When in Italy, speak as the Germans do.

I was so hungry that I just ate an entire plate of rice, and I would eat another one if I wasn’t too impatient to wait for it to cook.

So, yeah, I was gone for a week and it was as if time stopped while I was away. There were no new posts anywhere, no comments on my blog, and nobody was online when I finally returned to my computer. Bah humbug.

But, yes, I am home from Italy (home being Germany, of course). I’m really tired and I have a headache, so this post is going to be a little slackerish.

It all started in Freiburg on Sunday, October 15, 2006. Alex, Joslyn, Mary, Beki, Sarah, and I all met outside the Reise Zentrum at the Hauptbahnhof. Three trains, two taxis, one plane, one bus, and 12 tired feet later, we were finally in Florence (a.k.a. Firenze). We ate at a pizza place near the train station. It was pretty good although expeinsive. But, as we soon found out, everything is expensive in Italy. When we got to our hostel (which was quite nice), we picked our beds and settled in for the night. My foot had oozed during the day and stuck to my sock. And, yes, that was a very important detail that I had to include here. The plane ride was nice. I thoroughly enjoyed it again.

Monday was another full day. We bought things, went in an old cathedral (the 3rd biggest in the world), climbed up the dome in the cathedral and saw Florence from high above, ate, explored, had a picnic on a random hill, watched the sunset, and went back to the hostel. It was at this time that we realized that 6 pairs of feet in shoes for 12 hours does not produce a good smell when they are all released in the same room. Beki was the first one to point this out when she suddenly exclaimed, “Sarah [McDole], I can smell your feet!” Similar exclamations were made throughout the week and Joslyn’s socks were officially declared a biohazard.

On Tuesday, I began to get more annoyed with people. After much unneeded pessimism (which annoyed me… they were not being realistic), we woke up early and went to the Academia where Michelangelo’s famous statue, David, is being displayed. In the line, we met two Australian guys who were in the process of traveling the world. They were funny. The David was impressive, and afterwards we had lunch and got in line for the Uffizi, a famous art gallery. By this time I was completely annoyed and generally irritable, and so I tried to just keep my mouth shut as much as possible. I was tired, sore, and really did not want to see anymore art that day, plus the line was incredibly long. Thankfully, Alex suggested we go to something that we had found the day before. And so Alex, Mary, and I did that while the others ended up waiting in line for at least 2.5 hours. We went to a beautiful garden and walked through a museum thing. It had old clothes from a few hundred years ago and also some really cool cut-stone artwork. Later in the day, the others were unfortunately 30 minutes late to our scheduled rendezvous. That did nothing to ease my annoyance. We ate at a Café across the street from the hostel. The guy there (presumably the owner) was incredibly nice and gave us discounts and kept bringing around more and more food. It was only €6 for a large delicious meal. Gelato and win ended the evening.

Italy is full of motorcycle things. It’s crazy. And everyone drives like a maniac pretty much. We arrived in Florence during rush hour or something, and there were vehicles everywhere. The mini motorcycles were weaving in and out wherever they could and the rest of the traffic was basically one big blob. Sarah commented, “It’s nice that they are pretending that there are lanes.” Which was funny because the road did have lanes, but the cars paid almost no attention to them.

The landscape looks a lot different in Italy than in Germany. They have the tall pointy trees… I don’t know. It’s different.

I spent about €390 this week including accommodation, travel, food, entertainment, and souvenirs. It’s a lot, but it really isn’t that bad considering what it could be (easily over $2000 when coming from America as an adult).

I prefer speaking German in Italy. Speaking German in Germany is too intimidating.

“Romance languages: buy one, get four half price.”
- Alex commenting on the many similarities between Italian and Spanish.

More to come tomorrow… You know you’re on the edge of your seat in anticipation.