Italy
After an amazing three weeks exploring Germany (mostly) on my own, I returned to Prague for one night (I stayed at the kolej again, roome 223A). I didn’t spend much time there, but in the few hours I was there I did enjoy one more Kofola and a smazeny syr. (Speaking of smazeny syr - the trusty Tesco smaz stand is gone! The whole area is under renovation! Prague wasted no time getting rid of my favourite midnight snack place after I left…) During the next morning’s flight to Rome I talked with an Italian studying in Prague who got me very excited about my coming eleven days in Italy. I met up with Shawn in Rome, and checked into our hostel.
Before I start about Rome, allow me to rant a bit about the hostel, 'M&J Hostel' near the train station. First of all, some of the staff - particularly one person - were terrible. Not friendly in the slightest, not helpful and only pushed their own affiliated events and locations on us. The showers were the worst I’ve seen at a hostel and the rooms had no air conditioning. However the absolute worst part about the place was the bed bugs. I had never encountered these before, and even though everyone in our room had seen several even during the day time, we paid no attention, we thought we’d man up and deal with the idea of some bugs. About fifty bed bug bites later, my opinion is completely changed. They are absolutely awful. Thousands of times worse than mosquitoes.
Rome
However, even though the hostel was an unpleasant experience, Rome itself was so amazing that the overall impression of the city is still high. The immense city is so full of history and has a southern, mediterranean kind of charm that makes it very beautiful. There are numerous monuments from all time periods in the city, many of which we visited. We walked through the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel and many other amazing places. Every street in Rome was gorgeous, whether it was a narrow one with tall buildings on either side or a wide boulevard. What set the streets in Rome apart from those belonging to other cities are first of all the architecture of the buildings and the colours, but also the amount of vegetation. Even the smaller streets were decorated by small trees, bushes, flowers or other plants.
Some of the highlights of the trip were seeing the Pope during a Wednesday mass, eating a delicious full course meal at a tiny private owned restaurant, and drinking beers with two British guys who work for Ericsson. Another more personal kind of crowning moment was the first time I had an ‘entire’ coffee. In North America we would call what I had an espresso, while in Italy it’s just ‘coffee’. It was actually very good, and I had quite a number of them during my stay in Italy. Maybe when I get back home I’ll be more open to trying American coffee, but I might have to still look for good espressos for a while.
After Rome we caught a train heading south east to Bari. Shawn has family in the area, and we stayed with a cousin of his and her family for a week in a smaller town outside of Bari called Mola di Bari, or just Mola for short. The week spent there was sensational. We were kept (very) full with the best Italian food I’ve ever eaten, including many dishes I had never tried before. One such dish was ‘braciole’, or ‘horse meat” for you anglophones. Shawn really hyped it up for me since he tried it while I was still in Germany, and it really was all I expected. Another thing I really loved, surprisingly, were the olives in Mola. Back home in Vancouver I’m not a big fan, but the Mola olives were more than very delicious.
Storm in Mola Harbour
Besides consuming tasty food, we spent a lot of time hanging out with Luigi (Shawn’s cousin’s son - I don’t really know what relation that is…) and his friends. Luigi spoke the best English out of everyone in Mola but we were able to get along quite well with everyone. Being a fluent Romanian speaker I could understand the majority of the Italians’ discourses if performed slowly, but actually talking back to them in Italian was difficult. Most sentences included some English, some Italian and some miming, but by the end of my stay in Mola I started to get more and more accustomed to the language. I’d like to return to Italy for a longer stay in the future to immerse myself in Italian and really learn the language.
Luigi and his friends hung out mostly in the late evening, after dinner, in a few popular spots in town. The main square, the castle and a few bars (including Bux, we had a lot of beers there over the week in Mola), and especially their cars. Even though the city was small and the streets were cramped, we would drive around it aimlessly in either Luigi, Donato or Leo’s car, just for fun. Our new Italian friends called such a drive a ‘giro’. All in all we had a great time in Mola, met a lot of great people (who will hopefully consider visiting Vancouver at some point) and again, ate a lot of good food.
Mola Crew, from the left: Vito, Tiziana, Luigi, Me, Leo and Donato
This post was published from a hotel in Athens. Keep an eye out for my Greek adventures, they'll be up here soon!
