Uncle Traveling Matt: Italy Recap

May 25, 2008

Italy Recap

I'm sorry this has taken longer than expected, but I've had so many things going on, I haven't had the energy to update this. Anyway, some news--finally!

My first couple of a weeks in Italy didn't go particularly smoothly. I got sick and had a lot of difficultly eating well due to staying at a hostel in the middle of nowhere. I ended up losing about 8kg in weight in the course of 2 weeks, which isn't particularly good. I also was having a very hard time finding somewhere to live, I was struggling with my Italian and not being in the best of health wasn't helping either.

During all of this I was still trying to get some of work done. However after finding out that both of my Vodafone sim cards had been cancelled and buying new ones, I found there was almost no Internet coverage at the hostel, so I had to sit outside in the cold to upload my work, often at 33.6kbps modem speeds and then go back inside to get AC power. Then I got robbed they took my cell phone (so I lost everyone's phone numbers and all my the text messages I'd saved from my girlfriend) and the plug adapter to plug in my laptop, so was completely cut off for several days and couldn't get any work done either. A replacement adapter also turned out very difficult to find, as there's no Dick Smith's or Travel Stores kicking about here.

Fortunately in the end I managed to find a nice house, though it wasn't available straight away and I ended up staying at this other place temporary. This is where things started to get better, as the girl I was sharing it with was Australian and had an Aussie to European plug adapter (was use the same plugs in New Zealand), so I was able to use my computer for the week it took to find a replacement. I had to buy a new cell phone, fortunately since the sim card in the stolen phone was only 2 days old, they were able to transfer my number and credit. This proved very fortunate was there was an expats get together in Florence I had been invited to however the directions were on the stolen phone, no problem I thought call/sms and ask, hmm numbers where all on the phone too, excellent. In the end I waited around 2 hours until my friend Nicki called and asked if I was still coming.

Since then I've been pretty boring, just trying to get through the backlog of work and get my health back up to 100%. I'm back to my normal weight now and exercising regularly etc, health ok though a little run down again at the moment, as I worked too many long hours this last week... not much else to report. The apartment I ended up getting is in Santa Croce, it's quite a nice place modern with aluminium joinery, double glazed and new appliances etc. I'm sharing a room to keep costs down, as this place and Italy in general is very expensive. In the apartment is an Italian, a Mexican, a Canadian and an Aussie, all guys, 5 of us in total. Below is a picture of my side of the room, I did a bit of shopping at Ikea as the room was pretty bare before (the photo with the plant is newer).