Hakunnah Matata'd

Sorry about the delay between posts. We just got back from a weekend skiing in Prali, a small township located right on the border between the French/Italian alps. That sentence sounds awesome if you read it back out loud. As expected there was no internet access for computers up in Prali. Somehow I managed phone reception though...

     I left off right before leaving for the Castello, if memory serves correctly. It's so cool how close everything is here. It's like a 10 minute walk from the Duomo to the Castello, and that's if you're dordelling. Anyways. I went in with my guard down, looking up at the walls and taking some photos when out of nowhere, it happened. For a quick bit of background knowledge for those who don't know, there are a whole lot of people all over the 'touristy' areas of Italy that will essentially rob you with a smile. They'll come up with a pile of little rope bracelets or badges and insist that you take one, telling you it's free and so on, and then proceed to insist on payment for their product. Back to the Castello- I'm on my way towards the gates when this African guy comes up to me with this pile or bracelets. I didn't notice him instantly but turned around pretty quickly (and somewhat aggressively) when I felt him start to tie one of these things on my hand. I didn't at all want one- they were this horrible rainbow color and everything. He proceeded to tell me how he'd made them himself back home in Africa and how he was going to bless me with the 'Hakunnah Matata'. Not totally pleased that he used such a carefree song for what was essentially his attempt at robbing me. Simba would not be impressed. After tying this stupid little thing to my hand he then somehow managed to find the audacity to ask me for 10 euro to cover his expense. 5 for himself, and 5 for his friend whi had literally just stood there smiling and saying 'Hakunnah Matata'. Obviously there was no chance they were getting that kind of money for this crappy-rainbow-hakunnah-matata-string. I begrudgingly gave him 2 euro and went on my way. I am now referring to this as being 'Hakunnah Matata'd'. I laughed at another guy who was Hakunnah Matata'd almost straight after me. I'm glad to know I'm not the only victim. Anyway- I spent the rest of the evening in the park behind the Castello walking around and soaking it all up. After a good 3 hours or so I made my way home, with a quick pit stop on the way for a Panzerotto. Panzerotto are like God's bread, only way better because God probably doesn't cook with oil. They're essentially fried bread pockets full of cheese and ham. Ohhh my god they were good.

     The next two days were somewhat less exciting. I had a tonne of files to fill out for university and documents that needed to be circulated around, which all ended up taking far longer than I had anticipated. Thursday night I was saved, as I went down to a local(ish) bar to meet some more Italian friends. I was beyond surprised when I found the bar had a deal on hamburgers and a pint of beer. It was legitimately even a good hamburger. The next day I again met with these friends, only in a somewhat different matter. Their school had been running a week of 'alternative' lessons, which we decided I should join. After dodging roll calls and sneaking my way in to the lift with a janitor who proceeded to accompany me to the 2nd floor, I was in. The first class I kind of understood nothing of, because I spent the whole class wondering how much eye contact to make with the teacher without looking suss. Should I stare and flare my confidence? Or shy away and hope I remain unnoticed? I'm certain there must be a science behind these. It has now become one of my 13 life goals to discover the truth behind this mysterious eye contact paradox. The second lesson, however, I was quite amused by. A lecture titled 'The History of Weed'. Legit a whole lecture devoted to weed, medicinal and religious uses, and why it should be legalized. This lecture was organised and run by students as part of the alternative lessons, but had been listed as 'The History of Bicycles' in order to avoid the prying eyes of teachers. I will never forget the teachers face when she walked in to the room and saw the board... Now adding 'attended a weed lecture in an Italian high school which I snuck in to via the janitor's lift' to my resume. The only hugely disappointing aspect of this day was when a freestyle Italian rap battle which had broken out in one of the corridors was stopped before I got there to enjoy it. -insert emotional breakdown here- That evening I went to an art show with Pietro and his family. There was an exhibition on for Kandinsky, which we had all decided to attend. He was a modern kind of artist who had through the 1900s and died just before the conclusion of the Second World War. First art show I've ever been to- and I actually quite enjoyed it! There were a few paintings that literally didn't make a lick of sense. I spent a good 20 minutes trying to find a fish in one of the paintings. The description made it so clear that the centerpiece of this painting was the fish, but I couldn't manage to find it for the life of me. I actually got quite frustrated with the painting, before remembering it was a painting and continuing on my way. Favorite painting on display was Sviluppo in Bruno (Developement in Brown).

     That was Friday. We spent the following 2 days up in one of the families ski houses in Prali, situated on the border of Italy and France. The whole town was covered in almost 2 meters of snow. All the buildings were the typical Italian style, with alternating colors and cobblestone pathways (I think. I couldn't exactly see the cobblestone beneath the ice and snow, but I imagined it was there). The local temperature was -10 degrees upon our arrival, and continued to fluctuate from -12 to 5 degrees the entire weekend. The roads were all covered in black ice and you had to skirt around the edges of the buildings because of the constantly falling icicles. So cool. Here I learnt to Ski (only fell over twice. Olympics come at me.), and spent some time failing at Ice Skating on a frozen lake. It became quickly apparent to me, after having no success with either the ski boots or the skating shoes, that Italian shoe sizes are much smaller than ours. We couldn't find any properly fitting ski boots and all the ice skating boots were at least 2 sizes too small, which led to a few painful laps of the ice skating ring before an early retirement. One of the coolest things there was an older guy who drove around selling cheese out of the boot of his car. He had a full cash register in his boot. He. was. awesome. Today (second day in Prali) I spent some time exploring the older local villages, like Ghigo, Giordano and Pomeifre. They were all hundreds of years old, comprised of old stone buildings and paddocks. They had frozen water troughs with poles to break the ice open, stables turned in to garages, frozen paddocks and so on. Old wooden staircases were dotted amongst the slowly decaying houses, which were marked by their torn curtains, open doors and broken windows. It was literally like being on the set for Winterfell (Game of Thrones reference for the younger generation). One older building had been somewhat restored and turned in to a restaurant. It maintained all it's old charm, but had been reinforced and had a kitchen installed upstairs. They were well known for their traditionally cooked 'mountain food' and all their ingredients were locally sourced (hoping their cheese didn't come from that guys car). It's hard to put in to words how incredible this place was. I will put a few photos down below, but understand they really don't do it enough justice! My plans for the rest of the week remain open as of yet. I'm hopinh to find some local backpackers who are keen to try and hitchike somewhere. I don't really know where yet, I just like the idea of being able to say I've hitchiked. On the condition that I'm not literally going to get stabbed by a man with a cheese car or something. These plans are still being processed. Suppose we'll find out!

Ciao for now!

Icicles galore. 

Part of one of the old villages in Prali. 

Selling Cheese out of their boot!

Out the front of the Castello. 

Part of the park behind the Castello. 

Skiing!

One of the older storage houses/garage!??!

Shopping trip with Pietro!

Concrete staircase made of chairs. Sat on this for a good
hour or so contemplating the meaning of a
Chaircase. 

Lucky Balls

With such incredible success on my last post, I thought I might give it another shot! Over 1500 views in just under 2 days. Oh, wait, no, I'm still dreaming, as seems to have become a habit with having to shift my body clock 10 hours back when it was already lacking back home... but hey. I didn't come here to whinge about how my whole brain wants to destroy the sun and curl up into an eternal ball of warm fuzzy cuddles and unicorns barfing sleep juice on to me. I came here to create linguistic art, and dammit that's what I'm going to do.

     I think I left off somewhere around lunch the day I went to check out the Catholic mass. Onwards from there! Later that evening I went with Christina (the mother of the family) to check out the Castillo Sforzesco and The Duomo. The Castillo was a quick stop as it was bucketing down rain and the front gates had been closed (so I am going back to revisit it later today after I've finished with this little blog and eaten lunch!), but the Duomo, on the other hand, was not! We made our way through a few little side alleys and shopping strips built in to the old buildings and arrived at the Duomo. This thing was pretty much awesome. We went for a tour inside, checking out some of the old tombs where previous cardinals had been buried, and I spent some time listening to Angelo Scola, the standing Archbishop of Milan, as he shared a message from the pulpit. The whole atmosphere in the Duomo was awesome. A very quiet, reflective, revering kind of attitude from all the people coming in to listen and take some time off. Less so from majority of the tourists, but that's to be expected. Having spent a little time in there we moved on out to check out what has been consistently referred to as the *best* bakery in Milan- Luini's. At this point I was like, super hungry. I'm talking like I would totally go gollum style on a freshly caught salmon if it meant satisfying my rumblies. As we turned the corner I could almost taste this brilliant concoction of bread and cheese when all of a sudden, right before my eyes, the bakery closes. I fell to my knees, choking back wave upon wave of tears as I realised, right in that moment, there was no God. I tore my jacket off and wrapped myself in sack cloth, openly weeping in the streets at the indescribable loss I had just suffered. I knew, in that moment of emotional anguish, that these scars would never heal. Until I got to munch on some pasta. Then it was all good again.

     Fast forward the most satisfying pasta ever and we were making our way to Galleria Vittoria Emanuele. This was quite cool. Between the light rain outside and the bright, golden lights illuminating this whole strip of shops, I was made whole. Until I saw the price tags. Outrageously priced hand bags and shoes aside, this whole place was incredible. The highlight would have had to have been the floor. Seriously. In the centre of this Galleria is an area of porcelain tiles that have been used to make up a few different cultural images (bearing in mind that they are coming up on 140 years old). Among of which was a little blue bull, with an indent where his wiggly bits would have been. Christina explained to me that you're meant to press your heel in to the indented wiggly bit for luck. I still fail to see how this could in *any* way promote good luck. I'm convinced sticking your foot into a bulls junk is going to get you hurt. But then again, bulls move in mysterious ways. Jokes aside though this was an awesome experience, going through the Duomo and the Galleria the first time. Rinse and repeat- yesterday I returned for another tour myself through the area and ended up managing to get totally lost in the city, for an excess of four or so hours. From a legitimate protest of 100+ Italians all wearing anonymous masks, to a Ferrari store which makes racing sounds every time you walk in and out of the door (much to my amusement, and the annoyance of anyone standing nearby for the 2-3 minutes I spent reveling in this). I quickly followed up this Ferrari racing experience with nearly being killed in a Ferrari racing experience. I'm still not totally used to traffic coming from the opposite direction. It's amazing how quickly an empty street can become the busiest street in the intersection, all because you weren't looking at the cars. The more you know. The sunset over the Duomo that evening was incredible. I didn't end up taking any photos. It was kind of one of those moments that you're so content just being there that you forget you even have a camera with you. It had been overcast all day and the sun only just peeked out towards the end and managed to illuminate parts of the Duomo, which was quite spectacular. I can't tell you how much I wanted to pull out a table with a glass of wine and just sit there- too bad all the restaurants literally charge you to even breath their air, let alone drink their wine!

     I spent the rest of that evening getting to know a few of Pietro's friends. It's crazy how close everyone lives to eachother here. Said friends are now today speaking with their teachers to see if I can take over the role of their apparently not so good English teacher. Again, in retrospect, having been the one to promote this idea I am now feeling like I might be being made in to the head of a hostile take over. Which I don't really seem to mind, because if it's for the quest, I will do what needs to be done. I will keep you all posted on how my new role as the english teacher of Liceo Scientifico Francesco Severi goes! Ciao for now.

As much of the Duomo as would fit on my camera.

Part of the inside of the Galleria.

A small garden and side streets behind the Duomo.

Recieving my fantastic-turbo-charged-bull-testicle luck.

The Bull, right before I lucked him.
I just re read that and thought it
sounded inappropriate.
But it's staying.
Sorry. 

More porcelain artwork! This cow happens to be enjoying this
WAY. TOO. MUCH. 

Because you can never have too many options
for Pizza. 

Touchdown!

Hello one and all!

That's a pretty cliche, boring intro but hey. Whatever. So this will be my travel blog for the duration of my stay in Italy and a few other parts of Europe. A few housekeeping details; I plan to update this every 2-3 days (where convenient), will be sharing it to Facebook each week, and plan to upload just a handful of photos to each one. I'll obviously have a lot more to say and a few more photos to share than what I post here, so if I happen to mention a topic or place that I have a few funny stories about that I haven't shared on the blog, I'll underline it. For example: '... we visited a restaurant for dinner after getting back from the beach'- in which case there would be a few funny stories from the beach that I haven't shared in the blog. If you're interested write it down or Facebook message me and I'll update you on the shenanigans. Same for the photos, except where I'd highlight the topic in bold, for example: 'I took a train down to a vineyard today where we got to...'. Hopefully that all makes sense. Anyway, that's all the boring stuff out of the way. Here's my last 2 days in a nutshell! 

     Having said goodbye to the family and successfully clearing customs, much to my surprise seeing as I obviously had a knife strapped to my wrist, I pretty much made my way straight to the plane. I sat down outside a cafe which faced my departure gate and waited for them to open the gate. I have no idea how I managed it but I actually nearly missed my plane, despite being a good hour and a half early. I must have zoned out hardcore whilst sitting there or something, because by the time I had zoned back in nearly everyone had boarded the plane and the staff were preparing to close the gates! I scored well with plane seats though. The guy next to me lived right nearby my house in Warrandyte, was in to games and had an original Gameboy with his own copy of Pokemon: Fire Red on him, which is pretty much the coolest thing anyone can have on them. His name was also Josh, which was kind of weird. The flight up was pretty much gross. 14 hours stuck on a seat which had no leg room was kind of not awesome. My saving grace arrived when we landed! 

     Queue: Abu Dhabi. Not that I really got to see any of it... this was so weird. Everyone speaking Arabic. I literally had no idea what was going on. I pretty much made my way to my flight by trying to walk down each walkway with my ticket in hand. Eventually someone would tell me I was going the wrong way (at least I think that's what they said), and showed me the right way to go. I was literally bouncing between random walkways and cafes with people correcting me and showing me where to go next! I got stopped at customs because they thought that my little plastic Flight Centre folder was concealing a weapon, because I can totally stab people to death with my well folded paper. Nothing too special can be said for the flight from Abu Dhabi to Milan, except for the brief time we spent flying over Iran and Baghdad, The on board flights were kind of interesting though. There's a photo attached of the description for one of the in flight movies, produced by an Arabic company. Can't say I watched it. Milan was totally covered in thick clouds, so I couldn't see anything coming in for landing. Unless like 14 million friggin tonnes of clouds count as something exciting. The family I am now staying with picked me up from the airport and drove me to their house. We ate some seriously good pasta for lunch, followed up by even better pizzas for dinner. The pizzas were like a whole family effort- Lisa (the youngest sister) made the pizza bases, Achille and Christina (parents) made the tomato bases and Pietro and David (brothers) fetched the cheese and mushrooms. These were like seriously good pizzas. 

    I went with Christina and Lisa to a Catholic church this morning, which was run by their uncle. It was kind of interesting listening to the whole service in a different language! I reckon I understood like, 5% of it, tops. I kept up with most of the traditional bits and some of the songs though, because they were similar to the ones we use in a course I've been a part of back home in Melbourne. The last prayer totally got me though- it was like a full 5-6 minute prayer that the entire congregation had memorised. There were no notes to follow either. I didn't want to look like I was defiantly refusing to get involved or something so I started quoting the navigator I use in my car (which is set to Italian). Retrospect: stupid idea. My brain failed to recall the fact that we were no longer in Melbourne, and that people here actually understand Italian. I stood there for a good minute or so telling everyone to take the second exit at the roundabout and to turn left in 300 metres. Turns out the looks I was getting from the guy in front of me weren't because he was super impressed by my Italian praying skills. I'm not totally convinced he heard the whole minute of it, because I wasn't exactly shouting it out at the top of my lungs. I'm certain he must of heard some of it though. I've probably just totally turned his life upside down with my hyper enlightened prayer about left turns and roundabouts. He should probably be thanking me. Home now and making plans for the rest of the day/week. Just discovered the family has a pet turtle. Score. Never met a turtle with an Italian accent...

One of our in-flight entertainment options.
Because who doesn't want to see a movie
about a human flesh eater from the
Yaksa Clan.

Can't see too much of it, but that cloudline below us is literally

 something like 700-800 metres thick. 

Took us a good 10 minutes to descend through. 

The nativity scene, with an african theme. Jesus is a glowing ball and a giraffe is playing the drum! These were all done by the children who attended the church.