apparently every occasion is an occasion to wear heels in italy….going shopping, going to the beach, playing sports….etc..

here’s an example of driving in italy…
I was on a 4 lane road today (two in each direction) and on the sides of both roads cars are parked (with no space between the second lane and the cars parked on the side). It basically ends up that the cars driving drive over the divider line (a lot of roads like this don’t even bother with dividing lines) because you have doors opening on the parked cars on the right side of the road, bicycles on the right, scooters on the left and the occasional car passing going the other way moving into what should be the left lane…as a result (I guess this can be considered driving defensively) you end up sort of merging to the middle of the two lanes to let all the chaos ensue around you without consequence. It’s sort of a beautiful thing cuz you can still pass the slow moving cars without much threat….
the beauty, art and chaos of driving in italy…I’m not scared anymore you just have to actually pay attention when you drive…in the states they just widened the lanes such that you don’t even have to pay attention when you drive (make it easy for the lowest common denominator…aka. the stupid people…)…in europe you have to drive actively…if someone dies then they deserved it…in the states if someone dies then get a lawyer…

I’m going to learn more Italian in a week of being here then i learned deutsch living in Deutschland for a year…it’s quite easy…
in fact it’s very cute the way the italians put a hard e sound at the end of most words when they don’t speak much english…except words that actually end with a silent E…those they manage to leave off…the stereo-typical italian accent speaking english is not really an exaggeration…I love listening to it…
don’t ask an italian to spell M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I

Viva la España!!!
Watched the game at the only Irish pub I’ve ever been to that didn’t have any english on the menu…my waitress was defaulted to me because she wasn’t afraid to speak english…I’ve never seen a waitress so excited about a 10% tip…seriously. She was not a good waitress, but being a yank I’m horribly incapable of not tipping…maybe the service gets better next time…

Went to work today and it was actually pretty cool…Everyone in the office was so nice to me. I got the walkaround and everyone shook my hand and stuff and made me feel welcome all day…My boss and I were talking about italians during lunch (incredible tuna steak, but a slug came with the salad…”Put it away man!!!”) and he said that Italians were very open minded and open hearted…so far I can’t really disagree with him.

THERE’S AN ESPRESSO MACHINE IN THE OFFICE WITH ALL THE FREE ESPRESSO I CAN DRINK!!!

and now for the list of little things that annoy me about italy….
1) It’s really hard to open doors with these weird old fashioned keys…Not only in the hotel, but at the office they have these types of keys…I bet it was the Germans that invented card locks and the Italians are holding out to spite them… 😉

If there is a fire in my room I will probably die because it takes me about 60 seconds to unlock the door…

btw the hotel is great…I recommend it….

2) I heard a def lepard song on the radio
’nuff said.

My plan today was to wake up early, then beat all the other tourists to La Spezia and Cinque Terra…woke about 8:30…(how ott!) and skipped back onto the roads…Considering that people were still arriving to eat at this restaurant/hotel at 23:00 I guess 9:00 can still be considered early on a sunday…
if anyone cares here’s the hotel I’m at…
http://www.paracucchilocanda.it/eng/

anyways step outside and am sweating already…
make my way to la spezia (somehow…), drive a bit, park, walk a bit. go down to Harbour and it’s quite nice actually. People are fishing and playing with their dogs (large breed hairy dogs…can’t you give them a haircut…they’re probably uncomfortable). There are about 50 old people sitting in the shade under the palm trees along the water, so I grab a coke and go join them…Listen and watch old italian people act old and italian, then go visit the tourist office…
got directions to Cinque Terra (I guess you are supposed to roll your r’s for 42 seconds when you say terra and you’re Italian), but ended up not taking them…I can only buy a parking ticket for 2 hours at a time so I decided I don’t want to look for another spot…
that’s brilliant the way I talked about Cinque Terra, but it has nothing to do with anything since I didn’t go there…anyways it’s on my to do list for next time…lovely place. Google it and look at pics…incredible…

Next I decided to sweat some more…
here’s my italian travel tip for today…always bring twice as many clothes as you think you’ll need cuz you’ll just sweat through them all and have to shower 2-3 times a day…
…maybe that’s the point behind the 2 hour lunch breaks and closing of all stores…
…can someone send me some clean socks and underwear…j/k I will have to either do laundry or go shopping this week I think…

actually as long as you sit in the shade and don’t move it’s not that hot…there’s a semi constant breeze so far. I’m sure I could get used to this weather, but it hasn’t happened yet…so I’m going to complain about it 🙂

have I mentioned old men and speedos??? Not gonna!!! note to self…don’t get old.

I forgot to charge my camera before I left and don’t have the charger…this annoys me…I only have half a battery left…

bought another 2 hour car park ticket and go for a pizza…mmmmmmm. Good pizza…

Funny thing is I ordered from one guy…we spoke in english and I gave him money and he left to get help…a girl comes back looking at me suspiciously…i gave her a 50 cuz it’s all i had on me, and she glares at me and has to go next door for change or something…I manage my best grazi! and go outside to wait…
she brings pizza and the dude must have told her I was an english speaker and she was suddenly smily and super nice to me…and even attempted some english.
this isn’t the first time this happened today…must be some false pre-conceived notions about us native english speakers 😉
they have .66L bottles of beer here…are they trying to outdo the Germans? why not just round it up to an even liter…

back at room now for a shower and nap and air conditioning. Will go to some irish pub tonight for the footy…
got this quote from the intl herald trib at the airport yesterday…it was an old english guy re: football: “22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and in the end the germans win”
Good quote, but I think I’m cheering for spain. Must be the Liverpool connection…and they’re way more fun to watch…

I’m listening to Interpol right now…it’s really growing on me quite a lot…at first I thought they had 3 great songs, but it’s actually a really good album…I don’t know the name of the album, but it is an album 😉

so get off the plane in Florence (that was half full of yanks…what’s this about…) and my first thought is of course…ITS TOO HOT!!!!

Get rental car…why yes I don’t really remember how to drive and it might be technically illegal for you to rent me the car, but hey…when in Rome…sweat is probably showing through my shirt at this point as I walk to the lot with all the other yanks. Find that my car has literally 4 inches between it’s bumper and the car in front and 2 inches with the car in back…Go back inside the little league airport and buy an english-Italian dictionary…Find that the girl behind the counter who must be younger than me doesn’t really speak very good english…I find this odd, but as a native english speaker I expect everyone to understand me all the time 😉
DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM… 😉 (Saffa….By day Albert, but by night…)

somehow manage to wrangle car out of it’s ‘parking spot’ and drive around lost like a fool for a while…finally get on autostrada and after about 60 minutes get off the wrong exit, and go to the wrong line in the toll lane…and my italian driving adventures begin…
Spend the next hour driving through small towns with roundabouts while trying to get used to motor scooters on one side, bicyclist and/or pedestrians on the other and watching out for the italians who like to pass on corners (it’s true)!
It’s actually not as scary as everyone described it…it is sort of like chaos-as-art. I find that if you know where you’re going it’s easy to get around. The problem is when you don’t know where you’re going and trying to watch signs as you’re entering or exiting a roundabout…
I only got honked at once so I’ll consider it a successful drive…
The scariest moment was when about 12 bicyclists entered the roundabout at the same time as me…after a moment of panic I just decided to gas it and hope that I could get out before them…
I didn’t look in my rearview mirror, but hey…I haven’t been arrested yet 😉

Marvel at how green everything is…even though it’s so hot. Must be the humidity that keeps everything green. The weather forecast past and future seems to be exactly the same every day…Low of 20, high of 33.

text from matt: Are there guys just diving everywhere? U should carry a yellow card and just start sending people off.

to test matt’s theory I bumped into a dude in the street…He fell over and grabbed his foot…
Doing my best to channel Christy Ronaldo I fell on top of him and grabbed my ankle…there was some wincing, and rolling around…The cops came running up and gave ME a card…can you believe that…One more and I have to leave the country for a week…you can’t beat the Italians at their own game 😉

started a pics page…not complete yet, but keep checking back…

It’s halftime of the Romania v. Italia football game, and I can’t help but think about something someone (not sure who) told me….
“italians are lying, cheating, diving bastards”…this was in reference to Italian footballers…and I have to say in the first half I’ve seen a bit of lying, a bit of cheating, and a bit of diving from the Italians….until I hear about bastards from a country that’s something like 91% catholic I shall reserve judgement….but whoever it was could be right…. 😉
I really like watching Romania play…they play hard and they play smart.

…and for the yanks…”they” (in my case a german colleague and former french colleague) say that Romanian is the closest spoken language to latin…since noone speaks latin anymore we just can’t verify this…if only they had some form of magnetic recorder 1000 years ago….jerks!!!!
…anyways I thought it was interesting so I type away…. 🙂
…and to the former French colleague (hi Vero) your team sucks too 😉

is the Italian keeper going to rob a train on his way home??? 😉

maybe in the Italian leagues they don’t go by the final score of the game, but they have judges that judge how the players played and how the players looked…
oooohhhh style points!!!