Piccolo. No,piu piccolo.

Stupid web advertising. You got me.
There I was, minding my own beeswax perusing the interwebs, when lo and behold I came across an advert for a Macy's luggage sale. I tried for about 2 seconds to summon the willpower. I told myself, "No don't..". Click! I swear once I looked I could feel my synapses poppin'. The Kraken had been released. Macy's of course didn't have what I wanted. I didn't want a rolling suitcase. No I didn't want a suitcase at all. You intrepid hostel dwelling, vagabonding, and flashpacking hobos know what I want.  I WANT A NEW BACKPACK!

     How can this be? I just got a new one last year! And another new one the year before that! I am Brknsuitcase and as my info implies I am always on the hunt for the one piece of luggage that will make my life super easy when I'm travelling. I do love my Kelty Redwing 50 that I got last year, but it was precisely that bag that has me wanting a new one. I had a whiff of the good life doing carry-on only. Bangkok to Siem Reap flight was the exception  (plane was smallish) and even then they let me put it in the empty seat next to me. I loved that I was able to throw it in the overhead bin for most of the plane rides I took last year. I loved not having scary thoughts of wearing the same underwear for a week or two because of lost luggage.  I loved that I didn't have to find and then wait for the baggage carousel. I loved the pockets of the Redwing which allowed me to tuck and store things quickly and easily with all the outside pockets. The only thing I didn't like about it were the straps dangling and flapping everywhere. Oh, and with carry-on only comes great responsibility and shoulder aching from carrying 15lbs on your back all the damn time.

     I, quite frankly, thought I did splendidly last year with weight, but I was comparing it to the year before that where I thought I was the shit for getting myself down to 25lbs. Which I compared with the year before that when I wheeled around a whopping 40 pounds in a huge suitcase. I was thinking maybe I could get myself down to 10lbs this year, but I think it's a pipe dream. This is Italy, not exactly a steamy tropical climate. And I will never again go a week wearing the same smelly shirt because it was the only one I packed and couldn't get to a laundry. This time, I would like to be fresh and have fashion choices. I want to layer like a boss! I also think the airlines changed their carry-on baggage requirements again so the 50L won't work anymore and I do NOT want to go back to checking in. Nevah! So I'm looking at you 40L. Can I go this low? Do I dare to dream?

     I've looked at Amazon, Rei.com, Sierra Trading Company, and theclymb. So far the Osprey Farpoint 40 and the Rei Vagabond 40 packs look the best. Everything else looks out of my price range. I'm planning on hitting REI and my local owned gear shop next week to try on some stuff to see how it fits. Of course I will let you know how it went! Don't fret!

     In other news, I am still learning Italian. I kind of gave up on Assimil. I didn't feel like anything was sinking in. So I started doing Duolingo which helped me understand how to put a sentence together. I'm also paying a tutor on italki and having conversations with people on my days off and doing Pimsleur sometimes 2 or 3 lessons a day. I'm going h.a.m. until packing day. I still speak like a drunk toddler, but now I think if I landed today in Italy I could order a drink and tell someone where I want to go and what I want to do. Per esempio, "Vorrei comprare un backpack!".

   

Meh

  Have you ever been kinda 'meh' over a travel destination? I am super excited about going to Italy, but I am not really looking forward to a couple of the cities where I'm stopping, namely Rome and Venice. It's not like I could get away with NOT going to either one. It is an absolute necessity from a first timer to Italy point of view. Not going to either or neither would probably be considered sacrilege. Everyone I've heard from regarding these two cities have told me that it's really overrun with tourists (like me, the IRONY), it's full of long lines for major sites, and pickpockets. Their stories are filling me with a sort of dread. I am the kind of tourist that likes the off-the-beaten-path cities/towns. This is very hard to find in Italy, especially without a car, but I think I've settled into a nice compromise of two biggies and two very small towns (more on that later).

Then again, I think I shouldn't be dumb and let others dictate my feelings on a place when I haven't seen it for myself yet. After all, I was told I'd probably get kidnapped when I went to Brazil and the same for Colombia. I was also told I would experience some pretty bad racism in Japan...and nothing could've been further from the truth. In fact I had the best travel experiences of my life in these places. I don't think anything bad will happen in Rome or Venice, but I'm a little leery of the general atmosphere. I don't think anyone wants to be thought of as a walking dollar/euro sign, but this is the general impression I'm getting from folks who've been there. To sort of offset the feeling of being a fanny-pack wearing camera toting ohh ahh tourist, I've booked an apartment in Rome and am staying a bit back from the hordes in St. Marks square in Venice. I'm hoping this will give me a better feel of the cities.

On the flip side there are two cities that I'm completely excited about experiencing. One of which is Matera. I'm going to stay in one of the cave hotels. It looks like it's going to be an utter bitch to get there and to make matters worse, the order of cities on my itinerary is completely jacked. I must've been high! So I'm going to hope that there's a plane out of Bari, the closest town to Matera with an airport, to get me back north. Another town where I'm stopping is Spello, somewhere in Umbria. Someone suggested I go to Spoleto, but I wanted to go somewhere smaller and maybe a little more peaceful.

Oh yeah, I've scaled back my original itinerary quite a bit to 5 cities. Venice, Rome, Matera, Spello, Milan. I don't want to constantly worry about how I'm going to get myself to the train station every 2 days. It's a vacation, I want it to feel like one. I also stopped practicing Italian, but am restarting today. It just got overwhelming in my mind and it still is. I still don't understand what I'm saying or why, but I'm just going to trust the process and hope for the best. Like Rome and Venice. :D

Learning Italian. #$%^%& !

     Uh oh. This doesn't bode well. I already feel defeated. I just got the Assimil Italian last Tuesday and was super excited. I've done lessons 1 and 2 and feel like a lost babe in the woods. I think my first mistake was not starting off with Pimsleur. One thing that Pimsleur is very good at is getting you comfortable with speaking the language bit by bit. You can also pick up some small grammatical points such as feminine and masculine words. It is very good with providing you knowledge on how the target language works. Pimsleur is the foreplay, Assimil is the sex. I obviously have skipped the foreplay and jumped right into the sex.

     Suffice to say, I am uncomfortable. I thought, well, I have knowledge of quite a few romance languages so Italian should be a breeze, I don't need Pimsleur. Right now I'm doing all the steps and shadowing with Assimil, but I feel I'm just memorizing the pages and can't really grasp why I'm saying what I'm saying if that makes any sense. I don't have the vocabulary nor grammatical groundwork to understand it. It also doesn't help that words generally roll right into one another so you can't really nail individual words down. It's like you almost have to learn entire sentences sometimes. Most romance languages are like this in some cases, in Italian it's relentless.  On a happier note I love how sing-songy the language is. After mastering lesson 1, I felt exuberant just speaking it. It's that kind of language. No wonder Italians are known for being passionate. Their language reflects it!

     Also this version of Assimil with the mp3 (ed. 1991) looks very different than the Assimil French with Ease. It is denser and there's no funny little dialogues..at least not yet. The lessons right off the bat feel a bit longer than the ones in the French book and also unlike the French book, it's taking me 2 or 3 days for each lesson. For French with Ease I was sailing along with maybe an hour or so for mastering each lesson until I hit the wall with Lesson 9 or 10 and had to slow my roll considerably. I am considering stopping here in Assimil and start up Pimsleur and work with it for a little bit before jumping to lesson 3. It's just as well since I'm still stumbling my way through lesson 2 in Assimil.

     While I'm on this subject, I feel the need as a beginner to review the programs I've used.

Assimil - I love these books! Even with all my bitching here, I am able to recall entire sentences not only from Italian, but from French also which I abandoned about a week ago. If you employ shadowing in your lessons, this will also help your pronunciation immensely. I think once you have a foundation down with your target language, then start work on Assimil. Since I had zero knowledge about Italian I'm (obviously) finding it more difficult to get up to speed just using Assimil.  It was fine for French as I had a bit of familiarity with it before starting. So if you're starting a language from scratch, I recommended getting a bit of familiarity with some basic vocab and grammar rules first.

Pimsleur- Great for getting your feet wet and also to use in conjunction with Assimil. Alone won't get you fluent nor will it help you a whole lot while out in the world of your target language unless the person you encounter in your target language also follows the Pimsleur script. However, it will help you tremendously with recall and speaking under pressure. I wish I had it the first time I tried learning French and then went to Paris. Maybe my mind wouldn't have gone completely blank when I tried speaking to someone for the first time. No transcripts though, so I hope you have keen hearing.

Rosetta Stone - I actually still have an online subscription for this for French, but I've also tried Japanese and Spanish (software versions). It's good for drilling vocabulary words, but that's pretty much all I've gotten from it.

Living Language - Tried this for Portuguese, Spanish, and Japanese. When I finish Assimil, this is what I will turn to next.. This is where you learn grammar rules and why you say the things you say. Also very nice vocabulary lists in these books as well. For Japanese, I highly suggest you get something geared toward reading/writing and speaking. Between Rosetta Stone and LL, I would say I used LL the most, I was completely illiterate, but it wasn't my goal to read/write in the language. If it was both of these would be useless.

Semantica -  I used this the second time I went to Brazil. It's a really cool educational video series with an actual storyline. I am going to use it again to relearn what I've lost.

Memrise and Duolingo - Addictive and fun. Something to do while you're in a waiting room or on your lunch break.

     As far as my travel itinerary goes, it's still a work in progress. It turns out Lecce might be a bit difficult without a car as you have to take buses from the city to get to the nice beaches. And I keep hearing the buses aren't so reliable to and fro especially nearing the off season. So now since hitting a beach might be off limits, I am thinking of going to this town called Matera. It looks positively beautiful and the chance to stay in a cave hotel is almost irresistible. Or maybe I will just go to Amalfi and hang out there for week. We shall see.

Okay, I've vented and whined...now back to the books!

Vive la Fran..*cough*.. Viva l'Italia!

Hey y'all! I'm going to France Italy! This shit happens everytime I have my mind on a set destination. Some other destination comes waving its pretty cheap fare in my face and I have to take advantage. Suddenly the place I'd been enamored with for months is thrown out the window and I fall in love with the new place instantly. This one was a difficult decision and it still stings a little. I've spent months attempting to learn French for this trip I've been longing to take for a very long time..that has once again been thrown by the wayside and now I gotta start from ZERO and learn some Italian. Unless I can totally get by saying 'pizza' all day, it's going to be a necessity.
   
     I also knew next to nothing about Italy in the travel sense either, but you can bet your ass I boned up really quickly after I bought the ticket. I now have somewhat of an itinerary already, dumb as it is. I actually have two possible itineraries: one for just Italy and one for Italy/France just in case. I must say at the moment I'm completely leaning towards just giving up the France ghost and just go for Italy. It just seems more exhausting to cross borders even though it really isn't. I would have to catch the same amount of trains I think for each itinerary, but for France I would probably also have to rent a car. It's almost the same cost for hotels with the only Italy itinerary being 100 USD more expensive. And boy is it expensive! I've been tooling around to places where the US dollar is king for a long time and now I'm faced with the euro making the dollar a pauper. I'm flying into/out of Milan and I swear I can't find a decent hotel under 250 US. I tried the two hostels that looked decent and of course neither has availability for when I want to stay. So as soon as I land, I'm getting the fuck outta there and hightailing it to Rome.

     I also promised myself that I would really take it easy on being a kamikaze traveler like I did last trip. Last year was fantastic/epic, but I swear running to airports every few days was wearing. It started to feel like Bangkok airport was my home after a while. It's a huge dilemma. In my heart I would like to maybe go to one or two places and just chill out, but in my head I think I'm never coming back here and I need to see as much as possible. The head is winning and my itinerary suggests that. So here we go again, except this time with train stations.

     Another thing I've been struggling with is where to go in Italy. You always want to hit spots that are 'must see' in a country, but for this trip I've put together a list of 'Why is this not on the list?' spots. For instance, for the Italy only trip I've left off Florence and Venice. Why? This is probably sacrilege for any first timer going to Italy. I've wanted to go to Venice forever, but as I read more about it (tourist overrun, super expensive hotels, crap food, and virtually nothing to do after 6pm), it's way less appealing. Florence, I've read, is also crowded with tourists. Also it's appealing to actually hear Italian while you're in Italy and not some Joe from Idaho ordering spaghetti. I love my people, but if I wanted to vacation in America I would. I want to actually miss hearing my own language and fight my way through theirs. Italy is a huge tourist destination and there's virtually nowhere I could go that hasn't been done before by billions of others before me.  Rome isn't a little out of the way spot, but I feel like I've achieved a bit of a happy medium of 'Yeah I've seen that city in movies!' and 'Umm..where?'.

As of now, here's what my work in progress Italy only and Italy/France itineraries look like.

Italy
Day 1- Fly into Milan, train straight to Rome
Day 1 - 4 Rome
Day 4 - 6 Naples
Day 6 - 8 Salerno
Day 8 - 12 Lecce
Day 12 - 13 (?? train to Ferrara via Bologna)
Day 13 - 15 Ferrara
Day 15 - 20 Lake Como or Garda
Day 20 - 23 Milan (fly home)

Italy/France (It's pretty friggin' bonkers I admit)
Day 1 - Fly into Milan, gtfo to Rome.
Day 1- 4 Rome
Day 4 - 6 Genoa (yes I know I'm backtracking)
Day 6 - 10 Eze/Nice
Day 10 - 15 Arles
Day 15 - 20 Marseille
Day 20 - 23 Milan (fly home)

So there you have it for now. It'll probably be changed a billion times before I leave, I'm fickle that way.






                

Psycho Killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?

     Do they have serial killers in France? I was thinking yesterday about the crazy chances I take with myself when I'm in a foreign country, that I would never in a zillion years do here in the United States. Of course, I have all the modern conveniences of home so there's really no need for me to put any huge amount of trust in complete strangers. However, when I'm alone in a foreign country where I don't know anyone, I have to do this from time to time. I wind up doing something stupid inevitably which puts myself in a bit of jeopardy. Case in point, a few years ago when I was in Brazil leaving the Cristo Rendentor monument, I sniffed my nose at all the cab drivers below at the exorbitant price they were charging to take me back to my B&B. I have no idea what I was thinking, just that maybe I would catch one down the mountain. I completely forgot that it was a very long way down, but by that time I had walked so far that turning back seemed almost as foolish. The road down was pretty abandoned with plenty of woods around and taxis racing around the mountain with passengers that had good common sense.

     Each step, I started thinking of all the horrible things that could happen. Someone could've swiped me right there and no one would've been the wiser. I started singing the happiest song I could think of to take my mind off the absolute fear I was experiencing, "I'm a little teapot short and stout, here is my handle here is my spout.'. All of a sudden a car came racing around the curve and came to a complete stop a few feet ahead. I froze and the car backed up to me. I thought, 'Oh shit this is it! This is the part of the trip where I get murdered.', and spent a couple of seconds mentally telling my family I loved them. A woman was in the car, she rolled down the passenger side window and in portuguese asked if I needed a ride. This my friends, is why it is SUPER helpful, to know a bit of the language of a country you're going to. Now, just because she was a woman doesn't mean she didn't or couldn't have serial killer potential. I was faced with a choice. Get a ride from this grim reaper in a white volkswagen or wait for my possible murder by continuing to walk down the mountain. Existential dread all the way. I found I would much rather die after being in a comfortable vehicle, rather than sweaty with aching muscles thrown in the woods.

   I don't know why I ever doubted Brazilians, they really are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. She drove me down the hill after admonishing that I was crazy and shouldn't do things like that ever. I wholeheartedly agreed, but then did another crazy thing the very next day of jumping in a car while buzzy (slightly drunk) and tired, mind you, with another complete stranger and it was a male this time. That situation wasn't even as dire as the Cristo situation, I just didn't feel like walking up the steep hill to my B&B. Don't judge! Ok, judge a little bit. Since then there've been quite a few moments of  'This is probably a really bad idea, but..'. I've come to the conclusion that I will always have dumb moments like this wherever I go. Thankfully nothing horrible has happened yet and I'm grateful and quite lucky. All the guidebooks really stress to not do things such as this. I say you can't really plan for everything and sometimes you have to take chances and go with your gut. I do it every time I buy a plane ticket for one.

     So now I'm really thinking about my trip to France. I really want to run all over the countryside and plan on getting a car, but the thought of just hitching rides from train stations did cross my mind for a second. I did not know that there are a couple of sites that are dedicated to this mode of travel (see Digihitch and hitchhikers.org to name a couple).  I don't know how to drive manual and it seems automatics are much more expensive. Also I can't parallel park to save my life,  which judging by the pictures of some of these French towns looks like it's going to be a necessity. I am just dreading having to drive in a foreign country by myself...DREADING. I hate getting on the freeway or going somewhere unknown here at home as well. It just seems like such a romantic way of travelling, but then of course the cons are huge. What if no one picks you up and what if you get picked up by a psycho? I'm still planning on getting a car, but I am just curious about how this works.

       Another thing I've been thinking about is where I should go and the trip tempo. There are so many beautiful villages in France and I want to stay in all of them! However, being constantly on the go during my last trip was hella tiring. I had fun, but I'm not sure I want to go through packing up my suitcase every 1 to 3 days again and hanging out in airports when I could've been in the world. On the one hand I think it would be different as I would be in a car as opposed to sitting in airports..there's scenery and best of all I could stop and break whenever I want. On the other hand I really feel the need to soak a town in. Maybe I could base myself somewhere in Dordogne or Alps-de-Haute Provence and venture out to its towns and villages. Or just find a town I like and hunker down for 3 weeks. I'm kind of liking the idea of hunkering down which I haven't done on a trip in a long time. At least that way, I can't get into too much trouble unless you can actually die from too much stinky cheese, bread, and wine. And if I can, the grim reaper's scythe might come in handy for buttering my bread.

You will be Assimil-ated!

     I feel like I have accomplished 0 since my last post on learning French. I shouldn't say that, I feel that I've accomplished a lot with pronunciation, but haven't gotten far with actually understanding French. I am going through Assimil New French with Ease, but it's really slow going. I know Rome (or in this case Paris) wasn't built in a day and it's hard to know how far you've gone if you don't have anything to measure against. And no I haven't tried to speak to anyone yet. My new goalpost is to just finish the goddamn book. As of now I am in the passive wave of learning and am only on lesson 16. It has taken me 3 days to finish this lesson and it's hella frustrating for a couple of reason. I am currently using the method laid out by LanguageGeek:
1. Listen to dialogue with book closed.
2. Listen to dialogue again while reading English translation.
3. Read French aloud while looking at the translation to get the meaning.
4. Read the French again without looking at the English translation.
5. Listen to the recording twice. Once looking at English translation. Second time looking at French.
6. Listen to recording again without the book. Hopefully by now you should pretty much understand the dialogue (if not I usually start back at #2).
7. And this is the time consuming part. Listen to the recording, stopping it after each sentence to repeat back what is said. I try to get the pronunciation very close if not spot on. Complete mimicry.
8. Read the comments and notes several times as they provide some important grammar notes.
9. Do the exercises.
10. Examine sentence structures of the lessons.

     It's probably not cool, but I totally skip 9 and 10. I plan on getting a decent grammar book once I get to the active phase of the book. I also amend #7 by doing something called shadowing. Instead of stopping the recording after each sentence then repeating the phrase back, I try to say what the person in the dialogue is saying in real time. Basically, speaking on top of the speaker. It's really satisfying once you've nailed it. I can feel my pronunciation at least becoming tip-top. It's just getting there that will have you throwing the book across the room.

     The sentences are getting a bit longer and therefore I'm having to work harder at pronunciation. I swear if I have to hear this bitch say, 'Oh, monsieur, je suis desolee, je n'ai pas un modele assez grand!' (that's what he said haha) and it coming out of my mouth as, 'Oh, monsieur, je suis desolee, je je gurgle pas de lodel laisel a grand! one more time I am going to hit someone with a loaf of french bread.

     The voice actors they use of course have a different way of speaking. There's one who seems to add a slight unnecessary uh sound at the end of some of her words. I like it! She embodies how French people speaking English sound to my ears. I imagine her wearing a beret, sitting in some outdoor cafe smoking heavily, 'Je suis une femme francaiseuh'. Then there is another woman whose pronunciation is quite clear, but she speaks quickly. I have a love/hate relationship with her when shadowing. I often have to repeat what she says at least 20 to 50 times on one sentence for my pronunciation and speed to catch up. She really makes you work, but she is also why it's taken me 3 bloody days to get through lesson 16! The book states that you're supposed to devote 30 minutes a day, but honestly steps 1 - 6 take at least that amount of time. I was able zip right through these in 30 minutes until I hit lesson 9. Then the time went up exponentially. Now it's more like 2 hours.

     All in all I really like this book. The dialogues are short and you really feel a sense of real accomplishment when you finish a lesson. It's also kind of humorous which helps. I am not using anything else but Assimil at the moment as I feel I might get too bogged down if I add something else to the repetoire. I want to see how far this alone will take me. I've tried little practice tests to see how far along I am right now and am miraculously sitting at B1. Although I still feel if you plopped me in France right now, I still wouldn't be able to have a halfway decent conversation with anyone beyond, 'Hello, how are you doing? Where is the restaurant?'.

     The New Year is upon us and I hope 6 months from now I'll be having some decent conversations and ordering French bread like a boss! Happy New Year peeps and may all your travel and language plans come true!

Allons-y!!

Photo courtesy of morguefile.com

It's that time of year again where I hem and haw about my next solo adventure. Next year I've set my sights on France! Aah Paris, you're probably thinking, but no you are a little wrong mon chers (or whatever). I plan on staying for as short a time as possible in Paris and will venture out to the countryside. Well, that's the plan for now. I have been to Paris before, nearly 15 years ago. I tried as best I could to learn French before my arrival.  This was all early internet, mind you, where there weren't a crapload of resources I could turn to for online learning. I was only armed with my French 101 college text book with no cassette tape accompanying it.

     By the time the trip arrived, I felt I was at least armed enough to say pleasantries and ask for simple directions. The French people I encountered, however, had other plans. My attempts to speak with the natives was thwarted most of the time..sometimes rudely. Looking back, my pronunciation was probably horrifying to the point of insulting as I had no one to practice with while I was learning and was too poor to take classes. I probably also sounded like a hick with my southern accent on top, 'Saloo, commahnt allay voo?'. While I did have a fun time with my friends, I couldn't help but think when I left that it would've been so much better if I knew how to communicate to the regular joes/josephines on the street. It very much felt like I just saw the city, but didn't experience the city, so much so that the thought of Paris today leaves me a little cold. Now that I'm a bit more experienced in travel, I want to give it a second shot. It's my white whale and I want to conquer that bitch! 

     Ever since then I've stopped and started learning this language off and on throughout the years. Oddly enough it's my favorite language, even over Brazilian Portuguese, but I couldn't stay motivated. Now I've decided to restart in earnest since this trip will be occurring next year around this time. Not only this trip being the motivator, but I also love French music and movies. There are a lot more free resources/options available for self-study as well. I have this entire week off so now is the time for some intensive studying. I'm going to hunker down and eat, breathe, sleep it for the next 7 days. No English allowed! Everyone says that I should get a language partner right away, but aside from saying hello I wouldn't know what else to say. Right now my goal is to just have a simple conversation with someone who is fluent or a native.

That said, here is my plan for the week:

1. Go through Pimsleur French and Assimil French. 2 to 3 hours a day, no exceptions. I need to up my game on forming a sentence without thinking too hard about it.

2. Get on Memrise (so fun and addicting) and shore up vocab for an hour a day.

3. Watch French movies/tv shows and listen to French music for fun breaks.

4. By day 5, get on italki or skype and partner up with a native or pay for a tutor to practice speaking.

     The biggest hurdle for me will be speaking with someone. I am shy and am usually not a person that will initiate contact. I also really hate the fact that being a complete moron when you speak to someone in your target language for the first time and possibly forever is a pre-requisite. Why can't I just know it dammit?! I just have to put my big girl panties on, be a little Zen, and let the humiliation wash over me. The satisfaction when I was learning a bit of Brazilian Portuguese was that I got to the point where I was starting to dream in the language. I felt I had turned a major corner when that happened. Hopefully this will happen for French as well, it's a great feeling. Until then, au revoir and see y'all on the flip. Maintenant, je commence!