being serenaded with bob marley outside my dungeon window. i shall miss you, rome.

skills gained

-playing pool
-gutting fish
-pruning olive trees
-feeding animals
-collecting eggs
-fending off horny goats
-rolling cigarettes
-hitchhiking
-building volcanoes out of various materials
-speaking Italian
-speaking some Dutch
-drinking grappa for breakfast without grimacing
-how to braid a pony's tail
-driving tractors
-jumpstart a fiat
-corking and labelling wine by hand
-beer pong (unfortunately)
-slicing even tagliatelle
-cutting marble
-kill a chicken
-hunting wild asparagus
-carrying six bottles of wine at a time - three per hand
-making ricotta
-mowing lawns
-baking bread in woodfired oven
-using a forklift
-lighting bonfires
-serving meals to giant tables of hungry people
-cooking fresh artichokes
-the difference between pinzette and pancetta
-the words to "Can't Hurry Love" in Italian
-why the toilets have two flush buttons on them. I never knew why. Today I encountered a toilet that had the buttons labeled, 1 and 2. So now I know unless you want to advertise, just pick a button and be consistent.

but also i miss everyone too much and have a pending plane ticket. so, potentially, see you soon!

You probably all want an explanation.

Well it wasn't the first time I'd considered staying here in Italy, whether extending my trip or not having a flight booked home. But the past few days, staying at an amazing place with amazing people and continually hearing these enticing stories about people with expired visas and spontaneous itinerary changes.

I spent two days on walking tours which I swore I would never do with people who are now planning their weekend visits to Montreal for later this year. I'm wearing one of their jackets and shoes. I miss everyone at home so much but I'm already here you know?

Anyways, the hostel I'm at, one of the members of the bar staff and one of the tour group leaders had an overlapping birthday weekend and had closed off the downstairs for their private party. I was invited and had cake and kept hearing about how easy it was to get a job here and how they have a place I can stay.

Finally I said the magic words, "Why not?"

A round of applause, cheers, I stumble upstairs in tears to skype my dad and not only inform him I will not be landing tomorrow but essentially run the whole thing past him.

----------

Tomorrow when the offices are open I head to the airport to check in on my missed flight situation and then start the job thing.

I'm not at all one hundred percent certain. There were points today I was literally walking towards the train station to get on the bus to come home. But I'm here, I have minus one hundred dollars, I threw out all my clothes yesterday to make room for packing souvenirs, but I sincerely doubt I'll be regretting this.

St Peter's Basilica

TEAM WIN/e

Rome is, once again, just frustrating gorgeous. I remember once going on a trip with my family to some cutesy ol'-fashioned doily-ed cottagey region and by the end of it we were all nauseated by how goddamn QUAINT everything was. This is how it is in Europe. They can't help it.

I grab a coffee at the hostel bar and then wander off. My touristing days have taught me that you don't need a map, you can really just follow all the other groups of tourists and find all the biggest landmarks. In an afternoon I find the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon and I'm done.

I head down to the bar armed with my computer prepared to write a little update and google stuff about Gladiator to make it make sense, when the bartender who greeted me earlier spots me. "Paris!'
"No, um, Montreal..."
But there's a situation. It's pub quiz night and one of the teams needs their third member. I am pulled over to Team Win - two girls from the states. "Are you smart?" one asks.

Name three David Bowie albums. Recognize a movie still from North by Northwest. What medium is Frank Gehry known for. The other two girls are law students and we win by landslide. The prize - other than eternal glory - is a bottle of wine. "WHO WANTS A TASTE OF VICTORY?"

I get to speak to the people who work here and it's fascinating. Most of them were just like me, coming to Italy just for a crazy different thing to do and then a lot of them just ended up staying here. Some of them even have expired Visas to worry about but just don't care.

The night goes on and someone suggests we swing by the twenty four hour muffin shop down the street. How can I say no?

fontana trevi

oh hey angelina jolie

Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie and their respective families are in Venice as we speak, filming for an upcoming movie. Today on the vaporetto I caught a glimpse of them shooting and this is my attempt at being paparazzi.

Venice

Venice is for lovers. It's such a beautiful romantic city, people seem surprised I am traveling alone. And you know what, for the first time here, I am getting that longing feeling, as I watch all the other touristy couples. I just wish I had someone, someone to scream at in public for getting us lost. Or someone to buy me a horrifically overpriced fugly mask and then take even fuglier photos of it in front of a random landmark. Or someone to help me struggle with the babystroller up over the millions of cobblestone bridges. Someone to keep shrugging everytime I asked them where they wanted to eat. Someone to give me loud, pompous and inaccurate historical information viewpoints on architecture during the sunset at St Marks. That's amore.

____________

Venice is like Disneyland, it's so touristy and unreal. The tall narrow streets look like an opera backdrop.

The locals have a name for me here. "PARIS HILTON!"

The hostel is magical and by magical I mean it took me a good hour to find it in the maze of streets, lugging my suitcase in the 30+ midday heat. I even had BACK SWEAT. But it's in a beautiful old Venetian building with terraces and chandeliers and all old original fixtures and a big pool table (billardo anyone?). Every night is like a slumber party as we all converge in the common area and sip cartons of grown up juice at cocktail hour and discuss conservative cultures, Gossip Girl, and recipes.

In the evenings we accidentally discover the nightlife. Walking past a restaurant one night the waiter calls us inside, "Here, you drink for free!" Well buenas noches. Prosecco, Campari, grappa. Here in Venice their local drink is Spritz. It's pretty lame. We meet the richest man in town on the way to the discotheque. Italians dance funny.

Today was beautiful. I managed to see the sunrise. Me and five other cheap travellers at the hostel decide to split a gondola ride six ways. We decide not to bargain, our only deciding factor was determining how hunky the gondolier was. Daniele has been in the business most of his life, and as we glide through the canals we pass by his younger brother and his father, also working the boats. I ask if I can try rowing us - after all I've been getting fully RIPPED in my months of farm work - but he says no.

From there I take the vaporetto to Murano, the glass island and get to watch a glass blowing demonstration. On the way back I hop out at the San Michele stop. The Island of the Dead is the cemetery of Venice, and has tons of old crumbly graves. I'm the only tourist I can see for a while and I'm not even sure if vistors are permitted so I catch the next vaporetto back to the island.
I walk past a wedding leaving a church- it must be a famous family because the piazza is blocked off by Italian swat teams. I pass through an alley of them and they applaud. I get lost and find a teeny piazza with some little kids playing soccer and I end up setting down my purse and getting creamed by them for nearly an hour.

Here are some creepy puppets. Culture.

florence

My final day of manual labour was yesterday. Today begins the brief part of my vacation that is actually vacation time.

I'm sharing a room with two Turkish girls who are very understanding and help talk me through justifying buying a dress even though everything here is ridiculously overpriced. You need to wear clothes, it's just like breathing, it's a necessary part of life.

Everything is just so beautiful. Europeans. They just make everything good. We have Mount Royal park, I've been to Central Park oh but Florence has the Boboli Gardens and YEAH OKAY WE GET IT EUROPE, you're fantastic and historic and beautiful, way to go.

I had originally planned to nonchalantly follow around tour groups at an inconspicious distance however technology has once again outsmarted us. They all wear little ear devices and the leader speaks quietly into some sort of magicphone that only THEY can hear.

Even though I refuse to ask for directions and ensure that I take out my camera only when nobody is looking, I still am somehow immediately recognized as a tourist by the extremely vocal locals. Thanks to my blonde hair and my new sunburn, they all call me "California."

"Do pigs bite?"

"No, no, Pato almost never bites."

"Oh, okay."

Pato: GRRUUMMMBLLEEEEE!???





p.s. yes i have gained seventeen pounds in two months.

animali

This is Paolo the peacock. He's lonely and trying to pick up the chicken in front of him. She's really not into it though.

This is Boing, Stella and Gianni, the mule, pony and donkey.


This is that same trollop of a chicken sharing banana peels with Pato the pig. Drama.....

fattoria didattica

What's really fun about this farm is that it's a fattoria didattica, which they say means a teaching farm. So it's like a school trip farm. Every other day we get a class of students ranging in ages from two to twelve come to see the animals, learn a little, make something like bread or cheese or candles and get yelled at by their psychotic teachers.

Federica runs the show and is fantastic. I've earned the role of her assistant. I prepare the espresso for the teachers, feed the mule so he stays still as she talks about him, use my shepherdess skills to keep the kids from straying, hold up the pig's feet so they can count the toes and translate various terms into French and English.

I'm pretty sure this makes ME the hunky farmhand. And the circle of life is complete.

I'm far from the hunky type though. Definitely more of the clumsy type. Yesterday going to take the slops to the pigs I fell flat on my back, and when setting up the benches in the classroom area I clipped two kids and broke a leg off one (of the benches.)

For some reason the kids seem to love me. Federica introduces me like a freakshow character - the girl all the way from CANADA who does not speak our language! Children are actually great to teach you a language. Unlike adults, they will not cut you any slack. No speaking slowly or using simple recognizable terms. They just repeat and repeat and repeat, louder and louder. For this I learned how to request a pink tiara on the drawing made of myself in a princess dress, and how to explain where chicken eggs come out of.

The kids are really fun to be around too. Most of them are city slickers like me, but unlike me are absolutely fearless. They begin charging towards the peacock the moment they spot it, grubby little fingers outstretched. Federica gets them to march in a circle chanting, 'PIOVE VAI, SOLE VIENI" on a potentially cloudy day and it's too cute for words. They're not quite sure what to make of me hanging around - I'm clearly not old enough to be their teacher but I'm definitely taller than them. The little Romeos hand me fistfuls of wild daises and rosemary.

It's also quite an honour to be finally included on the other side of these field trips. No longer one of the students, the adults enlist me as an ally.
Marco lingers behind to pet Olivia, one of the dogs, as the rest of the kids head over to the sheep. The teacher begins forcibly tugging on his arm.
"But I want to play with the dog!!" he wails.
"You can't right now!" she screeches.
"WHY?"
"Because it's her dog," she raises her eyebrows pointedly at me, "And she needs him right now."
I stand to attention. "Yes, sorry, it's my dog, and I really really need him. Right now."

Even by Italian mothers themselves I've been told it's not just a stereotype - they are truly one of a kind (read: suffocating, overbearing). Usually the kids here have their lunches and snacks provided by the school. So on field trip day the kids come stumbling off the bus with army rucksacks stuffed with panino after panino. The mothers who accompany the class on the trip keep their eight year old sons on their lap the entire time. Assuredly, none of them will leave home until at least thirty four.

As soon as the schoolbuses pull out, Federica locks the door on the classroom, refusing to let me clean up. She heads off to Pisa and I have my aperitivo and nearly fall asleep out in the late afternoon sun.

I found this pretty little plant outside my window. The leaves look like teeny little cuori, no?

One of the best things about working on the farm is that there's not much to be done on the rainy days. Woke up this morning to a thunderstorm, now I get to go back to bed to wait until it dies down.

forza forza

Today on the farm, I finished burning the olive branches fairly early in the day. I was surprised because I didn't think I was good at lighting fires. I had to convince my last "family" that it was a good thing that it took me forty five minutes, two newspapers, a wheelbarrow and a half of tinder and twenty three years of stubbornness to get the stove going. Nobody wants to marry a pyromaniac.

In the lazy hot afternoon I was getting twitchy. For some reason, all the stores in the little nearby town close on Wednesdays, so I couldn't even go get ingredients to bake anything. Finally, I decided to go to Pisa.

I washed my face, grabbed my camera and some euro and marched proudly down to the bus stop only to discover that also the outgoing buses were closed on Wednesdays. Having gone so far already (personal hygiene FOR NOTHING?) I decided that I would take the advice given to me that Europe was very accepting towards hitchikers and tried to autostop.
It took me a good hour to even get up the courage to stick out my thumb but the first time I spotted the first sexually-non-threatening driver and held out my hand - on my way to Pisa.

Upon arrival I managed to make some friends while having an aperitivo. They were genuine Italians and I convinced them they wanted to see the tower. The streets of Pisa are reminiscent of any large, touristy city, like Paris or New York, maybe even Montreal, on smaller scale of course, but the same overpriced convenience stores, stands on the streets selling 10 euro Chanel belts, people holding maps and being in the way. I managed to blend in, I think, thanks to my guides, Antonio and Guido (I'm not even kidding).

We find the tower and I ask them for the history lesson. "It's old."
"How old?"
"Older than that building next to it."


We peruse the pushy vendors and they buy me a bracelet. As I put it on I realize it's nearly time for the last bus back to Fauglia. I have to dash through the frustratingly narrow streets, nearly knocking over a family of three on their bike. I literally run out of my shoes and frantically grab them in my hand and continue barefoot. I'm sure some part of this day must be illegal and I keep trying to remember the useful phrases from my guidebook. "Posso avere un avvocato che parli inglese?" "Questo medicinale e per uso personale."

I run literally straight onto the bus and make it back in time to yell at the sheep until they go back in their stall. The peacock is on the roof ; I give up.

hee haw

My final moments in Mondaino were thank god much less tearful than before. This is because I am instructed to return as soon as possible - before I come back to Canada, and before my other predetermined trip in the fall. A few family members even hide in their rooms firmly stating this is NOT a goodbye.

I make it in one piece to my next location, Fauglia, which is a little town outside of Pisa. No I did not see the tower and I honestly don't plan to.

A beautiful farm wedged in the middle of this little town, it's a glorious old estate which they have been adding onto for about ten years. I get my very own apartment with a KING SIZE BED and there's sometimes working wifi and a better equipped kitchen than I could imagine. I follow Federica around in the morning to feed the animals. Goose eggs are giant. They have a pony, a mule and a donkey. The mule is named Boing. She opens the sheep gate and lights up a Camel and tells me to try leading them out to pasture. I summon up everything I learned from Babe (as you should in most life situations anyways) and eventually they mosey out to the field. They also have a peacock.

In the evening I eat some sort of white blossom off of a tree, breaded and fried and either dusted with sugar or eaten alongside onions. I still am not sure if this was some sort of initiation.

They have bees and produce their own honey, as well as olive oil and different dried herbs and spices. Oh, also I made cheese today, making bread tomorrow.

roughin it