It has certainly been a while since my last update! So long, in fact, that I’m starting to get hate mail. The last few weeks have been very busy. I’m going to attempt to hit the highlights…
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Several weeks ago, after receiving my loaner furniture from CFMO, I invited a few friends over for dinner with the hidden agenda of talking the boys in to putting together my Ikea furniture. As I started cooking, and went to open a can of tomatoes, I realized that I did not have a can opener. Rachel convinced me to ring my landlady’s bell and ask, via hand gestures, if we could borrow one. As I had predicted, Bimbi invited us upstairs and instructed us to sit, pouring 3 tall glasses of orange juice. She dug out a very rusty can opener and tried to show us how to use it. She was holding the can still while trying to turn the opener, but we couldn’t explain to her what she was doing wrong. When she walked out with a long, sharp knife, I assume to pry open the can, Rachel snatched the tomatoes and the opener away from her and quickly showed her the correct protocol for opening cans. Bimbi sent me home with the opener.
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Memorial Day weekend, I took a spur-of-the-moment trip to the UK to see the Counting Crows. I flew Ryan Air from Pisa to London Stansted. I was all set to be able to catch a train from Stansted to Brighton (about a 3 hour ride) and arrive right on time to catch the opening act. I should have known better. My flight left Pisa a few minutes after we were initially due to be landing in London. I de-boarded the plane at 6pm and debated for a few minutes if it was worth it to try for Brighton. Not easily deterred, I made my way to the train station, where the attendant selling tickets laughed at me when I told him my plans to make it to Brighton and back the same night. I climbed aboard the first train around 6:30pm and after 2 changes and a short taxi ride, made it to the concert hall by 9pm. Although they were already playing when I arrived, the Counting Crows played until 11pm, so I don’t think I missed more than 20 or 30 minutes of the show.
After the concert, as I was walking up the main street in Brighton, I came across a real life street fight. I’m embarrassed to admit that I stopped and watched for at least 10 minutes. Eventually, I pried myself away from all the action and made my way back to London, only to find that the Victoria Underground station was closed – 1am seems like as good a time as any to figure out the London bus system! After asking a few passerbys for advice, I landed on what I hoped was the bus that would take me to the general vicinity of Pax Lodge. The ride proved uneventful until Tony, a very friendly and very drunk Brit took advantage of the empty seat next to me. After I turned down his numerous invitations to join him at the Jazz Club, he gave me his phone number with directions to, “give him a ring and stop in with some hens” the next time I find myself in London. Sorry, Tony, but I “lost” your number the minute you got off the bus.
The next morning, I woke up to a dreary and rainy London. My plans to sight see officially rained out, I arraigned to have lunch with two volunteers in Alconbury. A good decision! They introduced me to the pink pub, where I enjoyed my first Strongbow of this trip and took me on a tour of Alconbury, only the third base I’ve been on after Fort Jackson in SC and beautiful Camp Darby.
I was supposed to fly out of Stansted at 6pm, and arrive in Pisa around 9pm. Once again, my Ryan Air flight was delayed (timeliest air line, my butt) and we didn’t take off until well after 7pm. We landed sometime around midnight, and I was home and in bed by 1am.
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The last weekend in May, I escaped my house and the grasp of my homework (I’m in a 6 week course, Financial Management for Nonprofit Organizations, that is consuming my days) long enough to venture in to Lari with a group of friends for the Cherry Festival. Lari is a small, charming city, about 20 minutes from my house in the rolling hills of the Tuscany region. From what others tell me, it is usually quiet and rarely busy. During the Cherry Festival, however, hundreds of people descend on the town to partake in the wonderful, locally grown cherries, shop at the small market and watch the live entertainment. While we were there Sunday afternoon, a live production of Pinocchio was happening. It took us a minute to figure it out as the dialogue was all Italian, but eventually the giant whale prop and the small boy with the long wooden nose gave it away…
Between watching Pinocchio and shopping with the local vendors, we all bought a paper cone full of fresh cherries and munched as we wandered around. Just like some steak houses in the States where you chuck peanut shells on the floor, when finished with a cherry, we spit the seeds and threw the stem on the ground. The cobble stone streets were slippery with slimy, discarded cherry pits.
After gorging ourselves on cherries, we loaded up and caravanned to a near-by Italian restaurant where we lingered for hours over red wine, and lamented our return to work the next day.
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This week, I’ve been all over Germany. We drove from Italy, through Switzerland to Heidelberg on Thursday. The drive alone is enough to warrant a blog entry all its own (as beautiful as you might be imagining the Alpine scenery, multiply that by about 10 and you’re getting hotter), so I’m going to leave all that for another time. I just checked in to the Bradley Inn at Schweinfurt – third hotel I’ve had the pleasure of staying in over the last week, sadly, not the last one this trip – and discovered my room has a big bath tub. So, I’m going to soak.
