanian waitress offered me Italian lessons in exchange for english lessons…

nuff said…
I’ll be sure to not use those italian lines that worked so well for Matt 😉

16 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

Italy

27

Dec

Food, football and figs.

I made it home OK. The train trip is quite nice so that’s not a pain. When the taxi man is hiding in the coffee shop and does not come out to check to see if anyone (me) is standing next to his taxi that is a pain, but alas, it happened eventually.

I may have said this before, but what a great week! Luca is the greatest tour guide ever, and we were staying at his mom’s house who I guess is a typical Italian mom. She doted over me (and everyone else), which was kind of nice.  Luca’s family and friends were all great.
Luca is really the only one who speaks english fluently, so I was forced to attempt Italian. It didn’t always work, but it was a good experience. We all laughed at our failures.

I bought a couple of learn Italian type books so I guess I have no excuses. It was somewhat inspiring to be in Rome and around Italians.

When I get more pics from Luca I’ll post them on the Roma pic page.
Cheers again mate. I had lots of fun.

Words I learned this week:
busta=stop/enough…As in “I’ve had enough food” or “Stop bringing me food”.
fico=fig…Difficult one that. I also learned that if you make it feminine it’s an insult/bad word
mangare=eat…We ate well.

I somehow feel mentally better than I have since I’ve moved here. Relaxed, refreshed, refocused. It feels good!

I just downloaded some El-P, and Autolux. Cleaned a bit. Trying to catch up on laundry and soon off to the Focacceria.

16 years ago Short URL 3 Comments

Italy/ramblings

24

Dec

ahhh Roma.

Took a bunch of pics yesterday at the Forum, Coliseum etc…
Here’s the link. More will be added later.

Rome is a beautiful city. I’m sure I will make it back.

…and so I guess it’s 24 December. If any of my people in the States read this, please consider it a happy holiday wish! Enjoy!

16 years ago Short URL Comments

Italy/travel

22

Dec

when you’ve seen one sistine chapel you’ve seen them all…

So I’m in Roma now. I have a ticket to Frankfurt, but since it seems everyone but the Saffas are gone (and I don’t want to feel like a third wheel) I have taken up Luca’s gracious offer to come to Rome.

The weather over the weekend was a wreck. It seems to have finally warmed up now, which is a nice gesture from the weatherpeople.
So a review…Matt arrived from Frankfurt on Saturday. Because of the weather he had to divert from Pisa to Genoa and he had to ride a bus from Genoa to Pisa. No skin of my back 🙂 I just walked around Pisa while waiting. In the meantime there were also train problems so when he got dropped off in Pisa it was getting late and I was worried about more train cancellations-  so instead of showing Matt the tower we just went straight home (and then to the pub) to watch some football…which was also cancelled because of the weather. Didn’t really stop us tho. We still had a bit of fun before we both left Monday morning to catch a train (and an emergency taxi ride from a colleague – thanks Massimo!). Him to the airport for London and me to Pisa central station to move on to Rome.
I hope my tour of Marina di Carrara wasn’t too boring 🙂 At least there was snow on the beach. I guess you don’t see that everyday!

The train ride to Rome was pretty smooth (other than me sending a text to the wrong Luca to tell the roman luca when I would be arriving – oops).

Last night Luca played football with some friends while I kept time. It was about 1°C and pouring last night so the quality of play was questionable ;)…as was the timekeeping…This was followed by a great dinner.

Today Luca took me to the Vatican and it was great. It rained most of the day, but the museum and the Vatican were beautiful, as is the rest of Rome so far. On the way to the Vatican (by bus) we saw all the big sites (Colisseum etc) and we’ll get back there tomorrow to see them up close.

Cheers Luca for being such a great host!!!

16 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

Italy

28

Sep

30 days

I barely remember Frankfurt. At this point I’m not sure I ever actually lived in the states.

Things I miss about ffm:
Kebabs
(at least ones without chips in them)…and gnoblauch sauce. mmmmm

12 germans saying gesundheit after someone sneezes.
In Italy noone says anything unless the sneeze is extra loud then they’ll say something like ‘pronto’, ‘ciao’ or ‘salute!’…ok it’s a point for itality, but I can still miss the germans.

starbucks…
Last time I went to the states I was really surprised that the people at the starbucks by the old office still remembered me. I expect the same behaviour when I go back to DE. Though I have to say I got waaaay more free drinks at the DE starbucks than I ever got in the states.
I enjoy the italian coffee, but it’s just gone so quick (30 seconds). They do have 1 McDonalds in town (which blows my KFC theory), but no other businesses have learned about super sizing in Italy yet 😉
I hope I don’t need a segue there…Going from tiny coffees to gigantic McDonalds orders. it makes sense to me 🙂 I hate McDonalds. I eat there about once every year or two and never by choice…

H&M/C&A
They have 9 bennetons, 14 sisleys, and 1 carrefour. I don’t know where to shop yet.

Public transport.
Catching #11, #12, #4, #5 at any five minute (or so) interval.

Live Music
Dreikönigskeller, Balalaika, Nachtleben, das Bett.

Clothes taking 3 days to dry
Not here…

The Main…
Ok it’s not the med, but hey….It’s all brown and stuff 😉

Humidity…
Not so much…

Joeys and Mr Pizza
Online food ordering…greating thing ever!!!

The Renaissance….
wait a minute!!!

and my people (yo)…

ok so the list isn’t that big cept for my friends. I guess that’s good. So far most of the Italians are great. I’m enjoying myself. I’ve mastered the very basics of Italian.
Stupid things like
‘hello’
‘how are you’
‘good’
‘me’
‘me?’
‘and you’
‘where is veneto street?’
‘here’
‘there’
‘tractor’
‘doctor’
‘boss’
‘enjoy your meal’
‘wine’
‘beer’
‘I would like’
‘yes’
‘no’
‘what is this’
‘bye’

So as long as someone is willing to follow a sript with me we can have deep conversations…(pretend it’s in Italian).

me: Hello, how are you?
random italian: Good.
me: Where is tractor?
random italian: there
me: no
random italian: here
me: yes
random italian: I would like beer
me: I would like wine, and you?
random italian: I would like beer
me: what is this
random italian: tractor
me: boss
random italian: yes
me: enjoy your meal
random italian: no
me: bye
random italian: bye

I’m obviously obsessed with tractors and beer 🙂

16 years ago Short URL Comments

Italy/Uncategorized

13

Sep

“The tower…with the problem”

I made it to Pisa yesterday and hung about there for a few hours. I
found a used bookstore that had a few english books. Bought 3 for
10€ so that hopefully will keep me busy for a while. I started on
“the Spirit Wrestlers…and other survivors of the Russian
Century”. From a travel writer who visited the Cossacks and other
‘forgotten’ ethnic and social groups in Russia.

Made it to the tower and it was actually quite more impressive than
I expected. I’ve seen it from afar (train, plane and autostrada),
but upclose you can see it is REALLY leaning. Looks like it’s going
to tip over in a few hours…
I walked a bit much yesterday and now my knee hurts. I’m abiding
though…
I wanted to watch some english footy, but the only place it was on
was in a “bet shop”. A legal sport booky bar thing. All the irish
pubs didn’t open til 7 or 7:30, and were advertising Seria A
(italian league) so I ended up coming back to Massa about 8PM and
just hung out at home watching a movie.

Nice day today. The weather is cooling and there was a bit of a
chill this morning…not a real chill, but an Italian chill I
suppose. I think it must’ve gotten down to 13 or 14°C…brrr 😉

16 years ago Short URL Comments

Italy/Uncategorized

29

Aug

Tedesco…where did you go?

So I have officially moved to Italy. I feel like I should write, so I’ll scatter…

It seems hard to believe that I was eating breakfast in Frankfurt yesterday. The nice spanish place at the top of the My Zeil…

Thanks to everyone who came to my various good bye things. It really was nice and meant a lot. Also still waiting for my memory book…ship it!!!

The greatest shopping trips are when you are in a new place without most of your things.

The shirt sizes in Italy are bigger than German sizes of the same name (S, M, L).

I need a scooter.

It’s hot, and the taxi driver complains about it everytime he picks me up from the airport. If he can’t adjust then I’ll probably be dying next summer. At least the worst of it is over for this year.

I want to go to Starbucks.

This is the most boring entry ever, but now that I will have lots of free time the blog should improve a bit. Here’s hoping…

16 years ago Short URL Comments

Italy

08

Jul

hometime

The airport….where all proverbial and literal journeys commence…

so everything I typed about the language in my last was wrong…I think the smallness of my dictionary caused them to put words together that aren’t quite exactly the same thing…I guess Italian is not as sexist as I first thought…I’m not editing it of course because I like to read my first impressions of a topic later….

They aren’t the alps either…it’s the apuane alps…which is a separate chain completely…and the Med is more like a kilometer (1000m – for the yanks) away from the office at least.
the whole last entry was a waste 😉

The annual company party was last night. Hung out with the two polish guys. They were quite funny and friendly..At one point one of them re-enacted a whole monty python sketch by himself (complete with old lady british accent). simply magical…they were cool….

There was a pool and it was quite funny to see the italians frolic like a bunch of little kids in it…

Only italians could turn a 4 letter word into a 5 syllable word….
CH-EEE-AAAAAHHH-OOOOWWWW-eh (ciao)…this might be even more amazing than the german MmmmmmmmmmmmmmmaaaaaaAAAAAAAaaaaannnnn as described by matt.

today went to the town of Lucca…It was a medeival town with a complete wall around it. the wall is still intact and the town is absolutely beautiful. I only had a couple hours there, but it is on my to do list for when I go back…
I had lunch at the first place I saw inside Lucca. It so happened that it was an ‘American Restaurant and Wine Bar’…Whilst waiting for food I looked around and figured that all you need to call yourself an ‘American Restaurant’ are some Beatles posters (WTF!!!!), Muhammad Ali Posters, and Marilyn Monroe Posters. There were many more Beatles posters than anything else.

My english is continually getting worse…I actually used the word ‘quitted’ in an email last week…I didn’t even notice until I finished the sentence then had to reread it cuz I knew something was wrong…
Now the fact that I thought ‘quitted’ and then went ahead and typed it is a bad sign…I suspect if I spend more time in Italy this trend will continue. 🙂

Will put the pics on the Italy page…

17 years ago Short URL Comments

Italy

02

Jul

Searching for the Italian Jan Delay…

If I had just left the blog entry it would have been a good, typically vague entry on this page, but since I feel like I want to chat and I’m lonely  (if you’ve never been on a business trip to a country where you don’t speak the language you can’t possibly relate) I will continue…

I won’t be bothered to explain who Jan Delay is…that’s why god invented google…

I’ve heard way more Italian music on the Italian radio than I hear German music on German radio…are the Italians more patriotic than the Germans are?

I’ve gotten lots of nice texts this week…maybe I read too much into them, but it’s nice to feel missed…

17 years ago Short URL Comments

Italy

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