Grand Tourer

So after Francesco Totti-Gate that morning, we all met up in the main piazza, the one with the funny Pope, for our tour of Camerino. The four of us that had started to form a tight unit at the Frassassi Caves once again drifted together and got our cameras at the ready for what promised to be an entertaining afternoon looking at some of the more beautiful places in the town.

The tour started at the university. There was a large courtyard/cloister set up which led on to some of the university buildings. Within that, however, seemed to be the town hall - I think they ran into each other or used each other's facilities where necessary because we came across quite an unusual room (on the left). I confess I didn't really listen to the explanation of what it was because I was more keen to ask if I could sit in the big chair and look important. It turned out I could. It was very comfortable and, even though I say it myself, I felt at home in such a seat of power. (Jokes.)

We moved outside after our little flirtation with power and influence and moved along another covered walkway. Instead of skirting the piazza, this one skirted the edge of the town itself and gave the most fantastic views of the hills below. It seemed a shame that there were only a few windows in the passageway where you could look out and see it in all its glory. Still, when they came, they were spectacular. It was also a great day for taking pictures, the clouds were big and fluffy and cast some incredible shadows on the fields below.

 After we'd fully explored the ins and outs of the university cum council town hall thing we found ourselves back where we started, in the main piazza. We turned our attention to the church - the one where you are expressly forbidden to show your knees - and with the clouds the way they were, from the outside it looked quite something. From the inside it was still a little gloomy and overly ornate, but my friends and I took great delight in finding the pew for 'La Famiglia Innocenti' and thought that it would be the perfect photo opportunity.

 We walked over to the other side of the town after our visit to the church, skirting the left side of the city. Lynette got halfway there and then decided that she'd go and do some shopping and get on top of the pile of homework she'd be given by her tutor (who seemed to take things a little more seriously than Wendy, or should I say Sig.a Totti).

 In between the amazing views, we came across another church - it is Italy. This one, I came to realise, was a lot more traditionally Italian. It was smaller that what I can only imagine was the main parish church in Camerino, but they'd crammed in just as much stuff. I know 'stuff' isn't a particularly eloquent word, but I can't think of a more appropriate one. It was just stuff - gold stuff and painted stuff, marble stuff and miscellaneous shiny stuff - stuff everywhere. Stuff. Stuff. Stuff.

Stuff.

Anyway, our tour ended at the top side of the town where there was a little walled park; the guide (who was one of the tutors) left us to wander back in our own time. Gaby, Bree and I decided to hang on a little before we wandered. We wanted to take some pictures first. I'll leave you with one.

'I Am Francesco Totti'

The following morning at class Wendy decided she would play a game with us as she got the 'why are you making us do a tense that no-one speaks?' vibes. Looking at her, there was something familiar about her - something of me that I saw in her. I thought it might have been blonde curly hair or even seeing someone that looked like Victoria Wood and that just made me feel at home. It took me a long while before it occurred to me what it was.

Her teaching style.

I had taught for two weeks at a summer camp near Brescia, and if you've read the posts, you'll have seen that things didn't really go to plan. I wasn't the best teacher and I lacked real drive or experience. I knew teaching wasn't for me and so although I'd put my all into my class, I knew I was still a bit rubbish.

Most of my lesson plans fell through in one way or the other, and because I hadn't taught for very long I didn't have an arsenal of games and ideas to fill in if my class got bored, or started going native. The knowledge I had of English grammar was very formal and linguistic. I could explain the subjunctive mode to my class, but this was little use when they were still on 'do you have'.

Unfortunately I wasn't the right fit for that job, and it was that I recognised in Wendy. She had decided to play the 'who am I?' game, where you ask yes/no questions so that you can guess who the person is masquerading as.

Wendy went first. We got down to a sportman who also did some writing. I looked around. None of my classmates were even remotely interested in sport. The two blokes we had weren't the type of guys who spend Saturday in the pub watching the footy, and the girls didn't really seem to case about any kind of sport. It was down to me.

The writing thing flummoxed me. I didn't know of any Italian sportmen that were also writers. I guessed as many Italian footballers as I could and then gave up. We all gave up.
'Io sono Francesco Totti' says Wendy.
Ahhhh. Now it makes sense. Though not a terribly clever chap, Signor Totti has written a few books here and there.

We played this game for a little while longer but it soon transpired that sportmen and women weren't the only people of little interest to my classmates. They just weren't interested in anything really. Wendy abbandoned the game and we went back to the passato remoto.

Another Evening at the Theatre

That evening we all assembled once more in front of the naked lady (who we still hadn't clothed with Lynette's zebra print dress) and took our seats in the theatre. Well I say we all, I actually mean myself and Gaby waited next to the naked lady for about four minutes and then went to get a seat. To be honest I wasn't there for the music - I love music, but I had the feeling it was going to be a little on the dull side. I just quite enjoyed being in the theatre in our little booth, with plush red velvet everywhere.

After a while Bree arrived and wanted to join us in our little booth. We were quite a long way up and had a great view so I directed her to where we were, but it was like a maze and unfortunately because all the booths look the same, it was a case of trial and error. In the end I had to go and find her so that she stopped terrifying people by bursting through the curtains expecting to find me and Gaby.

Once we were all settled and had stop frightening the locals, we found that the best bit about the whole experience was taking pictures of each other looking regal. I would share some of these with you, but I deleted them on account of the fact I was laughing so much that without the flash, blurry was certainly the order of the day.

Still. No worries. I don't have any pictures of the band, but I do have a video - watch with caution, they're a rowdy lot.

Anyway Bree decided that although she was loving the booth, she was going to watch down in the circle with the commoners (it's her video).

The concert went on for a while and when they came back for their encore I decided that it was perfect timing  because I needed to do some homework for Wendy. I don't know what 'encore' means in Sicilian, but apparently one of the translations is 'come back again and again and play for at least twice as long as you did before the encore'. I stayed another twnety minutes and then called it a day.

Though I had initially feared the music would be dull, it turned out to be noisy and energetic and almost as bad as boring music. With boring music the worst that will happen is you fall asleep; with loud music the worst that can happen is a banging headache. Gaby stayed until the bitter end, I couldn't manage it.

It was still a good night though, and my authentic Italian experience was getting better by the day. I went to bed after I'd trawled through all my homework and woke refreshed the next morning. Not only was I ready for class, but I was ready for the tour of Camerino that we were to have that afternoon.

Road Trip!

That afternoon as we met in the place the bus had dropped me off those couple of nights previous. There was a double-decker coach waiting for us. Whenever I was a kid, the people at the back of the bus were the cool ones. When I reached an age when I was getting buses to and from university, this ceased to be the case, or at least aged twenty I still wasn't cool enough.

I say 'still', there were the odd occasions that I did manage to make it to the back of the bus. Anyway, for some reason this is where I ended up on that first road trip. My new friends and I had bonded so furiously that there were about ten of us in a group and the back was the only place that could accommodate us and our desire to get to know each other further.

I confess this move made me feel slightly immature - surely we're too old for the back of the bus lark, but it proved useful for leg room and chatting. So our first road trip was to see the Frassasi Caves. Anyone who's been to these kind of caves before will know the deal - stalagmites, stalagtites, lots of eerie lighting, a strict 'no photos' rule, and dark, dank walls.

This is quite cynical isn't it, and it was beautiful, I was only disappointed I couldn't take any pictures of it. We were allowed to take a group photo, but it's so small that it took me a good five minutes to find where I was.

Anyway, it was still spectacular and a really nice way to spend an afternoon. Looking back at some of the pictures, there were four of us starting to emerge as firm friends - me, Gaby, Bree and Lynette. We made a great team: we all had the same sense of humour, a good attitude to studying, and a childish delight in comandeering the back of the bus.

When we got back to Camerino, we decided that we'd all go to the concert that evening. One other thing we had in common, was the desire to get stuck in at every opportunity...

The Class System

After our evening at the theatre we all retired quite early, I seem to remember. With the prospect of a concert the following night as well as our first outing the following day, there was certainly a lot to look forward to and also to prepare for.

The teachers at the school had been feverishly marking our placement tests so that they could put us in classes the next day. So when we got to school the next morning, everything was in place for us begin putting the money we'd spent to good use.

Gaby and I congregated with Bree and Lynette, and one of Lynette's flatmates. When we met we were all equals, but we were about to be separated into the good, the bad, and the downright hopeless. We had a little idea of each other's ability, but only because we'd chatted about how we'd ended up in Camerino: we'd all studied Italian, but at different levels and in different contexts.

The principal came out and started chanting names. I was called with Lynette's housemate and my housemate Anna. There were others, of course, but only two people that I'd actually spoken with. We were whisked away to the first floor of the school and left in the charge of a woman called Wendy.

Hang on. That doesn't sound very Italian.

She wasn't. Well she was in that she was Italian, but she looked more like Victoria Wood than Sophia Loren: it was uncanny - she had short, curly blonde hair and the slightly-protruding teeth. I took a seat at the back, probably with Anna, excited to start learning how to actually speak Italian.

'Cominciamo con il passato remoto' says Wendy, turning to the blackboard.
We were going to start with the only tense in Italian that only appears in the written language. Not that the passato remoto doesn't have a place in Italian - I believe I used it in my final exam to adopt a high and ironic literary tone when talking condescendingly of something. It was also useful to learn so that I could recognise it when I had to dive into Petrarch and wade through Dante. I mean it wasn't just the heavy stuff that uses it - I found it spread liberally all over I Love Shopping, the Italian translation of Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic (I had to read it - it was not out of choice).

Anyway, it turned out that the start I had to my language course was an eency-weency bit disappointing. I took the time instead to suss out my classmates. There was a gentleman from the Lebanon (he always referred to it at the Lebanon - I'm never sure why some countries give themselves a definite article, but I don't wish to be politically incorrect). He was quite loud. He had a friend, also from the Lebanon, a nice girl, quiet, but her friend more than made up for her silence. There was a Spanish guy, some Spanish girls - in fact the most represented nation was Spain. Lynette's friend was Croatian, Anna was Belgian, and then there was little old me from England.

At first glance they didn't seem like the kind of people I normally come into contact with and subsequently befriend. I wasn't pre-judging them at all - I fell victim to that once before. Instead I was trying to read them, as I had done with the group in the cafe. This sounds a bit creepy, but it isn't; I was just trying to get the measure of them. We do it all the time subconsciously, I just wasn't that interested in the passato remoto.

Our days were structured thus: one class, break, another class, finito! At break we all met up and found out where each other was, who we were with, and what we'd done. I had thought that at that moment everything would become clear as to where we were placed in terms of levels. I didn't necessarily want to know about everyone else, but I was keen to know where I stood and what level I was aiming at. I established that I was in a class above Bree and Lynette, but I was unsure about Gaby: no problem, if we were doing similar things, we could do our homework together.

The afternoons were ours to do whatever, though the school had organised a number of trips and special classes throughout the month. Our first trip was that afternoon - to the Frasassi Caves; we had just enough time to go back for lunch and get ready to go out again.

An Evening at the Theatre

When you get back from holiday and it's a nice day and people say you brought the weather back with you, it is potentially the most irritating thing in the world. Of course I didn't bring the weather back with me! It would not fit in Easyjet's hand luggage allowance, and the logistics of removing the sun from one part of the world to place it in another is full of pitfalls.

Anyway, I had spent approximately a day in Camerino when the British weather caught up with me and we were subjected to Biblical rain showers. they had been brewing during our jaunt around the piazza and they materialised not long after. I didn't even have an umbrella - I was in Italy. So that evening Gaby and I squelched through the building site - which, by now, was filling with water - got some shelter in a covered walkway, emerged on the main street and dashed into the theatre a few yards away.

In the foyer was a large statue of a naked woman. This was a little too close to home for me and my recent experience with naked Italian women and I did my best to ignore it.

Gaby and I went to join Bree and Lynette and wait for our tour to start. From what I remember, it was originally Roman. They took us down into the basement and showed us what was left of the original Roman columns. This was the first proper encounter I had with Roman Italy. As a teenager at college I'd been to Hadrian's Wall, I've been to places like York and Chester loads of times too, but there was something quite special about seeing it in Italy - as the Romans intended. Even though there are Roman walls all over the UK, they're ever-so-slightly anglicised. These weren't, however - they were 100% Roman, it was just a shame they were hidden away in the basement.

After that they took us up into the theatre itself: it was quite incredible. It wasn't massive - it had a very high ceiling and balconies all the way up. There were murals and gilt-edged this and gilt-edged that wherever you turned. It was like a little treasure trove, hidden away on top of this hill in a tiny town no-one has ever heard of.

Our guide left us back in the foyer and told us that if we wanted to see something at the threatre, a Sicilian band would be playing the following evening. We all thought it would be good fun to go and see and so we parted to meet again the following morning for our first day of classes, but not after threatening to get Lynette's zebra print dress to clothe the poor naked woman statue.

Don't Show Your Knees!

After the shopping had been put away and our housemates had been told they owed us (actually they owed me) quite a lot of money, especially considering they hadn't initially consented us to do their shopping for them. This is something I didn't realise as Gaby was being so efficient and busy-body-ish that I hadn't even thought to check to see if she'd asked our housemates if they wanted in on our elaborate dinner plan.

Now I have no problem with communal living. What I hate, however, is wasting money and wasting food. When I was at university I made sure I bought only what I intended to eat. I was able to do this because I would plan my meals in advance and buy accordingly. I realise that this is a bit of a sad thing to do, but if it means I can save £5 or even £10 a week, then it's more than worth it.

I had the same attitude when it came to my language course. Gaby didn't. Anyway, that will come out in glorious technicolor in good sweet time.

After we'd put our shopping away, the clouds had rolled in a little. We were going to meet up with Bree for a wander round the town so that we could get to know our surroundings a little. By the time we met Bree at her flat it looked like it was going to rain so though we still went on a walk, we made it short and as indoor as possible.

Our first stop was the piazza itself. There was a statue of a pope in the middle and for some reason we found this quite funny. I want to stress that I don't find the Catholic Church inherently amusing, but sometimes the way its figures are interpreted in art does, unfortunately, raise a smile.

So after we'd laughed at the Pope, we went into the church itself. Catholic churches do tend to offend me slightly with great ornate murals and trimmings and then a tiny wooden box 'per i poveri'. Still, from an artistic point of view, I like to look and admire how even a tiny village church can be as nicely fitted out as St Peter's Basilica in Rome.

We went in and then realised we were getting dirty looks from the haggard old caretaker. Due to the fall in temperature, I was wearing a jumper, so it wasn't as if I was showing my inapporpriate shoulders. Bree was wearing a shawl over her shoulders, Gaby was wearing a cardigan, and they were both wearing trousers. What's the problem then!?

Oh.

My knees.

It turns out you're not supposed to show your knees in church. I mean I realise that under close scrutiny knees are funny things - knobbly and and a bit unsightly - but why should I cover them up!? Why is a knee more ugly than an elbow!?

I'm only kidding. I know why you can't show your knees in church, I just think it's a bit silly.

This somewhat curtailed our visit to the church, not because we were kicked out, but because I found it a little difficult to walk with Gaby's spare shawl wrapped around my legs...

We decided to abort all attempts at sightseeing until evening when it was to be our first group outing - to the theatre...