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Well, I have finally found a new place to rest my head. I am living with Christine and her 12 year-old son Simon. They are German speakers and live in a mostly German neighborhood. There are little stores with South Tyrolian breads and women wearing traditional clothing! Things are good and Simon is a really cool kid. We've talked about politics (he's for the green party), movies, sports. You name it.
There are two brothers in Bolzano from Rhode Island who play hockey for the Bolzano hockey team and they hooked me up with two free tickets to the season opener and I invited Simon since I didn't know who to invite. Bolzano won! The crowd was kind of lame though. Christine let me borrow her car. Well, I had a lot to learn because she has this little red fiat from the 70's. They sure don't make cars like that anymore. The best part is you can park it anywhere!
In the mean time I continue to intern. Never a glorious thing, but hopefully the last time I will have to do that!
Last weekend I walked up to the Runkstein (Roncolo) Castle. Pretty cool place with lots of medieval fresoes. (picures in photo gallery)
I am noticing some funny things after living in Italy for a while. For example, at the post office they insist on putting ink stamps on everything by hand. Yesterday I was there and there was someone who had to mail a lot of letters. I think the lady got a strange joy out of stamping hard like 20 times in a row....boom, boom, boom. Crazy. While I was there I also had to deposit some checks. That is like the longest process ever and the money isn't acessible for two weeks! In America we have a machine that electronically reads the account number and verifies if the money is in the account immediately and so you can cash checks. Not here. Forget about it. One other thing that I find somewhat absurd is the Italian obsession with "privacy" and "securtiy from terroism". Two very American inventions. There are all these crazy laws about privacy that don't allow you to do anything. Then there are these terrorist security laws that limit many freedoms that in America we take for granted. For example, I work in an office for the province, which is a governmental institution. My computer at work, for security reasons, in blocked from allowing me to download ANYTHING....even clip art from Microsoft's webpage. An in addition to that, the province feels that wi-fi puts the sensitive data on the province's service at risk and so wi-fi is band in the governmental offices. AND in Italy if you want to offer wi-fi in a library or an internet cafe or in a hotel or anywhere, as a provider of that service you have to have every user's information IN CASE they happen to be terrorist's and use your service to blow up the world or something. It all has to be traceable and the provider is responsible. This limits so many things...no wi-fi at starbuck's or panera. No wi-fi at the airport. NO WI-FI practically anywhere. Now, in the States, who are the one's who invented all this security bla bla, we don't have a law like this and the government is moving towards making wi-fi like a public service and making it accessible everywhere. I don't quite understand the Italian reasoning....so if some terrorist downloads something because he is using my wi-fi service, what do I have to do with it? It is like if you want to use my public payphone to make a phonecall about terorrist activity first you have to fill out a whole bunch of forms and basically sign off your life so in case the government in court traces your phonecall to my payphone we have all your personal info. craziness
Last but not least, an Italian colleague here who speaks a little English was joking with me about how his luggage was lost in an airport somewhere in europe where he didn't speak the language so he had to use his little English. He said that in the end, in this situation, you just need to know two Nike comericals and you'll be fine (NIke advertises in English even in Italy): Just Do It. Impossible is Nothing. There you go. Lesson one for survival English when in an airport with lost luggage.
l.g. |
