Exploits of a Shameless Adrenaline Junkie: LBD's, Self-guided vineyard tours, and Roman Stalkers OH MY!

<-- Ross, myself and Fiona

The adventure continues. I stayed up WAY to late on Sunday night/Monday morning and did not manage to drag myself out of bed until 10:30am or so. Oy ve. However, true to form, I was able to create enough adventures in one day to compose a sizeable blog entry. Here's the rundown:

1) I went to CB Outlet (the "discount" store in town) and managed to have enough of a dialogue in Italian (thank you Lonely Planet phrasebook!) to find the right size, ask the price, find a dressing room, and ultimately spend WAY too many Euros. Sometimes its better not to do the conversion in your head. But I bought an awesome euro-trash outfit (pantalones azul e una camisa amarillo that reads "Only boring people get bored" in black sequins) AND the most gorgeous LBD (Little Black Dress) EVER. No pics of that yet, but assuming that it still fits after all the yummy food I have been consuming, I will be wearing it soon. YAY!

2) After my purchases, I grabbed lunch at la cafeteria municipale then started walking. The town of Alba is surrounded by hills and I decided that I wanted to find one and walk up it. So I started walking up through neighborhoods and eventually got to a street that dead-ended into a little dirt path through the woods. Why not? I followed it. And came upon a HUGE open vineyard at the side of a hill. Having never been to a vineyard, I decided that the only logical thing to do would be to walk through it to the top of the hill. My reward: a SPECTACULAR view of the whole valley. It was fabulous. My other reward was a very muddy pair of New Balances. Turns out grapes are planted in clay which adds about 10 pounds (I'm not lying) to your shoes when it sticks to them. Totally worth the walk. I think I shall walk up another hill in a couple days.

3) After my self-guided vineyard tour, I decided I needed to head back down so I could have time for a shower before rehearsal. I got to the end of Via Vittorio Emmanuele (the street off which I live) and this random Italian guy starts talking to me. Which isn't THAT abnormal, but this one was sketch and also not from Northern Italy (Northern Italians and Southern Italians look markedly different.) I kept trying to tell him in broken Italian to go away, I did not WANT to have coffee with his dumb ass, but he kept following me and calling me "mi Bella" in very "Eurotrip"-esque manner. Finally, I spotted Beverly Babcock (SMCM Piano Faculty) walking in the opposite direction and ran to start talking to her. The skeezball KEPT following me. We went into a large courtyard where her rehearsal was off of, and also the music school. The guy kept looking into it. I was trying to wait until the music school opened so I could cut through it to another street, but they never unlocked the door. I eventually crawled through a window and made a McGuiver-esque escape back to my apartment.

The window I escaped through -->

4) The rest of my day was comparably tame. I had aperitivo, followed by rehearsal, followed by aperitivo parte due, followed by a concert (yay for timpani parts in modern pieces!!) in a GORGEOUS church (Chiesa San Domenica), followed by post-concert aperitivo and dinner at 11:30pm. That's how we roll in Italia. Fabrizio showed up and we decided that since I would have the next day (Wednesday) off, I would take a bus/train to his town of Savigliano (Savi Beach for short) and hang out then meet him after work for aperitivo and dinner before heading back to Alba.

The power of Christ compels you!!! -->

5) It was a characteristically crazy night out with the SMCM students/staff and the Scots. I ended up having drinks with Jen (the violaist) and her Italian friends who were all quite pissed (inebriated). I did try my first grappa. Kind of stiff in a Scotch-type way. It was very amusing listening to drunk Italians make crude jokes and try to translate them to English via hand gesture.