Italy

So I'm back in Romania. It's just as cold here as it was there, but now I can sleep in my own bed and cook my own food. I'll miss the mozarella but I can buy German-imported stuff.

I was surprised at the amount of tourists there. I heard English much more than Italian. At any rate, (and of course, I will never admit it) but I'm so glad I studied Italian this year. I managed to get us around, I spoke Italian with shopkeepers and waitresses, and didn't embarass myself too much. I was surprised at how much I understood. I could understand all the signs and almost everything everyone told me.

I studied Spanish at university and can barely form a coherent sentence, but I receive Italian verb conjugations via SMS and I remember everything.

Sometimes I surprise myself.

Our concierge in Rome was Romanian, from Bacau. We had nice chats every night. We even shared a drink of tsuica! He's coming back to Romania in January and we talked about meeting up. He's very nice!

I started playing games with myself. I started with "spot the tourist" but that was too easy. I think Americans outnumbered Italians 3:1. I would go crazy if I was Florentine, having all these tourists decending upon my city. I know they depend on tourism for an industry, but after a while, I would probably go postal.

So then I started playing "Listen to the dumb things tourists say". Someone was asking "which one is God?" while at the Sistine Chapel. Another was describing her hotel to us by Caesar's tomb. "We live on a farm and everything is made fresh right there, and it's wonderful! It's such a good idea!" "Are you staying at an agriturismo?" "Oh my gosh! Yes, that's what it's called! How did you know we were there? Have you been there too?" "There're probably over 1000 agriturismos in Italy."

I had a great time. It was cold, windy and rainy, but I was so glad to see my mom. It was nice to have a bit of art and culture after being in Romania for so long. Now she's back home in Canada and I'm back in Romania.

In Ancona, I was searching for a restaurant in the rain. A guy standing beside me on the sidewalk offered me his umbrella so we started talking. He was from Tunisia and didn't speak a word of English and barely any French. We spoke in Italian. Me badly, him perfectly, but we still managed to understand each other. We went to a Middle Eastern restaurant and I got to eat couscous. Mmm...chickpeas. I was heaven. He offered to take a walk with me but I didn't know his intentions and I didn't want to stray too far from my hotel. So I pretended I was tired and I went back to my hotel, where I watched the MTV European Music Awards on MTV Italia.

While waiting for the bus to take me to the airport, I made eye contact with two Italians. One of them kept glancing up at me and smiling, and I couldn't help but smile back. I saw them at the airport. When they called the Timisoara flight to check in, they were in front of me in the line. What a coincidence! I started to freak out when they called us to board. The London and Timisoara flights were boarding at the same time from the same gate and no one would tell me anything. Luckily, I was shoved into the right line, and got my seat.

The Italians were sitting behind me. The one who was smiling at me playfully poked me during our meal and we started talking. He doesn't speak any English so once again I had to use my Italian. As much as I like to think otherwise, my Italians sucks but I can understand it quite well. We made each other understood. When we landed, I wanted to give him my email addresses, as they're in Timisoara for ten days, but I had already spied Cristi and his friend and I didn't want to keep them waiting.

Now Maud's here. She's the intern in Bucharest, so she, Cristi and I went out to dinner, then for drinks. Cristi had to leave so we stayed and listened to the music and chatted and gossiped as girls do. Then Cristi came back and we all went to a salsa bar. I'm not a fan of salsa music or dance but we still had fun. Cristi taught me some basic steps so I did get up to dance a bit.