Oh The Places We’ll Go

I’ve been all alone in Scotland for a few days now and things are going fine so far.  All of the summer people have moved out of the apartment and all of the year-long people are finally here in my apartment.  There’s plenty of locals; people from all parts of Scotland, some English people, an Irish girl, and then the random internationals from Poland, Sweden and my roommate, the Estonian.

I went on my first grocery store adventure here since moving into my apartment.  It’s a lot harder to find things here since everything is so much smaller, the stores and everything, but food itself is pretty cheap.  I’m having a hard time finding hot dogs, but I won’t give up on my search since I know they must be around here SOMEWHERE.  I need to get more hangers, too, but I have no idea where to find those either.  I’m sure eventually I’ll figure everything out, but for now it’s all pretty confusing.  Getting back from the store is going to be such a drag by the end of this year.  I have to walk up a big hill from the grocery store to my apartment, so with bags and everything I’m sure I’m going to hate it after a while.  For now it’s not so bad, but I know it’s going to wear on me soon.

School doesn’t actually start until the 22nd, so I’m working on figuring out classes and planning on going to talk to people to get pre-registered for everything.  I need to get faculty approval for courses I want to take, so that’s going to be a pain in the ass going to talk to everyone to figure everything out.  Why can’t they just do everything online like Americans do?  Why do I have to go and like, TALK to people and stuff?  Haha.  I want to be in my sweats reading course descriptions and click buttons to join classes.  None of this doing actual, real work stuff.  I can’t be bothered, of course.

I’m going to get to watch some American Football before going out tonight, which I’m pretty excited about.  I miss my San Francisco 49ers and people who understand what 2nd and 10 means.  Here, it’s either football (as in soccer) or Gaelic foobtall, which I have no idea what that is but I’m pretty sure only Irish people do it.  Football (American Football) is going to be a lot easier to catch here since the games are on in the afternoons so I don’t have to stay up super late to watch them.  Baseball and Basketball are going to be a lot harder unless the Giants or the Warriors are on an East Coast road trip.  

I’ve had my first British dish since being here- beans and toast.  I guess it’s a big deal out here- just toast with butter on it and then baked beans, but everyone eats it.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner.  I mean, it’s nothing too exciting, tastes fine, so I don’t get what the big deal is but then again they don’t understand peanut butter and jelly at all.  Peanut butter here is like this foreign weird tasting thing that no one normal would ever eat, but MARMITE, on the other hand, is perfectly normal.  Make sense?  I don’t think so.  

I’m still working on picture uploads, but it’s going to take a few good, solid days just to get everything organized, let alone flipped and cropped.  I’ve got something like 600 to 700 photos to go through, so I think you’ll all forgive me.  I’m going to wait on sending out the address where you can see them all on photobucket since I want them all to be good before I send it out, so hopefully within the next couple of days I’ll have it all sorted out.

I’m off to catch my 49ers game and go out tonight with the Scots, so wish me luck!  

Go ‘9ers

-Catherine

Group's First World Cup Qualifier

Oh, and a photo from the football game.  There you go!

After having to change our plans, going to Torino instead of leaving for Spain on Friday, we are back in Milan with 6 hours or so to kill before getting on an overnight train headed to Barcelona.  We haven’t done much of anything for the last few days, mostly because everything is closed around here for the Italians vacationing in much nicer places with better weather.  Torino is a nice place.  Cleaner than some of the other Italian cities we have been in, and much much greener.  The Olympics have definitely made an impression on the city.  You see advertisements for the Olympics everywhere, even two years later.  The metro is spectacularly clean.  You could probably eat off of the floors if you wanted to (which who does?), and the trains are graffiti-less, a first here in Italy.  If you’re looking for some adventure, though, Torino might not be the place to go.  Sure, the Alps are a nice setting and backdrop, but for travelers who need something to DO there isn’t much to offer. 

The highlight of our trip in Torino was our time spent at the Huntsman Pub, a little pub near the Porta Nuova train station where people speak English and follow football.  Lots and lots of football.  We had a chance to catch the Arsenal v. West Brom match on Saturday, which was a cakewalk for Arsenal since West Brom was only recently brought up to the Premier League level after being at what they call the Championship level for a while (think being a Triple-A baseball team playing against a Major League team… easy).  Yesterday was all about football.  The first match of the season for Manchester United was against Newcastle, who are a good team but not nearly as good as the big four: Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, and Liverpool.  It should have been easy for the defending champions both of the premiership and the champions league, but no.  We must have jinxed it.  Or Ronaldo did with his bum knee, the traitor.  We drew.  First match of the season and a 1-1 draw.  Disappointment for sure, but hopefully when Ronnie’s knee is better and Hargreaves tendonitis is gone we’ll be back at full strength. 

We also got to catch some of the Juventus match versus AC Milan, in Italian and none of which we understood.  In Italian football there are four main teams: Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan, and Roma.  Juventus just so happens to be from Torino, so you can imagine which team all of the people in the pub were going for.  Their main guy, Del Piero, is a stud striker who has been playing for the Italian national team for what seems like forever.  The keeper for Juventus is also the keeper for the Italy national team, but he wasn’t playing yesterday. 

It’s crazy watching Italian fans watching football.  Think Boston Red Sox fans, but on crack if that’s even possible.  There are all different kinds of people who come to bars and watch the matches.  Old men, young boys, parents with their kids, grandmothers, anyone and everyone comes together to cheer for their squad.  It’s love and hate all swirled in to one.  It’s like that with any sport for any real fan, though: a constant state of agony.  You’re never completely satisfied.  Even when you’ve won, there is always something you could have done better.  Why did they pull Lincecum out in the 7th instead of letting him pitch the eighth?  Why did Lewis swing at the first pitch?  Doesn’t he know anything?  Agony.  Constant agony.

We saw two good falls, by the way, during our time in Torino.  The first, a motorcyclist trying to show off popping a wheelie going 40 down a street and having his bike slip out from under him.  He slid across the street and after a loud ‘thud’ his bike was no more.  It shouldn’t have been funny but who am I kidding- it was.  The other fall came from an elderly woman in the footballing pub, who was sloshed out of her mind and took a dive going up a step to her table.  She fell, got back up with some help, and then fell off of her chair on to the floor.  Oh, and she dropped a fry on the floor, picked it up and ate it.  Really, it happened.

We left Torino this morning after checking out of our room and watching some Olympic weight lifting.  Yes, weight lifting.  If the Italians are competing in it, they put it on TV.  We leave tonight for Barcelona around 8 and get in tomorrow morning at 9am.  A 13 or 14 hour train ride.  Oh, the joy. 

As for the experience in Italy as a whole, there’s a lot of good and a lot of bad.  There’s a big graffiti problem here.  In the big cities especially, a lot of graffiti.  As much as the cities are beautiful, all of the graffiti takes away from their overall impression on people traveling and visiting.  The food is wonderful here, let me tell you.  Pizza, spaghetti, and bread bread bread.  Sure, you get the good and the bad, but when it’s good… it’s really really good.  It sucks being a tourist, not knowing where you’re going and being in a constant state of frustration and confusion, but you find good people who remind you of home everywhere you go.  I saw a Golden State Warriors jersey while we were at the Colusseum and told the guy I liked his shirt.  Jason Richardson, an oldie but a goodie.  And the guy working the internet cafe in Florence- a Dodgers fan.  Bad decision, for sure, but still cool to talk some baseball to someone.  No one knows baseball anywhere in Italy, but they all wear Yankees hates.  Ugh.

I’m not trying to make a meaning of life out of this or anything; that’s for someone else to do.  God, J.K. Rowling, I don’t know.  What I am saying is that Italy is definitely worth a look for those people who are out there looking for a something, whatever that something is.  Romance, nature, history, food.  Something. 

I should probably go and brush up on my Spanish since I don’t think ‘Hola’ and ‘taco’ are going to cut it in Spain. 

Ciao.

We left Florence reluctantly yesterday after having a great time relaxing and seeing the sights around town, getting used to the laid back pace we hadn’t seen while we were in Rome.  Our entire experience there was amazing- great hostel, great people, great food… we already miss it there.  After waking up at around 7 to get our things together, we took our last stroll through Florence before arriving at the Firenze train station to board our Eurostar train to Venice.  One thing we’ve noticed about Italy are that there are McDonalds EVERYWHERE, in every train station, in every city we’ve seen so far.  It’s almost a bit sad- here we are in Italy having McDonalds McMuffins for breakfast when we should be eating Italian food for breakfast.  Italian breakfasts are coffee, though, so it’s better to have something than nothing at all.

The train ride was fine through Bologna and into Venice.  That’s when things got really interesting.  We got into the Venice San Lucia train station around 2 yesterday afternoon and after wandering around for 20 minutes confused and extremely frustrated (not to mention hot), we figured out that our hotel was on the MAINLAND in Venice and not in VENICE venice, if that makes any sense.  See, there’s a difference between Venice mainland and Venice the island of Venice, since it takes about a 10 minute regional train ride to get between the two.  To get back to the mainland, we hopped on a metro train for about €2 and finally figured out what our directions were telling us to do.  It was much easier, obviously, since we were taking the directions from the right train station and all.  Haha.

500 meters later, and a lot of sweat and frustration, we made it to our hotel on mainland Venice.  Let me be the first to say- this hotel is SHADY.  It’s in the middle of this residential street with no one around, like a ghost town and the walk under the passageway to get to and from the Mestre train station is hella creepy.  Lots of graffiti, lots of weird smells, just all around a very very weird place.

One thing about Italy that I had heard about, but not really seen yet, was that during the month of August many people leave the cities in Italy to go and vacation elsewhere.  Thus, many hotels, restaurants, and shops are closed down because everyone is gone.  On the mainland in Venice, everything is closed down.  Everything.  Last night we wandered around for almost an hour trying to find a single restaurant that was open, walking down these shady, dirty streets in the middle of nowhere.  Imagine downtown Oakland, but a million times worse.  And empty.  We finally found a little pizzeria near the Mestre station that was open, and I don’t think either of us have ever been so happy just to see a pizza place in our entire lives.  Let’s just say our stay in Venice hasn’t been off to a great start.

Our plan for today is to wander around the Grand Canal here on the island before heading to Milan tomorrow.  Our original plan was to go from Milan to Nice, but since everything in Nice is so expensive, all the hostels and the hotels, most likely we are going to go straight from Milan to Barcelona instead of stopping in the south of France.  It sucks, but that’s the way things go sometimes.  At least that will give us an extra couple of days in the UK to travel around, so it’s not completely disappointing.

On a completely unrelated note, I can’t believe we’ve only been in Europe for 6 days.  7 days?  Whatever.  Time here seems like it goes so slow.  Maybe that’s because all we do is walk around, look, talk to each other, eat, and sleep.  We’ve seen so much and been so many places, you’d think it would be taking a lot longer than it has been.  The UK seems so far away right now, and as much as we love seeing everything here in Italy, I think both of us see London as the peak of our travels around here.  Going pub hopping, watching football, and being in a country where people speak the same language as us.  While I think both of us enjoy the fact that we’re doing this together, looking around and exploring everything, it gets to be tiresome and lonely.

More than anything, though, Venice has worn us down.  Getting lost, being hot and sweaty, it doesn’t really make either of us want to jump up when we wake up in the morning.  I’m sure for a lot of people, Venice could be the pinnacle, the peak of their entire journey here in Europe, but for us we’re hoping that there’s a lot more out in the world than this.

I’m going to keep trying to find a place to put up our pictures from our travels here.  I haven’t been able to find anything yet, but hopefully sooner than later I’ll be able to post something.

Until next time, Ciao.

So Thomas and I are posting again from an internet cafe in Rome.  It’s our last day here, since we’re going to Florence and Pisa tomorrow to explore until we move onto Venice in a couple of days.  Since we posted last, we made it back to the Colusseum to take a couple of pictures as well as have dinner at a little cafe near the Colusseum.  The food hasn’t been much of a transition for either of us.  A lot of pizza, a lot of spaghetti, bread, etc.  Not much of a stretch for people who eat pizza and spaghetti on a frequent basis, although the quality (especially of the spaghetti) is way better than in America.

Yesterday was probably our most social day here since we met our two dormmates in our hostel, Sophie and Nancy, with whom we spent well over 2 hours discussing American stereotypes, British stereotypes, having a good laugh along the way.  It was pretty funny, they were both REALLY interested in how high school is in America since it’s pretty different in England.  They are both on their gap year, which is basically a break in between graduating from school and going to university.  Nancy introduced herself to us and goes ‘Nancy, that’s a pretty American name, right?’ and Thomas and I just look at each other and go ‘Umm… I guess?  Not really’.  Haha. 

We got to talking about, among other things, football, where to go in England, what Scottish people are like (dirty and rugged, sound funny apparently), and what people in America are like.  I guess being from California makes us really cool, especially since we are both from different parts of the state (Santa Barbara and near San Francisco).  We explained baseball and basketball to them, learned about rounders (?) and netball, and got to hear their best American accent impressions. 

We made our reservations on the train to Florence today, so we leave tomorrow at 10:30 to Florence and after checking into our hostel we are going to try and make the day trip out to Pisa to see the leaning tower. 

So far today we’ve seen the Trevi Fountain, the four rivers fountain, and the Pantheon.  The Trevi Fountan is absolutely gorgeous.  Huge, amazing, a spectacular sight.  We both threw coins over our backs and made a wish before moving on to the Pantheon.  The dome inside the Pantheon is what makes it the most impressive.  The four rivers fountain is in the middle of being restored, which kind of sucks, but it is still beautiful.

We’re off to see more sights in Rome before we leave so we’ll update more when we get our bearings in Florence.

Ciao!

It’s finally here.

It’s funny, you’d think that after months upon months of planning and speculating about where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do, we’d be prepared. But even now, mere hours away from when we’re driving to San Francisco and flying to New York before we go to Rome, I don’t think either of us feel 100% ready. It’s all such a foreign feeling: the backpack, the cubes, the new shoes, clothes. Brand new and untouched. Not for long, I guess. By the time we get going, maybe it won’t all feel so weird. Until then, I feel like I’m playing dress-up for Halloween.

Our first week plans take us on a flight from San Francisco to JFK in New York City, and from JFK to Rome, where we’ll be arriving on Wednesday morning. We’ll be in Rome until Saturday and from there we’re going to Pisa and Florence. We reserved our hostel in Rome not even an hour ago, so I doubt we’ll know the specifics of the plans for Pisa and Florence until our last days in Rome. We’re ready and armed with 300 Euros, which converts roughly into $525 US Dollars (what a great conversion rate, eh? Haha.), which if no one reading this has ever seen a Euro before it almost looks like Monopoly money. Pink 10’s, purple 20’s and blue 5’s, which are smaller than the other bills. Oh, and no dead people on European money. They stay classy- landmarks on their money.

So what am I going to miss? I guess for Thomas the obvious answer is his friends and the girlfriend, but I don’t really feel bad for him- he’s going to be back here in a month or so. For me? I’ve got almost a year until I get to come back in the house, hang out with the dogs and suffer in the sweltering Rocklin sun. The biggest thing I will miss (and the most obvious) is the family. The ‘rents (parents), Thomas and Alicia, the dogs, Uncle Scott, Grandpa, and everyone else around here. Not to mention school friends, random friends from random places. It’s not like I get to text any of them while I’m bored in class anymore. What am I going to do with myself? Pay attention? … I don’t think so.

Aside from the obvious, I’m most DEFINITELY going to miss Mexican food. I know that probably sounds really stupid, but I absolutely love Mexican food. Scottish people? Doubt they eat many tacos, enchiladas, nachos, or burritos. What is Scottish food anyway? Haggis? I’m afraid. The other BIG thing I’m going to miss is my sports. Baseball most definitely. I won’t be missing much of this season, since the Giants are obviously not going to be playing past September in the playoffs, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to miss Kruk and Kuiper, Jon Miller, Dave Flemming. Maybe if I’m up really late I can listen to The Razor and Mr. T on the internet. Maybe. I’m going to be missing the ENTIRE Warriors season and 49ers season. That sucks. I’m not expecting that I’ll be missing much, but at least the Brits get the Superbowl broadcast live as of this last year. Score. I’m holding onto a hope that they watch American hockey in the UK since there’s so many Europeans that play hockey. Cross your fingers.

There’s one guaranteed sport that I won’t be missing, though, which makes me happy: football. European football (otherwise known as REAL football, the kind you play with your foot). I’m looking forward to Sundays watching Celtic and Rangers in Scotland, and following the trials and tribulations of Cristiano Ronaldo with Manchester United. We’ll see how that goes. Maybe I’ll actually start understanding all the rules instead of just erratically screaming at the TV for the things that I do understand: block, goal, red card, yellow card, etc.

For now that’s all I’ve got. I’ll post more when Thomas and I get into Rome and have a look around.

-catherine