Dance the Night Away

The second week of our language course wasn't initially that eventful in terms of trips. We'd had another one of our exciting culture lectures, but apart form that, life in Camerino had ebbed to quite a pedestrian pace. After a busy first week this was actually a welcome surprise and in view of the busy schedule over the next fortnight, taking some time off to study and do, quite frankly, what we'd gone there to do, made a lot of sense.

Still there are always exceptions to this atom of logic and the school organised a trip one evening to Babaloo, a club on the Rimini coast. If enough people went then it would make it worth their while to get a coach and when questioned, the majority of people were up for it. I was in that majority.

Bree wasn't. If she didn't have a skirt for the opera, she probably didn't have a dress for a club. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this. I will fully admit to going because most other people were and I didn't want to miss out on anything. I've never been a party animal, but after a week of doing not very much, it was nice to go out and let me hair down, so to speak.

We met at the bus station and piled on the coach - us at the back as usual. It was going to take about an hour and a half to get there, so we settled down for what was to be quite a long ride before the party could start. Most people were quite reserved and were saving any boozing until we got to the club - this made for probably the slowest start to a party in living history.

We all stumbled out of the coach at the club - not because we were drunk, but because we were really sleepy; there's nothing that will induce a state of drowsiness quite like a long coach trip at night. We had left at ten to arrive at midnight. To put this into context, I like to go to bed at 10pm.

The first thing we did when we reached the club was to head to the bar - we needed something that would perk us up a little. Wait. Drinks are 10Eur each. Each. EACH! I suppose it was free entry. I thought I could do without. Lynette buckled and her housemate pressganged someone into buying drink for her. Handy.

Anyway, this matter dealt with, we started to get acclimatised with our surroundings.

First of all, it was out in the open. There was a large building that looked like a house and a courtyard area as soon as you got through the gates. There were plush leather seats and lots of palm trees and the like - it was very swish. The house-like building had several rooms - two main areas and plenty of chillaxing space with more leather seats. The whole place was built on the edge of a lake and at the end of a jetty was a salsa hut.

It was a fantastic place. The music wasn't my scene really, but it was great to go and get out and do some dancing. Things didn't really pick up for a few hours. Bearing in mind we got there at midnight and left at three, it was only 2'o'clock that things started hotting up and there was any real atmosphere to speak of. After the first hour we were considering going and sitting on the coach until we had to leave. Fortunately we didn't do this.

So we sat for a while, then we moved to the salsa tent. For anyone that's every seen me dance, I can't really do it and certainly not salsa. I was wearing flat shoes and I had a wayward bag - this was not a recipe for much fun. Still I kept calm and carried on and after sitting awhile some more, the Camerino gang reassembled itself and we danced the last hour away and even convinced the bus driver to let us stay an extra half hour.

We were back very late that night and I walked back to our house with Gaby. She was a little out of sorts and it turned out there had been an incident with one of the guys on the course. He'd made a move, she didn't want him to, the poo had hit the fan, yady-yady-yah.

At the time this happened, she was still in love with her English sort-of-boyfriend and she was incandescant with rage at the very thought that her coursemate would make a move on her. This made me take a certain dislike to this guy, but I soon found out this was ever-so slightly misplaced, but we'll deal with that when we come to it.

So I went to sleep that morning and let's just say when Wendy rolled out whatever nonsense we were learning in class, I was less than receptive...

Culture Vultures (Part II)

Every week we had cultural classes; in the first week it had been the perfect complement to our trip to the opera,  in week two we were to have a lecture all about Rome as our Saturday trip was all about the history of the capital city.

I will confess that I wasn't very interested in Puccini, but it paid off much later in my year - more on that as we get there. I was, however, a lot more interested in Roman history. I had found the Romans fascinating from being a kid at school and I was actually looking forward to first delving into a bit more history, then going and experiencing it a few days later.

So on our second Wednesday afternoon we were psyched for a bit more Italian culture.

We ran into a problem almost straight away. The first class had been in the school and quite a lot of people came. But that was Puccini and not everyone's keen on opera. The initial signs were that far more people were interested in Rome and so we'd need to take the class into a bigger arena.

I had absolutely no idea where it was. Someone had tried to give me directions but I was still clueless. I was going with Lynette, Gaby and Bree and we found the place by accident. I say by accident, I actually mean by tailing some other people on the course that for some unknown reason, happened to know where we were headed.

Just as we were leaving the rain started. It was much like it had been a couple of days after my arrival: the rain was Biblical. I still didn't have an umbrella and so I was about to get very wet. We hurried along with the storm clouds gathering and managed to get ourselves to the classroom about five minutes late (which, for Italians, it actually early).

As more latecomers began to drift in, you could see how much more the weather was coming in; each person would be slightly wetter than the one before. Fortunately for me, because it had been quite hot, I wasn't layered up, and like Bree, I certainly wasn't wearing jeans. This means I dried out really quite quickly and could focus on Roman banter without sitting in a wet patch.

One of the main lecturers was taking the class. At this point I'd like to explain that though my friends were all similarly aged, and the majority of people were, in fact, young, there were some older folks that had come along for the ride, and let's say there were ever-so-slightly keen.

The first question went thus:
'Can you name the seven hills of Rome?'
The lecturer had a go. He couldn't quite get there, but he wasted about five minutes in trying. I was starting to wish that I was drenched after all as that would certainly take my mind off it all: he could have called them after the seven dwarves and I'd have been none the wiser.

Good start.

The rest of the lecture picked up a little. It turned out to be as interesting as I'd expected and there were plenty of things I learnt that came in handy during my year studying in Verona; but I had no foreknowledge of this and in that moment I was looking forward to Saturday's trip to Rome even more...

Old Friends

Week two started with great gusto and after having a break on Sunday where I relaxed, did some food shopping, and Skyped my family from the main piazza in Camerino, I was feeling more ready for some more Italian-learning fun.

Building on the banter we'd had in Perugia, I took a seat by Lynette's flatmate in class on Monday morning. I'd kind of forgotten she was in my class - I'd forgotten that anyone else was in my class other than the very, very loud man from the Lebanon. It was nice to have a familiar face in my class. I loved spending time with my desperate friends, but classes still felt like they dragged because the level of banter just wasn't there.

Wendy still wasn't pulling her weight and the only other familiar face (Anna, my flatmate) was being much like her character and a bit of a petulant teenager who felt she was 'too cool for school'. The classes were potentially the thing that I dreaded, and I say dread to be melodramatic - I've been in plenty of classes in my life where I didn't know anyone and you either swallow it and make friends, or swallow it and don't let it bother you.

So I'd thrown myself into Monday morning, taking a seat on the front row with Lynette's flatmate. I was trying to focus on whatever it was we were doing, but I got distracted. The blame for part of this distraction can be laid at the door of a phone call I received - it was from the company I'd taught with. They were desperate, and I mean dseperate for tutors. They had camps coming up and no tutors to staff them. They were embarking on a campaign of carpet bombing tutors with phonecalls and emails hoping one of them would bite and fill the gap that had started to emerge.

What happens is they hire a number of tutors and in the downtime during 'Ferragosto' - the national holiday - quite a lot of whom will go on holiday. What some tutors do however, instead of spending all the money they have just earned, they go home and though the company might be expecting them to stay on into September, if they've thrown in the towel, this isn't going to be an option.

I was one of the tutors they carpet bombed. I was quite overwhelmed to get an offer like that and immediately told them I was busy for the next three weeks. I may not have been enjoying classes as much as I might, but I wasn't ready to sacrifice the money I'd paid trying to learn Italian so I could teach children how to speak English instead.

I thanked them for giving me the deets and the offer, but I told them I'd have to think about it. Basically I had to choose whether I wanted to go on my family holiday or not. The company would pay for get me up to Domodossola in Piemonte (where we would be holidaying) but I would do the standard teaching thing for a week, stay with a family that wasn't my own and only get one week of my family holiday.

It was tempting - it was 250 Euros, but I didn't know if it was worth sacrificing my holiday for. Had this been the plan back in the day, then I would have been fine with it, it was just that I'd psyched myself up for two weeks of holiday and never teaching children again.

After some time I refused the offer. I'd spoken to my family and they felt the same way I did. I hadn't enjoyed my time with the company as much as I might have done - the enjoyment that there was I can attribute to my host family. I didn't want to chance this and get another bad camp but with a bad host family.

All it had succeeded in doing was mean that for the rest of the morning of classes, I paid attention to nothing whatsoever.

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.

Popping to Perugia

Our trip to Assisi had been good, if a little warm, but I wasn't really in the mood for much more sightseeing that afternoon. Realistically there's only so much a normal person can take in about the Italian Renaissance in one day. When we arrived in Perugia we had to get the monorail into the town. The monorail carriages were basically sweatboxes and though I enjoyed whipping through the air, up to the town, I didn't enjoy everyone else doing it in my personal space.

After meeting with that stunning view when we alighted from the monorail, and headed into the main piazza and the tour began. Bree and Gaby were standing at the front of the party ready to absorb more pub trivia about Italian independence. It just so happened that I didn't want to learn these facts on a sunny Saturday afternoon when I was in the company of friends and shops. It just so happened as well that Lynette wasn't keen, and neither was her flatmate. Cue slightly awkward chat with Bree and Gaby when we divulge this information. They wanted to stay, we wanted to go - there was a very simple solution to this that it took a little too long to realise: they can stay, we can go. This is what we decided to do and we dropped out of the tour after the main piazza.

I don't know where we headed really. We ended up walking down and out of the walled town and into a more run-down residential area. Then again it's Italy, and it's beautiful wherever you go.

We headed down wherever it was we ended up via a number of interesting shops. I bought a banana and some harem pants, tried on some interesting sunglasses and a Valentino Rossi backpack, and had a little ride on a rocking horse before we hit the edge of town: that's my kind of sightseeing.

We started to wend our way back into town. We saw a side of Perugia that most tourists don't - not if all you do is wander round the big churches and the town hall.

This is the part of Italy that I just can't get enough of. Everyone's seen pictures of the famous places, but how many people get to see understated views like that one to my left?

When we discussed Assisi and Perugia later on, I chose Perugia as my favourite. Assisi had been far more spectacular, but Perugia was somewhere I could see myself living. It was the kind of town that had everything you'd want and then some.

We met up again as the sun was beginning to set and headed back down to the coach on the monorail. We got back to Camerino late that evening and I went straight to bed. The following day was a day off for me, Gaby and Bree had paid a little extra to go to Venice, but it was a long way away and in view of the fact I was going to be spending a year in Verona just down the road, I decided against this.

It would give me the chance for some much needed rest, and though things weren't necessarily uncomfortable after the incident with Bree and Gaby in Perugia, I was glad we could have a little break from it all.

Perugia, Italy, 2009

Seeing Assisi

After spending Friday evening watching Madama Butterfly in Macerata, I was keen for a lie-in on Saturday morning. It had been a full-on week and, quite honestly I needed a break. Saturday wasn't going to be the day for that: we were going for guided tours in first Assisi, then Perugia.

We had to be on the bus reasonably early so that we could get over to Assisi for about midday. Midday - yes, that's when everything's very cold, right? Readers, I was melting. I had a tomato and mozzarella sandwich in my bag - the tomato turned the bread to mush, and the mozzarella melted just like its owner.

We made our way into the city via the 'self-starting stairway' - yeah, I don't know either - and were treated to a wonderful vista. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and everything was in sharp focus (apart from the horizon which was boasting a heat haze - no surprises there). There was absolutely no breeze. You would have thought that there might have been even a whisper of something higher up. There was not.

We were given a few minutes to ourselves in the piazza where the 'self-starting stairway' had 'self-stopped'. We took some pictures, drank a lot of water, huddled in the shade, tried not to pass out... You know the kind of thing.

After that we embarked on our tour. It was like Camerino in that someone would take us around, tell us some interesting things about the place in which we found ourselves, we would take some pictures, and then leave as more well-rounded individuals.

I had discovered that Bree was very much into the culture thing as was Gaby. I liked to think I was, and so we made a very good team. We were taken in and out of town halls and churches, soaking up the sights, and taking some beautiful pictures along the way.

What I really liked about all this was that we always had our own time. We'd get the chat first off, and then we'd get some time to explore and find out for ourselves what the theory looked like in practice.

My favourite bit, however, was still going to be taking the pictures. I had bought my camera especially for my year abroad I was going to make sure I used it at EVERY opportunity...

 The tour continued. I snapped happily and Bree and Gaby absorbed what nuggets they could for future pub quizzes. I was quite honestly in my element - well apart from the fact that I was sweating like the proverbial pig and I was going ever so slightly faint.

We reached St Francis' church and made it the last stop on our tour. It sits right on the far side of the town as you look at it and it really is a sight to behold. What I didn't realise is that though you can take wonderful pictures looking away from the church, you can't take that picture (the one where you see the church and all the arches clinging onto the hillside) from the church itself - you have to do it as you come into the city. The church itself was very dark and a bit eerie. By now you should know I'm not a big fan of Catholic churches. This one was supposed to have a very famous fresco in - by Giotto, if I'm not mistaken - but strangely our tour guide hadn't let slip that information.

I started to explore a little and soon found that I'd lost Bree, Gaby and Lynette. I mean I wasn't at the stage where I was panicking, but I did feel a little disconcerted about the whole situation. My visiting experience in the [very large] church then became a search for my friends that just happened to be inside some wonderful Renaissance architecture.

I ran into Bree and Gaby eventually and we sat for a while by the arches, looking out onto the plains below. To be honest we were really tired and I certainly wasn't relishing Perugia as much as I might have done.

We started to walk back into the town and ran into Lynette coming out of a shop selling foccaccia. Good idea! I thought and did likewise so that I didn't have to brave my disgusting sandwich. I was also in desperate need of a drink. It turns out Lynette had felt really unwell in the church, had to leave, and gone straight away to get something to eat and drink so that she didn't pass out (or worse). We thought that we'd probably had out fill of sightseeing in Assisi and started to wind our way back via some shops for a spot of retail therapy.

Chiesa di San Francesco, Assisi

Next stop Perugia!

Friday Night at the Opera

It may have taken all of an afternoon, but I eventually started to grasp the intricate details of Puccini and his unique approach to the art of opera. If I was going to get my money's worth for my language course, I was going for the immersive approach and if it meant enduring an extended lecture before an evening at the opera itself, I was going to do it.

The venue for this opera-fun was Macerata, a town not far from Ancona on the coast. We were told by the course tutors that we must wear dresses or skirts. Hold the phone. We must do it.

This was fine for me - I'd brought some dresses. Admittedly I didn't have many, but I had enough to be going on with and one of them I hoped would be opera-fit. Bree, however, had a little problem. She only had jeans. I don't know how she didn't just melt, but she'd only brought jeans with her and this was not a dress or a skirt. No, this was a problem. Cue feverish borrowing and trying on and mismatched outfits and more borrowing and trying on.

So having undergone much trauma already, we were setting off for what we hoped would be a pleasant evening. Macerata was a nice town, we had some time before the opera was due to start and we hit a cafe. We had an addition to our desperate gang in the form of Catherine, who was living with me and Gaby. She was a bit of a loner and though she was friendly enough, she seemed to be quite happy on her own. Despite this, we invited her to join our little party at the cafe.

When the time came, we took our seats in the threatre. It was a fantastic place; for a start it was open-air. The evening was nice and warm and though it got a little chilly as the night wore on, I wouldn't actually say it was cold.

I wasn't sitting with the desperate gang. I wasn't even sitting with anyone else on the language course. Ok so I was near everyone, I just happened to draw the particular straw which meant I wasn't near Bree and her programme, or Lynette and her banter.

We were watching Madama Butterfly and I confess that the best bit was the interval with the ballet dancers, but like I've said to anyone who's asked since, I'm glad I went, I just wouldn't go again. We got back late that night and hit the sheets so that we could get up early for another trip the following day - Assisi and Perugia.