Adjusting and Wanting to Go Home

Home,

Usually when people hear this, they think of a house where they were raised, or now currently reside in. When I say home in this title, I mean home as in Florence, Italy. I have been back in the United States for over a month now and I cannot believe how quickly my time studying abroad went by. It seems like just yesterday that I was touching down at Rome Fiumicino Airport before finally taking the journey to Florence, the place that I would call my home for the next 3.5 months, and the place that I still consider my home to this day. I had the most unbelievable experiences while I was abroad both inside the classroom, within the city of Florence, and on my trips to the various places in Europe that I visited. Going into the program not knowing anyone was a little intimidating, but I can say now with full confidence that I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I met an amazing group of friends who I now consider my family, and really took full advantage of the opportunity that was given to me. Classes abroad were eye-opening as opposed to the class sizes and teachers that are present back here in the states. Not saying that the teachers here don’t care, but the relationships that I made with my Lorenzo de’ Medici professors cannot be matched. Compassion, companionship, and enjoyment were shared with each and every one of them throughout my time at the school. I hope to continue to stay in touch with them, as I will without a doubt go out of my way to make this happen. Taking 15 credit hours seemed like a lot, but it was the perfect amount for me. International Marketing, Crosscultural Communication, Topics in Nutrition (cooking class), Elementary Italian, along with Wine and Business marketing took up my Monday-Wednesdays, but after that I was free! I even had time to work with the LdM marketing department on creating a strategic marketing plan for the art restoration program in Florence! I was quickly accepted into the Italian culture, and did my best to fit in right from the start (I even met a few other Maio’s during my stay)! Sure there were times where I felt out of place, but all I could do was laugh, smile, and think to myself….I’M IN ITALY!!

Outside of the classroom and in between classes, most of my time was spent exploring Florence, attending local events such as Fiorentina matches or local food events, spending time with friends,playing club soccer for the school, embracing the Italian culture, and most importantly TRAVELING! From my very first trip to Bologna/Venice, all of the way to my last trip in Rome, the places that I visited were breathtaking, amazing, and beautiful at almost every moment. The summary of my places visited includes 11 countries, and over 18 cities in Italy…needless to say I did pretty well with my time abroad! I became a campus ambassador for the travel group Bus2Alps where I met a whole new group of people, and traveled to many places with. The opportunities that the company brings are exciting, and I hope to get back to Europe to work for them at some point (use my code “UC” to save 5% on trips!!). I had amazing food in every place, and highly recommend the following places….La Giostra, Acqua Al Due, Gusta Panino, Gusta Pizza, the Oil Shoppe, Trattoria Sostanza, Zeb, Ristorante Nuti, Gato Dinner, B-Ice Gelato, Venchi Gelato and many many more! The food in Florence is fantastic, and the dining in Europe in general is incredible…you literally can’t go wrong with any of it! I can sit here and reflect on my life abroad for hours and hours, thinking about all of the places I visited and the fantastic people that I met. I talk to my family and friends abroad on a regular basis, and really want to keep this communication going for many years to come. Endsley is flying into Cincinnati this Thursday for my fraternity formal, and we have now locked up our spring break trip out to California to visit a large group of our family that goes to school there. It’s still crazy to sit here and call the once random people that I never knew my family. Here is a picture of them….from skype sessions, to phone calls, to simple text messages, we have all helped each other adjust to being away from one another after spending a huge portion of time together every day…I MISS THEM INSANELY 

Now back to the present…even a month later, I am still adjusting to life in the US, wanting to go home still. Life here is a lot more convenient, and it seems like a suitable life, but my time in Italy has confirmed my desire to potentially work abroad later down the road. It’s hard to explain, but the lifestyle of Europe, especially Italy fits me perfectly. Things will definitely be different for me in the future, and I will not have anywhere near the same experiences that I had a short time ago, but it excites me to know that my dream is possible. I am currently planning a post-graduation backpacking trip throughout Europe…needless to say the travel bug has hit me hard! It’s finally becoming evident that I need to step back into reality, and assume my role here at school both inside and out of the classroom, but I can’t let a day go by without thinking about home. My trip couldn’t have been possible without the help from my parents, grandparents, UC International, President Ono, Caroline Miller, Raj Mehta, Athena Study Abroad, and the University of Cincinnati for the love, support, and funding that they provided me with. This trip has opened up a whole new world for me, and I cannot wait to embark on my next journey! As Walt Disney said, “All of our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” Until next time……..

Arrivederci, 

Last Week in Florence

It’s crazy that time has flown by so quickly. With only a week left with my friends, family, and home of Florence, we really had to take advantage of every second of every day. Studying for finals was just a small part of the mix, and I really got to spend some quality time with everyone and hit up the places that I would miss the most.

From family dinners, to the bars, this final week was such a good time and it was finally starting to hit us that we had to go home within a matter of a few days. I think this made us become even closer this final week as a family, and made us realize just how special the time that we had together was.

With a few finals already down the drain, it was time to make the best of Florence before the dreaded trip back to the United States. One final Tuesday night at BeBop for the live Beatles cover band, one last trip (or 3) to Pinot’s, a few more nights of Eby’s/Kikuya/Lion’s/Uncle Jimmie’s/Full Up, it was becoming evident on how much we would actually miss this place. There aren’t many places in the world where you can walk past the historic Duomo at 4am after a great night out with friends and it makes me realize how much I do not want to leave this place.

DO AS THE ROMANS DO

7/12: After 3 months of studying abroad, we finally decided to go to Rome. Kyle, Reed, and I arrived in Rome this morning at 8:25am after about a 2.5 hour train ride from Florence. We were able to check into our hostel right away which was great, and proceeded on to getting breakfast downstairs. Quickly after, we bought one day metro passes and rode the metro to When In Rome Tours for our reserved spots which included a guided tour of the Vatican, Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s per my parent’s request as they did the same tour when they visited Rome in October. We all were really excited to be spending our last weekend in Rome, and could not wait to start our day! We took the metro and met our tour group at the When in Rome tours office to meet our guide Chiara who was set to take us all throughout Vatican City on a private tour. It was pretty funny because I told her that she gave a tour to my entire family when they visited, and proceeded to show her a picture of the group. She bursted out laughing and recognized them immediately, claiming my dad was one of the funniest guys she knew. Our time in the Vatican was simply amazing, seeing everything from the Vatican Museum, to the Sistine Chapel (where my tour group left me for about a half hour) to the Vatacombs under the famous St. Peter’s Church, and ending inside St. Peter’s. The whole tour lasted about 3.5 hours and was well worth the money. Afterwards, we chose to climb to the top of St. Peter’s which was absolutely incredible! It offered the best panoramic view of Rome, and was incredible to see how big the city actually was. The Vatican was an amazing place, and I’m glad that we chose to go all out. It was getting late, so we decided to go to the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain to meet Matt who came into town later in the day.

Spending some time out and about, we went back to the hostel to hang out for a little bit before heading to Carlo Menta for dinner where a group of Matt’s friends were meeting us. Dinner was great, and we went out on the town for a little bit, deciding to head home a little early. Reed and I took a quick detour and got to see the Forum, Coliseum, and the capital hill lit up at night. It was finally bed time as we were waking up pretty early to get our private tour of the Roman Forum and Coliseum.

8/12: Today we woke up around 8am for our guided your of the Coliseum and the Roman Forum, or at least tried to. We ended up falling back asleep and were about 30 minutes late for our tour. Our guide Mitra who Rafaella recommended met us outside of the metro stop (who was a little mad that we were late) and we began our tour. History lessons, jokes, and an incredible time rounded out the 3 hour tour. The Forum was rich in history and I absolutely loved every second of it as well as the Coliseum. I love ancient mythology so this trip to Rome was right up my alley. We ended our tour and went to eat with Mitra and had a blast. She is an awesome person and we even got to meet her husband who was hilarious.

Fabio and her work about 12 different jobs, and Fabio proceeded to ask us if we had heard of the movie Green Street Hooligans. We all laughed and replied yes, to him showing us pictures of the Roma games where he was once part of a firm as in the movies. After the lunch, we made our way towards the Pantheon which has the only original artworks left in the ancient site. Unfortunately the Pantheon was closed for the day as it was an Italian holiday, so we went all over the city just walking around, exploring and taking pictures. The rest of the night consisted of the same type of things, eventually coming to a plaza with yet another carnival. We had an extremely late dinner at Magdalena Rosso and went home directly after to get some sleep as we were exhausted. Rome was such a cool place and I’m glad we got to visit.  We caught our train the next morning and headed back to Florence to prepare for our last week of classes including finals.

“DO AS THE ROMANS DO”

Swiss Alps or Bust: Interlaken

11/29: My third bus2alps trip started a little differently than the other two had. We met at the train station to leave at 7pm which was about 3 hours earlier than we usually leave. The ride to Interlaken was about 8 hours, and we were on the best bus that I’ve had for any of my trips. The seats were more comfortable, and there were actually places to charge electronic devices. We watched two movies the first, Couples Retreat and the second, Catch Me If You Can. The ride was actually pretty quick, and we arrived to our hostel, the Backpackers Villa around 3am to sleep and re group before a big day of canyon jumping tomorrow.

11/30: We woke up this morning around 8:45 to shower and eat before meeting everyone at Balmers Hostel. After we met up, everyone walked to the local lake for some pictures and goofing around. Tait, Phil, and I went back to our hostels to meet up for canyon jumping, our first high adrenaline experience of Interlaken! We took a 25 minute ride up the mountain which offered break taking views before finally reaching our destination. All 14 of us in the group got harnessed up and took a quick 10 minute walk through the snow covered forest, making our way towards the platform where we would free-fall 311 feet straight down. About 10 people went before it was finally my turn. I stepped up to the edge and wondered how I should jump off. The only way to add to an adrenaline filled day was to start my jump with a gainer off of the platform. I took to the corner, braced myself for the jump, and sprinted towards the edge with my heart pounding in my chest. The next few seconds were silent and the mountains were slowly flipping around me. I pulled off the perfect gainer and a few seconds later I was soaring at top speed through a snowy valley in the alps. The canyon jump was easily the coolest thing I have ever done, and definitely worth the money! After the jump, we drove back to Interlaken with our guide so he could drop us off at Outdoor Interlaken to be fitted for our ski gear for tomorrow! Gearing up took about an hour and a half, but we were soon on to the next thing which included a funicular ride up to the outdoor Christmas market on top of a hill just outside of town. We hung out in the area exploring, zip-lining, and drinking hot drinks before leaving to go back to Balmers. There we goofed around playing pool and ping pong before happy hour opened up downstairs at the hostel. The night there was a ton of fun and I even met a girl who lives in Cincinnati…she knows a ton of my friends! All in all the day was absolutely incredible, and I cannot wait for a full day of skiing in the Swiss Alps tomorrow!

12/1: Man it’s crazy to think that today is December 1st, time just flew by wayyy too quickly! Everyone woke up around 6:30 to go skiing this morning, and after breakfast we all met up before taking the bus/trains up to the top of the mountain where we would be hitting the fresh powder all day. The mountain was insanely gorgeous and I could not believe that I was going to be skiing in the Swiss Alps all day long! The day kind of flew by but it was easily one of the most fun days of the semester. We hit every single slope on the mountain throughout the entire day and had an absolute blast. Everyone had such a good time, even though most of the group wiped out into the fresh snow on basically every run. I am so fortunate to have gone on this trip with all of my friends. We headed back to Interlaken around 5pm, returned all of our equipment, and went out to eat at a local pub in downtown. Everything in Interlaken is super expensive, and the dinner was really pricey even though I only had an appetizer. We didn’t get any good pictures of my canyon jump, so I went over to the Funny House and bought the pictures of my jump which was really cool to see. Later that night, we just kind of hung out at the local bar before I went home to watch the UC football game and basketball game, eventually heading to bed. It was a super long day full of excitement, and my body was just dead.

12/2: Our last day in Interlaken was today and we woke up to a great sight….SNOW! It had snowed probably about 8 inches while we were sleeping and was still coming down hard. I had a quick breakfast with another great hot chocolate, before meeting up with all of my friends and going around town playing in the snow, throwing snowballs at each other, and stopping at the local swiss chocolate shop to purchase some sweets to take home. We all hung out the rest of the day just goofing around before getting on the bus back to Florence at 3pm which ended up taking about 4.5 hours. The trip was incredible and was the icing on the cake to end my study abroad traveling aside from one final trip to Rome. Everything is ending too soon, and I’m not quite ready to go back, but I am excited to see my family.

Buda Buda Pest Ya’ll

11/21: our journey started around 8:45pm when Reed and I headed to our favorite panini shop for a little appertivo dinner which only costs around 3 euro for a glass of wine and as many finger foods as you’d like. We hung out and relaxed there until 9:35pm before catching our fast train to Milano Centrale which left at 9:55pm. This was the first time I had been on a La Frecciarossa since arriving in Italy August 29th, and man was it a treat. The train ride was smooth, comfortable, and quick even though there was a cat running around on board the entire time…weird. We met Reed’s friend at his apartment right by the train station to drop our bags off at his apartment, then walked around Milan for about 2 hours before heading home to go to bed.

11/22: We had to wake up really early this morning to catch a bus from Zach’s apartment to Milano Bergamo where we were flying out. Reed forgot all of his boarding passes so he had to scramble around the airport looking for a place to print it out at right before our flight. I waited as long as I could, making my way through security and down to my gate with some time to spare. Reed came running down sweating, panting, and pretty upset as he had to pay 60 euro for forgetting his boarding pass. Our flight landed at approximately 10am and finally, WE’RE IN BUDAPEST! We walked out of our terminal to find Tait waiting for us, so we got our Budapest Cards we purchased and jumped on the bus to take the journey to our penthouse apartment. We arrived pretty easily to the most incredible place I’ve stayed since being in Europe. A 3 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom penthouse with roof access, and the nicest people possible here to greet us…everything about this trip so far is incredible and it’s only just begun! Quickly getting adjusted, we went to a bank where I got 40,000 forint, and went to a spot called Frici Papa which was soooo good. I had fried turkey with ham/cheese, mashed potatoes, and a Hungarian beer. It was super cheap  and as close to a thanksgiving meal as I could get. All 3 of us went back to the apartment, grabbed towels, and took the metro towards Sźechenyi fürrdo where Hero square, the zoo, ice rink, and the castle called Vajdahunyad Castle, and most importantly the Szechenyi Medicinal Baths. The next 2.5 hours was my most relaxed time in all of Europe, walking out feeling like a million bucks! Taking the Oktagon line back home, I sat down for a quick Skype session with my family before our dinner reservations for 9:30pm, at a restaurant called Ruben Étterem Kft.  I had the chicken breast stuffed with ricotta cheese, spinach, and peppers with a side of spicy beef goolash…it was mouth watering. After dinner Phil (oh yeah we picked him up after the baths), Tait, Reed, and I went back towards our apartment to hang out and wait for the rest of our gang.

11/23: day 2 for a few of us started with a iced macchiato and a tuna bagel from a spot right by our place called the California Coffee Company. From there, we got on the metro to meet the walking tour that took us all around Pest and eventually up on top to the Budapest Castle. Our tour guide was a local who was extremely knowledgeable and really nice. From our ending location, we took a quick bus back across to Pest where we picked up the yellow line of the hop on/hop off bus tour that guided us through parts of the city we hadn’t seen yet such as the Parliament building. After the bus tour was over, we all went back to our apartment and for a quick few slices of pizza before going to out second baths of the trip: Gellértbath. The building itself and the hotel were amazing, the baths were awesome too. Coming out relaxed as ever, we took the tram back to the main square for our dinner reservations at  Magdalena Merlo. We were at the restaurant for over 3 hours, but the 13 of us had a great time together. Kyle and I split meals which were duck steak with blueberry sauce and turkey in beer with sour cream, cheese, and a side of mashed potatoes…..INCREDIBLE! Our group went back up to the apartment, played some music, and goofed around before heading to a ruin club called Instant. Our night ended there after a few hours..an overall great day.

11/24: Everyone slept in today which was kind of a mistake, but I think we all needed it. The gang was moving pretty slowly so Kyle and I took the metro to Hero Square to see in the daylight and ran over to the zoo as we only had a little bit of time before we were supposed to go caving! The zoo was awesome and had some crazy animals including monkeys, warthogs, flamingos, rhinos, elephants, and lemurs! We sprinted to the metro, back to our place, and eventually to the meeting spot where we met our cave tour guide (including Reed and Dan, the rest of our group bailed). It was really complex to get there including a few different buses, but we eventually got there and put on our gear to explore the underground caves! One of the most amazing experiences by far. We were weaving, winding, crawling, climbing through over 5000 kilometers of ancient underground caves. Our two tour guides had been doing this for 10 years, and were really fun to be around. We met some Australians, a Canadian, and some Americans who lived in Italy on the tour and had some fun throughout the caves. The experience took about 3 hours and we came out pretty exhausted, but we were on to the next thing which included a stop at a restaurant called Best Burger, and a tram ride to Margaret Island. We basically just walked around exploring toying around on the multiple playgrounds, also going inside of the first indoor swimming pool in Hungary. Afterwards we met everyone back at the apartment for a quick meal before heading out into the city again. We did a lot of walking and a ton of touring, eventually ending the night at a Hungarian pancake spot across the river in Buda. Tait and a few others had to catch their flight out of Budapest at 6am, so they took a taxi to the airport around 4:15am and the rest of us went to sleep.

11/25: today was a pretty early morning consisting of last minute packing, some cleaning, and the 45 minute journey back to the airport for our flight out at 9:55am. By this time we were masters of the metro/bus system, so getting there and on the plane was a breeze. Like other flights, I don’t really remember much in between the takeoff and the landings (this landing was by far the roughest Ryanair one I’ve had). Arriving at the airport in Bologna, we took a bus to Bologna Centrale to catch a train home when everyone just kind of split up. Some people had to get money out of ATMs, others just bought tickets and booked it to the terminal. I ended up waiting to buy my ticket until Reed and Dan got back from the ATM (which they never came back from), so I missed all of the trains leaving in the 12th hour. I bought my ticket, waited with Kevin who was on another train at 1:28pm, and eventually caught my Italo rail train back to Florence. The Italo trains are SUPER nice, cheap, and the staff is very accommodating (if possible, book trains through them!).

Pisa

Nick, Reed, and I thought to ourselves…what haven’t we seen yet in Italy. The main sight that we HAD to see before we left even if it was for a half an hour had to be the Leaning Tower. We set out in the afternoon after Nick got out of class and took a quick train ride to Pisa Centrale where we took a bus/walked to get to the tower. Not very crowded, we hung out in the tower area for about 30 minutes taking pictures and just enjoying life before heading back to the train station as Nick and I were leaving for Interlaken later that day. Pisa is a pretty cool area but there isn’t a whole lot to do. It was hardly a day trip, but at least we got some cool pictures with the Leaning Tower of Pisa and you can add it to my list of places that I have been in Italy!