Asterix

I'd spent a very pleasant afternoon not at the pool and I was quite looking forward to catching up with my friends at a bar in the square. There were several groups of friends on the course and each of them had a watering-hole. We used to water at Asterix.

It was largely open-air (it is Italy) and it extended into the square itself. It was quite American in style - they served chips (well I suppose you'd call them fries) and extra large soft drinks inamongst the standard Italian cocktails and wines. It wasn't the classiest place I'd ever come across, but it was great to sit out and watch the townsfolk Camerino go by and chat with the other people that decided to water at Asterix too.

Gaby had come home, eaten in a hurry and was busy doing her homework so that she could come out to Asterix with us. I was sitting calmly eating a nice spot of pasta and she was ricocheting off the walls like a pinball in a pinball machine, trying to get everything done in time: she was a tornado of tenses, rattling off the imperfect and the future whilst stirring bubbling pots and trying not to burn even more some already-crucified chicken.

I finished, washed my dishes and walked slowly into the bedroom to begin getting ready. I then did what was becoming normal, and shut her open and overflowing drawer, closed the cupboard door so that if I sat on my bed I wouldn't be sitting in a little alcove of solitary confinement, and wandered into the bathroom.

As I sat on the loo I could hear Hurricane Gaby hurtling around and when I emerged, predictably, the overflowing drawer was open and vomiting all over the floor, and my pillow was once again reduced to a darkened corner away from the rest of civilisation. I collected my bag and told her I was leaving. Hurricane Gaby had one final bustle before exiting the flat with me.

On the way to the bar I asked her what the incredible rush was - she didn't need to stay out too late with us; we were just intending to have a few drinks and leave it there.

'No!' she said indignantly, 'I'm not staying at Asterix, I'm meeting some people from my class later.'

Oh.

I confess I didn't really know the people in her class very well. They watered elsewhere in town and were very much a hermetically sealed clique that turned their noses up at some people and looked down their noses at the others. Together with this, Gaby was becoming more and more interested in blokes. After the incident at Babaloo where she had an incident with one of the gentlemen on the course, she'd used that as a springboard to see what the other the gents were like. The sort-of boyfriend she was ready to run away with at the beginning had now vanished into the ether.

So by the time we arrived at Asterix she decided that she didn't want to have a drink with us at all and she busied off to her other friends. I think I was quite relieved by this and I sighed happily before taking my seat at a table with Lynette, Susan and Bree. Brilliant.

We got the drinks in and I caught up with the girls and asked them how their day had been. They'd had fun at the pool, but it hadn't really been worth the money, and it turns out that my relaxing afternoon in voluntary solitary confinement was much the better option.

Still, no hard feelings and it was great to relax in the piazza. Hang on. What are those guys bringing in? Wait, are those speakers? Does that guy have a guitar? Ok so quiet evening turned into live music in the piazza. But then again I love live music so I wasn't too gutted. So how was it?

Let's say it was a trip down memory lane as I hadn't listened to Green Day since high school. That said it was really quite interesting to hear the singer chew up the words so that all he was really doing was making funny noises. That's what happen if you sing in a different language that you can't really speak in the first place.

Don't believe me?

(I apologise for the quality of the video and the Italian man who seemed to know exactly where my camera was pointing through the eyes in the back of his head.)

Anyway that night turned out to be entertaining after all and it was great to sit and watch the world go by,  laughing at it as it passed...

An Afternoon at the Pool

I went on most outings that there were on my language course. If I'd paid for a trip to Rome, of course I was going to go. There were some that cost a little extra, like the trip to see Madama Butterfly in Macerata, or the trip to the club, Babaloo on the Rimini coast. These were fun outings and the kind of thing you sign up to in the heat of the moment and don't give a second thought.

The whole ethic of the language course was to act now and think about it later - most people were wonderfully relaxed and relished not having responsibility. They loved living la dolce vita, spending break times in cafes, spending the evenings in bars, eating pizza and pasta, exploring beautiful places, making great friends, I could go on.

The experience was amazing, but sometimes all I longed for was a bit of peace and quiet: some time to explore on my own, take some time out to do my own thing. Though I loved the friends I'd made, I knew our friendship would probably benefit from taking five minutes out here and there.

To be honest, things in my house were getting a little frustrating. Gaby, now it transpired she was but-a-girl at 19, was acting her age more and more, and showing that she had no idea about communal living and respecting other people's needs in that situation. My bed was in the corner of the room, next to the wardrobe: she'd open the wardrobe doors to get her clothes out and then leave them open - cue me sitting in a tiny, darkened box, shut away from the world. She'd also leave her drawer open so that in order for me to get my stuff out, I'd have to ram her stuff back in said drawer before I could shut it and open mine.

Woh.

Poxy, I know, but it was the little things that really got to me: she'd bought all this food on our behalf, but had no idea how to cook it. I soon decided that we would cook for ourselves from then on. She would often stay out until the wee hours with friends from her class, and then stumble in drunk putting on all the lights possible and making as much noise as she could.

It was getting to the stage where if I didn't take some time out, I was going to spontaneously combust.

I was given a great opportunity to do just this. The school had arranged an afternoon at the pool for us in our third week. It wasn't free - we'd have to pay about 7Eur for the privilege and I'd forgotten my bikini bottoms. I could therefore go, but I'd have to sit on the side, or buy some pants, or borrow some pants - there is always a solution, but I couldn't be bothered with it.

Instead, I was scheming ways to get an afternoon to myself. Lovely.

My friends were really surprised when I said I wasn't going to go and they offered me all kinds of sweeteners, but my mind was made up. I waved them off on the bus and then wandered into a bookshop. I browsed. I browsed a lot. I was looking for English literature translated into Italian.

I love classic literature and so bought Orgoglioso e Pregiudizio (Pride & Prejudice) and Re Lear (King Lear). It was enough to whet my appetite. I went back to my apartment and then decided that I'd head down to the supermarket. I walked all the way down and all the way back up. It was a long slog and I didn't enjoy the last 500m because my arms were about to fall off, but still it was nice to do it on my own, without having to think about making polite small talk with someone else.

I got back to my apartment and then headed off to the deserted piazza to Skype my family. Not long after my friends arrived back. It turned out I hadn't missed very much at all. Ok so it had been fun, but I could tell they were secretly all jealous that I'd had some time alone.

So with all my chores done and the evening stretching out in front of me, I decided to arrange to meet my friends at a bar in the piazza that evening. I could tell my friends were all in need of a drink for different reasons that I was...

Internet-Gate

There's not doubting that Camerino is beautiful: Camerino, Rome, Assisi, Perugia, Frassassi, Porto Recanati, Macerata, Caldarola, all of it. You can understand, therefore, a) why I decided to take pictures at every opportunity, and b) why I felt I just had to share it with the wider world.

Ok, so I'm blogging about it - but it happened back in 2009, so quite a lot of time has passed since then. What I did in the heat of the moment was to write emails to my family and friends all about my time away. For this to happen I needed the internet. Fortunately the school had a number of computers connected to the internet in the main foyer; unfortunately the room was a complete sweatbox and the computers were all paintfully slow.

My solution came in the form of a brand-spanking new netbook I'd bought for my year abroad: it was portable, had a long battery life, and wireless internet. This meant I could sit in the main piazza (just outside the school) and construct these entertaining emails and Skype my family back in the UK. It was great to be able to share my experiences and catch up on what was going on at home.

There were two downsides to this: quite often many people serendipitously has the same idea and so there was no room to sit in the piazza, and sometimes it rained. I wracked my brain for an alternative and remembered that in my flat I was near the university buildings. Great! I'll just connect to their network.

So there I am chilling in the kitchen. I load up my computer and click on the internet connections. Yes! The university network is listed. Oh. You need a passcode. Oh. Bummer. Still, I asked at the school and they said I just needed to go to IT Services at the university and they'd sort it for me.

It's the start of the third week by the time this happens and to be honest, if it wasn't for the frequent thunderstorms that rendered Skyping in the piazza a bit of a bad idea, I'd have left it alone. Nevertheless, one break time I went down to IT Services and asked them to sort out my computer. There were a couple of guys hanging about and one of them got to sorting my netbook right away. The other seemed to just be chilling there for fun. I don't know what he was doing there during the summer, but he was harmless enough.

They fettled my netbook and I headed off back to the school. The hanger-on decided that IT Services wasn't as exciting as escorting a blonde English girl back into town. Nice. The other guy gave me a look as the offer to take me back into town was made, but I don't like hurting people's feelings so I agreed.

Now this is Italy where guys enjoy female company, but this guy was a bit more English - soppy, wet, not very interesting, certainly not an Italian stallion: I got rid of him before I even reached the main street. But Camerino is a small town and it's quite hard to avoid people. That said I like a challenge and spent the remaining fortnight ducking into alleyways, having loud conversations with my friends, and doing lots of ignoring.

It sounds cruel, but let me tell you it would have been much crueller to tell him exactly what I thought. We had plenty of outings planned over the next fortnight so as long as I could avoid him during the days, I'd be home and dry.

So after all that you would kind of think it was worth it because I got internet in my flat. Well I didn't - whatever they tried didn't work; I thought about going back and thought better of it - Skyping in the rain was a much more attractive prospect.

The Capital City (Part II)

I am currently outside the Pantheon in Rome, well not literally, but considering that my last post was about the first half of my Roman adventure, technically I am just outside the Pantheon about to continue with a guided tour of the capital city.

Our tour moved from the Pantheon to the Fontana dei Trevi made famous by Anita Ekberg who danced in it during Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita. Our tour guide was one of the tutors at the school but I get the distinct impression she had never been to Rome. The tutor that lectured us on Roman history would have been a fantastic tour guide, but he was unavailable so we got the next best thing, only this woman wasn't the next best thing, she spent most of the tour reading out Wikipedia.

Anyway, things wound up there quite abruptly - our guide decided that the rest of the day was ours to explore because she'd run out of Wikipedia notes, or something similar. This wasn't a bad thing because she wasn't giving us the best tour we'd ever had and to be honest, I just wanted to do a bit of sightseeing without seventy other people in tow.

First things first, however, we needed lunch so Lynette, Gaby, Bree and I went to MacDonalds. I may have introduced Susan into our group but she was keeping one of Camerino's locals busy. To this day I don't know why he'd come with us, but he took a shine to Susan and they decided to go round the city together.

So it was just four of us in MacDonalds and we had two very different ideas about what to do with the rest of the way. Now I was getting on really well with Gaby and Bree, but it was Lynette that wanted to do what I wanted. We hit a bit of a rough spot with this. As had happened in Perugia, we got our wires crossed and the easiest thing to do at that point is walk away.

Now I don't want to moan about my coursemates because I'm still really good friends with Bree even though years have passed since we last saw each other, but sometimes you hit a rough spot with someone and in the interests of community relations, it's a lot easier to take a deep breath, wave a cheery goodbye and then meet back at the coach at the end of the day.

Lynette and I, two lassies from Manchester, started to get to grips with Rome. Our first stop was the Spanish Steps and then we headed over to the Typewriter. The reason for the disagreement with Bree was that she wanted to use the tube and we didn't. The very last thing I wanted to do was go and stand in a sweatbox like the Pantheon, but underground: on a hot, airless day like it was, the aim is to spend as much of it as possible out in the open. Bree maintained it would be too hard to get everywhere we wanted and walk, but I was sure it wasn't too much of a distance to cover.

Anyway we reached the Typewriter and headed down to the Colosseum. We'd seen such a mis-match of time periods and architecture during the day that it was only fitting we saw some real Roman stuff at some point. The road down to the Colosseum is long and so we chatted, paused every now and then and took our time to get there because we still had quite a lot of time left before we had to meet at Termini Station.

We didn't go in the Colosseum - it was quite pricey and I wanted to see a bit more of the city before heading back. We headed up round the back of the Colosseum, where I thought it was a good time to jump, and then we started walking back to the station - via the odd shop or two along the way.

We got back to the station quite early and ran into Susan and her new friend. We went to one of the cafes in the station and got something to eat. I wasn't very hungry - I never seemed to be despite all the walking and touring I'd been doing. After that we headed to the place the coach would pick us up from. Bree and Gaby were there after spending the day with some of the Portuguese crowd and they were full of what they'd done. They'd had fun - to be honest they'd not done a lot more or less than what we'd done, but they'd enjoyed it nonetheless.

On the way home I was thankful that Sunday was a day of rest.

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...