Somewhat more formally, the pink part of my brain has temporarily (I hope) ceased to function properly and that is where work-related stuff is produced. The anterior amygdalactic protofusional undula umblumgata (the green part) is all that remains for now. Fortunately, that small part at the back (hence the "anterior" -- thank you neuroscientists!) allows me to still somewhat functionally be able to write some blog related stuff.
Summary of recent events
For the 4-day weekend last week we rented a car and drove to Torino, Italy -- site of the 2006 Winter Olympics. We also went with a friend of mine from work. We arrived on Friday around lunch time and had some lasagna and Italian beer at a local bar (local as in near our hotel). Bars in Italy are generally also like French cafés in that there's literally a BAR and behind it there's a big huge espresso machine and there are little tables. But also in Italy's bars they usually serve food for lunch (not necessarily dinner though). We then went to the Parco del Valentino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parco_del_Valentino) where we met up with our friend Clara (back story: Clara is my friend from when I went to university in Leeds. She is also our friend because Sandi met her when she came to visit me in Leeds and also we stayed with her in Italy and travelled with her when we came to Europe for my friend Brian's wedding in the summer of 2007. Also, she is our friend because when you're married then generally what happens is that all of your friends become your spouse's friends as well, except in the case when you really don't like a certain friend (or certain friendS) of your spouse's and then when they say something to someone along the lines of "we're visiting our friends" or whatever then you have to add in something passive-agressive-ish like "No. We're visiting YOUR friends" just to make it clear that due to you not being so crazy about the friend(s) in question, that/those friend(s) never made it past that cut-off where the friend of one of the spouses also becomes a friend of the other one. But, all that being said, Clara doesn't fit into this exception so it's very safe to say "our" friend.) So, we saw Clara and we took some pictures in front of the river (which I can't post here because I'm at work and don't have said photos.. oh no wait, I have one that I sent to Clara on facebook.. I'll go get that now [...] ok, back. Here it is:
)
After this, we took a long long walk to the sort-of city centre (only sort-of because it was allegedly the "ciocolaterie" district and not the full-on city centre but it turned out that it was pretty much JUST south of it as we discovered the next day) and went to a famous ciocolaterie. We got some chocolate (obv) and some cappucinos (in France if you want coffee with milk you get a café crème and in Italy you get a cappucino and they're almost the same thing. People [i.e. Americans or tourists in general] will often order a "café au lait" with the intention of getting a café crème and because this is so common they will generally be given a café crème anyways and everyone is happy and they move on. BUT, what a café au lait really is is a coffee with a LARGE amount of milk served in a cereal bowl and you would only ever have this at breakfast time. So, while you'll likely get what you want if you order a café au lait [if you actually want a café crème], you will be contributing to two things: 1. it will be very clear [although it already was due to your accent] that you are a tourist; and 2. you will perpetuate this travesty of incorrect naming and then if you ever really did want a café au lait [which you would almost, well, FULLY, never order because it's something you have at home -- come on people] then the person would just assume that you don't really want that and they'd give you something else, and is that what you really want?). After sitting around for a bit Clara had to go as she was in Torino on vacation with her family (she's not from Torino -- she lives elsewhere in Italy and I was just about to write exactly where but then I didn't because of that whole identify theft thing we talked about last time). Then, our remaining group of 3 walked around trying to find a good place to eat and we ended up going to a pretty weird place but it was fine..
The next day we did a little bit of "shopping" in the real city centre and then drove to Asti because we wanted to visit a nice little wine-producing village. But, it turns out that the actual town of Asti (Asti is a region of many towns but the biggest of the towns is also called Asti) is actually pretty huge and wasn't really what we were expecting but we spent some time there walking around and such and bought a few things and drove back to Torino. Now, here is where the story gets kind of interesting (well, not so much interesting as sad so if you're into schadenfreude then you're in luck.. well not even because the story has a happy ending [to spoil the ending...]). Anyways, so we're driving back and the thing is that -- just like France -- pretty much all of Italy's highways are toll roads. Every few minutes you're stopping and you're putting your credit card in the machine and your bank account's balance is getting smaller and smaller. But I guess that's the price we pay for nice big smooth paved roads. Now, we also didn't have any kind of GPS device as most people seem to have in this day and age. The iPhone can provide something of this sort but as were outside of France if I wanted to use it I would have incurred data usage bills that are out of this world. But we had a fairly good idea of where we needed to go. We knew we had to take the A6 at some point and when we finally got to it there was much rejoicing (we were worried we'd never find it) but that was short-lived because after being on the road for maybe 20 minutes we realized things weren't right because the whole trip should take no more than 30 minutes and we'd already gone much longer than that. So we deduced that though we were on the A6, we were heading in the wrong direction on the A6 AWAY from Torino, rather than towards it. The next possibility to turn around came when we arrived at a toll booth. When you first go through the booth you get a little ticket that shows where you started on the road and then when you come to the next one you give your ticket and it calculates how long you've been on the road for and therefore how much you need to pay. I took the ticket, and then saw that there was a ramp where you could turn around. I took the ramp, turned around, and then -- now going in the correct direction -- came to the toll booth from the other side. I put in the ticket and it said that it was invalid (I suppose that makes sense because I guess they don't expect you to turn around even though it's possible thanks to the special ramp). After about a minute or so (by the way these things are generally "unmanned" so it's all automated) some dude came on the intercom and started blabbing away in Italian. Our friend that was with us from Grenoble speaks Italian so they started blabbing and I presume she tried to explain what happened. She said everything's fine, just take that "receipt" that the machine spit out. I took it, the gate opened, and we were on our way! Less than 1/2 hour later we were back in Torino at our hotel and preparing to hit the town for dinner, etc. [Side note: in my excitement to tell this story I forgot to mention one of the most important parts of modern Italian culture. That is the aperitivi. We indulged in this magnificent idea when we were staying with Clara in Florence {security through obscurity} in the summer of oh-seven. Basically, from around 18h to 21h or so, aperitivi bars (most of them are this kind) set up a buffet of food which includes pizza, cheeses, meats, &c. and you buy some kind of apéritif drink like a Campari or Martini Rosso/Bianco and the drink costs like 4 euros which is pretty standard. BUT, included with the drink purchase is unlimited access to the buffet! It's an amazing thing and if I'm ever so unfortunate as to become really down on my luck and find it difficult to gather enough money to eat every day, I will do this, and I would offer this same advice to anyone who might find him/herself in the same situation: save up 4 euros, don't eat anything all day, go to an aperitivi bar, buy your 4 euro drink, and eat until you can't eat anymore. Repeat.] Back to the toll story though... Just as we were about to head out, we took a look at the receipt just to make sure that they hadn't charged anything on my credit card (I had put the credit card in just like a normal toll booth at first but I didn't seem to have been charged anything).. Well, it still appeared that I hadn't been charged anything, but the "receipt" was in fact an "Unpaid Toll Ticket" in the amount of 86 euros. This -- needless to say -- put a bit of a damper on the mood of the evening and got me not a little bit upset. We went to dinner though at a place that the hotel man recommended and it was fun.. an Italian place run by Chinese people so there was the tiniest Chinese Food twist to things. Anyways, the next day we went to visit the old Fiat factory that has been converted into a giant commercial shopping centre and we visited this place called Eataly which is a famous (I guess) grocery/restaurant. We had lunch there which was quite delicious and we purchased several Italian products to smuggle (thank you European Union) bring back to France (mainly wine -- not that there's anything wrong with French wine, of course). The whole drive home was POURING rain and it was quite painful in that manner and when we finally dropped the rental car off at the train station there was one final F-U from Italy for me: I had somehow forgotten my (yearly) Grenoble transit pass in the hotel room. So, because of those misfortunes I wasn't too happy about the trip in general but then things started to improve. First, I found out that I just had to pay a 7 euro fee to cancel my old pass and have them make me a new one. Second, I really didn't think we would get around it but I wrote the Italian Toll Company people an e-mail and my friend called them and they cancelled our ticket quite easily. So, then, gaining some perspective after the two (what I thought to be) major disasters were averted, I realized that it was a pretty good trip all-in-all.
This week has been a long week after last week lasted only 3 days so perhaps that may have contributed to the fact that the pink part of my brain stopped working around 16h. However, that week is now essentially over and it's the weekend! During the week there was a visitor to XRCE and he's some rising star from Cambridge but he's originally from Victoria! I went to his talk and I asked him afterwards if he was from Vancouver because he talks exactly like my friends from Vancouver and he said no good guess I'm from Victoria how did you know and I was like it's pretty obvious you west-coaster. This weekend we wanted to go biking since (as I think I explained recently) it's impossible to go after work due to the darkness factor but unfortunately again it looks like it will rain all weekend. So, I think we plan to do some shopping (!!) perhaps for xmas time for some of the very people that are most likely to be reading this blog (and by the way, if you're still reading: congratulations! If I were you I probably would have quit by now. Reading this must be infuriatingly exhausting!).
Grenoble Blog Contest Update
For those that read the last post, you will (perhaps) remember this little nugget:
Grenoble Blog Contest: write your own witty fun slogan for Bern and send it to me before the next posting and you could win a Christmas present from France
Unfortunately for everyone involved, not a single person submitted a single slogan (let alone witty or fun) to describe the city of Bern and therefore no one wins. Since not even a single person submitted even a single entry, you know that if you had just submitted ANYTHING you would have won. Keep this in mind for when the next contest comes up. Therefore, many of you may have to settle for a Christmas present from Italy (for Tom, this would kind of be opposite [as I understand it]. What I mean is, he would prefer an Italy present over a France present so winning for him would be an Italy present so maybe he'll get a France present anyways even though he didn't win the contest, but then that just kind of reeks of spite so maybe I just won't get him anything.. hahahahha just joking Tom [if you're reading this] -- you'll get something super cool I bet.
Triathlon Update
Nothing to report. We have become fat and sedentary.
No comments:
Post a Comment