Fast Cars and Not-So Fast Women

We're two weeks further along in my language course, and I think it's high time for another brief hiatus. A couple of weeks ago I dealt with amusing things, now I'm going to look at something quintessentially Italian: the motor car. After being in Italy for seven weeks I had begun to notice the art of the motor car and the Italian obsession with it. I appreciate everything with an engine and therefore seeing some of these vehicles in their native environment was quite special. So if I saw something of interest, my coursemates would be taking pictures of pretty buildings and spectacular views, I would be looking the other way, taking a picture of the interesting car that was parked up a side road somewhere.

This first example was seen in Sanremo at the hotel that boasted, amongst other things, the laughing seagull. You can't tell from that picture, but it's actually a British Italian car, that is a Lamborghini with British plates. On the other side of the makeshift turning circle is a Porsche, also with British plates. It's sights like that one that make me proud to be British, knowing that my countrymen have such a good taste in cars...

This was seen just outside the Frassassi Caves. My coursemates were still walking round with beautiful stalagmites and stalagtites seared into their brains, but I was attracted by something of a much different nature. I confess to not knowing a great deal about bikes other than if they look pretty or not. I'm not a great lover of Harleys, but this one (which I believe is a Yamaha) was a pretty special specimen.

If I were able, this would be my car: an old style Fiat 500 Arbarth, souped up with silly additions almost everywhere. The boot doesn't close and there are scorpion badges painted everywhere. Italy is really the only place you can get away with driving a car like that, or else I'd have one over here. I saw it on our tour of Camerino and while my coursemates were admiring the view, my attention was taken hook, line and sinker by this extraordinary motor.

I found this ostentatious motorbike at Porto Recanati on the Rimini coast. I have no idea what it is, but I fell in love with it. It was big and orange and shouty and in-your-face - it was everything I had wanted to be in life (well nearly). I felt I had a certain connection with it, so convinced my friends to take my photo together with it. There's even a Vespa in the background to make things 1. even more Italian and 2. even better.

A little while later, we found another Fiat 500 - maybe the beach is where all the cool people with cool motors end up (ignore the Fiat Multipla in the background). As you can see I like people to think that it's my car, so I pretended I was snapped nonchalantly getting into my retro but classic wheels. Smooth.

My last picture also comes from the day I had at the beach - what can I say, it wasn't that great architecturally so I decided to take lots of pictures of other things of interest. This was particularly interesting to me. As a person who is challenged when it comes to parking, this was impressive. Very impressive.

Some Amusing Things

I'm going to take a brief hiatus from my stories from Camerino to share some amusing things with you. Thus far in the story I've been in Italy for about six weeks and there have been plenty of amusing stories that I've shared with you. This is all well and good, but I want to share some of the amusing observations that I have captured in photographic form.

As I sat at a cafe in Sanremo on my last day in Italy after getting the early bus down from Baiardo. I was enjoying my caffè macchiato when a billboard caught my eye. I found it so amusing that I photographed it. The first bit is of little interest, as is the offer of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for 8,90Eur. No, what interests me is the bit in the middle:
'If you pee up against the wall, there will be a fine of 300 Euros.'
Those kind of threats only need to be made if that is a prolific problem. Che schifo.

My next amusing thing comes from Camerino during our tour of the town. There was a room in the university cum town hall that had what looked like crests painted on a wall. This was no ordinary 6' wall - it had an incredibly high ceiling and all four walls were covered in these crests. One of them caught my eye in particular: no bears allowed.

The third amusing thing I want to share with you is a sign I saw at the escalator going into the heart of Assisi. Apparently the Italian doesn't make much sense either, but I'm not sure how one is supposed to adhere to the rule: 'self-starting stairway'.

Oh well you can always 'hold you up at the handrail' and 'keep always the position towards the line march'. Yes.

This next example can also be found in Assisi - in a church on top of the hill. I saw the Pope depicted in statue-form and though he is probably doing something respectable and indeed reverent, all I could think he would say is:
'Would you like an orange?'

My last example can be found in Assisi too; it seems Assisi is just a funny place. And come on, who doesn't find old people on scooters funny. I did see some nuns in an Apecar later that day, but they were going so quickly that I didn't have time to snap them and catch them in the act.

Cafe Culture

The following morning I woke up in my new room. Because it was August in Italy, it was already hot by 8am. I didn't have anything for breakfast having just arrived the day before, so I decided to join Gaby in meeting some of the other people on the course for a coffee and a croissant before we had to meet at the town hall.

I was a little swept along by everything - I didn't quite understand how Gaby knew people already, but I wasn't going to complain. At that stage I still didn't know the town and so I was led down narrow backstreets, inamongst old-fashioned blocks of flats, the like of which I'd seen in Sanremo's old town and Baiardo. We arrived at what I learned later was the main street and I was immediately set upon by another Portuguese girl I will, in the interests of maintaining my Desperate Housewives theme, call Bree.

She scooped up me and Gaby and chivvied us into a cafe that seemed to be full of other students on the language course and explained that she'd met my roommate on the plane over from Portugal. She asked me where I was from and I told her I was from Manchester.
'Great!' she said, 'there's another girl from Manchester here too!'
I was quite taken aback and then I remembered that the person that had put me onto the course was a university lecturer and had mentioned it to one of her students too.

Bree introduced us: I shall call her Lynette. I got the impression everyone knew everyone else and considering I arrived so late the previous night, I wasn't surprised. I slotted myself into the pack and waited quietly to find the lay of the land and see what kind of people they all were.

Thinking about it now, and thinking about how strong our friendship became, it seems funny that on the first morning we were all playing characters and playing to stereotypes until we got to know each other better. It seems like we went about it backwards and became friends in the most complex, round-about way possible. But then again, you could say that's why we became friends...

After the cafe debacle, which fitted a whole host of personalities into a confined space in a headache-inducing half hour, we moved on to the town hall where our introductory meeting was to take place. It was typically grand. We all took our seats - I sat with Gaby, Bree and Lynette - and the principal told us about the course.

We did a quick show of hands for different nationalities and Lynette and I discovered that we were the only British contingent - language wasn't going to be too much of a problem as the Portuguese people spoke English almost better than we did! There seemed to be as big a stress on culture as on language which I didn't understand until long after the course had finished, but was grateful for in the meantime as it meant the month certainly wouldn't be 'all work and no play'...

We had to sit placement tests so that we could be placed into classes of an appropriate level and we were informed of a couple of opportunities coming in the next couple of days - a concert and tour of the theatre and our first official outing (to some caves).

The scene was set and the players had been moved into position...

Homeward Bound

The time has come. I have finished the first mini-leg (let's say the first ankle) of my time in Italy. I'd crammed so much into a month that I had plenty to think about on my way back. Early the next morning, my friend and I got up and got ready to get the bus down to Sanremo from Baiardo. We had to be quiet as Tom Daly (not really, you might want to get an explanation for that) was still sleeping. We managed to get on the bus and get down into Sanremo nice and early. We hopped on a train to Nice and left Italy behind, for now at least...

Because I only had hand luggage, I went straight through security with my friend as I didn't have to wait for check-in to open. My friend was leaving a few hours earlier than me, so I sellotaped her to her plane and then found myself a nice little corner to do some relaxing. The hours slipped by and soon I was on my early evening flight back to Liverpool. I have never seen such a beautiful view as we left Nice and I'm genuinely sorry I can't share it with you in photographic form - blame Easyjet. The airport is right on the coast, so as we took off, the sea yawned out before us showing the curviture of the earth on the horizon. The sun was on its way down and throwing this beautiful yellow glow over everything. The sea was perfectly calm and the yachts in the bay were drawing patterns with their wakes. What a stunning parting gift.

It was then, when I was thousands of feet up in the air that I decided to write down my memories from Italy so that one day I could share my collection of bizarre and incredible stories with the general public. I got out my Moleskine notepad and started at the very beginning and my adventures in Nice all the way through to the lady that wanted to get changed completely on the bus to Baiardo. I made my first few observations about the art of the 'man purse', queuing etiquette and the completely different pace of life in Italy compared to the UK. The last observation I made was that despite all these things, I couldn't wait to go back.

I didn't have long to wait. In theory I should have stayed out in Italy for an extra couple of days to give me a smooth transition into a language course that I was going to do for the month of August, and with hindsight I could have gone and stayed with my family in Brescia, but these things are never set in stone and so I had already booked a flight home. It was nice though; I got to see most of my family and share with them some of my madcap stories and repack my bag for learning instead of teaching. And four days later, I was ready to go all over again...

Nudity in Public Places

I left my family in Brescia for the second time on the Monday morning (and this time remembered to stamp my ticket). I had to spend most of the day on Italy's collection of slow trains and I wasn't looking forward to it. I had much to ponder and several changes to make.

I went to Milan (again - who's counting - I make it four times) and despite a person waking me up whilst taking a nap at Milano Centrale, everything was going swimmingly until we got to Genova. I'd been the same route the previous week and I knew I had to change at one of the stations in Genova. The first time I'd gone all the way to the terminus and hopped on my other train no problems. What I hadn't realised was that train had been delayed. This train was not. And I missed it.

Bother.

Well get the next one - you may be saying. It wasn't as easy as that. I had to get to Sanremo for a certain time so that I could get the bus up to Baiardo. Even this wasn't as simple as it sounds. I was meeting one of my friends from Sanremo and we were going up to Baiardo together. Though I would have been ok spending the night in Sanremo, my friend had to go back to Baiardo to collect her stuff as we were both flying out the following afternoon.

Things were about to get tricky.

I hurtled through the station to ask someone when the next train would be, the nice lady at the ticket office told me I should have got off on the stop before. I explained that I knew this and that telling me what I should have done is little use as it's not going to help me get the last bus to Baiardo. (I didn't actually say that, but I would have done if I'd had more time.)

Anyway, she gave me an alternative route via some other place on a train that, for anyone's money, looked more like a bus. I changed in another place I'd never heard of and then again in another place with a population of about four before I was on the train to Sanremo. I was clock-watching avidly - counting down the stops: 'We're not gonna make it!' 'Yes we are!' 'No we're not!' That was a very entertaining conversation I had with myself for about two hours.

I saw the second to last stop and started to get ready. It took ages to get to the next stop and then we went in what was by then a very familiar tunnel - for some reason we'd skipped the previous stop and gone straight to Sanremo. Good job I was paying attention.

I ran down the walkway.

This took some time.

I arrived at the waiting area to greet my friend and we legged it to the bus stop. Ten minutes later we were on the bus to Baiardo and I was glad I had an hour on the bus to calm down.

Now at this juncture I want to share something about the bus to Baiardo. When it's not full of tutors and others affiliated to the company, it's speckled with locals. I don't know what it is about these locals, but several of them seemed a couple of basil leaves short of a ragu.

I was busy catching up with my friend and telling her all about the time that during hide and seek one morning at camp, we'd gone and lost three children at which point it had ceased to be a fun game. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the locals take their top off.
'It's ok,' I thought, 'it is hot in here.'
I carried on and told my friend about the morning we tried Olly, Olly Octopus on tarmac and in about four rounds we ended up with six injured children. This local caught my eye again.
'Hang on,' I thought, 'he's wearing a bra!'
It transpired this local was a woman. Awkward. Still. No matter and I went on to tell my friend about how my kids had written me a thank you message on my blackboard and had spelt it 'thank yuo'.
'OH MY GOODNESS! THE WOMAN HAS TAKEN HER BRA OFF!'
She was literally changing completely on the bus. I mean what kind of situation means that you have to change the majority of your clothes on a public bus!?

Needless to say that when we got to Baiardo I'd had my fill of Italian public transport...

Jimmy'll Fix It

So Thursday morning was to see a massive exodus from Baiardo and indeed Sanremo. Kitty and the other Canadians were off to Cinque Terre, my Sanremo roommate was off to Monaco with her new friends, and some people were even headed for home.

As it was to be our final night altogether we decided to have dinner together. At this point I feel it is appropriate to tell you a little something about Jimmy...

If you have ever been to Baiardo, you will have met or heard of Jimmy: he is a part of Baiardo folklore. He is not Italian. I don't think he can even speak Italian. He is a handy-man. From London. With very few teeth. Now Jimmy is a great person - he fixes stuff and so we had no reason to believe that he wouldn't fix our dinner plans.

'Now Jimmy' we said. 'We all want to have dinner together. Can you fix it for us?'
'Sure' says Jimmy.
'We have two very simple demands: cheap, and no set-menu.'
'No problem.'
Jim was going to fix it.

So that evening we met Jimmy and he walked us down to the restaurant. It looked a bit ropey, to be fair. We sat down and I got used to my surroundings.
'Yep,' I say to myself, 'that is a stuffed squirrel behind me, just above a large hunk of cured meat. Nice.'

Our first course was brought to us.

Hang on.

Our first course was brought to us? But we didn't want a set menu. Oh well. It was probably the cheapest option. Jimmy knows what he's doing.

The first course was pasta in a sauce - vegetables and the like. It wasn't the best I'd ever eaten, but it was passable. Oh well, it's only the first course. We were soon brought the second course - bolognese. Lovely. I take a mouthful. Not so lovely. There is a hum that goes round the table - don't eat the meat.

So far, not so good.

We were brought the meat dish next. We were understandably a little tentative at this moment in time. We passed it round - 'Oh, rabbit, my favourite.' Now I did have rabbit with the Brescian banquet my host family treated me to and it was ok. This was not. It was incredibly dry. I put a dollop of vegetables on my plate to moisten it a little. I have never eaten something so repulsive. I kept eating them as I couldn't work out how it was possible for a courgette to taste that bad.

By this point we were on a downhill spiral. Then dessert came. We realised that we'd been looking at dessert all evening. Next to the cured ham and the squirrel was a tray of profiteroles. No, not refridgerated, and yes, covered in a selection of neighbourhood flies - the very same flies that we watched crawling over stray cats and dogs outside.

Boke.

We ate as much as we could stomach so we wouldn't go hungry and then asked Jimmy if we could settle up. Jimmy has a word with the restaurant owner and walks over to us apologetically.
'That'll be 15Eur. Each.'
Silence fell in the restaurant and then the murmurings began: 'I can't pay that'; '15Eur! He must be joking!' and so on. I was sitting at the end of the table with Kitty and the other Canadians. We made eye-contact and decided against saying anything. The murmurings became louder and the tension began to augment. This was not going to end well.

Kitty made an executive decision.
'Let's pay.'
We looked at her.
'We ate their food, so let's pay for it. It's so disrespectful to refuse - what kind of impression are we giving!?'
I agreed with her and could tell things were about to get nasty. We collated 60Eur between us, handed it to Jimmy and left.

I believe at that point the poo hit the fan.

Thankfully we were long gone at that point, walking back to our house with a smashing view to boot.

We watched this stunning sight and hung around for the other diners to return. It transpired that most people had left within a few minutes of us, putting down any pile of cash - 5Eur, 10Eur, 0Eur... The other tutors couldn't understand why we had paid up - Kitty played the disrespectful line; I said that although we hadn't got what we wanted, we'd paid for an experience we certainly wouldn't forget - when Jimmy didn't fix it.

No Regrets...

There are only a few buses a day to and from Baiardo. It is potentially the only place in the world where you are completely relaxed one minute as you have breakfast looking out over a beautiful view and then suddenly there is sheer panic as you might miss the only bus down to Sanremo.

Because of this, I was treated to an early get up the following morning as it only really takes one day to do Baiardo. Even the prospect of getting further with Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent couldn't tempt me to stay and sunbathe any longer.

Kitty and I therefore took the bus down to Sanremo to spend the day doing fun things. Shopping was a high priority.

At this point I am going to tell you about my biggest regret of that whole trip.

Kitty, from Canada, had been spending the extra weekend I spent with my host family with a couple from her native land. So much had they got on, that they decided to go to Cinque Terre together on Thursday morning. Cinque Terre is a beautiful stretch of coastal land, spanning 5 (cinque) villages (terre - sort of). I had been invited on this trip. Kitty had organised accommodation and trains and all I had to do was say yes.

I said no.

I don't know why I said no. Now I would say yes, yes, yes - try holding me back. But back then - when I was only at the start of my adventure, something crept inside me that told me to go for the safer option.

The safer option was by far and away the most complex. It was not staying in Baiardo. Most of the tutor population was leaving for one reason or another and I didn't want to be rattling round on my own. One of my Sanremo friends was coming at the weekend, but I was facing Thursday and Friday on my own.

So I took the easy option. I texted my host mum and asked her if I could come back. She couldn't have been happier. She was thrilled that I wanted to return and sample some more of her hospitality: to be honest, I felt instantly relieved.

I think Kitty was a bit bummed at this. Not at me personally, but because she would be spending a couple of days with just that - a couple. But I think it was the thought of travelling back to Baiardo alone that made me nervous about it, so instead I decided to go back to Brescia - travelling alone.

The depths of my intellect astound me, they really do...

So that day in Sanremo, as well as buying some harem pants - the first of many - we also bought our train tickets and that was that. My decision had been made, and do you know what, I still haven't managed to make it to Cinque Terre...

Delapidated Beauty

Things were a little sombre after my arrival in Baiardo. When I signed my e-contract with the company they said I would get a week of training, two weeks of camp and one week in Baiardo. During orientation I was so excited about the prospect of everyone being reunited at the end. But it wasn't to be. As you may have read.

Oh well. That's life. I'll get over it.

That evening I wandered round Baiardo with Kitty. The company director had escorted them all when they first arrived and he explained a bit of the town's history. The medieval church was a ruin, for want of a more elegant phrase, but apparently it was like that for a reason. One Easter morning the roof had fallen in killing everyone inside. It stayed like that as a reminder and as a monument.

The rest of the town was remarkable. Everything I'd noticed about Sanremo's old town was true here, but so much more. It resisted change from every side and sat on top of this hill refusing to bend to modern ideas like capitalism and television.

I don't have much more to say about our exploratory voyage - the pictures will do that well enough for me.

 The view from Baiardo

 The ruined church

 The rest of the village

 Living standards

Delapidated beauty

Friends for a Season

My Sanremo roommate had arrived in Baiardo with three other girls - girls she'd taught with. As we were the new arrivals it made sense that we shared one of the spare houses together in the village.

At this point I feel I should interject with an explanation. This owner of the company also (as far as I could understand) owned a lot of Baiardo - at least he helped build a lot of the village and came to own some of the houses there. Anyway as he had little use for all these houses, he gave them to the company to offer tired-out tutors a break here and there.

So on the Monday this is where I ended up. There were two types of houses - in town and overlooking the hills. The spare one was in town. We all went in together to have a look at this house and found it was inhabited - by Lydia, and Lydia's, ahem, man friend. It was a hot building anyway - sandwiched in the middle of other buildings in the town. I looked around. Found what would have been my bed. And to my great relief, Kitty said that she'd been keeping a bed spare in her house down by the edge of the village, overlooking the mountains.

Thank goodness.

You see I had been hit by a nasty feeling. I really got on with my Sanremo roommate, but she had since bonded with the tutors she worked with. It's like I said before, we were no longer part of the same experience.

I saw her that evening and we caught up on what had happened in the last two weeks. she had done two camps and they'd been completely different to mine. She'd been in a suburb in Milan and hadn't so much as smelt the country air that we'd been inhaling solidly over the past fortnight.

But the more people I spoke to, the more I realised that everyone's camp experience was different and that I'd been so fortunate. Despite all its foibles, my camp had been one of the better ones. I hadn't lived with nuns who gave me leftovers from lunch to eat, neither had I been abandoned by my family, or been left to explain why dancing like Lady Gaga wasn't appropriate for 10-year-old girls.

It was at that point I remembered the friendships I had made laughing over the tablemat debacle and oversized pasta. At that point two things were settled in my mind - that I would never risk the programme again (in view of the fact that striking it well seems so rare) and that friends for a season really do exist.

They're Trying to Make Me Go To Rehab and I Say 'Yes, Yes, Yes...'

The Monday brought a really emotional goodbye at the train station in Brescia. There were tears and vows to come back as soon as I could manage. In all the kerfuffle I forgot to stamp my train ticket. Now for those of you that don't know, the yellow boxes scattered all over Italian train stations are so you can validate your ticket for the journey you're taking - if not you could use your ticket again and again and that tends to be... frowned upon, let's say... They come down really heavily on people that do this - to the tune of 50Eur.

I remembered just as I was pulling out of the station.

Oh.

When the guard came along the train I was ready to pay. It was my mistake and I should have known better. I hand him my ticket. He speaks to me in French. I speak to him in French - though what I need right now isn't a chance to brush up on things I learnt at A level, but I ran with it. He realises I'm not French and tries again in English. I tell him I'm very sorry. He smiles apologetically and validates it for me. 'Don't do it again' he says. I could have kissed him.

The rest of the [very long] journey passed without incident. I arrived in Sanremo that afternoon and met up with Kitty outside Grom - the world's BEST ice cream parlour. (This won't be the first time we'll hear about Grom.)

I also ran into my old Sanremo roommate outside another ice cream parlour and we all traipsed to the bus station to get up to Baiardo. You can see Sanremo from Baiardo, but it takes an hour to get there because, let's be honest, you're scaling a mountain.

We got there early evening and it was beyond belief. It clings to the top of a hill and to your left is Italy, to your right is France. It is quite simply wonderful. Cars are a joke there, so there is no roar of Alfas or Fiats, the population is getting on a bit and so the pace of life is slow. I don't know why rockstars and filmstars don't go there for rehab, because it would be the perfect place.

All Good Things Come to an End

All in all my first camp was a bit of a nightmare. I had a class containing a child who spent the majority of his time on the desk and not sitting quietly on his chair; my final show was based on a highly complex story my kids had told about the Loch Ness Monster - to this day I'm not entirely sure where they got it from; things had got a little strained between Wickham and Lydia and the rest of us; and I still had very little idea what I was doing.

I knew that I probably wouldn't choose to do the programme again - just because it was highly stressful and only made palatable by my amazing family. I didn't want to risk having a bad camp and an equally bad family. So with this in mind, I made my peace with teaching and I taught my last class, resigned to the fact that it would be just that - my last class.

(For those that enjoy irony, you might want to read about what happens one year on...)

Therefore, with the Loch Ness Monster play still ringing in my ears, I left the school and went home with my family. Some of the other tutors were moving onto new camps the following morning, Kitty, Lydia and myself were finished (in more ways than one). We'd only signed up to a 2-week teaching contract after orientation, but we could stay in a little village (part-owned by the man who pulled the strings at the company) for another week if we wanted a little holiday.

Kitty and Lydia decided that this is where they were headed. As the fortnight had gone on, I actually got really close to Kitty, even though my first impression was that we weren't really that compatible. I too wanted to go with them, but I also wanted to spend some more time with my amazing family.

In the interests of killing two birds with one stone - watch out for the birds in the next post - I thought that if I ask for another weekend with my family, I can train over to Sanremo on the Monday and then meet up with Kitty and head on up to this mythical mountain-top village with her. That way I didn't need to lug my stuff over with everyone else and I could say a proper goodbye to my fam.

I put it to them. They were thrilled that I wanted to stay a bit longer. I, as you may remember, am more than happy to just relax. My family operated using a different philosophy and so decided that my last weekend with them should be special. (I wanted to stress to them that it had all been special - the Garda road trip, the out-of-body experience of watching X:Men Origins: Wolverine at the castle in Brescia, embarrassing myself on two wheels in front of a bella vista...) Anyway they wanted to make my last weekend extra special.

We were going into the mountains...

Heading East

On the Friday of orientation we were put in groups and told where we'd be going. Despite the churning rumour mill, everyone got a place, including Jack and Jill... I was off with two girls that in honour of Pride and Prejudice we shall call Kitty and Lydia. I had spent very little time with them during the week and I had a feeling that Kitty was going to take it very seriously and Lydia, well, wasn't. I was half right (more on that later).

Although we were by ourselves in a compartment on the 9am train east from Sanremo, we'd left as a mass exodus of tutors so every now and then a familiar face would stop by. A short while later Lydia scarpered to watch Shrek 2 with 'her friends'.

Lydia was a funny one. She was stick thin, like properly stick thin, like skeletal, like a bit gross. She was born in Malta, but was really English, and studied in Birmingham. Along this confused family tree were some Italian grandparents, giving her a reasonable grasp of the language. Despite this, when an elderly couple entered the carriage, wanting to sit in their rightful seats - one of which Lydia was occupying (or, to be precise, a third of which Lydia was occupying) - I've never seen so much huffing: you'd have thought it was a steam train...

I actually thought the couple were very polite about it all considering the Italians can get flared up so easily, but Lydia, who seemed incapable of working out the seating plan stuck to the wall exploded (or imploded as she didn't actually go on and make a scene). Not much longer into the journey she had answered the call of Shrek.

Now I love a petulant teenage display of insolence as much as the next person, but I could see that we probably weren't going to be the best of friends forever and ever. I was just glad she ran off so she could moan at someone else.

Kitty, however, was much harder to read; we did the polite conversations, the awkward silences, nothing that will really help you to get to know someone. She didn't seem to fit into the stereotype I'd given her and in true Pride and Prejudice style, I realised that my first impression may have been wrong.

The only time I'd really spoken to her had been in a group activity earlier in the week when she'd shouted down one of my ideas in favour of one of hers, which turned out to be a bit rubbish. But after my reassessment on the train, I decided I would get to know her a little better after placing her into a Stereotype-Tupperware and putting on the air-tight seal. I suppose I considered her a little incompetant; both Lydia and I spoke Italian and seemed to be a little more Europe-savvy than Kitty (who was from Canada).

We changed trains in Milan - my first trip through Milan station (please make a note, it will not be the last), and, with a reduced number of tutors, started heading towards Brescia.

The Laughing Seagull

Being a four-day intensive programme, we got little time to sleep; we were in bed after 12 every night and we had to get up at 7 in order to make it in time for breakfast. It didn't help, therefore, when we discovered that the Ligurian coast was inhabited by a healthy population of seagulls.

They did indeed take great pleasure in chatting to each other at 6am outside our window. Being a heavy sleeper these mutterings soon found their way into my dreams. I don't really mind seagulls in my dreams, but there was one in particular that sounded a lot like someone laughing. I tell no lie.

Breakfast chat at the hotel usually began thus:
'Did you hear the laughing seagull this morning?'
'Yeah, something must have really amused it this morning.'

By far the strangest thing was that the laughing seagull never appeared in my dreams; I did, however, think the noise belonged to my roommate. In the moments of exhaustion-filled surreality I thought she was sitting up in bed, laughing. I recounted the story to her the following morning at which point she seemed greatly relieved. She replied that it was good to hear such news as she had had the same dream about me...

They Call me the Sweeper...

Throughout orientation, our time was somewhat punctuated by Italians (in a nice comic relief-style way). There was the company director who, though passionate, was a little annoying, but did give Jack someone to talk to... However, by far the most [unintentionally] entertaining person was the sweeper.

Obviously being July and being Italy it was sweltering, so we'd often go outside for our workshops. The result of that was that we came into contact with quite a few locals. There was the man in the Apecar that seemed to take pleasure in scattering our game of 'Captain's Coming' so that he could drive round in a circle before disappearing. This also happened with people on Vespas, but they took up less space and to be honest in a competition between a Vespa and 150 tutors-in-training I know who I'd bet on.

But the sweeper.

Someone told me he may have been an olive or two short of a pizza, either that or he was horrendously socially awkward. He used to sweep the grounds, making sure all the Vespas had a clear road (until they ran into us, that is). He had a yellow-handled brush with a green plastic sweep-y bit (technical term), no shirt (it was tucked into his trousers), and a rather unpleasant smell. But we collectively kept our distances and no more was said on the matter. Well until that fateful workshop on pre-school children...

I was a couple of minutes late due to a large queue in the toilets and when I found the group, they were sitting on some steps in a lovely shady spot. I duly joined and started learning how to teach English to 4 and 5 year-olds. About halfway through over comes our friend, the Sweeper, wanting very much to sweep the area we were all sitting in. He mumbles in Italian and gets a little shirty with the lady running the workshop, but she smiles, says 'cinque minuti' and he wanders off, brush in tow.

Two minutes later he's back, trying to express earnestly how much he needs to sweep this particular area. We do the whole 'cinque minuti' thing and off he trundles.

Two minutes later he's back again, but really quite agitated. This poor girl with her even poorer Italian tells him that we'll only be 'cinque minuti', but this time, instead of wandering off, he stands there, seemingly staring us all out - just having a good look at all these peculiar people sat upon the things he desperately needs to brush away.

He stands there for about two minutes more and we manage to ignore him, on the whole, then he decides to remind our workshop leader he's here and we repeat the whole 'cinque minuti' saga, which is now becoming slightly tiresome. Really wanting to make his presence felt, he stands even closer to our workshop leader who is, by now, halfway through the story of 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. Now he really starts to become a distraction - we're listening intently to how the caterpillar eats more and more and m... Oh my goodness, he's standing practically on top of this poor girl and, oh no, he's scratching himself.

I confess I don't know how the story ended - whether it held true to the original, or whether the caterpillar was set upon by aliens, because the other show was far more captivating. But then, regardless of the caterpillar, the Sweeper decided he would wait no longer and proceeded to sweep around us which, when you're sitting on the floor at the extremities of the group, it is by no means the best place to be...

We're at the Robot Disco...

Obviously the point of the week, all partying and banter aside, was to learn how to teach kids (and specifically Italian kids) English. It wasn't just the past participles and the subjunctive! Oh no! We were also taught how to bring a spot of fun into the classroom with songs, games and drama.

Much of the focus was on the final show extravaganza. As one of the methods we had to employ was practical teaching, in a highly ironic situation we had to do some practical learning and come up with a show of our own.

Oh Mamma...

In theory this was fine. I was in a group with some lovely English girls. And a not-so-lovely American girl. She is New Yoik through-and-through and potentially the most irritating person I have ever had to create an end-of-camp show with.

Once we had decided on a show, however, everything seemed to be a lot easier. The trouble is it took us two full days to do that, meaning that time at the business end of making a show was reduced. Massively. Each group had to come up with their show as if they only had a certain level of English - our level was such that we could only operate in the present tense using very simple language. This was a concept my American friend did not comprehend who kept throwing past, future, and even the conditional at our modest script.

It was all time travel related - there were plenty of pirates and robots and Miss America was, of course, the protagonist. Once I'd explained the point of the exercise and the relative grammatical level of the children we were pretending to be, we managed to get something together; it was, however, arguably the worst of the lot - its only redeeming quality was the song, penned by my own fair hand in approximately 8 seconds (which, similarly, is how long it lasts):

"We're at the robot disco
We like to disco, disco."


I can practically hear EMI banging on my door right now. I still do get it in my head from time to time and with it comes the urge to dress up in a cardboard box and dance like Peter Crouch...

As for Miss United States, well she got lumped with Jack and Jill (the oddballs from a previous post) and I felt that the world's balance was temporarily restored...

Don't Stand on that Syringe!

The last night of orientation went down on the pier. Although not clear, the view back over Sanremo was pretty impressive and the misty sea behind us was hypnotic. We'd all gone down for some official takeaway pizzas. It was a real DIY fix with the plastic cups zipping up and down along with our friends, the 5 litre vats of quality wine. Mmm...


In theory it was a lovely way to close the whole shebang - we weren't on a time limit, we could roam, we could dip our feet in the sea, we could watch the sunset and so on. However, in reality we seemed to have accidentally taken over Sanremo's junkie haven for the night:
"What's that inamongst the broken glass?"
"A syringe."
"Oh."

Many of the party did shimmy over the pier walls to go and dip their feet in the glittering sea - the wine went with them. To this day I know not how they got back as the wall was at least 5 foot. I think the wine may have helped.

The following day we all went our separate ways and although some of us met up again, much of the Sanremo magic had gone; we were no longer part of an identical experience. I kept (and still keep) in touch with a few of the people I met in Sanremo, but I have a sneaky feeling that four days out of my life will be all the time I ever spend with them all. It's a shame, a real peccato. They were a fabulous bunch.

So before my train heads off to Brescia, stay tuned over the next few days for a couple of stories from the business end of my training week so you can begin to understand how it's possible to make lifelong friends...

Happy Birthday to Yah!

During the four-day orientation there were about as many birthdays. I mean I can think of better ways to spend my 21st than in a small Sanremo backstreet dancing with a lot of drunk people I have never met before...

My roommate had the [mis]fortune of having her birthday during our stay. She did at least pick a sophisticated venue for her meal - the boat club. We got hopelessly lost on the way and hadn't even come across the helper directing everyone to his 'boom gate' - whatever that was.

Although it might have been a posh venue, the same old food was rolled out: pasta and pesto, some questionable meat, stale bread. Mmm... my mouth is literally not watering. Not only that, but the presentation was impeccable - plastic plates and bowls and plastic knives and forks: you know when you're trying to cut up a piece of incredibly dry chicken, a fragile bit of plastic is just not going to do the trick. At the end of dinner the table was littered with broken eating irons. Only they weren't made out of iron and is thus the point I'm making.

As the night wore on, we felt it slipping away for some of the would-be campers and, as my roomie had had a bit of a rough night the previous day in the old town, I hot-footed it out with her and a my airport friends for a night of exploring Sanremo with a dash of banter and a spot o' gelato.

We ended up sitting at the entrance to Narnia (or the old town to everyone that hasn't read the previous post) eating our ice cream. We were 'approached' by several locals of the male variety and tried to distance ourselves from a very interesting conversation with a French immigrant as the witching hour edged closer.

Apart from that it was a really fun night and the other three girls were a great laugh. It's at this point that one of my old housemates would nod wisely whilst saying 'ahh, friends for a season' and I would then shout her down for being cynical. That said, however, she's right. They were my friends for a very short season of my life, but though they may have disappeared out of my day-to-day life, they're definitely not forgotten.

The Ghetto

Something that I've noticed about Italy is the fact that it is constructed in such a way that humble Britons have never considered. To clarify - do you ever see anyone taking pictures of council flats in Britain? Do the busloads of Japanese tourists ever stop by a tower block so that they can admire its quaintness? No, is the answer, in short: no-one in their right mind would compliment a British ghetto for its architectural contribution to a city.

This is one of the many areas where Italy differs from Great Britain. I spent an evening in Sanremo's ghetto, taking an awful lot of pictures and getting lost in its delapidated simplicity. It sounds horribly pretentious, but it was genuinely like stepping out of a Narnia-esque wardrobe: crooked TV aeriels, broken shutters, beautiful hanging baskets spilling over balconies, and the odd neighbourhood cat enjoying a spot of evening sunshine outside a door that had been left ajar. Most of the community were Southeners that had come to look for jobs inamongst the northern prosperity. This was my first experience of the North/South divide; these people were not living in prosperous conditions, but no doubt better than the life they left in the South.

This world fascinated me. It was just totally incomparable to Britain. I tend to spend a lot of my time lamenting the lack of something in Italy, or the presence of something unwelcome instead, but sights like Sanremo old town help to remind me that even though I am squarely in the European Union, that umbrella does not begin to explain the cultural differences that exist everywhere you turn.

At the top of the old town was a small set of gardens with a panorama over Sanremo. It was at that point I really noticed what an ugly city it is.I feel it would be much improved by sunshine; however in the heavy heat of early evening, I saw it all - tower blocks, overcrowding, hotels, restaurants, carpets of sun loungers, congested roads...

Down there was Europe - not a country in particular, but Europe and the EU; it had taken over a town like Butlins. Italy was being suffocated on a little hill - or is that resisting change? It was a breath of fresh air up there - the narrow streets below were far too claustrophobic.

Early Bath

So the training took place over four days and it would take far too long to go into detail and, to be honest, it would be bone-crunchingly boring for anyone who wasn't there. Let us, however, start with the people that were there...

We were not the first group of would-be tutors to embark upon a week of training that year, and, as is often the case in the 21st century, Facebook tainted our enjoyment slightly. Someone had posted in a makeshift 'let's get to know each other' page and accidentally let slip that he had been sent home from the training week but a month previous. An early bath, therefore, became a very real possibility.

During the first night antics, there was no party atmosphere in the chats I was having. We began to think back to our applications and the minor fabrications we had added. I saw myself turning up to camp and be immediately expected to create an entire nativity scene out of origami whilst playing a number of classics on the guitar. The reality was such that I would have been able to make an origami house, and play 'Amazing Grace' with lengthy pauses between each chord. I could practically visualise standing in front of the departures board.

Despite our greatest fears, everyone at our orientation got a camp in some form or other, even some of the stranger participants... I'm not going to mention any names, but there were two people in particular that only narrowly got through to the judges' houses after bootcamp (so to speak).

There was a gentleman, let's call him Jack, in his mid-30s; he had apparently been in prison in Thailand and had no experience of working with chlidren. He took pictures of everything and subjected everyone to his odd music. He gave feedback liberally and voiced his ideas readily - ideas that were ridiculous. I have no amusing anecdote about him because I avoided him at all costs.

I do, however, have an amusing anecdote about another member of our group, a young girl from Glasgow that we shall call... Hmm... Jill. She was Glaswegian and had an accent that you could hack with a Stanley knife lifted from a Glasgow street corner. We tried to include her, but she seemed to prefer the life of a space cadet than back on earth. Consequently we ignored her and all rubbed along fine. Having said all of that, it was never going to go well when she volunteered to do a lengthy demonstration of the song 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt' and the jungle explorers came across some sticks. When a room of people are fed up of watching pointless exercises, they tune out - especially when Jill was involved. If, however, someone suddenly starts shouting a world that sounds a lot like 'sex' over and over, it's going to give people the wake-up call they needed.

Poor Jill.

Sanremo, Italy's St. Tropez

As is often the way with a programme like the one I was on, you make friends instantly and forge such fierce friendships over a short space of time that you actually feel closer to those people than older, more distant friends. I was partaking in all this Italian fun with a friend from my university, and along the way we picked up another girl in Nice who was going the same way. It's funny how subconscious coping mechanisms kick in and you're soon giving the banter your best and having tearful goodbyes at the end of a week.

Anyway, before this gets too philosophical, I'll get back to the story. The three of us decided to hit Sanremo that evening to get some necessary nourishment. It was the first of many, many pizzas during my stay. It was there I was introduced to the phenomenon of the 'coperta'. You peruse a menu, decide you can afford one of the cheaper pizzas, and agree to share a bottle of still water (none of this fizzy stuff - seriously why would you do that!?). You can do it all for under 10 Euros which, on a meagre student budget, is very reasonable.

We ate, drank, and were merry; I asked for the bill in my basic Italian and recieved a nice 3,50 service charge (or 'coperta') on each meal. So much for a cheap and cheerful dinner. After a quick jaunt back by the American bar (where our fellow would-be tutors were loitering) we headed back for an early night with a week of training yawning ahead of us.

Sanremo is almost better in the dark. There is something tatty about it at close inspection. Forty years ago it would have been the place to be - when you finished in St. Tropez, you moved onto Sanremo. The shame of it is that the people that came forty years ago are still coming today, and no-one has bothered to patch up the wear and tear. It did have its little surprises though. At the bottom of the road up to our hotel was this fantastic Russian Orthodox church: it looked like it had been lifted straight out of St. Petersburg. In the day it was impressive, at night it was incredible...

So when I get up to my room it transpires that my roommate had arrived in my absence... and then departed again. It's very difficult to judge a person from a pile of stuff on a bed. I did my best psycho-portrait and then went off to sleep (somehow I think the two were linked).

Two hours later, my roommate returns. She was dreadfully apologetic and rather sweaty (courtesy of Sanremo's sticky nights). After she composed herself and the formalities were over we ended up chatting for an hour, dispelling any hopes of an early night.

And here we are again, making friends with complete strangers. She wasn't the first, and she certainly wasn't the last.