The Ancient Ones

This post doesn't really serve all that much of a narrative purpose, it's more just to confess something to all of you. Old Italian ladies scare me.

That's it. Go and ahead laugh, but I assure you, until you have a had a direct encounter with one don't be so quick to laugh it off. On the vast whole, they're all about 5 feet tall, wizened, and truly hate me. Yes its true. Every female over the age of 60 in all of Italy despises me and are determined to make my life difficult. They glare at me with tiny eyes glittering with... I don't know what to call it but it freaks me out. I've withheld judgment for several months, but over the past several months I've had many encounters that neither have my peers experienced nor my Italian friends been able to explain. The only answer: le donne vecchie don't like me and I should fear them. Let me regale you with a few tales...


The Metro (Part 1)

In the first month of school, I was getting used to taking the metro everywhere. That wasn't all that difficult, Milan has a fantastic public transportation system and I can get most of the places I need to go in about 30 min. The metro is speckled with the usual people, various musicians who trap you in the car with their old violin or accordion, gypsies who shout their (to me) unintelligible messages, and beggars with their signs and outstretched hands (a great source of moral trouble for me. I give what I can but the truth is that I just don't have that much money. Then their is the fact that some beggars here aren't working from necessity but rather work for the Family). Anyways, I had just really began to feel comfortable with my ability to negotiate a system filled with people who I couldn't communicate with. It was my first month here so I didn't really speak any Italian by that point. I mean I could have told them my name and how old I was...but not really anything too useful.

Now before I continue, you all should know that here in Italy age is a big deal. The elderly are generally very respected and on public transportation if there is an elderly person standing you're expected to offer them your seat. Totally cool, I think that's great. Well...

I was coming back from class one day and I climbed into a metro car that had literally nobody in it. So I just chose a seat back in the corner where I could see the vast expanse of no one in front of me. Unfortunately, my solitude only lasted until the next stop. The doors hissed open and in walked an imperious old lady in her ankle length fur coat (she was maybe 5'4") She looks over her sunglasses around at the empty car and then shuffles towards me. I ignore her until it is obvious that she is standing next to me staring down at me. Kind of awkward right? I glance warily up at her, and then she starts berating me in Italian. Not just a normal scolding either, a full-fledged-whiny-sounding-fast-as-hell-word-blurring tongue lashing. After about 2 minutes I realized what she was talking about. She was pissed off that I didn't offer her my seat.

What the hell?

This lady literally walked PAST 15 open seats to get to me. Easier to get into seats as well. You had to climb past other seats to get where I was. To put it lightly, I was more than irked. I'll happily give up my seat to an older person if there is a dearth of seating, but this was just abuse of the "I'm old" card. That day I was already a little irritated, so I just decided to try and ride it out. She couldn't keep it up forever, right? Wrong. She not only kept it up, but she was going ALL the way to my stop, nearly a 15 min ride. AND not a single other person got on the entire time. I couldn't have made that happen if I paid people to not get on at each stop. So I just sat there awkwardly and pissed off with an old Italian lady yelling at me. And so was my first encounter with....The Ancient Ones.


The Gelateria

Almost a month and a half later, I was showing Jenna and Brett around Milan and decided to show them what I (and my Italian professor) consider to be the best gelato in town, a small place called Grom. (Okay quick side note, in Milan there are only two schools of thought when it comes to opinions of where you can find the best gelato, Chocolat and Grom. Chocolat is apprently a more Milanese styled gelato, heavy and rich. Grom on the other hand makes a more light tasting gelato, though still delicious. It hails from down south in Firenze. Speaking of which, they had a new flavor the other day, Cassata Siciliana. It was a ricotta and candied orange peel combination. Blew my mind.) Anyways, I had been wearing a light jacket all day since it had been cool in the morning, but since we were in the dead heat of the afternoon I had pushed my sleeves up to try and cool off a bit. We wandered into Grom and stood in line for a minute while I translated the menu for Jenna and Brett and made some recommendations. Behind me I heard someone say "Ragazzo!" (Boy) I paid this no mind, you hear somebody yelling ragazzo at someone at least three thousand times a day. I continued trying to help Jenna and Brett decode the menu and then I heard another "RAGAZZO", meaner this time and it was accompanied with a tug at my sleeve. Puzzled I turned around only to find not just one, but TWO angry old Italian ladies. The sleevetugger began rapidly scolding me, and the entire time I'm sitting there wondering "What have I done wrong? Why does the entire population of elderly ladies in Italy hate me so?" Finally, I understood that they wanted me to roll down my sleeves. Why? Frankly I have no idea. I even double checked my arms to make sure I hadn't written "SHIT" or "DAMN" or "ASS" on my arms. (Not that this is something I usually do, but it would have made their request seem more reasonable. There weren't any naked ladies on my arms either.) So there was little else I could do but roll down my sleeves and be uncomfortably warm until we could get our gelati and get the hell away from the old ladies. I've run this story past my Italian teacher Paolo and he had no idea why my rolled up sleeves could offend anyone. What would they have done if I had been wearing a short sleeve shirt? I have no idea, it was just another encounter with .....the Ancient Ones.

Nor would I be so lucky that these would be my only such encounters with these beings. I am continually running into them, somehow inconveniencing them in some way and leaving awkwardly, my back pin cushioned with their daggers of ocular origin. Why? No one can say...no one that is....but The Ancient Ones.

I've been a wild rover for manys a year....

This is a true story. None of the details have been changed to protect the innocent.

So a while ago, Arseniy and I left for a short jaunt up to Ireland. Why Ireland? (Why not Ireland, don’t question me) Actually we chose the Emerald Isle because

A) it seemed like a pretty sweet place to spend a three day weekend
B) It would give us a short break from Italian (or so we thought)
C) Beer

Okay to be fair, beer wasn’t that big of part of that decision. But the other two reasons are valid. At that point we didn’t mind the idea of being able to go up to a shop keep and be able to explain in no uncertain terms exactly what needed to go down. So we bought our tickets, made reservations at a hostel and packed or bags to head up north. Luckily we thought about the fact that we were going north (we were to later find that Ireland even at the end of March is cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey (Not as dirty as it sounds, I’ll explain later if I have to)).

Since our flight was leaving at 9:30 p.m. on Ryanair, that meant we needed to be at the Bergamo airport by around 7:30 or so (Ryanair only flies into Milan at Bergamo). Not all that bad right? Wrong. Bergamo is about an hour bus ride out of Milan…a 8.70 euro ride no less. Cripes. So that meant we needed to leave Stazione Centrale at about 6:30, which meant that we needed to leave the flat around 5:45. Ugh, this was starting to look like an ordeal. Our biggest fear was that Dublin would become Venice, and no one should have to go through Venice twice (see earlier post Masks and Oranges, I can’t exactly remember the title it something like that). To our complete surprise, everything went as well as could be expected. Our bus left Centrale right around 6:30, we rolled into Bergamo at 7:30, checked in, had a coffee, waited for a while, and the flight left on time (HA HA!! Take that Murphy, you jackass!).

A quick word about Ryanair. I don’t know how many of you, my readers (of which there are now undoubtedly fewer due to my negligence. I beg your individual pardons), have ridden Ryanair but there are some really cool things and some slightly less cool things about it. Let me detail it in two lists:

Cool things: Cheap as crap (providing you book well ahead of time), over 90% of their flights arrive on time (this is tied to an uncool thing though…wait for it…), and ummm…. that’s about it.

Uncool things: The inside of the plane is unbelievably yellow (It’s like drowning in Mountain Dew inside a rubber duck), the seats don’t recline at all (forcing all manner of inventive, but equally uncomfortable sleeping positions), I have to go to Bergamo to fly with them, and when you arrive on schedule you have to listen to recorded fanfare and an Irish dude telling you that over 90% of Ryanair flights arrive on time.

Luckily for Ryanair, the first cool thing (hella cheap), is sweet enough to make up for all of the uncool things. Okay, back to the trip.

We rolled into Dublin at about 10:30 local time, and stepped onto the tarmac is a whirl of a category 4 hurricane and freezing rain. Ok not really, but it WAS really cold, windy, and rainy. So far Ireland had not disappointed my expectations. After getting through customs (by the way, the Irish are waaaaay more uptight about who is coming into their country than the Italians), we eventually found the bus that would take us in the general direction of our hostel. We arrived on O’Connell street, and in short order found our hostel, Marlborough Hostel. Typically this is where you would expect me to go on in great detail and describe how awesome our hostel was and all the sweet people we met there. Well, I’m not. It was a pretty cool place, but not epic or anything. Way too many pink, electric blue, and lime green rooms for my taste (And it smelled like….chicken bullion. Everywhere all the time). Here is a picture of our room which we shared with 4 girls, all from the states.


Never really saw them. On the plus side, we asked the guy at the desk, Steven, where would be a good place to grab a beer. He directed us to this pub where we stood at the bar and ordered our first pint of black. Excellent. There was also some guy playing Irish drinking songs, a few of which I knew. (It was awesome. I was in Ireland, drinking some of the black, and singing The Wild Rover. Ranks pretty high up there in travelling experiences). After our pint we headed back towards the hostel to grab some shuteye so that we could jump up early the next day and start exploring.

Which didn’t happen, we actually got up at about 10 but in all fairness we were out the door in 10-15 min. We quickly decided that the best way to prepare ourselves for the cold, blustery day was to have a pint of Guinness. Just kidding, we actually had an Irish breakfast and tea. It was my first face to face encounter with black pudding (yes I knew what it was before I ate it), which was actually pretty dang tasty, and I have no trouble saying that I would eat it again.

(Oh snap, I have to run downtown for photography class, I’ll be back)

(Ok, I’m back. Also went and bought some killer provolone)

Ok, after our hearty breakfast, we wandered around for just a short while before heading out for our main goal of the day…the Guinness brewery. (According to some of the girls from our room, it was waaaay to far to walk. It took like 20 min. Pansies.) It was a nice enough walk, taking us down the Liffey (seen here)



and letting us take in a few sights. Then we started up the hill and started smelling some of the fermentation gas being released from the vats. Ahh…fart smell… Visitors aren’t actually allowed to go inside the actual factory anymore, I guess to keep people from accidentally dropping mud from shoes, hair, or spitting into the tuns. But they have a really cool set up, where you get to walk around and see all the various ingredients and read about the history and stuff. There is a little place where you get to watch some really pretentious guy on TV and tell you how to properly taste Guinness and so you get to have a quarter pint. Then you can continue going up in the museum, checking things out and such until you get to the top where you can enjoy a complimentary pint while overlooking the whole of Dublin.



Excellent. I can also say that Guinness has truly never tasted as good as it did there in the factory. Whether or not there was an actual difference or if it was all in my head I’ll leave up for you to decide.

After the factory, Arseniy and I just kind of nonchalantly wandered around the city seeing some nice churches and enjoying some temporary (and relative) warmth during the afternoon. We found out several things about Dublin, it’s a very nice city: clean, open, friendly.


My kind of place.

The second thing is that Dublin is in fact just an extension of Italy. (Seriously I heard more Italian in Dublin than I heard English. Everywhere I looked there was a pizza place…..*sigh* so much for having a break from Italy) That night we set out to fufill our goal of eating some fish and chips while in Ireland (for those of you that know my fear of fried fish, I figured I should try to overcome it for this). We eventually found this place that both had really good fish and chips, but had also apparently been visited by everyone famous and their mother. You can see both the meal (I went with cod), and the list of people here) Afterwards we went to a small pub and I crossed another Irish beer (Smithwicks, a brown ale and really good) off my list, and I then found out that good cider is also “proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”, to erroneously use Franklin’s words. Afterwards we went home for a good night’s sleep in preparation for the next day’s plans, which was to simply make it to the coast. But as it turned out the night wasn’t nearly over yet…

At some point, Arseniy asked if I wanted to go on a walk out into Dublin. Thought tired I was game enough (don’t let it be said that Sam Howell is anything but game for walks). So we left the hostel and decided to go in a direction we hadn’t explored before. After a walking for a while, through the ghetto and under some bridges, we found ourselves in only what could be described as the nitty gritty of Dublin. Nothing to really worry about, I mean we’re too wary enough dudes so we weren’t too worried. That’s when things started to get weird. As we were walking down the street in an aging neighborhood, I saw the king of spades laying on the pavement.



Summoning the artist in me, I tried to make the most of it and took a few pictures (I mean coming across a random card in the street is pretty crazy, and I was on the lookout for pictures for my photography class). After snapping a few pics, I reached down and picked up the card. Immediately things started getting weird. About thirty seconds after I picked up the card a woman had appeared on the previously deserted street. She looked to be around 40, with kind of a vacant look on her face and kind of tawny, mousy hair.

“Please don’t gossip.” She implored softly.

This isn’t what we had expected at all. From our experiences in Italy, if anyone actually approaches you at night, they probably want a cigarette. And we hadn’t even been talking so this gossip comment threw us for a loop.

“Excuse me? Asked Arseniy

“Don’t gossip. I’ve been fighting gossip for ten years and I’m afraid it’s going to kill me.”

“Um...thanks.” I muttered, and we strode on. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw her looking at us and shaking off some chills turned back and continued walking. Not a minute later some large drunken man stumbled past, only pausing to blare a horn in our faces. Not inherently weird or creepy in and of itself, but in combination with the lady we were starting to get pretty uneasy. After the horn man, things were relatively calm for a while, and we were probably about ¾ of a mile away from where I had picked up the king of spades. And there, scattered across the road, we saw the rest of the same deck of cards. Though all rationale and logic says none of this had anything to do with the king, I threw it down among the others and we hastened on our way. We decided that the best course of action was to stop into a nice crowded pub for a steadying pint. We found solace in a cool drink and rowdy company. But upon our exit, Dublin seemed determined to have one more go at us, and there staring at us was this creepy old man doll, blankly staring with a slight smirk and holding a bottle. We made it back to the hostel intact but in silence. We settled in for some sleep, not really talking about the odd events during the witching hours of Dublin.

Our original plan was to just spend the next day out on the coast. But we actually ended up going to the Bodies exhibit first. Yes, I did actually go, believe it or not. I know many of you are shocked, and there were no dire consequences, though I was truthfully rather unsettled by it all. Call me a pansy if you wish, but that’s the truth of it.

After the exhibit we just kind of wandered in the direction of Dublin port, and after a good hour and a half of wandering finally came upon the sea. I actually had the thought to take a video, so here it is. I had been taking some pictures so I forgot I had the zoom on so you all can enjoy a close up of my face.



We then just kind of sauntered around the coast for a while, finally coming to the longest damn breakwater I’ve ever seen.



It was literally 2 km long and it felt like an eternity to walk to the end of it, but walk to the end we did. All the way to the lighthouse. You can see me extending my empire over the Land of the Celts and Picts.



We tried to hang out for a while at the end of the breakwater, but we were in imminent danger of being blown off into the waters. The trek back was waaay harder, seeing as how it was around 4-5 in the evening and we had failed to eat anything that day. So we started slogging our way back…it started to sprinkle at a few points, but our vehement curses at Murphy and Finagle were apparently of some use, because we were never actually subjected to full out rain. By the time we staggered back into actual Dublin, we were absolutely wiped out. We decided that the only cure was to take the money saved by not eating the first to meals and apply them to dinner, so we had some really good Chinese food in a restaurant around the corner from our hostel. It was so wonderful to once again taste the flavors of the east upon my tongue, after such a long dry spell (2 months. Don’t laugh, it’s a hard two months) After dinner, we did little more asides from go buy some cider to enjoy in the comfort of the hostel’s courtyard (comfort=really damn cold). And later, in the wee hours of the morning we set off back to Italia.

The Visitors

So, the fact of the matter is that I am currently about two/two and a half weeks behind blogging schedule. I'm going to do my best but I've determined the only way to catch up and still do all my homework is to give some portion of the Milan experience the short shrift and I'm afraid it is going to have to be this part, no offense to my awesome visitors who I was thrilled to see. It's just the only way I can make up in some part for my own negligence so I apologize to you, dear readers for being a bum. But on to the story...

So three weekends ago Matt Warner rolled into town on his way to Avignon to visit our friend Sarah Idrissi. We had been facebook messaging back and forth several weeks prior trying to figure out which airport he needed to fly into and what time and all that little nitpicky but really kind of important stuff that you have to straighten out when flying, especially into a foreign country. (Early on in the negotiations, I made it clear to Matt that he had a place to stay only if he met my demands:

1)Giant bag of peanut M&M's (Really, really expensive over here. I can drop 2 euro on something only slightly bigger than a fun size bag. Cripes!)

2)A jar of salsa (B/c I hate eating eggs without salsa, and they're one of the cheaper ways to get protein over here and so I've been forced to eat a lot of non-salsa-ed eggs. sad face)

Luckily he quickly gave in to my demands as he realized had no hope of winning the negotiations. So finally I told him that I would meet him on Friday at Cadorna station next to the giant sewing needle (Yeah, for some reason Milan has this giant public sculpture of a needle. No idea where it comes from. Check it out)after my class got out at 12. As Murphy would have it, I got out 15 minutes late that Friday. "Cripes," I thought "Matt's going to have gotten impatient and wandered off and I'm going to have to go around asking people if they've seen an American wandering around with several suitcases and a large black fro." Luckily when I turned the corner and the needle came into view, Matt was standing beneath it thereby saving me lots of awkward Italian conversations (Also I don't know if there is a different word for afro). I was really glad to see someone from back home, though it was incredibly weird at the same time. As I would find out later, walking around with someone from home makes my brain feel like everything should be in English, but it was of course all in Italian so my head was kind of muddled for a while. Anyways, moving on with the story, I took Matt back to our place so he could dump off his stuff before taking him on the Milan-in-a-day tour.

I took him up around the Piazza del Duomo where we went inside the Duomo (speaking of which, I don't think I've given you all a picture of the Duomo yet. I'm not sure how I haven't done that yet. Huh, well here you go. This isn't taken when Matt and I were there, it's from a night long ago at about 5 in the morning) and afterwards grabbed some Gelato from one of my favorite places, Grom. After our finishing our gelati, we decided to drop 5 euro to take he stairs up onto the roof of the Duomo. This might seem steep, but upon arriving on the roof it was clear that it had been money well spent. You could see all of Milan and the Alps off in the distance. We spent a probably an hour and a half up there, just enjoying the view and chatting about stuff home. I also took a video, which you may find below for your viewing pleasure : (Or not. I can't really guarantee that you'll enjoy it, but at least I tried)


While on the roof we ran into my friend Johannes and his girlfriend. He said they might be trying to set up an aperitivo later that day and we were welcome to come along if we liked. Since aperitivo is an important part of the Milan experience, I told him that would be cool and to just let us know where and when once they had it figured out. As it turned out we never ended meeting up with them and instead just took some beer out near the columns with my flatmate Luka. Good enough for a slow night out on the town. We took the rest of Matt's visit kind of slow, with the exception of an aperitivo at Costanza's house which was pretty cool. Matt got to meet some of my Italian and international friends and at the very least he seemed to enjoy himself. And a day later he was off to Avignon, where he would spend the week and come back and spend a night back here in Milan before heading back to the states.

My weeks was then spent with general schoolwork, I had a critique in photography to prepare for, so I had plenty of things to keep me occupied before the arrival of my second set of guests. Jenna Thorp and Brett Jacobsen had chosen to spend their spring break bumming around Firenze, and had asked if they could swing through Milan on their way back. (I was really happy to have the chance to see two groups of people. I was entirely ready to go and entire semester without seeing anything more than a skype image of anyone, so this was an awesome surprise. Without thinking about the fact they would be coming in on a train from Firenze and not the airport, I told them to meet me by the needle, since that had worked out so well last time.

So when I got out of class Friday, I had a text message from Brett telling me they were up at Stazione Centrale (Of course they were Sam you doofus, real trains go into Centrale not Cadorna). After mentally beating my head against a wall for being stupid, I told them that I would meet them up there so just hang tight. Twenty minutes later, I was wandering around trying to find them in the cavernous building that is Centrale. Finally I found them out by the "center" of Milan (Here's the deal. Mussolini was all about Centrale reflecting the glory of the Fascist regime. It is a very austere, imperial, and beautiful building. Outside you can see the circle which is (According to Mussolini) the exact center of Milan. However if you look at a map, I have no idea how he came to that conclusion. Maybe if you stripped away all the growth since the end of WWII...anyways that is where they were). After I found them I immediately went about removing any sense of competency by not paying attention and getting on the metro that continues north instead of getting on the southbound metro which is the one we needed. (Good job there smart guy, way to demonstrate some competency there :/ But nevetherless despite of my stupidity I did manage to find my way home so that they could deposit their bags and...yes thats right...go to the Duomo.

Here I could type another paragraph about what we did, or I could refer you to three paragraphs previously. We went inside, ate gelato, went on the roof. It was a lot of fun though, and in contrast to when Matt was there we got to art nerd out on the Duomo itself and we did spend a good deal more time there than when I was there with Matt. Then we started the walk home and I took them through the Castello and around to Cadorna where they could see the meeting place that never happened. As we walked home, I threw out a few ideas as to what the next days activities could include. Museums, walking around, shopping (I mean if that's what you're into), but then a bolt of genius darted through my mind. "Hey," I said "what do you think about going to Como tomorrow?" That was a big hit so we decided that the next day I would return to and they would explore... Como.

The next day we were a little late getting out the door...again. (We just can't be punctual when trying to get to Como apparently) but eventually we got to Cadorna and jumped on a train. As it pulled out of the station, I could feel the relaxing influence of Como seeping into my body, and I knew we were in for a good day.

*Here the author needed to go buy some food for dinner. This part of the blog could be omitted but this is real in-the-now information from Milan. Just letting you know.*

So okay, now I that have some sauce simmering so on with the story. Arseniy and I advocated that going a different direction than last time. (We went right last time, so we thought going left might be exciting) Once again we wandered for about a kilometer or so before we found a nice park area to chill around in. We sat and enjoyed the sun, talking and watching a couple swans and pondering why they are one water fowl that has somehow escaped making its way onto humankind's tables. It was another gorgeous day, and no surprise that we all napped at some point. Later in the afternoon we ventured back into the actual city of Como, which was also really quite calm. It actually felt like Venice to tell the truth, which was kind of weird (I started to ave this paranoia that I would soon be forced to freeze in a train station somewhere). But soon enough we decided that it was about time to head back, b/c we were supposed to meet Costanza around 8 for aperitivo in the vicinity of the columns.

I'd tell you some entertaining stories about the train ride back, but truth is we were all asleep until we rolled into Cadorna station at about 6. We decided to run home before meeting up for aperitivo. Aperitivo was good, filled with tasty food and chilly weather. Afterwards we spent the rest of our night hanging out at this streetfront bar called the Paladin. By the time we left, it was waaay past the time when the trams stop running so I got to show Jenna and Brett one of the more frequent parts of life in Milan, walking an hour through the deserted streets all the way home. By the time we got home it was probably 3 or so in the morning, and I don't know about the two girls, but I was wiped out. Unfortunately they needed to get into Cadorna to catch the train to the airport by 5, and the metro doesn't open until 6. So I had to exercise my extremely tired mind and call a taxi to the house, which luckily wasn't all that difficult. (To be honest, I was insufferably pleased with myself at how smoothly it had gone) and they were off into the Italian night just a short while later.

Well, I finally managed to document my visitors. Hopefully sometime tomorrow I'll have finished my post about me trip to Ireland. Until then, peace!

Como Lago

Hey everybody, I know that you're all probably thinking "Why hasn't Sam updated his blog recently? Is everything okay? What am I going to do with my spare time now that I can't read his unimaginatively titled blog?" Okay, I realize that none of you are thinking that, and in fact, the large majority of you bums are on spring break. Well spring break is for scoundrels and rouges, I have midterms this week. I actually can't complain, I only had one written "study-for" exam, then I had to make a book of fotographs out of found materials, and then come up with a proposal for my final project in working with artists. In contrast my flatmates had at least 4 exams a piece, so it hasn't been all that bad. Matt Warner was here for the weekend, but I'm going to write about that in my next post entitled "The Visitors" So stay on the edge of your seats for that. Now to the main part of this blog post, my visit to Lake Como.

I'm dreadfully late in writing about this adventure, I actually went to Lake Como not quite two weeks ago. I can't actually think why it has taken me so long, just the usual conflagration of homework, sleep deprivation, and procrastination. So Saturday before last, Arseniya and I were just chilling in our room, reading and checking email and so forth.
"Dude."
"Yeah man?" I replied.
"We should go somewhere this weekend."
"F'shiz" I quipped wittliy. (Yes, I know this response was neither a quip or witty, I'm embellishing)

So a little while later we decided that we should go to Lake Como, for several reasons: A) It was supposed to be beautiful B) It was relatively close and cheap to get to C) George Clooney lives there sometimes (running joke, you had to be there, but really he does) We decided we would leave early Sunday morning so we could catch a train from Cadorna and give us a nice leisurely day of wandering around a gorgeous Alpine lake.

So at about 10:30 we hauled our groggy butts out of bed and grabbed our friend Kyle from his sleeping place on the couch. (I don't think I ever told you about Kyle. He is this 18 year old Australian dude who is going on this long crazy walkabout typw thing around Europe, sleeping in parks and trying to get by on as little as possible. Pretty chill dude and fun to hang with.) And we headed to Cadorna where we met our three Italian friends, Elisabetta, Martina, and Costanza (as awesome a group of girls you could hope to hang with).

And here we are, the Como adventurers:


Martina


Elisabetta


Costanza


Arseniy


Kyle


Me

So as it turned out, we didn't move our groggy butts (I think this phrase is funny) fast enough and missed the first train out to Como. As it turns out, this is a theme for the large majority of my trip so far, just missing trains... But not to worry, all we had to do was hang out in front of Cadorna and enjoy the beautiful sunny day. We only had about 40 minutes to waste anyways. In a while we bought our tickets and boarded the ghetto train for Lago di Como. (It really was, everything was carpeted in a poop brown, including parts of the walls.) We had a nice chatty train ride, a smattering of English, Italian, fighting for window seats. Como actually isn't all that far away only about an hour. And once in Como, you're aggravatingly close to Switzerland, so I'm going to hate myself if I don't go visit for at least a weekend. Here, look how close it is:

I'm pretty sure that if we set our minds to it and had our passports with us, we could have walked there. Ach, well...another time perhaps. Anyways, we arrived in Lake Como and it was just beautiful. There are mountains right up to the point where the lake starts, and buildings scattered on the slopes of some of the lesser Italian Alps. We didn't really have any particular plan for the day, just wander around and enjoy the beautiful weather and at some point get pizza and gelato. We casually strolled down one road that followed the shore, occasionally stopping in small parks and looking around at our beautiful surroundings. Here are just a few pictures of the first few sights we encountered in our passegiatta (literally translated a walk with no real purpose other than enjoyment).



After we had walked about maybe a kilometer, we ran into a pizzeria that seemed ready to fit our needs (i.e. they served pizza, and my Italian muddled brain has doubts whether or not I just used i.e. correctly). After a delicious repast of about 5 diferent types of pizza, we waddled our stuffed bellies out into the sun, where there were some very conveniently placed steps in a sort of odd park-hang-out-here kind of way. So hang out we did. For the first little while our activities consisted of this:

Which was awesome. But after a while Arseniy, Kyle, and I felt the urge to explore so we followed this path behind the stair area up the mountain a ways. We would later find out we had not ascended far at all, but it felt like we could see everything. We hung out on the bend of a road for a while, sitting on a wall and erasing a little more dreariness with the sun's rays.

Walking up...

Lake Como

Me

Arseniy really enjoyed the sun.

And I actually have another video for you all. So here it is:



And afterwards we made our weary way back down our little trail and back to the girls on the steps. Naturally such a great endeavor as taking a 5 min walk had worn us out, so we settled back down for nap due. This may sound ridiuclous but let me explain something about Como. As soon as you get there every muscle in your body starts relazing, and your stress and worries just melt away like snow in Tennessee. This is only the fourth place on earth where I have felt this utter relaxation, the others being Marathon Key, Kalaloch WA, and the Blue Grotto in Malta. I love these places so incredibly much, I'm not even going to try and describe it. Anyways, I decided to forsake the sun (redhead you know...) and found a nice place and settled in for a nice nap. About an hour later I woke up and found Martina sitting by my side. She asked if I was all right. I told her of course... why did she ask? "Because you are all the way over here," she said "away from everyone." I laughed and explained it was merely b/c of my condition(redhead) and I didn't want to push my luck with the sun (Isn't that right ASB 2008ers?). But moving on, shortly thereafter we began moseying our way back to the train station. Just in time too, as soon as the sun dipped behind the mountains it got really cold very fast, and none of us were really that prepared for it. We boarded the rain, and headed back towards Milan, tired somehow in spite of all of our napping, but happy with a beautiful day up in the mountains.

Well, I think I've finally finished this post, and now can begin on my next two. I hope to have one more up today and the other within a day or two. Until later...ciao.

Under construction

I have so much info it's ridiculous and midterms tomorrow, but I should have some posts up this evening. Sorry for the radio silence!

WARNING: ART NERD POST!!!

Its true, so brace yourself and strap in for some good old fashioned nerdiness in relation to the art world. But first a little normal news. This week has been pretty uneventful, just going to class and doing some minor exploring. I took the Italian exam that I mentioned in my previous post. And I have only one thing to say about that darned thing...

MY CHEST!!!

Ehhmm, sorry. It went pretty well. The hardest part was writing the composition (side note: being so immersed in Italian is REALLY messing with my English spelling/speaking ability. I just had to go back and rewrite the word composition in its English spelling). We could write about a friend of ours, so Joey, there is now an Italian professor who knows all about you. The hardest part about writing the composition was I couldn't use all the words I needed (i.e. drums, quarter baron, victory boxes)

And for the oral examination, Aresniy and I talked with Paolo about how rather than studying the night before, we watched some tv and drank wine. Later the subject moved on to calcio (soccer). So the long and short of it is that the exam was dominated and now we're moving on to round two...the semester course. So at the very least I can say this: Parlo piu italiano di prima.

But now for the art nerd part of this post. This Tuesday I went to La Acadamia di'Brera to see their advertised Caravaggio exhibit. Unfortunately, they didn't have student discounts unless you were from Europe, so I ended up paying 10 euro to get in (I feel like it was some type of discrimination. My bad that I was born on the wrong continent. Cripes) But luckily it turned out to be totally worth 10 euro. I went with my friend Anja from Germany, so I got to play docent to some extent. We spent a little while wandering around rooms of medieval and Byzantine icons, which was pretty cool. I mentioned to Anja that if all else failed, medieval artists only needed to follow this simple formuala:

1 Madonna
1 Child (creepy man/baby of course)
Then select one of the following hosts (and if necessary combine the two):
Saints
Angels
Bling (gold leaf preferred)

And voila, you have a religious medieval masterpiece.

Then we turned the corner and I ran into a painting straight out of Art 212.



Andrea Mantegna's Dead Christ.

I was so filled with incredible art nerd joy I think I scared Anja. But it was amazing. It had been one of my favorite paintings in Art 212 and I had just randomly
stumbled across it. Awesome.

After spending what Anja thought was an inordinate amount of time in front of the Dead Christ, we continued on through the museum. I was surrounded by names such as Della Francesca, Rubens, Barberini, and many other names that probably don't mean anything to the great majority of you dear readers (But the following posts are filled with lots of not art history! So don't stop reading! Please!) I also got to see a few random pieces by Raphael and El Greco. And of course we finally came to the Caravaggio exhibit...

Which consisted of four paintings.

What the devil?

I was really puzzled for several minutes. Where was this giant tour-de-force of Caravaggioness? I talked to one of the real docents and found out that they had been able to temporarily get two more paintings, and it was a very exciting opportunity. (Wait, you mean there are only two more paintings than usual? And this merits posters all over Milan?) I realize that I sound unbelievably whiny right now, but I had been expecting to wander around at least two rooms of one of my favorite painters, and instead was faced with only four paintings. *sigh* In all fairness though, they were spectacular works and were not disappointing in and of themselves at all. I'm really happy to have any chance to see anything by Caravaggio, so I left the museum with my mind blown from the sheer amount of great art I had been lucky enough to see.

Okay, I got some of my art nerd out now. Thanks for bearing with me. My next post will contain such exciting things as...a lake, planning, hopes unfulfilled, and a visitor.


Man...the suspense I leave you all with.

Bumming around....

No surprise there right?

I'm actually just giving you all a quick update in this quirky little span of time I have before I have to go to my 5:30 class. It's Shaping the Contemporary,and since its Monday that means I'll have the professor who is trying to teach me to be an elitist (psssh, like I need help with that ;). I'm also turning in two papers: 1) the doomed paper :Me telling an exhibition designer who considers himself an artist that I don't think he is 2)an analysis of a local artist who we visited, and then read two terribly translated review of (like you know, all someone did for these documents was plug them into babelfish or something. Its really bad). Then I'll probably spend the next two hours bored as hell. Then come home and cook. Hmm, what should I make tonight? Probably some tortellini. Ugh, I'm having trouble eating enough and healthily on a budget. I still haven't gotten my codice fiscale (Like a SSN. I've already applied, just haven't gotten it back), which the school needs to open a bank account with which to give me my meal stipend. Here in Italy I'll probably get it around the end of April.... Pasta is really cheap, I mean fresh pasta too. For a pasta lover like myself, its pretty awesome. I'm just going to have to watch it or I'm going to come back and be all unrecognizable due to a pot belly or something. Oh yeah, I have my final in my intensive Italian course tomorrow. I'm not too worried about it. Just the part where I have to chat with Paolo for like five minutes. I know I can do it, I've had much longer conversations in Italian than that. Its just...you know. Okay, well I have to head out so I can catch the metro downtown so I can make it to class in time. Wouldn't want to miss this class... Not at all.

ciao