where we'll be

here's what jamal and i are doing for the next few weeks:

may 27-28: lago di como
may 29-june 1: Berlin. Hostel: Mittes Backpacker.
June 2-3: Dresden. Hostel: Guesthouse Mezcalero
June 4-5: Munich. Hostel: EasyPalace, or maybe with our friend Anne
June 6-7: Zurich. Hostel: Youthhostel zurich.
June 8: Bern. Hostel: Bern Backpackers.

So, to whomever is going to meet us, either give us a call (i doubt our cells will work outside of italy, ie after may 29) or just show up in that town and leave a note at our hostel or something. adam, as you have read, we will not be in swissland until later in june, you had suggested the 2nd or so. hopefully either you two can hang around and meet us or maybe we could meet up in munich instead. let me know, hopefully jamal and i will check the blogs a time or two during the trip. also, you can find those hostels on hostelworld.com if you wanna try to stay where we're staying. that goes for you too, jeff.

time to go, gotta get up nice and early to catch the old train.

tentative plans

welp, bad news. i was shot down by the countess and it looks like i will not be working in Recanati this summer. and unless i miraculously find a job here in the next 3 days, it looks like i will also not be working in Padova. meaning i'll be back in the USofA.

but before that i've got some traveling to do. this section is mostly for adam. here's what jamal and i are thinking.

this friday - this sunday(27-29): lago di como
30 march - 8 june: around germany and swissland?
9 june - get back to padova at night
10 june - donatella will teach me to make some sweet sicilian food
11 june - kick back
12 june - parents arive
21 june - flight to NY
?22 june - back to ytown
? - out to stl?

so adam...any clue where and when you'll be in germany? usually i like to kind of get my hostels in advance and stuff like that. and will you and andy want to meet us in swissland either at the end of march or will you want to pass through there close to the 6th of june? i'd be more tempted to do switzerland early and then work our way north, then jamal and i can fly to padova from berlin or something like that. who knows.

and anyone in st. louis...have a job for me?

good michele

fine, i will stinking post. i have not really been doing a lot recently though, so that's my warning. i have no clue what i'm going to write about. alright, i guess my last post was about the weekend in recanati and stuff like that, so what did i do afterward? oh yeah, ok, i remember now.

the weekend right after that one, which was i believe the 8-9 or something, we stayed in padova. i probably did some reading and writing and stuff like that.

the weekend after that one but before this one, jamal and i went to Domodossola to visit professoressa bossola, who taught us italian for our first 2 years at WU. so we showed up saturday at the train station, she, her husband, and her 3.5 year old bambino cesare picked us up. cesare is really cute, cuter even than most babies that speak italian, and it does not get much cuter than that. so we got a guided tour of the town, which is really small, kind of nestled-like into the mountains up near the border (the town is 13 km from switzerland). cesare kept wanting to go back to the piazza with the fountain, so we passed that about 3 times, and jamal and i realized how sweet of a gig babies have, they can do whatever the f they want. he also had a toy rifle and he kept stomping in puddles and splashing water everywhere. his mom told him that jamal and i would leave if he kept doing that, and he said in a sad italian baby voice that we had to stay so that we could shoot the wolves. given that jamal and i run around pretending to have bows and arrows and stuff like that all the time, you can see why we would have found little cesarino to be quite a baller.

OH MAN, I HAD ALMOST FORGOTTEN. we went to play some bocce. it was quite awesome, except cesarino likes to steal the little target ball and run away, but when he wasn't doing that, i was creaming jamal, i even took a video of this one perfect toss i did. yeahhhhh.

then we walked around this hill with lots of tiny little chapels on it, inside each one was a large statue scene of jesus' passion thing. it was a nice walk.

then we went home and had some dinner with the family and some of their friends, met a guy who reminded me quite a bit of a mix between aaron ross and my dad. it was weird. and then jamal and i slept in the same bed...ugh.

the next day we did some more walking and picnic-ing type stuff. it was a nice break from bigcitychurchart sort of junk. though honestly i am not sure i have been in a museum the whole trip.

so that's about all for that weekend. mostly jstu hanging out with a professor and telling her how people are at wu, playing with the toddler, ecc (that's italian for etc).

on to this week. this was the last week of classes. actually the italian university classes that i have to go to are over already but i am still going because the professor rocks. so anyway i still have had my normal class schedule, i have exams next week, and i turn in my paper next week, but i really have very little work to do. i am pretty sure none of my teachers read this.

so i guess the two most interesting things happened on tuesday and thursday. on tuesday, our apartment was not supposed to have water, since they were doing some construction somewhere or something. Aldo (dad) left me a note on the bathroom door saying (in italian) "mike, after you take a shower, fill up the vasca." i am leaving the word vasca in italian because i did not know what it meant. so there was a pitcher on the edge of the tub and i cleverly deduced that the pitcher must be the vasca, since it is not usually there. though i could not imagine what good 2 liters of water would be. so i dutifully filled it up to the brim. then i got home and aldo fake-yelled at me, "why didn't you fill up the vasca." and i told him that i did. but then it turns out that the vasca is the bath tub...imagine that. they wanted me to fill it up so that they could flush the toilet by takign water from the tub with the pitcher and all that - what a clever family. i thwarted their plans though. nothing is foolproof if you have a sufficiently talented fool, i think i have heard. so that was a fun dinner, aldo tried to make me eat some stinky cheese as punishment and i refused, and instead said we should put it under jamal's bed. he liked that idea. jamal, you should notice it in a few days.

so the second story also has to do with aldo. i was out to dinner with anthony thursday night. actually i will say a little about that. we were in the mood to go somewhere new. oh my lord, the whole screen just went black and there was a tiny white line across it and i was pretty sure the monitor was broken and that i had lost all of this darling post. i told aldo to come in here and he slapped the monitor and it came back on. phew. it just happened again and i slapped it and it came back. so anyawy anthony and i went around the city, tried to get lost, thought we were lost, but then all of a sudden we were somewhere we recognized, so we failed in getting lost. the city is not as big as i thought. so we ate at a new place, and aldo called me in the middle of dinner to tell me about the game show we usually watch, which involves 20 boxes and moneyprizes and the contestant has to keep guessing boxes and stuff like that. aldo has some mysterious guessing ability and my theory is that he watches the show in the AM before i wake up, and then it is shown again at night,and he laughed when i told him that. but anyway he called me to tell me that he had guessed correctly again. what a goofball. also, he just left the apartment, and he said to me "if you need something, (i expected him to say i could call him) take care of it on your own." "this is what i say when i want to seem helpful but i don't want to do anything." so yeah, aldo is cool.

also, i made a cd for giulia and for isabella, giulia liked it so i made her another one, isabella still has not listened to it after like 2 weeks or something, what a lazy girl. but, on the up side, she did get a pet iguana, which is pretty baller but also pretty useless. she got a pet duck about 2 months ago but then they sent it off to the farm house, i wonder if the same will happen to the iguana.

and, i guess i will add on some summer plans. i went to that museum in recanati, recall? when i was there i asked this lady if they needed someone who speaks english to come for the summer, she said i should email, so i emailed, and the secretary responded saying "i called the countess, who is currently out of town and will come back on weds, and she is interested and will call you." but then she has not called me yet, which stinks, because it would be really cool to go to that museum and translate and stuff like that for 6 weeks. but if that does not work out, i will be back in ytown or stl, who knows.

as for post-semester, pre-summer, may 30-june 21, i do not know what i am doing. wait, from june 12 on the parents are here and also jamal's mom, so i know what i am doing then. but from may 28 or 30 to june 10, we do not know for sure. mabye some germany and switzerland and lake como action, hopefully.

i hope you slobbery hyenas are satisfied.

RIP Gabe

i regret that it is my duty to inform you all that a great tragedy has befallen us. our dear friend Gabriel Bartholomew Appledumpling Robbins has moved on to a higher plane of existence. according to my belief system, that is; according to his, he has become reincarnated as the toothfairy.

Gabe's life came to an unexpected end on the 19th of June, 2034, which happened, ironically enough, to be his favorite day of the year. Gabe was swarmed by a pack of rabid hydrophobic oversized ducks, which were ironically his favorite animals. (ironically, gabe was not a big fan of irony.) in fact, having already become rich, he had dedicated the last 6 years of his life to wild-duck conservation efforts. alas, his boundless generosity proved to be his tragic flaw: the flock to which Gabe was reading a story suddenly revolted and then proceeded to beat him senseless with their foaming bills. unconscious, Gabe could offer no resistance as the crowd of tiny carnivorous beasts reduced him (and his skeletal structure) to mincemeat, which they then ate.

i'd like to take a few moments now to look back at gabe's life. he was born in toronto, canada, on the sixth of october, 1984, and at the age of six his family sold him to a fleet of pirates. it was on the high seas of lake michigan that he developed an interest in japanese and maybe some other scientific things. he proceeded to scallywag his way into a nameless midwestern university, which granted him a useless diploma. unable to obtain a standard job, and unable to reunite with his old pirate clan, gabe decided it was time to reveal his secret prowess for acrobatics.

gabe went into hiding for a brief six weeks of intense physical training; upon completion of his regimen he joined the circus. from his humble beginnings as a tricycling bair, he worked his way up the circus ladder, becoming a tall clown that fits into a small car, and then a lion tamer, then briefly a caged monstrosity, and finally a cannonball-imitator. it is in this last incarnation that g.b.a.r. made a name for himself. somehow gabe defied the law of physics and was cabale of achieving a terminal velcity nearly twice that of any other man, or any other physical body of his mass and dimensions, for that matter. not to mention that his fire-resistant (albeit not duck-proof) skin contributed to many a dazzling spectacle.

however, gabe's myriad talents passed even beyond the boundaries of the big top. i'm sure you all remember his uncanny punniness, and jeff stepp would have us remember that "the species gabius robbinsus is extremely intelligent in determining appropriate football teams for which to root." i really don't know what jeff is talking about though, because he and gabe always picked the redskins, and i'm pretty sure the redskins have not won a game in the last 7 seasons. and in the words of bob, "gabe... if only he didn't love gerbils so much, perhaps we could have spent more time together" because bob was not a big fan of gerbils, and sometimes even refused to learn their names. sorry for getting distracted, my focus should be on gabe, who is dead. what a stupendous cribbage player.

yes, gabe, wherever you are, under a pillow in some strange land, know that we shall all miss you to a larger or smaller degree, most likely a function of how many circus acts we have attended. a hyperbolic one. goodbye dear gabe. may your mincemeat rest in peace in the stomach of those wild carnivorous ducks.

this post will be wiser than the last ones

i guess i have a bit of catching up to do. but listen, i was busy, i have to sleep and eat and walk around the town all the time and stuff. so don't give me any lip.

i'll start with the most recent thing, i.e. the huge failure that i call this weekend. here was the plan
friday: ancona
saturday: recanati, conero peninsula
sunday: pesaro, urbino, home

and what we really did:
friday:ancona
sat: recanati, porto recanati
sunday: bologna (not on the list above, is it? nope.)

so friday afternoon we left padova and went on down to ancona. we almost missed our train connection, but maybe it would have been better if we actually had. just kidding. we got down to ancona, walked around, the town was pretty much ugly as mess, but we had a good time making fun of it. we climbed up to some castle/church on top of a hill, watched the sunset together, stuff like that. then we went back to the hostel, where we had a 6 person room to ourselves, and went to sleep.

saturday the plan was to go to recanati, which is where leopardi lived. leopardi is this italian poet/philosopher i've been reading and writing about and stuff. so i wanted to go see his house. we managed to get a train to "porto recanati" which i suppose is like a sister city. we had no clue how to get to the real place though, so i just wandered into a 4star hotel and asked how to get to leopardi's house. the lady then copied a bus schedule for me and gave me about 5 pamphlets. very nice of her.

we had to wait a bit for the bus, so we went down toward the beach in porto recanati. there happened to be some big bike race or something and there was a marching band with cheerleaders. it was strange, they played YMCA. the beach was composed of small rocks, but not sand, which was cool. they were really smooth, not stabby at all. naturally they were perfect for skipping, so we did that, and we also threw the frisbee until bus time.

got on the bus, went to the palazzo leopardi, took the tour, took photos, read an exhibit, took a bus back to porto recanati. then the bus to take us to the sweet peninsula didn't come, so we just played frisbee and rockskipped and read on the beach. some italian girls borrowed our frisbee and then skilllessly threw it into the water, and i had to go retrieve it because i happened to be in swimming trunks and they all had jeans. man was that water cold. then they kept playing, then gave us the disco back. immediately afterward, a group of pakistani guys asked to play with it, so we let them, and we talked to some of them for a bit. then we ate dinner and i almost lost my jacket but the waitress brough it out to me as i was leaving. thank, waitress. so the day wasn't bad, just not as we had planned.

we got back to the hostel to find that two stinky guys had been placed in our room and were already asleep. (man, it's like i'm living with jeff and adam again!!!!) (just kidding boys, i know you don't snore like these fellows did.) the one on the top bunk snored quite loudly. moreover, he only stopped snoring when he needed to hack and cough. needless to say i got an excellent night's sleep. though it was mighty nice of them to vacate the room at 4:30 in the morning, or rather to set their alarm for 4:30 and to succeed in shutting it off at about 4:37.

we woke up at 9, realized we had to check out of the hostel within 30 minutes, quick-showered, dressed, packed, and left. then we took a train to pesaro, with the intention of finding a bus to urbino. well, may 1 is a holiday, so whoops, no busses. so then we figured we'd go to bologna because hey, the girls said it was cool. so we bought tickets and then realized HEY, WE ALREADY HAD TICKETS. tickets that we had bought in advance a few weeks ago. so i tried to make the lady in the ticket window give us out 13 euro back but she wouldn't do it. because i had already validated the tickets. but then she cancelled the validation and gave us the tickets back and said we could re-use them whenever, just at the same route. i don't know why she could cancel the validation but couldn't give me the money. anyway we just revalidated the tickets, despite the huge cancelled stamp, and got on the train. let's just say it confused the crap out of the ticket checker man.

so we got to bologna and were pretty lazy. we could have walked around and seen churches and the university and a tower or some other razzamatazz, but instead we stopped at this park, after we had eaten, and threw the frisbee and read and just hung out. for several hours. then we left bologna early to come home from padova. actually right now, according to plan, i would be walking home from the train station. so you are all lucky that my plans went awry, since it culminated in the writing of this very phrase. and if any of you wished for this to happen and your wish came true, you suck, you ruined my weekend, and it was probably jeff. omg i'll post whenever i feel like it, ok?????

just kidding jeff. i'm glad you read and desire madly to hear my updates. that's also applicable to anyone else who reads and desires madly to hear my updates.

so now the week before that i didn't do much. read, wrote, class, went to office hours for the italian university class, talked to the professor, that was cool, no problems at all really. and the weekend before that, (oh yeah, i turned 21), we went to the other coast of italy, the west one. jamal's blog will tell you a little about that. though he left out the part about the rabid killer iguanas that chased us around the whole time until he and i grappled with them and we all plummeted off of the cliff together but luckily jamal and i grabbed a rock outcropping on the way down and just barely saved our lives. i almost didn't live to be 21. and yeah, i think that's just about it, like i said, other than that, nothing else too noteworthy.