The Capital City (Part I)

We got on the coach early Saturday morning so that we could head on down to Rome. We stopped at an underground car park before heading into the city itself. The reason for our stop was to drop off those who were only staying two weeks on the language course and so would be flying out of Rome at the same time as we would be doing our sightseeing.

We got rid of our friend from the Lebanon (I use friend loosely) and I wasn't disappointed he wouldn't be with us for the rest of the course. We carried on, past the venue for the world diving championships where my Room 101 (Tom Daley) won gold, and arrived at the Vatican.

 The coach dropped us off just in front of the Basilica and we piled off into the sizzling heat of midday. It was stunning - such a sight to behold. We wandered round the piazza and were given about half an hour if we wanted to go inside, if not we could find somewhere to sit before the tour began. Bree, Gaby, Lynette and I circumvented the fountains, taking pictures along the way.

Lynette and I eventually decided that we wanted to go inside the Basilica and so we joined the queue. Sorry, I mean the mass of thronging people. We got ourselves into some sort of order, but there was an Italian lady behind us that didn't enjoy being behind us. She kept trying to push her way forward until Lynette finally lost her rag and shouted at the woman: 'C'e' una fila!' (Or 'there's a queue' to you).

We hit a slow spot and Lynette decided that together with trying to keep this woman behind her, she'd also put on some trousers because of the whole 'don't show your knees' thing they have going on. We got into the Basilica and it took my breath away. I know I've complained in the past about the OTT nature of Catholic churches, but tecnically St Peter's Basilica is THE Catholic Church so I can excuse it there. It was just magnificent. Everything about it was beautiful: the attention to detail was just incredible. We stayed there for some time and then made our way out to join the party for our tour of Rome.

We went past the Pope's digs - made famous by Angels and Demons amongst other things, and headed away from the Vatican and into town. We passed through so many beautiful piazzas (the one to my left happened to have a sprinkler system whereby passers-by could get quite a welcome shower under the hot Roman sun).

Our next stop was the Pantheon: the oldest church in Rome. Now for those of you that have seen Angels and Demons you'll remember that the Pantheon was almost deserted when Robert Langdon and his Italian friend go on their search for the 'Path of Light' or whatever it's actually called. This is completely unrealistic. I would have gone in, but most of the rest of the world was in there and though I don't suffer from claustrophobia, I didn't want to get involved in the sweatbox that was currently going down inside.

What was more interesting was the spectacle outside: some faux Roman soldiers having their pictures taken with tourists for money. They were about as faux as you get and so I began to take stealth pictures of the one that had just lit up and was smoking a fag on the sly.

I was never cut out for MI5 because as stealthy as I thought I was being, I wasn't being stealthy enough because he clocked me, walked over, gave my camera to a friend and insisted they took a picture of us. My friends found this hilarious, and I confess I did too. Rome was proving to be a lot of fun...

Life's a Beach!

After two evenings out so far in week two, what we really needed was some R&R at the beach. This is just what was in store for us on Friday afternoon. We endured classes in the morning - some of us with pounding headaches (largely the result of vats of wine the night before); we donned our bikinis and headed to Porto Recanati on the Rimini coast.

There was an initial disagreement as to where we would all go once we hit the beach, and then what we would do there. It soon transpired that if we wanted to sunbathe we'd have to pay for sunloungers and the like; if we wanted to go to the free beach we'd have to contest with a whole pile of shingly rocks. Some of our party wanted to play football, I looked at the stones and thought it would probably be a lot better for my feet if I didn't (there was also the minor problem of not being able to play football).

What I really wanted to do was sunbathe, but I wasn't paying for the privilege. This seemed to be quite a popular belief and so Bree, Gaby, Lynette, her housemate and myself started trawling the coastline for either a nice free beach or a cafe.

At this point I think it's time for me to bring Lynette's housemate out of anonymity and introduce her to you as Susan. Ever since Perugia our acquaintance had been growing and we'd formed an alliance in class against Wendy and her bizarre teaching and even more bizarre games. Susan had been there at Babaloo and the Castle and she was with us again at the beach.

I got on really well with her. I confess I hadn't been sure at first, but we'd got to know each other over the week and we'd really started to get to know each other and found we had a lot of common interests. She was originally from Croatia and was mostly legs.

So the full desperate gang walked along the seafront scouring cafes and bars for available tables. We found one and got settled. We stayed there for some time, singing German songs (don't ask) and learning miscellaneous Portuguese phrases (again, let's not go there). Time wore on and we decided to venture into the town for a wander. We wandered prolifically and soon wandered into a restaurant for dinner.

It had been the first trip we'd done that was really up to us to do whatever. All the other trips had had guided tours and tight schedules. This one was the first one where we'd been dumped and told to come back when it got dark.

We feasted on pizza and wound our way back to the coach stop, but not before taking a comical picture that said something on cross-cultural relations...

Bevilo Tutto!

I soon realised that though there were many excursions included on our language course - so far we'd been to the Frassassi Caves, Assisi and Perugia all included in our initial fee - we'd also been on our fair share of trips out of our own pockets: a trip to the opera at Macerata, a night out at Babaloo, Bree and Gaby had even been to Venice. Now these trips were optional, but if everyone else was going, you didn't really feel as if you had very much of an option at all. This was also the case for our next evening out: to the Castello di Caldorola.

In all fairness I did want to go, I just didn't know I'd have to pay for it. It was advertised in the course leaflet as Thursday's trip out and we were all looking forward to having a tour of the castle, followed by dinner there as well. It had all the hallmarks of being a really special evening, so we considered it worth shelling out for.

Bree didn't come to Babaloo and it was a shame; the rest of the gang was there, but she missed out. Fortunately she agreed to come to the castle and so off we went with Gaby and Lynette as well. It took a little while to get there, and then a walk up quite a steep hill, but we made it in the end (despite a lot of the girls having dressed up for the evening in their highest tottery heels).

The group had to split into two for the tour. Lynette, her housemate and Gaby all got in with the first group, Bree and I brought up the rear afterwards. Normally, Gaby would have come with us, but she had started to befriend her classmates and consequently spent half her time with them, and half with us.

The castle was typical of other continental castles - big houses. Whenever British people think of a castle, they think of a fortress; if you ask the same thing to a Frenchman, they think of regal houses and classic architecture. This is the same type of castle you get in Italy. Admittedly they are beautiful buildings, but it's got nothing on Conway Castle which covers a large part of Wales.

The interior of the castle was also different from UK equivalents in that there was one. Britain tends to pride itself on the fact that when visiting its castles, even if you tour the inside, you'll still need your umbrella. Caldorola was much more like D'Annunzio's house that I'd visited on the shores of Lake Garda: full of stuff. And expensive stuff at that.

Anyway, we had a wander round, listening to a tour guide rabbit on about past-owners, conflict, how they kept it warm, and other such useless information that doesn't even help in pub quizzes. It was nice, I confess, but I felt like I'd seen it all before - it's like going in one small provincial Catholic Church in one town and then going in another somewhere else - they all tend to look the same.

After we'd had a look at the castle, we were all deposited in the grounds while our meal was prepared. Ironically both tours had finished at the same time despite starting quite a long way apart - I think our disinterest was tangible and our tour guide knew when she was beaten.

We were called up together for dinner. I was sitting with Bree on one side and Lynette on the other. The meal wasn't dissimilar to the stuff I'd had in my orientation week in Sanremo, but this time it was a lot nicer. I was reunited with a familiar foe - 5L vats of wine. I'd seen them last disappearing over a pier wall towards the sea on the last night of orientation.

I don't like wine - and certainly not wine that's mass-produced on such a large scale. Anyway, some of my coursemates weren't as picky... We started with a large dish of pasta and pesto. Our table got through most of it and there was a bit left: Lynette and I polished it off. They brought another platter of pasta. Lynette and I exchange a worried glance, but still we dig in. Collectively we manage to polish that one off too. They bring a platter of meat and vegetables: this is becoming a farce.

Needless to say that at the end of the meal, we were stuffed and no matter how much we drunk, we would not get even slightly tipsy because it would all get absorbed by a vast amount of pasta. Though Lynette and I had been applying this piece of philosophy, Gaby had not. Bree drank occasionally, but that night wasn't one of those occasions; Lynette drank, but the aforementioned food consumption meant that she would have to down one of the entire vats before she got drunk.

It was therefore left to Gaby to embarrass us all and get completely bladdered. She didn't let us down. It transpires there is a song in Italy that goes through all the months of the year and when it gets to the month you were born in, you stand up (as the song dictates) and then you, well, 'bevilo tutto' - you drink it all. So we worked our way through the months of the year and when it got to Gaby's month she downed a large glass of red wine - like properly chugged it down.

Not long after she was a drunken mess. The previous night at Babaloo we'd discovered she was only 19, and not a lot older (as she liked people to think): the cap fitted - young, immature, eager to impress...

The dancing started after tea and we danced quite a lot of the night away with a spot of kareoke thrown in for fun. Quite a few people were comatosed on the way home and unsurprisingly, there were a few empty seats in class the next morning...

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.