Failing at Life: Milan

Sorry I haven't really blogged in a while. I'm not a huge fan of this/really lazy, but I will try to get better. Not much has happened since my last blog. We had another cooking class with this woman who was actually 4' 3". I'm not joking, she also had loads of cats, but I'm over it. The night life is getting a little slow around here, we are trying to search for other places to rage. That is a little hard when Verona shuts down at 8PM every night. We did find this dance bar called Time Out and it is hysterical. THey bump house music and techno all night and we all lose our freaking minds. My neck hurt for 2 days after Monday, I'm not kidding. But basically my next blog is dedicated to Milan: the trip that never happened. Here we go...

We've had this Milan trip booked for a few weeks now. It wasn't exactly on my top list of places to go, but a bunch of people were going and so I figured why not? I have to take the train to Milan all the time because most of our flights fly out of there so it would be good to know where to go. Some girls in our group decided to take it upon themselves to book everyone's hostel for them. I thought that was a nice gesture, until I heard about the hostel.

PLEASE NOTE
They did not look at ratings. If they had, they would have seen that it was a 58/100 and had 2 stars. RED FLAG RIGHT THERE. but maybe not everyone has common sense.

I had a bad feeling about this trip the minute I woke up on Friday. But there were a lot of people going so I figured at least we are all in this together. The train ride goes smoothly. We get off at the station, and we realize that we are in a slightly shady area. But oh well, we are in Milan! I was so excited to go out, we had been looking at clubs on the train and they sounded sick. But first we had to get to our hosel. We figured out that it was about a 25 minute walk from the station, so we started walking. The gps we were using took us to an ALLEY. yes and ALLEY. and the hostel was in the ALLEY. oh my dear god. We walk into this jank place and the girls who booked it go in to check us in. BUT OH WAIT. WE WERE SUPPOSED TO CHECK IN AT 5AM NOT 5PM. It was 5:45PM at this point, mind you. AWESOME, we are stranded in the ghetto of Milan with no place to stay because this WINNER of a hostel gave our rooms away. At this point I am ready to head  right back to Verona, but people wanted to see if there was anything else. A group of us decided to look into hotels, but everything was booked. The ghetto hostel gave us the name of another ghetto hostel and said it was "nice and close to the city life" GOOD JOKE BUDDY. I refused to go to this hostel. It was no better than this 2 star place and was the same distance from the city but just in a different direction. NO NO AND HELL NO.

Finally after a lot of wandering and complaining, our group split. Me and 6 other people were so over being in Milan, so we decided to drop like 50 euro each on dinner and call it a night. We show up at this 5 star restaurant looking like HELL with all our bags on us. The waiters thought we were insane but seated us and brought us plate after plate of food and bottles of wine. After i spent 40 euro on dinner and was sufficiently drunk, we hopped back on the train and headed home to Verona.

Milan, we may never meet again.
Next trip, Berlin.....

Eating, Eating and more Eating

I have never ate so much in my entire life than I just did a couple hours ago. I signed up for a cooking class and today was my first day. I am OBSESSED with Italian cooking. The woman that cooked for us is amazing. She was telling us about her family and how she hosts dinners at her house for 5 people or more every night! And Italian dinners are not just your main course and then you leave. It is usually a 4-5 course meal, with dessert and coffee at the end. She cooked the food and we took down notes as to how everything was prepared. She never used any measurements, ever. A pinch to her was a handful. A tablespoon to her was an entire ladle. But all the food was phenomenal. Here'e what we ate. I was considering writing out the recipe but I don't want any of you making it before me, ok here we go:

First:
We started out with some amazing wine calledValplicella which I guess is a wine that is specific to Verona. It was so delicious. I can officially call myself a wine drinker. We also had some cheese and bread.

Then:
We started to make the pizza dough completely from scratch. It was so cool to see how they actually make the dough. We also made the pasta sauce for our spaghetti and the sweet and sour dish called Agro Dolci which is peppers mixed with olive oil, onions, sunflower seeds, and raisins. It's known as a sweet & salty dish. I thought the ingredients were a little odd but it tasted GREAT. I'm about to burst...right now.

Still Going:
We made frittata which has eggs, onions, parsley, tomatoes, bread crumbs and cheese. It is basically an omelette but no omelette

Finally:
More wine, dessert, and oranges. I AM GOING TO BURST

Pizza, pasta, fritatta, peppers, dessert, wine. great night and great food. I'm moving here.

The past two days we went on day trips to Bolzano and Rovereto on Saturday and then Mantua on Sunday. Both places were beautiful cities. Bolzano was very close to the borders of Austria and Germany so both German and Italian were spoken. In Rovereto we toured a wine castle and got to purchase bottles of wine from the vineyard. One of the bottles of wine was 18 euro per bottle and it costs close to $200 in the US! I'm so bummed I didn't buy that one, but I did get one that you can only find in Rovereto, so I was happy.

Rovereto consisted of a lot of castles with AMAZING art work inside. We had a great tour guide who knew everything about both castles that we went to. There was a lot of Greek mythology in the different rooms we saw which I really enjoyed. One of the castles we went to had 500 different rooms! But we only saw about 20 of them. I was happy to leave tho because the castles had NO HEATING WHAT SO EVER so i was a popsicle.

Sunday night we got to go to this outlet mall because Saldi is going on all over Italy right now. It's this huge sale for the month of January and everything is 20% off and upwards. Really great deals, so I was so excited to go to this mall. We drive around in an obnoxiously large tour bus that we all call the space ship. It barely makes turns and I'm pretty sure our bus driver is insane and very horn happy. But the outlet mall was a complete bust and I didn't buy a thing! So pissed off, I need to find a good pair of boots and I won't stop until I find them.

Ciao Verona!

Wow, well I made it through my first week. And what a week it was. From the flight and layover, to the 3 hour bus ride to get to our apartment, to freezing cold showers, I'd say I'm beginning to get the hang of this. Moving into my apartment was a huge change for me, with not knowing my roommates and never really living on my own before, but I have to say that I love it! I get along so well with everyone and we love making dinner together, my mother would be so proud. We did a lot of sightseeing around Verona the first few days and went out on a lot of group dinners which was fun. Wine costs less than water here, which may seem awesome but it is actually really difficult. Natural water is SO hard to come by and it is really expensive. I am always dehydrated. But besides that, THE FOOD IS AMAZING! I am obsessed with everything I've tried and I cannot wait to try more. Last Saturday our entire group went out to this bar called Campus, which is basically Kams. Although the drinks are very pricey (4 euro for a beer!?) it is a great time. After a few late nights and a lot of hungover mornings, I finally decided to take it easy for a night and hang out at my apartment. We stopped at CHOCOLATE FEST which is the best thing in the entire world, and I had my first real Italian cannoli. It was to die for! After getting lost and lost and then lost again, I have blisters and need to sleep. More to come later...

We are going on our first group trip tomorrow to Bolzana, and then Mantova on Sunday. I'll let you all know how it is soon! and pics!!