Waves of Emotion

25th - 30th September 2016

The weekend stretched my birthday celebration as we traveled to Lake Garda (Riva Del Garda). This lake is quite large.

I live north of here!

There was only one bus leaving from the bus station that morning, and it was was Riva Del Garda (Lake Garda), I wonder if they were just lazy? (I guess I should be happy that they had at least one bus). The price of a return ticket was about 7 EUR and I was very pleased. The ride itself was quite fun, I had never seen so many long tunnels before. It always awes me when I realise that humans drilled through a mountain so that we could travel and be connected.

Some of my friends were having trouble since there were so many turns in this mountainous road, I just tried my best to be distracted while making conversation.

We reached the vast lake and decided to walk around to find the perfect spot. Alas! we were unable to find one further down the lake so we came back and found a nice spot. There are certain areas that are safe for swimming but they feel so small as compared to the vast lake. There were people water boarding, diving and sailing on yachts as well. It was quite a sight to behold; black suits suddenly emerging from the waters (sounds like a scary movie!).

We went to have lunch in the city nearby and found a pizza place (we always eat pizza everywhere!). I ordered the Viennese (the one with cut sausages on it), and to my surprise, the server called it the 'Kid's pizza' as he placed it before me. It does make sense to me and I felt quite embarrassed while eating it (I will still buy it again I'm sure!). The servers spoke some English and I guess it is to be expected of tourist towns. There were so many couples near us who were drinking wine with their lunch and I remembered how that was quite common in France; but I guess it is a European trend. I would love to have grape juice instead of water at a meal, after all, water was for pagans right? (reminds me of the Gatorade phenomenon in the movie, Idiocracy).

(^__^)

One thing that I notice here is that there are many people that have little dogs. I for one, wouldn't want a little dog because I feel that I would step on the little creature. But, it's quite sad when I see people walking and their dogs trying really hard to match their pace. Little dogs have little feet after all.

The waters were cool, but not cool enough to give you hypothermia (I think). The immersion is the hardest part, after that it feels almost natural. The waves near the shore were quite fierce and as we swam towards a floating raft nearby I almost felt like I could die when I saw the waves coming towards me. It's surprising how much fear envelopes you when you see an insurmountable, uncontrollable force coming towards you. Nature is something that causes that fear in us.

(^__^)

The trip back was quite interesting, there were so many people on the bus who were standing since the seats were full. I cannot believe that is allowed in a part of the world where safety is a rather high concern. I felt like this bus was a normal transportation bus when it seemed like a coach to me (like Greyhound maybe). And similar to public transport, the old ladies were granted seats thanks to some thoughtful youths (yes, I would have done it as well but the people in front beat me to it).

(^__^)

My friend from Vietnam gave me an interesting food item, it was yum!

Literally translated: Printed cake

Typical Trento family

I like how bicycle companies anticipate that the children want to with the parents when they move around the city. They came up with cycles that have child seats on them! Brilliant.

(^__^)

One of my friends went to get a haircut, guess how much a trim costs? 30 EUR. I'd rather have 10 gelatos(I could get three scoops of gelato for 3 EUR!)

Many of my classmates have their surnames ending with 'ini' like Agnellini, Agostini, Antonini. I originally assumed it to be a plural form of a name (like the plural of PANINO is PANINI). And what I found out is actually a very simply fact. They all mean 'son of'; therefore, 'son of Agnellino', 'son of Agostino', and 'son of Antonino'. Life is easy again!

One friend had the surname of 'Pan', too bad she didn't have a brother named 'Peter'. Even if she did pronounce her name like 'pahn', not 'pan'.

 (^__^)

I went to the famous Thursday market today! They have everything, from socks to frying pans and everything in between. I have been in need of a blanket since I know that it will get cold in the winter so I came here to get a good price. I learned some new words while Google Translating (can we make that a word?)

PIUMONE - duvet
PIU - more
DISEGNI - designs (I had asked for more designs, I got the pronunciation wrong though "di-se-nyay")

[Hi everyone! I apologise for not posting for so long, apart from being busy, my internet has been failing me constantly. Just bad luck this week I suppose. Please keep reading! I shall post again very soon! This week again for sure!]