On the Road to Geneva

Well, this road trip has no doubt been one of the longest I've ever been on. Thanks to the fact that I didn't sleep poorly enough to actually spare myself from part of the ride, as was what had happened the last few times, this ride has been the longest 6 hours of my life, if it's even been 6 hours. It feels more like 7, which wouldn't surprise me considering we had to wait in a really long line to get into the Mount Blanc tunnel, and thanks to things just taking longer than they normally should. So We're all still in the car, I'm about to lose my posterior, and the moods are not warm at all. We did get to drive through the mountains, though, although in Europe they take a more literal approach to the experience, they literally drive through the mountains. No slopes, just bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel. The few views you get in between, however, are really stunning. I'm pretty much just posting this because I'm bored out of my mind and want an excuse to publish the awesome photos I took.

Before we left for Geneva, we toured Florence one last time to "run some errands", which in code apparently meant do some last-minute shopping, because the only real errand that was ran involved packing our car. My mom bought a whole bagful of ceramics, my dad bought a cool guitar-handbag for my sister, and we toured the Florentine stationary shop, where I bought a surprise gift for my friend. It's unlikely this certain friend is reading this, if this certain friend can even guess that it's them. Excuse the previous grammatically incorrect sentence, it was a thinly-veiled attempt to hide the gender of this certain friend. I was tempted to buy everything in that shop, because not only did they sell beautiful stationary, but they sold leather-bound books with calligraphy parchment inside, fountain pens, ink, stands, and quills. Sadly, though, I only had 15€ left, so I had to settle with a bit of stationary, and then we took off. Adding to the "fun" was the fact that I had twisted my ankle fairly badly on the curb, so instead of enjoying the views as I walked back I had the priviledge of limping the entire way. Fantabulous. Whatever, here are the last few photos I took of Florence.

Update: As it turns out, we crossed into Switzerland right as I was writing this post, so here's the incredibly unexciting video of us crossing the border. It was our 3rd country in 3 hours. Only in Europe, Baby.

The Longest Recap Ever

Well, I guess I have to pay for putting off my next post. Having not written anything for the past 9 (10? 15?) days, I have a virtual lifetime of experiences to write down, and I doubt I'm going to be able to remember any of them. It's a shame, my guess is that I've been chickening out about the whole translate-into-french thing. It takes up a lot of time and has caused me great amounts of stress while writing the english version; I'm fearful I might not be able to translate certain things! No matter. The point is to write this down so that I can remember it later on, because my grey matter has not served me very well in the past. So here we go.

First, I wanted to talk about my little journey I had in Ugo's SUV. While I was strealing their internet, I heard him get up to go leave, and he asked me if I wanted to go down to the well with him (they fill up water bottles from the well every so often because the tap water tastes really nasty). I said yes, then asked my brother if he wanted to go. Addicted to the internet as he is (he can't stop reading manga), he said no, so I went out with Ugo to the well, or so I thought. Since Charlie had decided not to go with us, Ugo decided to make him regret it, so instead of getting in his little Nissan, we went in his big Nissan: A 22-year-old SUV. Unbeknownst as to why, I got in and we drove down to the well, filled up the bottles, and put them back in. Ugo then proceeded to tie them down as securely as he could in the back of the car. Being the idiot that I am, I didn't take this hint and, once again, blindly climbed into the car. I finally realized that something was somewhat different when, instead of turning around, he continued down the road we were going on and eventulaly veered off of the mountain road and onto a little sheep trail. The bottles, meanwhile, were making the biggest racket I've ever heard; had he not lashed them down, I have no doubt that all of them would have shattered.
So we continued down the road, it getting progressively rockier and rockier, and Ugo explained to me that the road's no longer used; not too long ago everyone walked their cattle down this road to go and graze. As this was no longer the case, the road's slowly deteriorated and is continuing to do so. Thankfully it wasn't that much of a problem for the vehicle we were in, because the view once we got to the top was absolutely stunning: You could see all of Angoli from one side, the bordering village from another (I was told that that was where my great x 2,000 grandmother came from), and the rest of the world if you looked straight ahead: Everything laid out for miles and miles. I think if I had been about 100 feet higher I could have seen my house. Maybe not. But still. It was absolutely stunning.

After that day, we all went to the festival of Saint Joseph. Apparently, as I learned recently, the actual day of the festival was in March, but since around that time of year it's still cold and yucky, they decided to have the celebration in August, when the weather was (a bit too) warm, and all of the inhabitants had moved back to Angoli for the summer (during the other seasons, they're all elsewhere for work). It started with a church service, then turned into a parade: They took his statue out of the church and paraded him around the village, saying their "Hail Mary's" (in Italian) and setting off cannons the entire way. By the way, when I say statue, I mean statue. They're hauling a one-two hundred pound statue up and down a mountain in 90 degree weather. It was absolutely crazy.
One opportunity that came along during the parade was the chance to meet the priest. Apparently, being a South African doesn't give you the best skin color when you're in a southern-Italian village of 300 people. It's not like he had a choice in the matter, though; he was assigned to the village by the Catholic church. So, upon showing up, the villagers stopped showing up to church. And then they all started to accuse him of stealing the offering. Talk about a warm welcome. It's better now, although I'm sure many villagers still aren't very nice towards him. He was a really nice guy, though, and happened to speak French and English along with Italian, not surprising considering those were the two official languages of Togo, where he grew up. Sadly, though, he had a parade to run, so we only got a few minutes with him. Shortly afterwards, we left the parade; not everyone enjoys walking up and down mountains and I have to say I share this sentiment. So we went back to Ugo's house and ate dinner, then went down that night for the fireworks, which were loads better than the ones we saw at Bastille Day. After all of that, we walked to our house and went to bed.
Sadly, that's the best my memory is going to serve me. The rest is a blank, anything after that begins with our leaving Angoli, which was a very sad occasion. As a parting gift, Ugo gave Thomas, my brother, an Italia baseball hat, and he gave my dad a Mussolini watch (some Italians are still big on Mussolini: The only reason we as Americans consider him a bad person was because he was associated with Hitler. Mussolini established a universal language [before there were only dialects], created roads, and completely unified Italy during his time in office, even though he killed a lot of people.). After some good-bye's, kisses, and tears, it was time to head back to Rome. So we all piled in the car (my dad did a great job of putting essentially everything into the roof compartment, so it was nice and roomy) and headed to Rome with one extra: Sara was coming with us! The ride back was a lot faster than the ride there, mostly thanks to the absence of the enormous traffic jam that we had the pleasure of experiencing on the way there.
Once we were there, we all headed straight for the beds and crashed. Well, at least, the majority of us: me and my brother were pretty happy to find that we actually had internet that we could use without feeling guilty, so we took full advantage of it. After dosing ourselves to a satisfactory level, we all headed out to the Vatican to go see St. Peter's Basilica. It really was incredible, sadly I didn't bring my camera so I didn't have a chance to take any pictures. I'll see if I can steal some from my dad's iPhone some time, but it's unlikely that they'll be any good. Oh well, there's always postcards. Plus it gives me the excuse to come back again.

The next day, we all went out for a drive to tour Rome after having dinner at a really great restaurant. We saw the Roman Colloseum, an Arc of Triumph (Evidently there's more than one) and some other... things whose names escape me, because I'm American and they don't seem important to me. That and my memory really stinks. I'll publish the photos we took though, one of the coolest things I saw that I could actually get a good picture of in the dark was the "Face of Truth": A rock with a face carved onto it, with a room behind the face. In the Roman times, you'd stick your hand in the mouth and tell a truth or a lie, and if it was a lie then your hand would be cut off by "the face of truth", who happened to be the person sitting inside probably guessing whether or not the dude was telling the truth. Maybe he just got a kick of cutting off people's hands (Caaarl!).

So, now that I've talked about chopping off hands, I'm not going to bother to put on a transition because I really have no idea how I'm supposed to. The day afterwards it was back on the road to get to Florence. That's right, Florence. On the way back to Paris, we've decided that we're going to go to Florence and then Geneva on the way. Geneva! I've really always wanted to go there, and really the only thing I'm hoping is that I won't be severely disappointed. Apparently we won't be visiting much, which makes me kind of sad, I'm not likely to go back there for quite some time. If there was an LHC museum anywhere I would totally go for it. Anyways, Florence. After making the 3 hour drive to Florence safe and sound, we visited the hotel briefly to drop off our bags, then got right back out to go tour the city. It was absolutely marvelous! We saw the David (I snuck a photo of it even though it wasn't allowed), 2 huge cathedrals (one made completely out of colored marble) and Dante's Inferno. We also went on a bridge, whose name yet again escapes me, where there were actual shops. Above the shops, you could see a corridor that went from the now-gone royal family's offices, all the way across the bridge, down a block, into a tunnel, and back up again, which would lead them straight to the palace's grounds without having to touch the commoner's road. While I think the idea of avoiding the commoners isn't necessarily the best thing for a government to do, I did think the whole concept of an enormous passageway was pretty cool. At least their society contributed perspective. I think that's worth a distancing government or two.
So that's the total recap. I think I just broke my keyboard from all of this typing, we're off to Geneva tomorrow and I'm likely to try (and fail) to translate this post along the way. I think I'll make it halfway. Hopefully I'll have free internet there so I can translate words I don't know, they charge a ridiculous price for the internet here. 5€ for 30 minutes, 8€ for an hour, and 15€ for 24 hours, per computer. Insane. Sorry, Frenchies, this might take a while.

One last thing: I'd just like to make a note of how adorable the trucks here are. That said, it's a miracle how any of them get anything done given the tiny trunk space they must have, but still! Don't you just think they're so cute?

By the way, Blogger Draft is stupid and isn't letting me change the location. This was actually posted in Florence, Italy. Love you Blogger. Not.

Getting Lost in the Mountains

En Français

It's been about 3 days since we arrived, and in those 3 days not much has happened. We've met various locals, we went on a tour of the village, we went down to Pianopoli for an awesome dinner, and just yesterday we went down to the beach to go swimming. And that is the subject upon which I'm going to base my post.

First, we headed down to Lamezia Terme to withdraw some money. Easy, right? Wrong. We went to one bank, waited in line, and had a lot of fun translating: Wanessa (pronounced Vanessa, by the way) talked to the teller, translated the Italian into French for me, and then I translated French to English for my Aunt Kathy. Then, she'd think for a bit, talk to me in English, I translated English to French, Wanessa translated French to Italian... Needless to say, it took a bit longer than it normally would for the line to advance. Not only that, but we had to find 2 places after that where we could change our money. After taking an hour more than we should have, we finally got into the car and headed to the beach, which was another good 30 minutes away. By the time we made it there, the stands were no longer serving lunch, so for lunch we all decided to eat ice cream and chips. At least it helped us stomach the enormous dinner we had later that night.

Anyways, while we were at the beach we decided to go snorkelling because the water was literally the clearest I have ever seen. We saw all kinds of fish, and amused ourselves by lifting up the rocks and watching the fish dart forward to feed on what was under them. We also tried to rent a paddleboat, but the person renting them out didn't recommend it due to the heat, so we took a pass. So we continued for a while, and then after said while we all got back into the car and began our way back.

The way back was where the problems started. John Cleese was leading us home during a traffic jam, and me not being content to stay stuck on the same road for the next hour led me to plot a separate route, one which Wanessa had never heard of. I honestly should have listened to her, because we ended up on a dead-end, a gate separating us between the tiny road we were on and the highway we could be zipping home on. Crestfallen, we all turned around, headed back, then, on the way back, we saw this other street that we thought might take us back. So we took that, which led us into the middle of nowhere (before we were on the outskirts of the middle of nowhere, it was legit nowhereness after that). Long story short, we spend about two and a half hours getting back when, normally, it would take us around one. Don't know what that traffic jam would have done to it, though. While we were all utterly exhausted by the time we got back, we all really liked it thanks to the beautiful views we saw on the way home, panicked as we were.

So, that's the biggest thing that's happened to us so far. Today we went to Domenico's house for lunch, where we ate tons of food, as is what happens when you eat at the house of someone who lives here. The view from his house is absolutely wonderful: You can see every single rooftop of every single house, the cars on the mountain roads going by, the ocean towns and the beaches, and the wind farm slightly to the left. If the Angolese have nothing else, they definitely have their views. I'm starting to wish I could extend my stay a bit or even live here, although I'm sure the novelty might wear off after a couple of months.

Glad my non-readers are up to speed. We've been in Angoli for quite a while, although I haven't had much to say about all of it. One thing that I really can't get used to here is the huge hills; I don't think I've ever craved something motorized this much. I also really miss being able to drive. Unfortunately, I'm sure that if I try I'll end up ruining the transmission in our car, due to the fact that I can't drive a stickshift, or at least I definitely can't drive a stickshift that well, especially when I consider the fact that at the moment we're living on a mountainside. Four months left. I still can't believe that it's 1/3 gone already. I might hide in a box when it's time to leave.

Angoli

So after navigating the traffic jam and successfully meeting up with Ugo and Wanessa at the AutoGrill that was about 30 minutes away from them, we began to make our way there. The drive up was incredibly terrifying, seeing as it was one of those mountainside villages and we were driving a tank. This morning I saw a charter bus up here and immediately felt incredibly sorry for the poor driver. At least he didn't have to follow a vespa that was comfortable navigating a mountainside road at not-okay-for-minivan speeds. The views were incredible: from the top of the mountain, you could see both the Mediterranean and Ionian seas, entire mountain ranges, and a huge wind farm that sprawled out for about two miles. Really cool. I wanted to take a picture, but it was a bit too dark. I'll try taking it later. Anyways, once we got up to the top we were greeted by some familiar faces, and my grandmother and aunt got to meet some new people / incredibly distant relatives. One thing that was really good for my French (and Italian, too) was their inability to speak anything but English; I had to translate for them whenever I was having a conversation. While it was helpful for my language skills, it got kind of old after a while.

Speaking of my grandmother and aunt (I'll just call them Mary & Kathy to simplify this, seeing as typing it out every time is getting somewhat irritating), I've decided that I'll go with them around Italy to help them out, seeing as they have never driven around in Europe before and probably need a little guidance. From what I've heard, we're going to re-visit Rome (Roma), go to Florence (Firenze), potentially Naples (Napoli), and some other ones as well. I haven't really asked them, and quite frankly I'm not sure if I want to find out, seeing as each city is likely going to take a fair amount of driving. It's not that I don't mind road trips, it's the fact that European cars just aren't built for such things. In our Honda Odyssey back home, we drove everywhere. It was spacious, comfortable, and had other features that just made sense for long trips. In our Peugeot 807, however, I have to scrunch up my knees, and if I want an extra inch or two of wiggle room by sliding my seat back I end up crushing the person sitting behind me. There isn't any trunk space (we've had to get a roof turtleshell thingy, and we still don't have enough room in the trunk), the seats are built for someone with the height of Napoleon (although it is a French car), and the acceleration, even for a minivan, is abysmal. We can barely make it up a hill. Although I do like the automatically folding mirrors. Those are fun to watch.

I'm done griping about road trips, the only thing it really means for me is that I have to spend an uncomfortable day in exchange for a few days in paradise. That said, I am really not looking forward to driving from Angoli to Paris. 18 hours of clown-car fun. Paris should be nice once we get back, though. I'm kind of apprehensive about school, but then again isn't everyone their junior year. Speaking of school, I'm still putting off my summer reading, which I've heard they actually go over. Yikes. I'll get started on it soon, I still have a good 3 weeks to finish my book. Of course, that 3 weeks will go by like lightning, just like the past 2 months have, thus the reason for this blog. Hopefully I'll write more in the future, because at this rate I won't be remembering much in the future. Yes, you heard me right. If you're even there; I never really expected anyone to read this so this is pretty much just a way of keeping a diary. Even though I'm going to forget a lot of this, I really hope that I'll be able to come back sometime. The people in Angoli are really nice, even though they do stare at you like you came here from Mars on a banana (although it is a town of 300 people, so they probably don't get many foreigners). France is cool too, although they really don't like tourists so if you have even the slightest accent they kind of automatically hate you. Especially if said accent is American, English, or Belgian. They're kind of stuck-up and kind of, well, French. I'm just generalizing, though, a lot of the friends I've made there are really nice. The people that you'll randomly see on the street, though, not so much.

Strangely, the northern Italians are like that, too. The southerners, though, not so much. Just don't mention the mob (seriously, don't), and you should be fine. I've measured the reactions between English and French, and, as I predicted, they look at you weirder if you speak English. So I tend to speak in French. Depending on the situation, though, sometimes I'll have to speak English to my siblings, so they end up giving me away. I get some kind of weird kick out of disguising myself. I'm done ranting now, we're about to go check out the town with Ugo and get stared at some more. We're probably the talk of the town, I hope it doesn't get to my head.

On the way to Angoli

On the way to Angoli from Jack Biggs on Vimeo.

I added a video to this post, just for teh lolz. We're currently stuck in a traffic jam, moving rather slowly, so (looking on the bright side here) we can see the countryside in more detail, and we won't have to worry about speed cameras. The speed cameras in Italy are somewhat interesting because not all of them are single speed-and-shoots, the vast majority time you from one point to another, making it virtually impossible to go over the speed limit and not get a ticket. I don't really know what my obsession is with speed cameras, it could be because they don't exist in the USA and I'm curious to know more, kind of lke the high speed train systems. Speaking of which, while we were at the gas station we saw one go by at at least 120 mph (~200 kph for the metrically inclined), which completed my day about 10 hours early.

The countryside really is quite beautiful here, as I said in my video it's less scrubby like France and and more, well, tree-y. There are a ridiculous amount of mountains, and on each mountain there's almost always a village. I think I'd appreciate it a lot more if we were actually going somewhere. The time it's taken for me to write all of this has gotten us about 200 meters. We might just get out of the car and have a picnic.

Anyways, last night, despite my fatigue, I decided to go out with everyone to see Rome. We saw the Vatican, a fortress thingy (the name escapes me and I plead you all to forgive my American ignorance), and a bridge in front of said fortress thingy (see previous comment). After we toured around town a bit, we went to a pizzeria for dinner. We went home, I collapsed, and actually slept. Today I feel worse, but at least I'm worse and well-rested.

So this was a rather short post. Like last time, I'll post and then write an update once we're actually there. If we ever get there. We've moved another 200 meters. At least we're actually moving.

A not-so-fun way to be in Rome

After writing my post on the car ride, I'd like to say that a lot has happened but I'm not entirely sure. We finished the car ride about 3 hours afterwards, but once we arrived at the bed & breakfast, the woman who managed it wasn't there, so we had to wait for 30 minutes on the pavement until she arrived to unlock the gate. I don't mean to sound unappreciative, but there really isn't anything worse than arriving after an incredibly long journey, absolutely exhausted, only to realize that what you've been telling yourself is really close is actually a bit further away than you expected.
Anyways, we got all of our luggage in the hotel, played a few movies, and slept for about two hours until dinner, upon which we all went to a skype pal of my mom's (she seems to have a lot of those). We talked, haltingly, in French, English and Italian, and they showed us some kittens that they found in a bucket at the side of the road, which absolutely killed us because they were too young to survive without a mother and looked terribly unhealthy. After talking about taking one in, deciding not to for obvious reasons, and setting them back down in their box, we went upstairs and tried to forget. After eating lots of food, we eventually got back home at around 23:40, upon which we all fell asleep. Except for me. Last night I literally did not fall asleep until I somehow magically passed out at 7:00, when everyone was waking up. Thanks to this inexplicable insomnia, I now have a sore throat and a runny nose, in a time where it takes all of my concentration to understand a basic Italian sentence. Seriously?
Seriously. So we're likely to go out into the city today, something that I'd otherwise love to do, but we're currently waiting on our new arrivals to wake up (my grandmother and aunt) from their jet-lagged fog. I'll try to take pictures while I'm in Rome, but, to be honest, I might just stay home while they go out. Woe is me.