Verona: Where I learned about Canada

So it's been a good 3+ months since I was at these places. But I still day dream nearly every day. Today in class my Spanish teacher asked who had been to Spain and mentioned Malaga, Sevilla, Madrid, and Burgos. After that, my mind was in Spain, not in the classroom in Arts and Sciences. I was walking through airports, flying on planes, crossing cobblestone streets, standing on bridges, walking along rivers. I was anywhere but in class. Senor, you just can't DO that to me.

And the other night my body might have been in my bed in Columbia, but my mind was in Turin with Silvia and Enrico. I was in Silvia's house, up on the mountain in the monastery, at the restaurant where I had dinner with her family. I couldn't get to sleep. I couldn't get the beautiful scenery out of my mind. It hurt my heart. I just want to travel. But luckily, Bri and I have been talking about where we'd like to go for spring break. We've got a place that seems really good and it's getting me really excited.

But now about Verona.

So Sohae and I parted ways after Rome (on June 8th), and I took a looong train ride north to Verona. It was like 6 hours and three legs on the train. It was weird. One leg I was with a bunch of smelly old men who took off their shoes and put up their feet on the seats. Another, my last leg, a father and his son struck up a conversation with me. And it made me a little nervous. They asked me where I was from and I said I was from the US. They said "oh." And I asked where they were from and they said "Pakistan." And I became a little nervous. We had been warned a little while ago by our study abroad advisor about "anti-American sentiment." So I was nervous. And I tried to be super endearing and polite. I mean, normally I wouldn't have been worried. I try to not be stereotypical. But come on, we just killed Osama in Pakistan. I was nervous. But luckily they got off not too long after. But they did repeatedly look back at me after they got off the train. But the train continued on to Verona.

I got into Verona very late at night. And I had instructions from the hostel to catch a certain bus out of the train station to get to the hostel. Well I waited and waited. I asked the drivers if they went to my part of town and I kept getting conflicting answers. But I kept waiting. And I big black guy from some part of Africa came up to me and asked if he could sit next to me. I said "sure, I guess." So he sat down and started talking to me. He asked me a bunch of questions and I lied my butt off. Yes I'm 22 and I have a boyfriend back in the states and I'm meeting up with friends in my hostel tonight. No we can't meet up later while I'm in town. I'm not staying for that long. Sorry. Luckily he didn't push anything. But then my bus came. Kinda.

I got on the bus and the driver said he wasn't heading to where I needed to go but he'd be driving that way eventually. So I hopped on because I was tired of waiting at the bus stop. So the driver took his sweet time and took a break for a coffee with a woman on the bus and then headed toward where I needed to go. So I got to the hostel eventually. And it was pretty nice inside. Kinda just like a regular apartment. So when I got there a boy and girl were sitting in the kitchen talking. They were both travelers, staying at the "hostel." And I was exhausted. So I just introduced myself, unpacked a little, and went to bed. The next day I walked around Verona and explored a little. It was rainy for a bit but not for too long.

During the day I went and got lost and visited the arena (Verona's Colosseum) and Juliet's house and some churches. Juliet's house was really cool. If you've seen the movie Letters to Juliet, it's pretty accurate, except for one important thing. They had the balcony and the graffiti and the lover's locks and everything. But you couldn't leave a letter in the wall! You could only leave her an email. Come on. And it cost money to get into the house so I didn't do that. But I rubbed the statues breast for good luck. (Funnily enough, I found the twin's statue in Navy Pier! And it said it was a gift from the city of Verona. That was really exciting to stumble across that this summer.) But anyway, I saw her famous balcony. I also got to climb the clock tower and see the whole city.















And I visited a private garden, that was also pretty expensive, and walked around. But it was really pretty so it was worth it. And one day I attended mass in Italian and I was so proud of myself because I could kind of understand it since it's so similar to Spanish. I visited the church again and did a little praying because I felt like it had been a while.


I don't remember much more but that evening a girl showed up. Her name was Ashley and she was from Toronto. She reminded me very very much of a girl I know from Mizzou named Audrey. Like, Ashley was tall and blonde, and they had the same personality. It was pretty funny to me. But I had a lot of fun with her. That night we went to dinner together along the river (which was quite possibly the dirtiest yet fastest river I had ever seen) at a nice family restaurant. The waitress spoke really good English and she made some good recommendations. Ashley and I each got some yummy wine and then dessert too. And some sort of pasta. We helped her with her English a little (she didn't know how to say cinnamon) and we sat there for a while and just enjoyed Verona and talked about our lives.

It was so interesting to learn about Canada. I was pretty ignorant about it before. We talked about her school system and the money system and the drinking age and the French population and the requirement to learn French in school. She talked about the city and the country and the popular cities and it was SO interesting. I learned that so much American money ends up in the Canadian money system. She showed me some of their coins and the nickles and dimes and pennies look so similar. I'm sure you've seen them before. And did you know they have coins for the dollar and two dollar, just like the Euro. But they call their one dollar coin the "loonie", because it has a loon on it. And they call the two dollar coin a "two-nie" HA! How clever!

She also told me about their drinking age and how, of course, like everywhere else in the world, it's 18 but in some areas, it's 16! So sometimes she and her friends would cross the providence lines and buy alcohol and then bring it back. I thought that was funny. I believe she was a year younger than me. She was traveling around Europe for 6 weeks. After we split ways, she headed to Florence and then some other places in Italy. I believe she had come from France.

So anyway, we had dinner then went back to the hostel. We talked about sharing this Verona tourist pass. You buy it and you get into the churches and museums and stuff. So the next day, she got up early and did tourist stuff and I layed in bed and read The Other Boleyn Girl. I'm sure she thought I was wasting my time in Italy, but I was EXHAUSTED. I just needed to chill. I needed a rest. So I rested, she visited stuff. Then she came back, I used her pass and visited stuff. It worked out well. We also found an internet cafe.

Sometime while we were together, not sure when, we got some lunch at a quaint bakery. At another time we walked into town together and looked for Romeo's house. Then that night we got dinner. And at night we went out with some other people from the hostel and it was all wishy washy, nobody wanted to make a decision and nobody knew what they wanted to do, and places were closing, and the kitchens were closing. All I wanted to do was get wine. And we didn't. So it was kinda a bust of a night. But we hung out with a Brazilian kid and that was cool.

Then next day, both Ashley and I were leaving Verona. She left before I did but we exchanged emails. (I have yet to see if she made it back to Canada. I feel bad.) But my train left around 11 so I headed to the internet cafe again to check some things. I decided to leave early enough where I could walk to the train station. So I started my trek and a few blocks from the station, SHIT! I realized I left my drivers license at the internet place. I had used it as collateral and forgot to pick it up. I was in deep trouble. So I booked it the rest of the way to the train station. I didn't have much time before my train left so I convinced people to let me skip ahead in the taxi line and took a taxi to the internet and back to the station. What a waste of money. I was upset. I was worried I'd miss my train. But luckily I didn't. I purchased my ticket and was on my way to Turin to meet up with my Italian friends.