Hella Bolognese

Hiiii everyone, so I’m fairly certain this will be my last entry.  Although I love keeping you all informed about my adventures, many of my abroad discoveries have turned more introspective over the past couple of months.  As I’ve settled into my life in Bologna and now as I begin to prepare for my return home, most of my time is spent just enjoying the home that i’ve made for myself here and the luxury of having time to think.  I’ve been thinking a lot about my experience here, what it means to me, and how i plan to continue them when I come back.  Its something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, and now that I actually have time in Bologna, I’ve started keeping a journal about all my ideas and thoughts so that I have something to remember Bologna by.  Soooo, I’ll see everyone back at hoomeee!!!!

Hey everyone! I know its been just about forever since I’ve posted (I told you this would happen!), but I thought I’d wish everyone a Happy Easter before I leave for Napoli for the weekend!  It seems as though time in Italy has been passing both slowly and quickly.  Slowly in the sense that my days are spent lazily reading, walking around, drinking coffee, eating pizza and hanging out with great friends.  But, I can’t believe that I’ve already passed the halfway point.  Going to Lyon to see Devan and my parents was actually the halfway point, and even then, TWO weeks ago, it seemed hard to believe.  But as we move into the spring months and end classes, I feel like it’s going to pass really quickly!  I decided a week ago to pick up my roommates guitar and learn a few chords and scales.  Hopefully my fervor to learn this new instrument will continue when I get home during summer…but my aim is to just get over the ‘hump’ and pursue it more at home!  However, I can’t be sure.  Returning home may also bring some unforeseen distractions, like the week of summer school I’ll need to make up and a semester of stories to catch up on!  But this weekend my friends Toby, Julia, Aaron, Olivia and I will be in Napoli, visiting Pompeii (FINALLY!), climbing Mt. Vesuvius and hopefully not getting toooo tangled up with the mafia!  Then we go for two days to Ischia, and island just off the coast with a less touristy feel than Capri…but with all the same perks!  I’ll be sure to post pics and…again hopefully, post when I get back!   Love you all, and Happy Easter!!!

Well I will confess: I am terrible with keeping up to date on this blog.  I think its been about a month since I’ve last posted.  But to really experience a country fully, you also seem to need to remove yourself from your home country.  I’ve found myself relying far less on facebook and blogs than I have in the past, and the liberation it brings is…empowering.  It also leaves me more time to really immerse, and especially over the past week, I’ve had quiite a few experiences.

Life in Bologna has finally attained some routine.  However, my routine is not as…intensive…as my routine in Berkeley.  It mostly consists of going to class, going to a cafe to do homework (or find some new music!), making meals and meeting up with friends.  Its a very low-paced lifestyle, which both relaxes me and irritates me at the same time.  God knows how Berkeley can make someone crumble under the stress, but the pace of life is exciting.  In Italy it’s the opposite: its incredibly relaxing, but if I weren’t a foreigner, there would be little to get pumped about.  Here, I have an entire culture to learn about, places to see, things to eat and people to learn from, which makes a day of merely walking around, getting coffee and maaybe doing groceries a fun exercise.  My friend Marco, a student from Bologna who came to Berkeley to study for a year always said that Berkeley was way more exciting than Italy.  But now I see that if you had lived in Bologna all of your life, I can see how things may begin to seem mundane.  I’m absolutely loving the relaxing pace here, and I will earnestly long for it when I’m back in Berkeley, juggling around projects, papers, midterms and Greek life at the same time.

However, on Friday I packed my bags and headed first to Belgium and then Leeds, England for a week! I went to Belgium with a group of buddies from our Bologna EAP program, and besides almost missing our Ryanair flight (thank GOD they aren’t punctual!), everything went pretty smoothly.  Then, as we got into the BEAUTIFUL city of Brussels, Julia and I realized that our contact who we were staying with hadn’t responded.  It wasn’t until after HOURS of freaking out that we’d have no place to stay and being able to sneak into our friends’ room at their hotel that we realized he had mixed up the nights for the night after.  So, that was a bit of a catastrophe.  Beer, waffles, delicious sandwiches galore in Hasselt, the small city where Sensation White was being held.  That night was absolutely magical.  The DJs were fantastic, the last set being one of the best I’ve ever heard.  This place was HUGE, and the music, lights, and people were absolutely crazy.  The last guy on the set, Dimitri Vegas, was INSANITY…I thought Laidback Luke was the main event, not this guy.  After it was all said and done, he obviously was the best one there.  I met a bunch of friends from Berkeley AND a girl from my high school I haven’t seen in three years. IN BELGIUM. HOW ABSURD.

However, after Sensation White got out at 6am, I left Hasselt at 7am and headed to England.  The ticket vendor booked me for a reservation-only train that happened to be high speed, so by the time I had found out I had to wait an extra 40 minutes for the regular train, which took three times as long, resulting in a few heart attacks and almost missing my flight from Eindhoven to London.  By 9:30pm I had made it to Leeds and after 36 hours of being awake, 9 of them being at Sensation White…I crashed.  After that trip, I realized a few, very important things about traveling in Europe.  Firstly, be very wary about using discount airlines like Ryanair.  They’ll fly you to the MOST out of the way, dinky airports and most of the time it takes HELLA money to get from the airport to your destination.  A very valuable piece of information that I will absolutely consider when traveling again.

But, my time here in Leeds with my bestie Sarah Vaughan has made it all worth it!  In Leeds it so happens that there is a very similar mentality as there is in Bologna: relaxed and laid-back.  We’ve hit a few pubs and such, which have REALLY up-scaled the bars and pubs I’ve seen so far in Italy…which figures being the pub capitol of the world besides Ireland.  Now on St. Patty’s day, we’re going to meet with our friend Gracie and see what Leeds is really made of.  I’ll try to post when I get back…but knowing me I probably won’t.  Cheers mates!