Woa! I've been having some problems trying to catch up my journal. I'm not certain if I will ever manage to catch up. I flew out of Glasgow this morning to Dublin where I'm sitting in a pub, enjoying a pint and kicking back. There's a football match on right now, so a bunch of people are here watching the game. Manchester United is playing some other London based team, can't remember who. The flight over was really quick, I think we were in the air for less than 20 minutes. This was the first time I flew RyanAir, it was pretty decent. The other day I spent quite a bit of time trying to get a flight with British Airways, unsuccessfully. They are a big waste of time and it really sucks trying to deal with them. I never got a hold of Paul or Michael to try to hook up, maybe I'll just run into one of them while I'm here.
I'm going to try to complete my summary of my Zonca workcamp and some of the other things I've been doing here in Scotland. I think the Zonca workcamp had really messed up my writing. Anyway some of the most fun I had in Zonca was definitely on pizza night. The first pizza night, Stefano and I were running around town doing a variety of tasks, including trying to figure out where my mail was. I managed to get about 10 minutes on the Internet to figure out what was going on and order my bus ticket from Brussels to Glasgow. Everything worked out in the end fortunately. While we were running around we bought a 33 litre flask of vino for camp. The wine was really great, I got to taste a few types while we were there. That night, I think, was pizza night and Kuba, Alberto and I got to decant the flask into normal sized bottles. As any reasonable person might guess we were hitting the wine pretty hard during the process. By the end of it we were all well beyond a comfortable buzz. Kuba was yelling at me about how drunk he felt. Alberto was singing and later on hanging out in an old, stone window sill yelling at people and telling then how drunk he was. It was pretty incredible because I was beginning to understand Alberto. I may have sat in the same window sill and talked along with him. That first pizza night I may have had two pizza's, not quite a lot of food considering the calories we were burning. It became my job to look after Alberto that night, no big deal for me, but for some people this seems odd, or possibly some people blamed me for Alberto's condition. It was cool to hang out with Alberto, he told me about his girlfriend and we talked in general. I also remember Stefano being a little disturbed that Alberto was too drunk. After Maria, one of the Croatian girls came up to talk to Alberto I vented some of my frustration with Kuba on what it means to take care of a fellow drunk friend. I don't know what time we made it to bed, it was severely late, but before we crashed Kuba and I got to do another mini joke night with Hilde and Sophia. We also played a few drinking games in the hallway of Stefano's house. It was a lot of fun.
The second pizza night was a lot of fun as well. After working and taking a shower Kuba, Alberto, Hilde, Francesco and I were hanging out drinking some beer we had bought. Francesco also opened up some guappa he had bought for his birthday. I was well on my way to getting really smashed before we left the hay loft. That evening I took quite a few pictures, mostly of people posing on the same bench, but I also took some action photo's as well. This particular pizza night I managed to get quite a few pizza's, and they were great! I'm really glad Nicola and Eros cooked the pizza's because they came out fantastic! I really remember most of the evening, up until I decided to pass out on Stefano's floor and started to snore like a madman. Kuba woke me up at about 3:00am or so, but I wanted to stay where I was. He woke up Francesco and they carried me back to the hay loft. The only part of that trip back that I remember was finding myself on the stairs. Later on I found out that Kuba and Francesco had dropped me, or I slipped due to the wet stones, and I had a moment of clarity. I also managed to scrape the shit out of my leg. What goes around can come around, so I was glad that Kuba and Francesco got me back to the loft in one piece.
Other cool days were when we would go out to Lago Antrona. The first time we went the entire camp bailed on Kuba and I. We still managed to get out there via autostop, with one ride! They managed to beat us by only ten minutes! I was hooked, so every time we went to and from the lake Kuba and I would autostop it there and back, no problem. Ok, OK! As Kuba would exclaim sometimes in Zonca. After the workcamp Kuba and I made out way to Francesco's house with Alberto and Johnny, his dad. It was fun. Johnny had this two seater jeep that he had a special license for... so only two people were supposed to be in the vehicle. Kuba and I laid down in the back and avoided the eye of the police until about halfway, where Johnny got a little nervous after he saw a few police. Johnny was justifiably nervous since if he was caught with us in the car they would just take his vehicle away. We were about 100km from Torino, just on the side of the freeway at a gas station. Within 20 minutes we got a ride from this guy going to Torino. We even passed Alberto and Johnny and arrived at Francesco's house before they got there! Unbelievable! The guy who gave us a ride was really cool, dropping us right in front of Francesco's place. That night we had a pretty good time. Francesco cooked for us and two other friends he had staying there. After dinner we headed out and hung out in this park where they had a variety of places to drink. Kuba and I were really getting silly on the Cuba Libre's and were pretty wasted by the time we got back to Francesco's. The next morning Francesco and Kuba dumped me off at the train station. Francesco had to work, but Kuba saw me off on my way to Milano to catch my flight.
Getting to Glasgow was a long trip. I am really glad that Hilde gave me some Belgian Franc's since the only thing I needed was to catch a train from the airport to North Station! The bus trip was brutal! We were late getting into London but I managed to get on another bus within a few minutes. Crossing the English Channel was pretty cool,. We were late because the bus driver was a jerk to the French custom agents. They made us take everything off the bus and x-rayed everything. Some people were searched, anyway no big deal now, just a hassle then.
My time in Glasgow has been really a lot of fun. Gerry, Lea and I made it to a few parties and got silly. We've been out drinking together a few nights and managed to take a taxi home most of the time. One night I was really hurting, I didn't eat much that particular day so my stomach was having some problems. We got some take-away curry, but I didn't manage to eat mine until the next morning. One of the first nights we also caught a live football match, it was pretty good. Gerry and Lea had to do some gratuitous translations for me since I was having some problems with the Scottish accent. This one guy was yelling "dramatic shit" and I thought he was yelling "geriatric sheep". They got a good laugh out of that one. I've also seen quite a bit of Glasgow, just walking around and hanging out. I arrived back in town for Gerry's surprise birthday, should be pretty cool. I hope to pick up a cool gift for him while I'm here in Ireland. The other thing I've been thinking about lately is how fast this time has been going. It won't be too long before I'm back for a week in the States for Bill and Tracey's wedding. During the beginning of September I also plan to make my way down to Belgium to see my Sunshine and hopefully Evelyn and Hilde. I'm going to declare myself caught up at this point and head out and get some food!
Comments