Tuscany

One of the main attractions of living in Europe is the ease of travel.  A couple weeks ago, Stefan had a conference to attend in Pisa.  For the extra Ryanair fare (and they happen to fly direct from Eindhoven to Pisa), I was willing to accompany him and make sure that the pasta and pizza were still good.  (They are.  The wine and gelato are also still excellent.)  Going to Italy counts as work, right?  I did see Roman things, after all.

So we flew out on Friday morning and wandered around Pisa all weekend.  Stefan went to his conference from Monday to Wednesday, and I wandered around by myself.  Pisa's not that big: Wikipedia tells me that the population is nearly 90,000, and the medieval centre can't be more than two square kilometres.  It's kind of interesting to get to see every last inch of a city like that, one that most tourists maybe see for a night or two.  They still do the afternoon siesta thing, especially in the off season.  Most of the shops were open from 10 until 1 or so, and then again from 4 until 8, although the hours varied considerably.  The restaurants did the same: open for lunch from 11:30 to 1:30, and for dinner from 7:30 until 11:30.  I don't know what you'd do if you hadn't adapted to Italian eating schedules.  There were always a few panini places and takeout pizzerias open, but certainly nothing for a sitdown meal.

After the conference, we went to Florence for a couple of days.  Stefan hadn't been, and I'd only been for a day (long enough to see David and the Uffizi).  There were a lot more tourists there, and just generally a lot more people.  Most of them were backing into things while trying to listen to audioguides or take photos of things.  After a couple nights in Florence, we headed back to Pisa for our Sunday flight home (with the way the flights worked, it was worth it to take the extra weekend on both ends and have an extended break).

Unfortunately, we brought the Dutch weather with us.  It rained on and off for the first few days we were there, and it poured from Tuesday night until Thursday night.  Friday and Saturday were warmer and sunnier, thankfully.  The locals were still cold, apparently.  They were in thick, puffy down jackets that I don't pull out of the closet until at least -25 C, and I saw several people with scarves pulled up over their mouths and tuques on their heads.  We brought only spring jackets (and certainly no tuques) and weren't really cold even when it was night and pouring rain, because it didn't go below +5 C, and the daytime high was still about +13 C.  It must have nearly hit 20 C on Saturday, and we were carrying our jackets, but the Italians were still wearing parkas.  Different perceptions of cold, I guess.  I assume this is how they continue wearing jeans and leather jackets when it's +40 C in June and I'm dying in a thin cotton sundress.  I'm still not used to the European concept of "cold."

Fortunately, we can in fact confirm that the food in Tuscany is still excellent.  The wine was phenomenal and the pasta and pizza continues to be excellent.  Asking the hotel desk guy for restaurant recommendations seems to be rather effective: in both Pisa and Florence, they steered us to places where they themselves eat.  The desk clerk in Pisa sent us to a lady who made the best pizza crust I've ever had (and I say this having once spent three solid weeks in Italy).  The guy in Florence sent us to a little subterranean restaurant that's had the same location for 130 years, right next to the cathedral, where Stefan was brave and attempted the squid-ink pasta: it's a much milder flavour than I expected.  When we just went out on our own to find restaurants, we went for the "look, a random alleyway restaurant" method, which has proven successful for both of us in the past.  We went back to a couple of them (Pisa's really, really small and there was a small selection in the price range and random location that we prefer) and they always remembered us -- it really is low season at the moment.  I've never had problems with English in restaurants in Italy, but my restaurant-related Italian is quite good, and I like attempting to order in the local language if I can manage it.

For example, on the last night, Stefan talked me into the full Italian meal: appetizers, a plate of pasta, then a plate of meat, and finally dessert with coffee, plus a bottle of wine.  That particular location had a set menu for the full meal at a fairly reasonable price.  And because I know my brother will ask, here's what we had ;)  They started with a giant platter of sliced meats (mmm proscuitto) and bruschetta and pate and such, and then moved on to a seafood ravioli and linguine with duck.  At that point, I would have eaten anything the waitress put in front of me, because it just kept getting better.  The meat course was pork with Tuscan-style beans, and the best cut of beef either of us had ever had (and considering where we're from, that says something).  The dessert was panna cotta and some sort of chocolate mousse with berries.  And then neither of us moved for 12 solid hours, because it was just too good.  I don't know what Italy does to their food, but so much of it is so, so good that it's a shame to come home.

I've put some of the pictures online here if you want to see.

TV and music

One of the first things we did after I got here in September was to buy a TV.  There are quite a number of free channels, many of which air English programming, so at least we had something to watch.  And really, you do pick up quite a bit of vocabulary, grammar, and particularly pronunciation, even when you can't follow every word.  They don't dub here, except for children's shows (so, for example, I've seen dubbed versions of Hannah Montana and Dora the Explorer), so everything's original language with Dutch subtitles.

A couple weeks ago, we got a digital cable, for less than a third of what we'd pay for the same service and a similar channel selection in Canada.  That takes us to somewhere around a hundred channels, mostly in English, Dutch, and German, with a smattering of French, Italian, and Turkish.  It means, for example, that we got at least three different channels showing the Superbowl last night: two with the American Fox feed, and one with German commentary.
A lot of what we see in English is BBC or Discovery Channel.  Right now, we get four separate BBC channels and five or six Discovery channels, and really, both of us are quite happy to watch insane British game shows and comedy sketches or Mythbusters and other such Discovery shows.  We get American shows on a variety of Dutch channels, but none of them are first-run, so we have to download new episodes of Big Bang Theory and other such shows that are currently airing if we want to see the episodes when we normally would.  We even, unexpectedly enough, get Canadian shows.  I trip across shows from Slice and HGTV that I know are based in Canada, we watched Little Mosque on the Prairie the other night, and just this afternoon, I happened to find Due South on BBC.  I really didn't expect to see any Canadian shows at all, but we actually get quite a bit.

We also get a lot of music video channels, including one that's only in Dutch, called TV Oranje.  You really have to see this channel to believe it.  The production values on the videos are spectacularly low, and we've seen videos that seem to be from the 70s and 80s.  A lot of the songs are really, really catchy, even though we can't understand everything.  We can't figure out if the videos are getting progressively more insane because we're getting closer to Carnival, because quite a few of them feature people dressed up in costumes (including an angels one that I can't find to post for you).  I'll talk more about Carnival in March, but for now... This is the Catholic part of the country and they still celebrate pre-Lent Carnival/Mardi Gras/etc.  Judging by the costumes at the stores, it's like Hallowe'en gone insane.  Neon and sparkles abound.

Anyway, I recommend the following videos, just to give you a taste (and yes, they're all in Dutch, but that's the point, isn't it?):

Vlinders, by Nick and Simon.  The title means "Butterflies."  This has the highest production values of anything we've seen, by far.

He lieve schat, by Ronnie Ruysdael.  The title means "Hey, sweetheart" or something to that effect.  Stefan likes this guy's suit and facial hair, much to my dismay.  This is perhaps more typical of the production values of the videos.

Daar gaan we weer, by Alle 13 Jaanke.  The title means "Here we go again", and I dare you not to get this song stuck in your head.  I've had it stuck in mine for like two weeks.  I wish I understood more of the lyrics, because there seem to be references to a number of towns and regions in the country, including Brabant, the region where we live.