Italy Part 1
It was fantastic. I’ll try to break down the randomness into categories. Part 1 today and Part 2 tomorrow. Amazing that I haven't done any work today but still managed to run out of time to write my blog post. Oh well, have to save some "work" for another day!
-Open borders eh?-
The boys swung by to pick me up in Brno Thursday night and we were off! The mission-- make it to Italy as fast as possible via Austria. It took 8 hours. On the way down I was a bad girl and broke road trip rules by sleeping for about 4 hours. I woke up really disoriented around 2am and asked the guys if they needed my passport for passport control when we were stopped somewhere. It was a toll booth, not passport control. AND they don’t even check your passport when you drive through these countries because it’s all EU! I didn’t believe them at first when they told me there were open borders because I always get checked (ahem…POLSKA). Lukasz informed me that with the new entrants (i.e. Polska) they still check on the roads. But the other people don’t! So for the whole weekend whenever we went by a toll booth, or actually- ANYWHERE the guys would laugh at me and ask if I brought my passport.
-Marcon-
Tommaso’s village is like 20km outside of Venice and around 4am on Friday morning when we finally rolled into town I looked at the street sign and started to laugh. Why? Because if there was an ‘i’ in the name it would spell maricon. Maricon means gay in Spanish. Ha! Tommaso is from the almost gay town!
-Surprise!-
Ok so maybe the most spectacular thing about the weekend was the BIG SURPRISE that everyone BUT Tommaso knew about. Currently his girlfriend Mirka is on exchange in Greece. They hadn’t seen each other for about a month and were pining for each other because they are so in love.[insert vomit here](Just kidding, I love them and I am happy they are in love) Anyway, last week I got a text message from Mirka asking what I thought about helping her to surprise Tommaso. I said “FUCKING AWESOME IDEA”. It was. She took the boat from Greece…a mere 24hour trip away. Then the bus from Venice and showed up at Tommaso’s door. She woke him up and he was completely surprised. Stunned really. He couldn’t even be excited because he was so surprised. It was perfect.
-Treviso-
We went to Treviso on Friday for lunch. Basically, we just went there to eat and walk around a bit. Italian food is great. I sent my friend Ricky some pictures of the food from Treviso and he googled Treviso to see what it was all about. Let me quote his email:
i was wondering what the fuck treviso was (is it a place? is it that yellow puree that is a recurrent theme in a couple dishes?) so i googled it. the first thing i read is:
Treviso and its province are teeming with restaurants, trattorias and wine bars which invite visitors to drop in. Eating and drinking well is a true commandment for Treviso's inhabitants. Abundant amounts of meat are eaten; the most widespread dishes include assorted meat on skewers, grilled meat, and sliced steak with herbs.
if that does not describe your purpose in life, i don't know what does.
Well said Ricky, well said.
-Bublifuk!!-
Why? Why did we buy bubble liquid and blow bubbles in Italy? Why not? Anyway in Slovak bubble liquid is called “Bublifuk” (booblyfook). That’s just funny. I decided instead of saying the word fuck I would substitute the more fun word…”Bublifuk”. What the bublifuk is going on?? What the bublifuk are you doing? Don’t bublifuk around.
-Tommaso’s Family-
We stayed with Tommaso’s family in Marcon which was really nice. His parents are super sweet and his dad prepared us breakfast every day! We also got to meet Tommaso’s 82-year-old grandma who is really the cutest lady ever. She was telling us how “Canada” got its name. The encyclopedia says that “The name Canada is believed to come from the Huron-Iroquois word kanata, which means "village" or "settlement".” They are wrong. Tommaso’s grandma has a better explanation. It comes from two Spanish words. “Aca” (here) and “nada” (nothing). Shortened to “Canada”. Translation: there’s nothing in my country. Tears.
More to come tomorrow. Stay tuned for tales from Verona (yes, Romeo and Juliet's hood) and Venice. Pictures are already posted in the "Italy!" album
-Open borders eh?-
The boys swung by to pick me up in Brno Thursday night and we were off! The mission-- make it to Italy as fast as possible via Austria. It took 8 hours. On the way down I was a bad girl and broke road trip rules by sleeping for about 4 hours. I woke up really disoriented around 2am and asked the guys if they needed my passport for passport control when we were stopped somewhere. It was a toll booth, not passport control. AND they don’t even check your passport when you drive through these countries because it’s all EU! I didn’t believe them at first when they told me there were open borders because I always get checked (ahem…POLSKA). Lukasz informed me that with the new entrants (i.e. Polska) they still check on the roads. But the other people don’t! So for the whole weekend whenever we went by a toll booth, or actually- ANYWHERE the guys would laugh at me and ask if I brought my passport.
-Marcon-
Tommaso’s village is like 20km outside of Venice and around 4am on Friday morning when we finally rolled into town I looked at the street sign and started to laugh. Why? Because if there was an ‘i’ in the name it would spell maricon. Maricon means gay in Spanish. Ha! Tommaso is from the almost gay town!
-Surprise!-
Ok so maybe the most spectacular thing about the weekend was the BIG SURPRISE that everyone BUT Tommaso knew about. Currently his girlfriend Mirka is on exchange in Greece. They hadn’t seen each other for about a month and were pining for each other because they are so in love.[insert vomit here](Just kidding, I love them and I am happy they are in love) Anyway, last week I got a text message from Mirka asking what I thought about helping her to surprise Tommaso. I said “FUCKING AWESOME IDEA”. It was. She took the boat from Greece…a mere 24hour trip away. Then the bus from Venice and showed up at Tommaso’s door. She woke him up and he was completely surprised. Stunned really. He couldn’t even be excited because he was so surprised. It was perfect.
-Treviso-
We went to Treviso on Friday for lunch. Basically, we just went there to eat and walk around a bit. Italian food is great. I sent my friend Ricky some pictures of the food from Treviso and he googled Treviso to see what it was all about. Let me quote his email:
i was wondering what the fuck treviso was (is it a place? is it that yellow puree that is a recurrent theme in a couple dishes?) so i googled it. the first thing i read is:
Treviso and its province are teeming with restaurants, trattorias and wine bars which invite visitors to drop in. Eating and drinking well is a true commandment for Treviso's inhabitants. Abundant amounts of meat are eaten; the most widespread dishes include assorted meat on skewers, grilled meat, and sliced steak with herbs.
if that does not describe your purpose in life, i don't know what does.
Well said Ricky, well said.
-Bublifuk!!-
Why? Why did we buy bubble liquid and blow bubbles in Italy? Why not? Anyway in Slovak bubble liquid is called “Bublifuk” (booblyfook). That’s just funny. I decided instead of saying the word fuck I would substitute the more fun word…”Bublifuk”. What the bublifuk is going on?? What the bublifuk are you doing? Don’t bublifuk around.
-Tommaso’s Family-
We stayed with Tommaso’s family in Marcon which was really nice. His parents are super sweet and his dad prepared us breakfast every day! We also got to meet Tommaso’s 82-year-old grandma who is really the cutest lady ever. She was telling us how “Canada” got its name. The encyclopedia says that “The name Canada is believed to come from the Huron-Iroquois word kanata, which means "village" or "settlement".” They are wrong. Tommaso’s grandma has a better explanation. It comes from two Spanish words. “Aca” (here) and “nada” (nothing). Shortened to “Canada”. Translation: there’s nothing in my country. Tears.
More to come tomorrow. Stay tuned for tales from Verona (yes, Romeo and Juliet's hood) and Venice. Pictures are already posted in the "Italy!" album
posted by Aruna at 3:57 PM
2 Comments:
Dear Aruna,
This entry of your blog will be considered as a third party confirmation in the testing of operating effectiveness of the Schengen States' border control. It was noted that the internal controls over cross-border passport check of the concerned Schengen states were not effective enough to prevent certain dangerous non-EU citizens (like moi) from immigrating into these countries illegally. The entry will be enclosed to the to-be-qualified audit opinion as the evidence of control weakness.
(Sorry, can't help it... I just can't get over this auditor's habit.)
I hope you have learned an important lesson. Waiting in line at the visa office is stupid when you can easily sneak into these countries. Ha! Take that!
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