2/16/10 Sicilian Pavillion

So here was the plan as of 7 days ago. We bought tickets to fly from Torino to Trapani, Sicily. From the airport, we would take a bus to the city center where we would spend the night in a hostel. The next morning we would leave for Palermo by bus (2 hours east)and spend two night in a hostel in Palermo, and then finally we would leave by bus and go to a hostel in Agrigento (3 Hours south) for two days and then take a bus back to Trapani and leave.
Trapani
Well we arrived in Trapani and we took a bus to the city center. Unfortunately, Trapani is like West Philadelphia. Let me take a minute now and build a mental picture of Trapani for you. The best way that i can describe this cradle of filth called Trapani is to present to you the image of two monkeys flinging their excrement at a brick wall covered in graffiti for about two hours. This is the only true way to describe the city. Trapani is on the coast so we thought "hey lets go out to the beach" No you can't go out to the beach because the beach is covered in trash. I walked down to the water only to see a series of bathtubs that and oildrums that had carelessly washed up on the shore like cocunuts on a desert island. Thats right, bathtubs. You think ok, i can handle rusted out bathtubs, well did i mention that this army of God forsaken porcelain maggot bowls also harbor wild dogs. Well yeah, obviously, as every good Trapani citizen knows you can't go near the bathtubs surrounded by trash and oil drums because they are protected by an array of wild dogs. I have one picture of the island and i think it does it justice. It will take me a while to put it up because its on someone elses camera. We walked along the coast for a while, commenting on the disarray of the island and picking out our favorite wild dogs until it starts sleeting. At that point i felt like my jenga tower of bad luck was one block away from falling over so i suggested that we cut our time short in Trapani and head to our next destination- Palermo.
Palermo
We get to Palermo and all of a sudden i feel immediately revitalized. The city was cleaner the people were nicer, and i had my dancing shoes on. I headed to the hostel that i had booked in advance with high hopes. When i got to the hostel with my four friends, who should answer the door but the lovable Gesepee. Gespee ushers us in and shows us our room and he gives us a map detailing every conceivable thing to do in the city. It takes him about 30 minutes to go through everything and he is unbelievably thorough. He tells us that we should go grab a snack at a cafe down the road and come back for dinner because he was making an authentic Sicilian meal.
We did as he said and we came back around 7 or so for the "dinner"
THE DINNER
The words of one of the other hostel guest resonates in my ears. "Gesepee parties like a crazed animal" I had never heard this expression, and it was a little colorful, but their is no other way to describe that dinner. He brings out his "wine" and he gets us all sicilian pizza and encourages us to drink as much of this wine/juice he had made as possible. Well none of us our drinkers, we are all conservative good natured ambitious men, but we didnt want to offend him so we drank what he poured us, which was a lot. Before i knew it he was pushing us all to go out and sing Karyokee. I didn't drink that much because thats not my bag and it doesn't coincide with the moral equation i have laid out for my life, but anyway he took us all out and had us all sing our favorite song in this bizarre district of Palermo. Well one of my friends did drink a lot and he starts getting angry and he makes a scene by punching random cars, and another one of my friends starts flipping tables over. I don't know what was in Gesepee's jungle juice, but i do know that none of us went to dinner the next night. One thing is for sure I had confused Gesepee with the lovable character from disney's Pinochio (Japetto) but i would not any longer.
So before we left Palermo we decided to go to the famous catacombs that are on the outskirts of the city. To call the catacombs disturbing would be like calling the movie Babe 2 (Pig in the city) mildly bizarre and off putting. (Both of these are horrendous understatements). Basically, the catacombs consist of about 200 bodies that are anywhere from 100 to 200 years old that have been ripped from their coffins and nailed to the wall. These catacombs made the "controversial" bodies exhibit look like the Chuck E’ Cheese birthday band. In fact, some of the bodies still had flesh on them, most of them had hair, oh yeah and did i mention their is a children’s section where feti and children under 10 are still rotting suspended to the wall. Some sadistic animal with a sense of humor had them all doing poses too. (Anything ranging from the simple “Uncle Sam” pose to the more complex ‘john travolta’ Saturday Night Fever pose. Nevertheless, I dont think i ever truly left the catacombs because i have had nightmares for the last couple of days. I’m probably going to be carrying a piece of that experience with me for the rest of my life. Anyhoo, we left Palermo and headed for Agrigento.
Agrigento
Agrigento is the picture of cleanliness. If i was in the awkward position of comparing Sicilian cities to Charlie Brown Characters, i would call Trapani (Pig pen-The filthy boy), Palermo (Snoopy), and Agrigento (Charlie Brown). The city has an open market that extends for half a mile and sells everything under the sun. There was not a piece of trash in site, no karyokee bars, and no rotting corpses hanging on the walls. Agrigento is known for its Greek Ruins. Supposedly in southern sicily their are more Greek Ruins then in Greece itself. The ruins can date back as far as 1500 BC and they are pretty spectacular. Agrigento was really a lot of fun and we were able to find a relatively inexpensive place to have a nice dinner and watch a parade that was coming through the city. Our hostel owner was really interesting. He had had multiple death threats from the Sicilian mafia because he was a part time journalist who wrote about the inter-workings of the Sicilian Mafia. He also had discovered some Greek ruins during his stay in Agrigento that had got him some press coverage

February 9, 2010 Roman Holiday

Our actual "Traveling" to Rome was a nightmare. Our flight in Milan left at 6 so we had to leave the night before from Torino and sleep next to the train station waiting for a bus to the airport for about 4 hours. Its funny how so quickly you adapt to being a homeless person. Before i knew it i was one of them, talking a feeble amount of Italian and looking for food and change. We ended up talking to this taxi driver for a while about American music. Apparently, we are both fans of the Electric Light Orchestra, which i thought would never be of any value to me. When we got to Rome, we stayed in this 10$ hostel called Carlito's way which is basically a group dorm. I got to know a couple turkish people, a peruvian, an ecuadorian, some Spaniards and some other American people. The dorm was really great for the price that we paid. We went to see the Trevi Fountain, The Colloseum, the Roman Forum, Palantine Hill, The Vatican, the Vatican Museum (The Sistine Chapel), the sculpture of the ecstasy of St. Teresa, the pantheon, and the Spanish steps. We found this really cool night walk, and we traveled through the city seeing all the sights lit up at night. The Trevi fountain and the pantheon were especially spectacular. We had gotten a tip that near the four rivers fountain their are some extremely gifted struggling artists, so we stopped by just to see if any of them were worthy of our time, and as a matter of fact their was one artist in particular who was absolutely incredible. He did all of his work with spray paint and he had to be one of the best artists i have ever seen. He was the farthest thing from professional, he had a pig tail and paint covered overalls and he was selling his art for 10e, but he was absolutely incredible. The night walk was a lot of fun because their are a ton of street performers out every night trying to gain exposure, and they really add to the atmosphere. Their was everything from mimes to world class singers. On Sunday night, we really wanted to watch the superbowl so we walked about 2 miles to find an Irish Pub. Its somewhat dangerous to walk the streets of Rome at 2 or 3 o clock in the morning, but what the criminal element doesn't know is that i carry next to nothing on my person and that they would actually lose money (opportunity cost) in the time that it would take to rob/pickpocket me. Well anyway we found a pub and we stuck around for a while before leaving in the 3rd quarter so that we get some sleep. I would say that my favorite part of Rome was the Vatican. I heard someone say something to this effect, and i think it embodies exactly how i felt: "To call the inside of the Vatican vast would be like calling God smart." I was absolutely dumbstruck by the gigantic size of the pillars and the art, and John and I climbed to the top of the Vatican and that had to be the best view i have seen. (One of the pictures below is of me on top of the vatican). On Monday, we went to the Vatican Museum and saw the Sistine chapel. It really was amazing, and we got a steep discount because we are students. That night we hopped on a bus to the Rome (Bergamo) airport and then flew back to Milan where we met up with that same taxi driver (haha) and headed home to Torino. Today I had my first Italian Cuisine class. We learned how to make a 3 course meal that was really great.



My computer is about to die so i will continue later

February 3, 2010

For those of you who are wondering what the negative aspects of Torino are, here is a slice of reality. I'm having a ton of trouble with this Marketing professor here at the school. I view myself as being extremely structured when it comes to academics and the Italians are fly by the wind, and they have no real Hierarchy of authority structure. Well this marketing professor tells us to read 50 pages of this giant textbook and that he is going to ask 4 people randomly at the beginning of class a general question from the material. Based on the size of the class you will probably only get one of these questions all semester. This question counts for 25% of your grade. Now of course i freak out and study really hard for the question and OF COURSE i get called on. Well i nail my question and the other three people bomb and so he decided not to give any of us credit. I laid into the professor for a half hour and he just kept telling me that im being selfish because i should think of my classmates and that the only reason i got my question right is because i took TOO extensive notes. So i told him he was an Ideologue who didn't understand how grading worked. If i put the work in i should get credit especially because if i miss a question that means i dont get credit for the class, because i need a B or higher to get credit. I'm going to try to complain to the administration, but i imagine it will be the usual italian garbage where they tell me to lighten up and smile more. I told them i was forced to pay 70 extra dollars a month for internet that i didn't have and that i wasn't going to pay it unless i got that internet, and they told me to smile more.

Reality

February 1, 2010

So this weekend we traveled to the French Riviera. We drove a rental car from Torino to Monaco (The country), to Niche, to Cannes, to Grass, to Mercaille,to Martigues, and then to tigues. Niche was incredible, we stayed a night in a hostel there that was amazing. The hostel had about 9 flat panel computers on the wall that had free internet access and there was a club built into the side where you can meet people from other countries. We met a group of Australians traveling to Italy (Of all places). At about midnight, this supposedly world renowned pianist who was going through Niche to get to Milan in order to do a concert came into the club and started playing some of his music. He was unbelievable, i think he was at the hostel because the hostel owner was a friend of his or something.
The beach and the view in Niche are probably the best that i have ever seen in my entire life. Niche is right on the waterfront were the mountains meet the shore. We were able to climb on top of a mountain that was in the middle of the city to get the most spectacular view of the city, the Mediterranean, and the mountains. (First picture) The sun was setting as we came down the mountain and we decided to walk out to a relatively famous lighthouse in the area and watch the sunset. We spent the night in the hostel and then got up the next day and rented bikes to ride along the coast. Biking is huge in Niche because of the "tour de france" influence and so they have bike paths that stretch all along the coasts. After we finished riding along the beach, we traveled to cannes (Home of the European film festival), and then to Martigues where we stayed in a really cheap condo for a night. The way we broke it down the condo only cost us 15 dollars each a night, and it was probably a little better quality than the apartment Sam rented this past summer in Miami.
Actually, it took us about 3 hours to find the condo because we got lost in this small town. We got really frustrated after driving around for a while so we decided to eat pizza at this local shop in town. We asked the waiter in broken french how we could find the condo, and he disappeared into the back. About 25 minutes later he emerges from the kitchen with a map and like 5 or 6 other people from the restauraunt. Before long we had the entire restauraunt gathered around our table, like a war room, arguing in french about the "location" of the condo. It was incredibly bizzarre and chaotic until this stereotypical frenchman silences everyone by walking into the jumble of people holding up a "GPS". They fooled around with the GPS for a while until they finally just decided to just drive us to the condo. (Which is borderline impossible to find). When we woke up the next morning we drove into mercaille to see some of the sites. On the way we started driving through the French alps and we decided that it would be a good idea to pull the car over and try to climb one of the smaller mountains to get a view of the Mediterranean. This of course is a horrible idea because we were obviously on private property and the temperature was well below freezing, but we did it anyway. After about 1 hour of climbing the altitude was too severe, and i started to feel like passing out so i turned around and headed down. On the way down i saw the owner of the properties trailer and his collection of junk yard dogs. Thank God their was a gate. haha After we all got down, we visited as many cathedrals as we could and headed home.

January 25, 2010

So this weekend, we did not get a chance to go to the Matterhorn because it was way too cold, but we found a lot of interesting things to do in the city itself. First we went on a chocolate tour in which we were able to sample some chocolate cake and truffles from a couple of really famous places. The tour was a lot of fun but unfortunately we had to walk from store to store in about 10 degree weather and the stores were not close at all. I would say that we walked about 4 miles total on Saturday. On Sunday we went to the Egyptian museum that Torino is famous for. The museum itself is the second biggest in the world next to the one in Cairo. The museum was interesting, but their was mostly pottery and books which get old pretty quickly. They had some mummies on exhibit though which were really interesting. Apparently, the reason why their is a Egyptian museum in Italy is because during the Napoleonic era a high ranking official who was served as the French ambassador to Egypt started an extensive collection and had the items shipped to a home that he had built in Italy.

We have bought our tickets to a number of places.
Next weekend i'm driving with a European friend to the French Riviera.

I'll keep you guys updated. Here are some of the pictures from this weekend

January 21, 2010

So the last few days have been pretty low key. I went out to lunch with some friends after school and then stayed in most of the night. Tomorrow we are thinking about catching a really cheap train to the Matterhorn so that we can spend a couple of days in Switzerland. Finding cheap flights is difficult, but with enough time you can really get good at it. 2 Weekends from now we are going to Sicily and 3 weekends from now we are going to Rome. The price of both round trip tickets isn't even a 100 dollars. Sometimes the hardest part can be finding your way from the airport around the city. We have figured out that taking the metro is the ideal way, but sometimes it can be nonexistent in less developed cities. Right now were working on getting flights to Spain and Scandanavia, but its not easy because the flights are rare and expensive. I miss everyone at home and i'm looking forward to some of you coming over.

January 18, 2010

We went to Milan this weekend, and we saw a number of really awesome places. First we saw the Duomo, a giant cathedral. When we showed up at the Duomo, i was assaulted by about 15 Nigerians who were trying to give me their "lucky bracelets." My question to them was "How lucky can the bracelets be if they each have about 5,000 of them and they are still living off the street." I guess they didn't think that through, and my superior intellect was probably dazzling to them. Nevertheless, I still bought one. After i obliged the black guy, we continued on to see the statue of Leonardo, and a really incredible castle. Behind the castle was a Milka festival where there were people widdling and sampling food. Milka (The company sponsoring the event) also built these gigantic artificial ski slopes that you could pay to ski down. I however wen the cheap route and decided to take the free picture with the Giant Milka Cow . We tried to see the last supper, but we weren't able too because their was a month long waiting list. Instead we decided to go to this science museum where a lot of Leonardo Da Vinci's ideas are on display. The museum also had a collection of giant globes that represented how Europeans have historically viewed the geography of the earth. The earliest one didn't include Australia or much of Canada and it had giant sea monsters plotted onto the pacific. It was really interesting.
Today i went to my first real day of classes, it was 8 hours long. I know your probably thinking, "John, in every one of your blog posts you say you are attending your first day of class'" well to be more clear, today was my first day in which i attended all three classes on the same day. Italian starts early so i began those classes last week. I'm looking forward to traveling more and learning Italian.