Assimilation Nation

Sometimes I feel like I could update this thing every night, considering how packed my days are. Here are some of the weekend highlights...

A group of us went out on Thursday night to a discoteca-ish place called Coyote. It's a little alarming how accustomed I've come to pregaming a night out with a bottle of wine to myself. It's only a euro here, and hilariously, it comes in juice box form, which I have taken quite a liking to. When I have my first wine seminar next week, it will be a hard adjustment to go from rating chugabillity to potency and age. Anyway, if I've noticed anything about the nightlife here it's that Americans make their presence known and the men who frequent these discotecas are always in their late twenties. I met a friendly fellow named Allesandro who invited me on a motorcycle ride to his flat where we could "do hashish or something else you like". While I always like a good date with a drug lord, I politely declined in favor of passing out on my couch with Nutella smeared on my face.

On Saturday morning, my roommate and I walked to the fresh market in Testacchio, one of the "few Roman neighborhoods not overrun with tourists". Under a huge spanning tent, we walked amidst stands full of fruits, vegetables, AS Roma (soccer team) paraphernalia and kooky trinkets. Among the highlights were slabs of equina, or horse meat, that we are planning on finding recipes for and finding cookware suitable for simmering the thigh of a stallion. Then, we stopped at a fish stand and began talking to the 77 year old man who had woken up at 1 am that day to haul in fish from his boat. We told him we were from Canada, as that usually reaps a more positive response, and upon noticing that we were English speaking, said hold on and went to the back of the shop. We were afraid he was going to come out with some type of hideous sea creature or ancient Toronto maple leaf, but instead he showed us an international newspaper upon which he graced the front cover. The article was about how the fresh markets are still relatively unspoiled by foreigners and that Lucciano, our new friend, had worked at the same stand since 1941 during WWII. He had never gone to school, but loved his work and never wanted to change it. We plan on revisiting this place every weekend to load up on some goodies.



On Sunday, everyone in my program went to the AS Roma futbol game at Stadio Olimpico. We played against AS Siena and beat them silly. The crowd was crazy- everytime we scored a goal they would cheer and hug and push each other like mad and a few of the guys on our trip took a tumble down the bleacher rows. There was one tiny section of Siena fans who all sat in one section with Roma polizia officers at the end of every row. Two years ago, a West Side Story-ish struggle broke out after a particularly heated match and someone got stabbed, so there is ultra high security around the opposing team's fans. The fans spent more time heckling Senia and singing offensive songs than actually watching the game, but seeing as we were ranked much higher than Senia, their passion could be directed elsewhere.



Some other highlights:

Went to a bank to exchange some leftover francs from Switzerland into Euros. To get inside, you have to press a button that opens a clear glass door. Then you walk inside and the door shuts behind you. A very pleasant woman says some rubbish in Italian and a thumbpad glowed down next to my hip. After scanning your thumbprint, another door opens to let you inside. Doesn't matter though, because it was 1:30 pm and thus it was lunch time for all of the employees.

Old Italian ladies rule this place. They shove past you with no mercy on the trams, they yell at you when you are in front of them to get in line on the bus, and they walk whenever and wherever on the street, letting vespas and smartcars pile up behind their sashaying mink coats and Italian loafers.

On the way home from the AS Roma game, my friend and I got on a bus that was supposed to go to Termini, the train station where we catch a bus to go home. This bus, however, went down some long and winding roads into a giant Italian cemetary. At this point, it was nighttime and we were the only ones on the bus. The area was what I can only describe as ethereal. There were long cement building type things that were like graves stacked on top of each other, a light shining in front of every person's name. Through the window, it looked like big fireflies floating over fields. The whole graveyard was probably the size of Champaign-Urbana, and the bus driver had to get out to ask directions twice. This was about the fifth or sixth brush with death I've had since coming here, and I really need to settle down on my urges to wander and test my navigational skills.

Okay, time for some studying for Italian and beddy-bye. Buona notte!

Dampenfahrt-ing

Guten Tag! I hope you've all had a great weekend like I did. First, on Thursday, our Layers of Rome professor took a picture of our whole class, telling us to "say lesbian" before the click. My kind of fellow. Then me, one of my roommates, and two other girls on the program hopped on a double-decker autobus to go to the Alps.

First off, Switzerland is just plain queer. It is primarily a German-speaking country, but the translations were so off it was comical. For instance, a sign in one of the store windows said, "Due scratches on window I please you not sit on windowboard. Nice meet you tomorrow". They still use the franc, which is much weaker than the Euro, so we would always buy things in cash and have a lot more change to spend.

On Friday and Saturday, the girls and I took a train up to the top of a mountain to the stop Kleinshaidegg to tear up some powder. Now, I have been skiing about 5 times, and I thought I was decent. Not in Europe. Every single person there was better than me. In Colorado, I'm used to avoiding ten lazy snowboarders parked in the middle of a mountain or laughing gaily as other people tumble into trees. Here, though, I would timidly follow a German family as they skiied from sign to sign, slowly trailing behind their 6 month old that didn't even need poles. In America, the trails are all clearly marked and people stay within the lines to avoid things like death. In the Alps, a number or color might be posted on some tree, and people view the entire mountain as fair terrain. Whenever I was on a chairlift (or a standing lift, which I fell off of and the whole machine stopped so the man could lift me up and say "STAND!"), I would notice the curlicues of trails going every which way, going from one run to the other. Moreover, there were no nets or fences keeping you from tumbling to your death. We're not talking falling onto a soft powdery pile of fluff, we're talking head over heels down the cliff edge of a mountain. Needless to say, I would make myself fall before I got too close to an edge. The others had enough skill to maneuver around me.

When I wasn't falling and sliding down the intermediates, which we originally had thought were the easy slopes, my friends and I would get bratwurst at the restaurants and order Jagers from the ice bars. At night, we went to a club at the bottom of our hostel that reminded me of a very diverse CO's. Make that the basement of CO's. It cost $4.50 for a Rugenbrau, which was the cheapest drink available and I heard the Black Eyed Peas and the Fresh Prince theme song about 6 times a night. The hostel in general was decent and definitely what I expected- cabin style rooms (even coed...I was surprised), buffet-style breakfast and plenty of chocolate to buy.

On Sunday, we went for a hike through the woods and found the Rugenbrau brewery and what I can only assume is the house from the Shining. That, after a 96 franc Swiss cheese fondue meal was enough of Swiss life for me. The skiing was incredible and the town looks like a gingerbread wonderland, but I am still far too intensely involved in my affair with Roma to make any other commitments.

Stay tuned, lovies. Prague and Carnivale await.

Piacere,
Cason

Broadcasting from the Boot

Buongiorno a tutti!

Well, I've been in the Land of Wine for 4 days now and I couldn't be more in amore. Every turn of the corner is a new beautiful sight, every interaction with an Italian is a new lesson learned, and every street stepped onto is a death sentence what with the lack of any rules of the road and Vespas tearing in between the Smartcars and trams.

I don't even know where to start. Well, I guess I'll start with school. I have it every day but some Fridays off, and I take Italian language, Layers of Rome, Food and Media, Italian Culture and Society, and Food and Culture. I know, right? I am getting graded on stuff I actually want to know more about. Some of my classes are at the Scuola Leonardo da Vinci, and some take us to the actual sites and monuments that we are studying. Our cooking classes are in the GustoLab, which is attached to the school and served us an amazing welcome dinner, complete with fried pizza (which is how it was originally made), pasta carbonara, eggplant parmesan, tiramisu, and, of course, vino. Did you know that the thought of spaghetti and meatballs makes Italians want to vomit, and that they have penis shaped pasta? Because they do.



But anyway, what I have taken away the most is what our program director, Sonia, has said to describe the country and people. It's a nation of organization and anarchy right next to each other. When another director, Leonardo, clicked out of his introductory powerpoint, every student was quick to tell him how easy it was to get back to the current page. He, however, chose to close and reopen the whole program, clicking through every page and link to get to the right one. That's how the people do things here- close down a pizzeria because they want a long lunch, but get furious when you give them a Euro bill over 10. They always suggest taking a ten minute break in the middle of class or bring you your food right away at a restaurant, but you must do everything short of throwing your empty bottle of wine at the waiter's head if you want to be given the check.

What's given me the most perspective on the differences between Italian people and Americans is the nightlife. Here, public drinking is allowed and utilized, mostly in the form of sipping vino in a piazza and people watching. However, a tour guide I met one night at an American bar said that this summer, the Prime Minister banned the sale of food from 2 am to 6 am. In protest, street vendors set their carts up outside of the government building and sold all that they could, leaving their trash on the front steps in their wake. Me and my roommates tend to side with these types of Romans, chugging vino on the bus to the bar and giggling endlessly at the beer called Splugen. In the bars themselves, there are always signs written clearly in English, not Italian, saying to keep our voices down. It's hard to gauge how to act appropriately, because some are genuinely enthused by our atrocious behavior. Our taxi driver last night, for example, sped through the streets at our request, proclaiming that he was "NASCAR driver, si?"

All in all, the first four days have been incredibly eye-opening and breathtaking. Right now, though, I need some friggin sleep because I am waking up at 8 am to get to an island in the Tiber river for class and then hopping on a bus at night to go to Interlaken, Switzerland to shred some foreign powder.

Speaking of shredding foreigners, I have made some more goals for this semester. Renting bikes and riding in Villa Borghese, attending a futbol game, seeing the Queen cover orchestra band, and visiting a Latin mass at the Vatican, among others. Because that, among other sites such as this ancient royal castle, are my current neighbors:



Jealous much? Also, note how the use of totes is embraced:



Probably the only thing they do that makes their appearances unattractive. Welp, I need to go finish up packing and do some Italian language homework.

Arrivederci!
Cason

I'm alive...

...and sort of well. Just got into the apartment- wanted to leave a quick message. So far, we have discovered that we need a lighter to light the stove, we paid upfront in cash for the internet which the landlord pocketed and then used to buy cigarettes in front of us, and my bedsheets have smiling moons and stars on them.

When we were waiting to get inside of our apartment, one of the flats was playing some weird house music and we could see a disco ball through the windows. I think I'm going to like my neighbors.

Okay, time to unpack, shower, and try to not clog the toilet. Wish me luck!
Arrivederci-
Cason

p.s. Saw Lamb and Mint chips at a duty free shop at Heathrow...so tempted to pick some up on the way home.
p.p.s. backpack strap broke at O'Hare. WTF Dave

Basta, Uscita, Andiamo

...are the three helpful Italian words I know. Enough, Exit, and Let's Go, respectively. Kind of quaint, isn't it, seeing as I leave tomorrow? I just wanted to drop a little update before I land. The next time I'll have an internet connection is up in the air-- the company my "romemates" (teehee) and I have a deal with require us to pay in Euros once we land. Shady, no?

As for my last night in the States, it was very nicely Westernized, consisting of takeout, a newly released flick from Blockbuster and the creeping realization that the next shower I take will be one where I have to physically maneuver the showerhead over my body with about five minutes of hot water. Also, I'm very curious as to whether or not my apartment will have a bidet in it. The last time I was in Europe I thought it was a convenient leg-shaving device, and now that I know what it is, I heartily scrub my feet at every bathing. Suffice to say is that I will not be doing that again, at least not when the other girls are around...and if the door doesn't have a lock.

But seriously folks, it's time for me to catch some Z's before I have to scramble together a slew of toiletries in 1 gallon size bag and suspend my cell phone service for the next few months. No unlimited texting? Hold me, I've had basta.

Ciao Ciao!

Well, it's here. 6 days and I will be nestled snuggly in my airplane seat, watching some atrocity on Brit TV and stabbing an unidentified particle of meat on the tray in front of me. Every day my departure date looms closer, I'm in a sort of limbo between excitement and sheer terror, the latter and former interchanging between 30% and 70%, depending on the time of day and the level of difficulty my Italian "word of the day" phrasebook bestowed on me that morning.

It's usually at night, when I'm lying in my bed, an array of needless electronics and wrappers of processed food around me, that I start to get more and more nervous. I mean, I've been to Italy before, and I can reflect upon the people as being, in general, friendly and accommodating. I think the biggest issue is the first few days, when the stuff that I forgot in my bedroom at home is beating me over the head, or when it finally begins to dawn on me just how much I should have gotten a job over break. It's the self-subsistence and loss of comfort that most frighten me, but I feel that, as with all things, it will be fine.

Thankfully, then, the excitement usually wins over and coddles me to sleep. In a week, my mailing address will end in Roma, Italia. In two weeks, I will be skiing (read: falling) down the Swiss Alps after a 10+ hour bus ride filled with newly downloaded iPod tunes or, perhaps, a textbook. I have such high expectations for the next four months, and the best part is that they will most likely be reached.

I plan on taking the biggest risks of my life and doing what makes me uncomfortable. If my hair gets long, I will walk into a salon and tell them to do what they want with it. Who knows? Maybe my barber will ask me to go dancing (a la Roman Holiday) and I will discover how the moon hitting my eye is, in fact, love, as Dean Martin so proudly reassures me. What's the worst that could happen? I wake up in an unidentified apartemento with a stranger's mother breathing over me, wielding a wooden spoon and spewing countless expletives? The consequences may manifest themselves, but I am ready.

I'd like to list a few goals here and there, as I'm sure some will crop up and others fade. For now, my main goals are to see Paris, Greece, and Ireland. I want to find a bench in a park in Trastevere where I can write in my (count 'em, 3) different journals. I want to buy a pack of shrooms in Amsterdam and go on a canal cruise. I want to visit a nude beach and at least go topless, be it whether or not I close my eyes to avoid the double takes of the Smurf-size Europeans that need to verify whether or not a beached whale is in their midst. I want to visit Brendola and see where my family comes from, see how the villagers live their lives. I want to make a close Italian friend that I stay in touch with after my return. I want to know a thing or two about wine, I want to be mistaken for a native, but most of all, I want to feel as though Rome truly is my home.

And who knows? Maybe a book will come out of it. But for now, bellas, I must be off to gape at my wardrobe and wrap my head around the fact that I can bring one eighth of it along me.

Wish me luck,
Cason