Stupid Crowded Boot

Well, then, I have been in Italy for 5 days, and seen that many cities. I left Verona yesterday, merely on principle, as it was time to be moving on. I fly from Parma to London on Wednesday, an event I am sincerely looking forward to, and plan to stay around north-central Italy until then.

In that vein, I took a train yesterday to Bergamo, upon the advice of someone who'd already been there, and soon realised it was a mistake. The details will follow later, once I have more time to type, but the long and short of it is that the ONLY hostel in town had a bed for only one night, and that I had to leave today.

This I did, as soon as I was up, as it was raining and nasty and there was no sense in staying. All I saw of Bergamo was the hostel, a pizza restaurant, and the 4 miles I put down getting between the three.

I went to Milano. Not because I especially wanted to, but because I thought that I'd might as well, as it's just one of those places. This, also, was a mistake. The town was equally soggy, looked miserable, was expensive, and offered NO hostels. The cheapest hotel wasn't, so I got back on the train and went south to Parma, where I'm flying from this coming week. There were 2 hostels in Parma, the woman at the Information desk told me, though one was showed on none of the printed maps of the city, as it was miles away. The other was booked full. I got BACK on the train, and went 13 miles down the track to some city whose name I don't even know, but the Parman information clerk booked me a room in.

Here I am now. The location is tolerable, and I'm sharing a room with a Japanese gent named Akiro. He's great. We played frisbee for awhile, had a beer, talked a bit, and he'll head to Venezia tomorrow. Finding and losing, that's the way of it.

I've met a few Asian folks this time around: 2 South Korean guys(Morrie and Moon), and a guy(Akiro) and girl (Miho) from Japan. I've discovered something about Asians: if you ask them if they speak English, and they say "Ahhh...leetle." What they mean is that they are fully conversant. If you ask the standard European the same, expect the same response, be they a public service employee, retail salesperson, or random person on the street. What THEY mean, however, is that they plan on answering your next question with "No" whether you ask them if you can brush their teeth, or what the sum of 3 and 5 is.

Any rate, the past few days theme song has been Moby's "Natural Blues."

For what it's worth, Tim Newberry (pretend this is a link to www.seeyabye.blogspot.com) will be eating at my favourite American pizza parlour this weekend. He'll be in Atlanta, and is supposed to be finding one of the local Mellow Mushroom Pizza Companies there. Best of luck to him...

Happy Belated Birthday to Vinnie King...

And Ciao to the rest of y'all...