I leave Italy kicking and screaming

The trash is taken out, everything is packed, we're all groggy because it's 5 A.M., and it's time to go back to America.

Oh my.

I am surprised how everything that is important can fit into a suitcase. Coming here, I had problems making it all fit. Coming back? I realize how little one really needs.

The airport is- well, you know how when you're a kid at Chuck. E Cheese and it's the best thing in the world? And then you go back as an adult and it's kind of...really loud and crowded and annoying? That's how international flights are on the way home.

At least the view is amazing.

Across a few time zones, the drink cart comes through. We get free drinks because it's a 10+ hour flight. I order a cocktail at 10 am. The lady next to me looks over judgmentally. Lady. I've flown like six flights in the past couple months. This one will be 8 hours more. Let me drink.

After hours and hours, we- oh my god- see American greenery.

That's one thing Europe doesn't have on us. This sheer amount of green is unique to America. And you know what? I kind of missed it.

We land, and of course it isn't done then.

There's customs. I have a bottle of limoncello I bought from duty free for my family. I am 20. The guy nearly confiscates it.

His error: I have been on a plane for 10 hours and I am very tired. I all but snarl at him that I bought this in Europe. where I can legally buy alcohol at 20, and this is for my family. He finally allows me to take it on the promise that my family will be right there to get it.

I arrive to my family. My mom hugs me so hard my ribs nearly crack. I am so jet-lagged that I nod off on the way home.

Culture shock is real. I cry at home that night. After the constant go-go-go of Rome, the quiet of home to too much and it overwhelms me. It'll get better but at first I need about 24 hours of sleep.

My cat keeps looking at me as if I'll vanish any moment.

Hi, baby. Yes, I'm home.

The last day

Is it really done? It feels like only a few days ago I just started. I know the guy at the downstairs grocery by name. I know that I buy a falafel weekly from the dude at my favorite shop. I know how I can get where I need to, I know my favorite churches, I know how to haggle in Italian.

Is it really time to go?

Exams, I did well. I studied, I stressed, they happened, but the grades hardly seem to matter when I have to bid goodbye to this eternal city.

I think I was strange because everyone else says they got homesick a month or two in and want to go home. And- well, mostly I miss peanut butter and breakfast food, but also...I could stay here forever. Everyone else wants to go back, and I would like to see my family, but. I could stay here forever. I really could.

It's the last day. How do I handle that?


Well, first by an epic last meal

This was described as pasta with "beef jowls". Yes, jowls. Don't look too far into it- it was delicious.

After that, we all got a second course. I chose a "fried zucchini flower", purely because it sounded strange. It wasn't something I'd have again, but I was glad I had it.

And then- GELATO

I tried the flor de creme flavor that my Paris friend suggested, as well as my favorite dark chocolate. A fitting goodbye to this lovely city.

Tomorrow I disembark. EARLY tomorrow. Very early. A cab will come. I know I should feel more happy than I am to see home but mostly- I just want to dig my hands in the land and refuse to go.

Pepperocini- no, autocorrect, I don't mean pepperoni

Let's talk about pepperocini.

Even as I write this my computer automatically changes it to "pepperoni". No, autocorrect. I don't want to say "pepperoni". I want to say PEPPEROCINI.

So. Pepperocini. What is it? Google says it's the Italian term for a hot pepper. Eh. In Rome, it means peppers in general. At least on pizzas. Like, banana pepper, green pepper, red pepper.

On our last week in Rome, my curiosity piqued, I ordered a pizza peperrocini.

Now, this is something American tourists in Italy get warned about a lot. Pepperoni isn't really a thing here. If you want something similar, you order salami, or a variety of some "hot sausage" kind.

Now, I like bell peppers. So I ordered this and it wasn't bad! If you like bell peppers, you'd like it. As mentioned, Roman pizzas are meant to be enjoyed one per person, so you aren't meant to slice it up and share it. That's why the peppers are distributed so randomly, because you're going to eat it all.

I haven't had a bad pizza in Rome yet, and this still adds to the total. It was magnificent. I think I could order a garbage pizza and Rome would make it taste good.

Life's a beach

Today the roommates and I took a trip by train and went down to one of those famous mediterranean beaches. After all, it's getting hot and sunny, it's time to enjoy that sweet ocean water.

One of the best beaches in the Roman area, Santa Marinella, is accessible by train from Rome. And that's it! Just a few bucks for the train and then you can easily walk to the beach. America has nothing on Rome public transport.

We each got some snacks and wine from the shop downstairs and headed out. We found a place on the beach (which wasn't even very crowded, despite being a weekend and a gorgeous sand beach), dug a hole so the wine would be kept cool, and spent the day mostly sunning but periodically swimming.

Imagine that kind of beach being a short train ride away. And not a bus, but a train, which isn't as bumpy and a lot more luggage can be carried on.

I didn't get burned because I have an obsessive need to apply sunscreen. I'm ridiculously white and even venturing out in the sun for a millisecond can turn me cinnamon red. However, while I applied copious amounts of sunscreen every half hour, my friends mocked me. How distressing. At least, until we got home and they had neon red sunburns on every part of themselves while I was still my pasty white unburned self.

Today's moral lesson is: public transport, but also apply more sunscreen than you think you need.

More gelato and I become a real Italian

My free days I've taken to wandering around the city, sometimes with a church in mind, sometimes not. When they say that Rome is the eternal city, I think it's true in the sense that it feels like a million years are coexisting at once. The newest shops and transportations are right next to ancient ruins or monuments that have been here for hundreds of years. And it's all taken so casually! Italians totally take for granted having centuries right next to them.

I genuinely think it isn't something that Americans can understand unless you travel. I'm not saying Americans are short-sighted or bad or anything, I just mean that it is truly a cultural consciousness. You don't understand how it feels to walk through these living centuries until you go, no matter how much you read about it.

Lately I've been going in and out of tiny shops, picking up gifts for some family and friends back home. Rome is full of tiny family-run stores and once you've been here awhile, you can pick out the mass-produced from the custom-made.

At one point I got hot and, in Roman fashion, it was time for gelato. I found a new place that looked good and had a decent crowd.

The crowd was enormous. I think a tour bus had come through since it seemed to be all Americans grouped together. 

And then, one of the most triumphant moments of my study abroad.

I fought my way to the gelato counter and the guy was obviously frustrated by all these Americans constantly asking "what's that? what's that mean? how much money is that? what's in that?" and I just shoved up (in true Italian fashion) and fired off, in pretty decent Italian, if I say so myself, "one medium with peach, limoncello, and grapefruit, thanks."

The guy looked SO RELIEVED to have someone who actually knew how to order. I got my gelato before most of the Americans, despite ordering towards the end.

I feel like a real Italian and I'm pretty dang proud. Victory gelato.

Ciao, Sicilia!

Friday 

This weekend I planned an impromptu solo trip to Sicily. Originally, when I got to Italy, I didn't really have an interest in seeing the island. But after taking my history of the Sicilian mafia class and spending some time hearing about it, I really wanted to go. But, nobody else did, so I decided to be miss independent and go on my own. The plane and hotel were pretty cheap (yes, I stayed in a hotel, not a hostel- I didn't want to stay in a hostel dorm room by myself and the private rooms were just as much as a hotel room (which still wasn't much) so I just did the hotel.)

Of course, when I get to the airport, I realize that I left my passport at the apartment and I don't have time to go back and get it. I'm hoping that because I'm flying within the country, they'll let it pass. But, of course, because I'm anxious literally all the time, it became a big Thing and I spent my time in the airport over thinking everything.

I get up to the front of the line and after a minute of deliberation, they let me fly with my driver's license as ID. Whew. (Hopefully they also let me fly back)

But I get to Sicily, take a bus from the airport, find my hotel alright. The hotel is a little strange, reception is on the fifth floor, and then my room is on the fourth. Also, instead of a keycard, I got a set of actual keys attached to this strange metal disk that is so heavy I could probably actually hit someone with it. The hotel isn't too glamorous, but that's fine, all I need is a place to sleep.

So after I get to the hotel, I decide to go out and find the catacombs of the capuchins, which I really wanted to see here, and also something to eat, because my plane got in around two and I was starving. I figure I'll find something on the walk down.

So I pull up the Palermo catacombs on my locations and away I go!

To get to the catacombs, I had to go through a few of the poorer neighborhoods- I felt a little out of place in my old navy collared t-shirt and bright pink phone, haha. But the catacombs of the capuchins were sooo worth it.

Honestly, I love creepy stuff, and I heard about these catacombs in some of the creepy blogs I read. Here's the deal about the catacombs of the capuchins: There were these monks, and one died, and the rest still wanted to pray with him. So they had his body preserved in order to still pray with him. They started doing this for more and more monks, and eventually it got super trendy to have your dead loved ones preserved. It became a symbol of being high society. If you were someone, you got your dead loved ones preserved.

They started in 1599 stopped doing this in the 1920s. It's been awhile since then, obviously, but a lot of the corpses in there are still in various levels of preservations. They're lined up on walls, lying in glass coffins, sitting on shelves. A lot have skin, some have hair, some even still have eyes. One of the most famous mummies is Rosalia Lombardo, a two-year-old girl who was one of the last to be admitted here, and who was preserved with a remarkable technique that was only rediscovered recently. To this day, she still looks as if she could simply be sleeping.

I'm not going to include any photos in here because quite frankly, I don't think everyone has the stomach for it. These are corpses in various states of preservation- it's not something everyone can handle. But if you've got interest in the bizarre and historic and macabre- it is well worth a visit.

So I leave the catacombs and decide to get something to eat. Problem: it turns out that this is national worker's day in Italy and freaking everything is closed.

It's nearly five. I haven't eaten since breakfast. I can't even find a gelato shop open. Finally I stumble across this really weird, hole-in-the-wall convenience store. Literally, hole in the wall. There was no door. But I was desperate, so I got some (pre-packaged) bread and crackers and wine (all for oddly cheap) and went back to my hotel. I had some work to do so I nibbled on my fancy Italian dinner of packaged rolls and planned out my day tomorrow.

Saturday

Today, I had one goal: See the Teatro Massimo, and just explore Sicily!

The Teatro Massimo is probably the most famous theater in all of Sicily. In addition to having a rich history of opera and art, there were scenes from The Godfather 2 filmed here! Most notably, the scene where someone gets shot in the theater- yep, that's this theater. Those of you who have been following my blog know how much I've fallen in love with The Godfather in my Italian film classes, so this was a must-see.

The theater was in this central hub of downtown Sicily, near all these shops and busy streets, so I spent the rest of the day just wandering! There was so much to see. Palermo knows that people come here because of its mafia history (and the mafia is still very active here, but nobody mentions that there) so I ended up getting some mafia souvenirs, some of my favorites from Italy. I'll forever treasure my "u mafiusu" bobblehead.

It was so incredibly hot that day- I discovered that Sicily isn't as into gelato as Rome is, but what they do have (and do very well) is granitas! The blend of frozen ice and fruit juice I explained in my Sorrento post. Well, Palermo is lemon country, and man, do they do good granitas! It was so hot, I must have had at least three.

This one was strawberry, lemon, and mint- the locals liked it! I couldn't get over the strawberry and mint combo.

I also came across this "American restaurant". It had "American meals" like chicken nuggets and salads named after the Empire State Building. It was so funny to see us from that point of view! I was so taken by it that I got dinner there, just to see what it was like. (It was American dishes, but also not? I was so entertained by the whole thing.)

Sunday

Not much to tell about today. The plane tickets were cheaper if I left earlier in the morning, so I checked out early and headed to the airport. I used the same bus system that I did to get here (again, proud of myself for figuring this out when I don't even speak the language) and flew back.

The mainland Italy and the island of Sicily are truly different lands, even if they are the same country. People here will tell you that but you don't really understand it until you visit both. When I got back to Italy, I just thought "it's nice to be home". Back to the mainland- I did miss the gelato!

Germany is a magic place

Early on in my semester, I booked a trip on a bus company to go to Munich, Germany, for their annual springfest! The trip included a bus trip either way and a weekend in a hostel nearby. So, geared with my now-familiar travel backpack, I got on the bus for an adventure!

Well, the first part of my adventure was sitting on a bus for twelve hours. It was overnight. I mostly slept.

Then we arrived in Munich. Part of the trip included a bike tour around the city, which was awesome! One of the big differences here was that bikes were respected on the road just as much as cars. I know it's supposed to be like that in America, but if we're honest, it's really not. Here, it was. It was really cool.

We did some local history spotting, but the best part of being on a bike tour was just focusing on the lush outdoors of Germany. We even stopped at the city's biggest clothing-optional park- didn't spend much time there. After stopping at the second-biggest beer garden in Germany for lunch (I got an enormous pretzel and a bratwurst. This must be what happiness tastes like) we stopped to see river surfing. River surfing is a local sport where they surf on the whitecaps at a certain location on a small river.

After that, it was time to go to the festival!

The next day we spent most of our time roaming the festival, going on rides, and eating our way through the booths. German food is meat and pretzels and just goodness.

On our final day, we took a break from all the fun to do something a little more sobering and visited the Dachau concentration camp. They've left a lot of it up as a memorial and museum.

The gates to Dachau- the inscription cites "work will set you free"

Some of the ovens used during the holocaust.

It was a good way to end the weekend- Germany is so fun and the people I met are so friendly and easygoing that it's easy to forget that they're a country still deeply hurting from the events of WWII. It almost made the festival that much more special- all the Germans I met were so, so friendly- honestly, one of the friendliest countries I visited. There's a real sense of openness, you really get the feeling that Germans want to make friends with people from all countries.

I was sitting at a table with some friends for an early lunch and one German guy sat down next to us- said his friends were running late and would we mind if he talked with his before they came? We had such a pleasant conversation- he told us about his daughter that was our age and talked about driving the autobahn. And that was typical of so many of the German people I met. They just wanted to share stories, to hear about our lives in America and tell us about their culture.

I'm so glad I got to go on this trip. I'd love to go to Germany again one day- maybe for a longer time. It's such a vibrant culture.