Italy - Lake Como

Throughout Italy I was essentially visiting the larger cities and spending a majority of my time living in the city and not really getting much of a feel for the country life. After a while all the cities start feeling the same and it gets quite dull! Ja feel?

So I used the website helpx.net to find a home-stay situation. The deal is pretty much that in return for me helping them out they give me a room and food. The guy who contacted me, Mark, needed help repairing his boat and immediately I had these idealistic notions of satisfying hard-work, honest living, lack of technology, sailing in clear waters blah blah. So I went to Mark's place which is situated in the small area of Grandola ed Uniti and is about 40 minutes walk from Lake Como.

Lake Como is one of the biggest lakes in Italy and it is quite beautiful. George Clooney and Madonna have villas by the water and tourists often flock there in summer. One scene in one of the Star Wars movies was filmed in one of the villas. Don't ask me which. I arrived by Lake Como then took a bus and was picked up by Mark himself to take me to the village. I skipped Milano because people had generally been describing it as a toilet. 

(GEORGE I LOVE YOU)

It was quite rural let me say from the get go. It's only really accessible by bus and bus tickets need to be purchased in advance from specific locations like cafes or bars close to the bus stops. The only problem is that Italians out this far really do take the idea of the lunch-break quite seriously. In Italian it's called a 'riposo' and it pretty much means everything shuts down from about 12pm-3pm. You want lunch? No. You want a bus ticket? No. You want to do literally anything in this town? No.

There's a grocery store there that doesn't bother opening on Sunday and is shut for 3 full hours in the day when people would probably need groceries. Hey Italy you're in a recession. Perhaps you should do more? Do Germans have this kind of lunch break? How's their economy?

Perhaps I'm over simplifying it.

(Or perhaps I'm DEAD ON)

Anyway Mark is a retired American man who spends 9 months of the year living in this nice place in Grandola ed Uniti (the other 3 are in the USA). His passion is boats and upon my arrival he was working on one boat and was preparing to bring another one to the shed. For the first 2 days or so we worked away on various parts of the boat - my responsibilities included.

- Polishing the brass on the boat

- Cleaning the shed 

- Organising the shed

- Cleaning these buoy things

- Provide witty repartee.

- Play music from my iPhone. This last one wasn't really my duty. More like an obligation... I felt... to myself... to listen ... because I wanted to.

(The boat sans sails. Didn't get around to that)

After two days however the weather turned quite dramatically sour. Mark thought it would be a good opportunity to go pick up the other boat and then work on that because we weren't sailing in the poor weather. That's when his fuel tank started leaking which resulted in him putting his car into the garage.

So this pretty much left us with absolutely nothing to do. I mean one day I polished the leather of his couches for crying out loud. Do people do that?? Here I was getting free meals and my own room and in return there just wasn't much else I could do. So we decided to cut our time together short and I flew straight to London. I wish I could say there was some kind of dramatic fight and violence but no it was just out of bad luck.

(Cloud-tastic. Lake Comoooo too mooiiiisssttt)

So here I am in London trying to get my life sorted out! The Australian police check has been processed and I'm waiting for that to arrive. I move into my room on Thursday and from there I'll be able to have mail delivered so I can get a proof of address and URGH it's hard sorting everything out.

London Life

I've been trying to keep a journal throughout my travels. I wanted it to become a kind of memory bank so in years to come I could be like "Oh YEAH! I remember that salad bar" however it has pretty much petered out. I keep playing catch up, you see. I'll sit there at the end of the week and write down all the things I did.  Kind of like backfilling a diary. Exactly like back filling a diary.

The thing is, I can type infinitely faster than I can write. You should SEE my type. Dazzling. Typing also provides me with editing abilities and it is literally easier for me to open up a notepad document than it is for me to rifle through my bag and find that little green journal, source a pen and then eXpReSsSs myself. "So then just type, Kris" you say in a bored voice - well no! I don't particularly want my computer to have a record of my life either. Feels ... wrong.

"You've got a blog" you sigh. True I have this blog and I do say a lot of what I do. However it's hardly very thorough. Man where does this leave me? A bunch of idle thoughts and stock photography I guess. This blog is only going to have stock photography.

(I'm not taking the watermarks off either)

I've been in London for about a week now while I've been trying to sort out my life. I lost my headphones yesterday. Or maybe they were stolen?

Work:
- Applied for five teaching agencies - received four phone calls in the first hour. One company called me four minutes after I sent the application. London is gagging for teacherssss

- The companies I've signed up to are now constantly trying to call me and offer me long term positions which I don't WANT. I just want to work as a substitute for a bit. That's why we had an hour long interview teaching agenciesss - so you can work out what I wantttt. I made it pretty clear you guyssss.

- Still waiting on particular documents from Australia before working can commence. I'm currently stuck in this holding patterns before anything can happen. The companies still keep calling me though! Most days even! I've just stopped answering. Responsibility!

Living:
- I inspected a few places in London but my price range was about 500 pounds a month so I'm not exactly going to be living in a studio apartment over looking Big Ben, ya hear? I've found a place in Wapping which is by Tower Hill. You know the Tower Bridge? That's like a five minute walk away.

       - Pros: nice place, nice area, within price range, no contract, well connected, nice house mates.

       - Cons: room is tiny, nice area but a bit boring, house mates not really into the 'fun' lifestyle I try to subscribe to.

- I move in on May 23rd. They wondered how I was going to move my stuff and I was like "Guys ... all of my worldly possessions in Europe fit into a back pack. Calm down."

Phone:
- Am currently on a prepaid option but it's not the best. I should probably jump onto a plan at some stage but it can only be a 12 month contract because I don't like being restrained. Can't be tamed!

- My iPhone is still functioning. It glitches very frequently, often resets, is an apple product (roll eyes) but it's functioning. I've been playing Candy Crush Saga but I REFUSE to connect it to Facebook or pay any money at all.

(It's not even an iPhone)

Bank:
- Can get a bank account with my Australian passport but they need proof of address which I'm still waiting on. My house mates are all bankers. Not in any kind of selfish/useful sense for me though.


That's pretty much life right now. I'm in Brighton but the weather is terrible which puts a bit of a downer on things. I'm going to go EAT THE WORLD.

Italy - Cinque Terre

I wrote this around 2 weeks ago. Sorry it's taken so long to post it I've been busy getting my life together in London. It's certainly within my grasp it just takes timmeeee.

-------------------------------------------

 I read a quote on the internet recently, "Alone you go fast, with friends you go far" - I'm not entirely sold on that but I get it. Sharing experiences with friends is one of the best thing anyone can do and indeed it's something I've been doing a lot of during this trip ... but I do see the importance of alone time, too.

I start off with that quote as the time I spent in Cinque Terre was time spent with two friends I met in Bologna - Harry and Arielle. Actually I found out about their CT plans there and just kind of latched onto them. I felt exploring something so beautiful as Cinque Terre would best be done with some friends, friends who knew what they were doing, and in the end it would be nice to have some company through all the hiking.

(These pensive looking people to be precise)

Oh the hiking. Oh the hiking. My legs and joints right now on the train to Milano have been put through quite a lot these last two days! The walks between the cities is usually around 1.5/2 hours each but due to the flooding that occurred two years ago a lot of the coastal routes are cut off which necessitates one to go on the 'mountain' routes which ... which just take longer! When asking locals when the walking routes are they always (every single one) would tut and tell us to just take the train. Not why we came to CT guyssss.

Out of the cinque cities we stayed at number Quattro - Vernazza. We had a really nice self contained 3 bedroom room just off the main street. Not that there is really anything else in Vernazza aside from the main street. We had a problem of needing things after 9pm which does not go well for the people here. Everything shuts then that's just kind of it. Very peaceful though and during the day it's really, really beautiful. I want to say the MOST beautiful of the terres. Controversy.

(VerrrrrNAZZA)

Day one we decided to go to the next and final town in the series of five. The hike took about 2 hours of quite dynamic hiking. DYNAMIC hiking. thin ledges, rocky areas, plants and whatever. Harry and Arielle are good with taking photos so I've actually got a fair few that I'm actually in. Woo. Harry also has a penchant for gelati and must have had it about seven times in the two days. I had it twice, bringing my total gelati count in Italy to 3. I don't have that much of a sweet tooth so...

The second day started off rainy so I just read my book in bed while the other two slept in (my genre cycle has gone from sci-fi to romance  this time. Real eye rolling stuff). Fortunately by the time we got around to doing some hikin' the weather opened up and we had some awesome views to gaze upon. Arielle and Harry were keen to go to the beach so when we saw a shabby, handwritten sign saying "Beach - 20 minutes" we just went for it.

(Because why not)

So I don't know how long the journey took but it was treacherous. That path was the most bizarre and dangerous route I think I've ever been on. After we spent some time on the stony beach (which was secluded and lovely) we decided to take a different path back up. Turns out we were in this bizarre, closed off bay area. One abandoned house with a path up the mountain that went nowhere, lead to an abandoned outside cooking area 5 minutes away and that was it. There were tyre tracks in the mud but no car around. Next to the cooking area was this ominous and outright scary black cave with no visible end. Arielle said she saw people sleeping behind a piece of wood leaning on the wall. We started walking into the cave but if it was a horror movie you'd be screaming at us to leave. So that is exactly what we did.

When we tried to find the way back to our original treacherous path we must have chosen the wrong way because all of a sudden Harry stiffened and then quickly told us to leave - turns out he had seen four people sleeping there in the thick bushes. I dunno. The whole situation freaked me out a little. Why were all these people sleeping and why were they all doing it in such out of the way locations? Were they even 'sleeping'?! We eventually found our way back up the original treacherous path, back to civilisation, and back on our way. We gave the beach trek a thumbs down but the beach itself was pretty cool. I'm now covered in more scrapes and bruises than I need right now.

(nuh)

The best part of the Cinque Terre is seeing the cities from a distance. I'm sure you've all seen photos but there's just no way a camera can capture how the blue ocean sparkles next to the vibrantly coloured towns. Being exhausted and then seeing the next beautiful city in the distance is simply incredible. At the final town we hiked up to a monastery up on the mountain and had a breathtaking view of all 5 cities as the sun was setting. As I said, it's just one of those things that you need people to share it with.

(It's beautiful when it goes down ... but the sun is pretty important for light giving purposes)

After that of course we had to trudge to the next city in near darkness. Worth it though. Definitely. It also concluded all 5 of the cities. We were concerned we'd have to miss one but as it turned out we COULD tick all the boxes. We ended the final night with some delicious sea food and a bottle of red wine made locally. All in all it was a fantastic two days.