Milan... short entry

Sunday, 9th September - Monday, 10th September '12
There really isn't much to say about Milan. I found the city to be fairly unremarkable. I really didn't do much while there... which is possibly why I found it unremarkable. On arrival, it took me a while to find my hostel, and once found I spent some time just relaxing in the room.

Shopping arcade near Duomo was beautiful

In the afternoon I met Gabby outside the Duomo, we had lunch in a shopping arcade nearby and then walked around about 20 minutes. We eventually settled ourselves on the grass in front of the Castle and sat and chatted till very late at night.

To be perfectly honest, I don't even remember the following day. Knowing me, I probably spent the entire day indoors doing nothing. I remember at night I went and had chinese food and had some delicious dumplings.

The end of my adventures in Milano.

Cooking Class in Bologna

Saturday, 8th September '12
This day was one of the most memorable of my entire trip in Europe. I had looked online for cooking classes, but they all seemed too expensive. I eventually found this class online, and it was very well priced, the website was very professional looking and they had a lot of different classes on offer.

http://cookingclassesinbologna.com/ 

The recipes for what we cooked are online here as well. :) 

I really wasn't sure what to expect, having never done something like this before. I was actually very nervous as I've never had anybody teach me to cook, and because I'm me and bad with new people... I was just really anxious I would be awkward and bad and break everything.

I was totally surprised to arrive and find out that the entire class was 1 on 1. I thought it would be a group of people, but it was just me and Stefano. For how little I paid, that is incredible. Normally that would be my worst nightmare, but Stefano really made me feel welcome in his restaurant and feel totally comfortable and at ease the entire day. It was wonderful.

The day began around 10am and we walked around Bologna and visited the marketplace. Had a coffee and decided what we wanted to cook. I decided that day would be a "yes" day and I would be adventurous and try new things.

We went back to the kitchen, and shared a big space at the back with the pastry chef of the restaurant, who, like all the other workers there, was very friendly. We started working on lunch, first up was to start the sauce for the ragu and then the pasta for the tagliatelle. Making pasta by hand is super hard work, my goodness! We even rolled the pasta by hand with a huge rolling pin, it was about a metre long. If you ever want to work out without having to pay for the gym, here's your calling! Because I'm weak, Stefano did most of the rolling but it was so awesome to see how pasta is made.

Bologna, Italy

Alright, it's actually almost end of the month right now and I'm finally catching up on my time in Italy. I guess details will be scarce given that my memory is atrocious. I guess most of these posts will be mostly pictures, apologies. I've been very lazy over the last month, both in updating but also in doing things in general. Hope you like the pictures all the same. :)

Friday, 7th September - Sunday, 9th September '12
I remember the 7th was a pain in the butt. I remember leaving Marlene's apartment very early on the Friday morning, and making it to my train with maybe 1 minute to spare. I accidentally under-estimated how much time it would take to get to the train station, then screwed up and took the U-Bahn in the wrong direction, so had to get off and then go back one stop the other way. And I ran, actually ran like crazy the entire way to the train station. I hadn't eaten and I felt faint and couldn't breath and was coughing and spluttering to get on. Yeah... exercise... who needs that stuff.

Anyway, luckily I made it to Bologna. But I arrived like 2 hours later than expected, because my first train was over an hour delayed due to some track work on the way, I missed my connection and then had to pay an extra 6 euros for the next train... and it took 30 minutes more than the train I was supposed to take. It was all just a massive pain in the butt. I splurged a bit my entire Italy trip and stayed in a nice B&B. I found that Italy, in general, didn't offer much in the way of hostels. They had much fewer hostels than the other countries I'd been too, and in general, weren't of the same standard.

Anyway, that night I went out to a place nearby my accommodation and got some tortellini in broth. The lady's at the restaurant were lovely and explained everything to me, and told me about how the bread was a special type of bread from Bologna and stuff. It was lovely.

On Saturday, I did a cooking class. I'll do a separate entry for that.

Anyway the guy was super nice and he walked around city with me and explained what was what and what life is like there. I really loved Bologna, it felt like a very unique city. The architecture seemed a lot older than I'm used to for European cities, and it had these beautiful porch walkways throughout the entire city. It wasn't a huge cosmopolis and seemed very welcoming. It didn't seem overly touristy and just felt like a sincere depiction of an Italian community. I can't quite describe it, but I really enjoyed my day there. 

Schoenbrunn Castle, Vienna

Thursday, 6th September '12

I am so behind with this blog right now. I went with Marlene to Schoenbrunn in Vienna. Sowon was a big baby and decided she didn't want to come with and missed the best part of the whole city! Boo on her!

The weather was a bit shite in the morning, cloudy, but it really turned out to be a beautiful day. Marlene and I walked around the gardens most of the day and then walked up the hill to the cafe, and looked down on this wonderful view while eating cake and chatting.

It was a beautiful day, all in all. Relaxing in all the right ways. 

Vienna, Austria [Part 2]

Monday, 3rd September '12
Monday was spent walking together with my girls through all of Vienna. We met outside the Leopold Museum (I gave it a miss, contemporary art stuff I don't care about zzzZZZ), went from there to the biggest market in Vienna. We were hungry and decided we'd try to find Wiener Schnitzel, as in, original, big ass, veal schnitzel.

Turns out it's harder than you think.

 (Inside Stephensdom)

 Opera

(The girls all together again!)

On our venture to find schnitzel, we pass by the centre of the City/Stephensdom and the Opera. We get accosted by freaky dudes in costume trying to sell Orchestral concerts. They're actually more persistent than those charity people, it's mental. Anyway, we go to some famous place in Vienna and sell our soul to afford a delicious schnitzel. I didn't think it was anything special, but I've had a lot of schnitzel and there isn't much to it to either change or fuck up. But yeah, can't really go wrong there. From there we went for a ye olde walk back to Marlene's place.

 (The home of the schnitzel since 1905!)

Tuesday, 4th September '12
Slept in all day and were lazy bums. Nicole had to leave in the afternoon.

Wednesday, 5th September '12
Once again, Marlene had to work. Luckily her shift was in the afternoon, so we all slept in again (try not to be surprised) and had a late breakfast together before going our separate ways. Sowon and I (with a detour on the way... shhh) went to Belvedere Castle. It was stunning, especially since I wasn't quite aware it was also a castle, I thought it was just a museum. There were some nice pieces, two nudes by Renoir and a beautiful painting by Monet. There were also a lot of famous Klimt pieces that I really enjoyed. Anyway, it was relatively small, but Sowon managed to spend the entire afternoon in there somehow. I like looking at art and all that, but I don't feel the need to stare at every painting, whether I like it or not, to study the lines and stuff. If I did that I would be exhausted by the first room. I also don't read any of the information... turns out I'm just shallow and like to look at pretty things.

Anyway, from the art museum, we leisurely made our way to the market again and bought some Korean udon noodle things and came back home, made and ate them and continued to be lazy like we have been for the last few days.

Vienna, Austria [Part 1]

(Look, I have friends!)

Sunday, 2nd September '12

From last post to now can all be grouped as travelling to Vienna. I stopped over in Geneva, but didn't do anything but sit on the couch and watch TV or whatever. I've been on so many trains, but that trip from Geneva to Vienna was so god damn hard. I was so restless the whole time. I think it's because I've been surviving so far watching Hawaii Five-O, but that was all I had and I was sick of it. 

Anyway, I arrived on Saturday the 1st in the afternoon. Met up with Nicole and Sowon at the train station and met with Marlene at her apartment. 

Next day Marlene had to work all day, so Nicole, Sowon and I slept late, made crepes for breakfast and then went out to Museum of Vienna at Karlsplatz. 

The church there is ridiculously beautiful, though we didn't go inside because we decided we were gunna be cheapskates and try not to spend lots of money. The museum was much smaller than I thought and overall quite underwhelming. It had a Klimt exhibition that was 99% pencil drawings, so that was disappointing.