Saturday (3 oct) I went with a fellow Belgian student to Ostia and met with some Romanian people. Nice folks.
Ostia used to be the harbor of Rome, but do to the silt the coastline evolved and the city died out. Anyhow, it's just a beautiful place with a vast amount of ruins. If you ever have the chance to go. I advice you, and if you're an architecture student it's even free for you (like many museums actually).
As Ostia was so vast, after almost two hours and only having seen half, you do get bored of it a bit. Or at least you start to think:"this all looks quite alike". So I made the decision with my new Romanian companion to leave it for now and come back later to see the rest.
As Ostia (i should say Ostia Antica !) is not too far from the seaside we continued to the coast. There I was surprised how black the sand was. Don't know yet why exactly (Volcanic? the Deep Horizon?... :p).
Although the beach is great, I do advice to go a bit further by bus if you have time. The stop with the train isn't the nicest seaside-spot, but at the same time, who cares :)
After our visit to the sea I arrived home and i was told that my german and french flatmates invited some people for dinner. Perfect, then I don't have to cook and always a good way to get to know new people.
After a nice dinner with a fare amount of wine and very nice people including a german who I got to know before and who, I quote: "was half german, a quarter italian and a quarter english", we continued our evening to San Lorenzo. Where some more wine was consumed. The perfect way to end Saturday and get into the atmosphere of Sunday....
Sunday = Marino. A small village in the neighborhood of Rome that has a yearly event: a wine festival. Many event of the day is the fountain of the city that in stead of water starts poring wine =) So everything in the city is wine and panini (little bread with delicious "fresh" pork meat). 1,5l wine = 3 euro.... you can imagine you take more then one sip :p
It's a nice little village were I got to know two funny old women. As I was sitting on a bench they joined us and started speaking Italian. As far as I understood the story, I reminded her of her husband when he was younger (she was 76), a story of their marriage followed and we were offered some juice (the tetra-kindergarden-like cardboard drinks, hilarious, sitting there in the sun on a bench with two older ladies). After some talking (or more listening from my way) she decided I should call her zia Maria (=aunt maria). I guess that's "la dolce vita", making new friends on a bench in the sun... :)
Today=monday (supposed to be D-day, but lets say that didn't really work out). There was a meeting at the school to see what to do with "il sciopero" (=strike). I heard about stories in France where either it's holiday or the schools are on strike.... but maybe it's just something southern. Anyhow after listening (and that's different then comprehending) an hour I decided it had no use and left the meeting. In short: "strike=no lessons till a still undefined day". So my italian classes (i'm in the beginners level, but also there the date for my group isn't know yet, normally i'll know more in 2-3 days) will probably start before the real one... Anyhow to make a short story shorter:
I'm experiencing the Italian way of living :p
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