The Bank

The first days I was in Italy I was withdrawing money from my home account and that was enough to cover all the expenses.

But a few days ago, it was time to pay the apartment rent. So I grabbed my landlord's account number and went to the nearest bank. 

When I got there I asked the good looking young man if he could speak English and he started to act all nervous and didn't really know what to say. I calmed him down by saying I just wanted to make a deposit.

                                         

He asked me if I was a student and when I confirmed it he told me maybe it would be better to open a new account in that bank. I told him I didn't think it was necessary because as Portugal is part of the EU I didn't even have to pay fees to withdraw money from my account.

But then he told me I would have to pay a fee of 5€ just to deposit the money if I didn't have an account in that bank, but if I did I would only have to pay 1€... Apart from the fact that I was shocked for having to pay for a deposit (this never happens in Portugal) he told me I wouldn't have to pay any fees to open the account so I agreed to do it.

And that's when the Italian bureaucracy arrived to "make it all very simple". He asked me for my ID and I gave it to him. Then he started typing on his computer and making those sounds of someone who is working very hard to solve my problem... After a while he told me he need another official document of mine. I asked him why telling him that was an official EU document so I couldn't see the problem. And that's when he told me he actually needed 2 official documents! By mear coincidence I had brought my passport to Italy and so I quickly picked up my bike and raced home and back with the passport (the bank was about to close so I had to hurry up). After waiting a bit for the other people that meanwhile arrived to be answered I gave him the document and he went back to typing on his computer.

(Did I mention it took me about 10min to find the correct way of opening the electronic doors to the bank? I guess no burglar will even be able to go IN that place, might as well leave it!)

He finally says there was a problem... That I had already been registered in some other office of the same bank. I explained him I had to pay for the university's insurance in that bank and that was the reason for it. 

And so after about 1 and a half our he said everything was ok and presented me the receipt that I had to pay. Guess what was written on it? That I had to pay for the god dam 5€!! So I asked him "what about all the talk of opening a new account??" And he answered: "oh we can make an appointment for that! Maybe tomorrow?". 

                                         

Oh my god! How ridiculous was it to make me run home and get all the stupid documents if he was only going to open the new account the next day and I still had to pay for the fee anyway??

Of course I had to go back there the next day and loose another hour of my precious time to solve the problem! But that was not enough! He still managed to find another problem to make me go there even another day and sign the same paper 4times to correct an error on the spelling of my last name! (Luckily he was good looking and I didn't really mind visiting him more often...)

TII (This Is Italy!)

The Internet

I know it sounds quite boring a post about internet, but not if you live in Italy!

As a Portuguese citizen I take internet for granted... I mean we have it everywhere! And most of the places it's for free! It's also quite fast for which you learn to be mad if it takes more than 3secs to upload any page...

However that is not the case in Italy.

From the moment we were out of the hostel it took us quite a while to find a place with wifi access... We eventually found a caffe with free wifi and it soon became the place we would spend the most time. Nowadays I can't really organise my life without internet and I had never thought how important it was for me because I took it for granted! I mean from finding apartment adds to getting information about classes and of course communicating with my family, I really need my dear internet!

         

When we finally rented the apartment the first thing we decided to do was to get some internet for it!

So we searched for internet companies and took all day just to visit them and decide which one had the best condition. But of course nothing is that simple in italy and we discovered it would take about ONE MONTH to install it! "But why?" I kept asking... And they just looked at me very shocked and answered "because that's the way it is". They didn't know why and they didn't really care about it!

So there I was for one month waiting for the precious internet to knock on my door when one day I got a phone call of an Italian guy saying something that I understood as: "I will be in your house in 15min". I couldn't even believe it! I told my friend and we grabbed our bikes and rushed home!

Once I got there I realized the guy didn't speak English of course... But then I didn't care that much because he just need to do whatever he needed to install the internet and go on with his life! 

Obviously the guy was not normal and it was not that easy! Again he really liked chating and would go on speaking in Italian or one of its many dialects, which I could only understand every now and then.

However, my Italian was now good enough to understand the topics of which he was talking about and that's when I realised he was completely crazy!

          

The first time he saw me he told me he had called 4 times and I didn't answer... And then he asked me if I was deaf?! At first I thought my Italian was really not as good as I thought and I was just mixing up everything he was telling me... But the next day I realised it was definetly not my mistake!

Of course the internet didn't work that day and he had to come back the next day really early and fix it. 

And that's when the conversation started!

He started by asking me if my friend was still sleeping. I said of course because it was still very early. For which he replied she was very lazy and immature! Lol! Then he kept going on as I looked more responsible. I told him I was a bit older than her and that was probably it... And his amazing answer was: "oh of course! I can see that from the dark marks below your eyes!" And he just said that like it was the most non offensive natural thing a strange man could say to a client! Finally he said it smelled like someone was cooking and I told him that was because someone WAS cooking! I was cooking something for lunch because I wouldn't have any time to do it later... Obviously he couldn't keep his mouth shut and he just warned me about how I was going to become very fat eating like that! -.- 

I have nothing more to add to this post... Just that Italian people are completely crazy! Gotta love Italy! <3

The Apartment Adeventures

If you are thinking about moving somewhere and live there for one year of course you will need to find a place to live.

And as young reckless and optimist students we are, we decided to do it only once we got to Padova. We figured if it was a students city like everyone told us, it wouldn't be so hard to find two rooms in an apartment for 2 Portuguese girls. And of course we were wrong! 

                              

In fact, we where so wrong that we ended up "homeless" for a week because we thought 4days in a hostel would be enough to find a place to live... I know, how naive! But that's another story that earned the right to its own post, so I'll write about it later!

As I was saying, as soon as we got settled in the hostel we bought an Italian phone card and off we went to find the little papers with adds that are spreaded across the city.

First stop: the medicine faculty! A lot of people told us that would be a good place to start because there was a specific place for those adds there.

So we stopped our car, trusting Catarina, and couldn't find the building anywhere... We asked a girl about our age that was passing by... Of course her English was terrible but she managed to tell us the hospital was about 10min walk (which in Italian means about 20min walk!) on the opposite direction! This time we really trusted Catarina and didn't really feel like walking 20min again so we just walked the complete opposite way of what she told us... And imagine what happened? A big hospital appeared in front of us!

                                   

So lesson nr 1 for living in north Italy: never trust the direction people give you! They're really just trying to be helpful but most of the times they just say the first thing they can think of that they think resembles some word you said in English and send you that way (we'll talk about the language again some other day)!

And there we were... Facing thousands of tiny papers written in computer and nicely printed or just by hand in some napkin! 

We had to select the ones we though were worth trying, so my friend took care of one wall and I took care of another one. We were there about 2hours just calling those numbers and picking up others to call them later! 

Most people didn't speak English and some of them wouldn't even bother trying to understand us so they would just hang up the phone. Others told us they didn't want foreign students or the place was already taken. In summary: we had long pointless hours of calling people who would talk to us in a language that we could not understand and didn't really care if we could or not understand them... 

But among thousands of phone calls we were able to make some appointements to see some rooms!

As we had called so many people we had to organise the visits every day and were just running from one house to the other, writing pros and cons about all the houses we saw.

However some of them we didn't even had to think about it because they were so terrible the minute we walked out of it we would cross it from our lists!

Here's an example: a creepy Russian guy who couldn't speak English and had a terrible Italian! The house consisted of a long scary corridor with doors on the left side and one on each end of the corridor. The rooms he showed us were tiny, dark and had ugly old furniture on them... But the best part was when I got the courage to ask what was the door that was closed for and he told me: "sometimes I sleep here". Ok that was it! I'm glad I asked him what was behind that door which led me to the decision of never even going near that place again!

Another one was a funny adventure: an old typically Italian couple. They were the most adorable people you can imagine, they just didn't speak any English... And still they wouldn't shut up! Our visit to that house took about one hour which was more than enough for the old lovely lady to tell us all her family history... In Italian! There was a point when I just felt like laughing because I couldn't understand a word of what she was saying and I looked at my friend and the expression on her face told me I was not the only one feeling that way! It was hilarious! The house was nice but we ended up finding a nicer one and gave up on that one.

       

Finally, after dozens of visits to different apartments all around the city we were left with 3 places. So we just made our famous lists of pros and cons and decided on a 2 bedroom apartment in a residential area not far from the city centre! 

Home sweet home! <3

The Detour, Monaco!

And as promised here goes the post about Monaco! 

First of all let me tell this was a non planed stop, but in any road trip (even one where time is not unlimited) you need some space for the unexpected! 

There we where driving as usual in the roads of Southern Europe, France in this case, and having fun looking at the road signs trying to understand how much longer we had to wait until we were in Italy, when the sing "Monaco" appears. 

We just looked at each other and didn't even had to argue about stoping there! So we ignored our life saving friend "Catarina" (the GPS) and couldn't help following those signs to see where they led us...

Passing tunnels, mountains and curves (really a lot of curves!) and there we where: Monaco! And when are you sure you arrived in Monaco, might you ask? When you see five ferraris parked next to each other as if it was the most commun thing in the world... Followed by bentleys, rollsroyces and lamborghinis of course!

At first we stopped in a tiny square where there was some kind of traditional market which was unfornatley closing... People where selling fresh fruit and vegetables as well as souvenirs of course. It looked like a charming place but not exactely the luxury we where expecting. So we figured we should head in the direction of the sea and try to find the image that appears in every postcard. And down we went, not really sure if it was the right direction (we don't really trust Catarina besides the highway as she often gets confused and sends us the opposite way we want to go). 

And there it was! That was absolutely amazing! From the beautiful cristal clear water to the glowing white sand which you could see between the tropical palm trees surrounding the main road! It was beautiful! 

It's actually quite hard to describe (especially for me as that is defenitly not my area of expertise) and not even the pictures will be good enough for you to understand how incredible that place is... So my advice: go there! Don't you dare traveling to South France without stopping there! Even for just an hour or so (which was the time limit we had established to stop there) it will still be worth it!

And because it was still September we were very lucky to have the sun shining all day! Which made it even more beautiful of course! So we stopped the car by the beach, took our French baguette, tomatoes and cheese and there we where having lunch in one of the most famous beaches of the world! :D 

Of course it was hard to trade that place for another 8hs driving, but is was so worth it that it made it easier for us to drive the next few kms!

The Roads

When you travel by car through 4 different countries you obviously expect some differences between the landscape, condition of the roads and the way people drive!!

I drive in Portugal and occasionally in Mozambique (and that's another story...) so I thought it wouldn't be so different from Portugal.

But let's start from the beginning! 

The first country was of course Portugal and being my home country I'm used to driving there. Anyway, as many of you might have never been there I'll tell you the basic rules of it.

The speed limit in the highways is 120km/h and you will get fined if you go over that limit, however it really depends on how fast you're going and which roads you're using. Some of them have speed radars, others have under covered cops in apparently normal cars who have top technology in the cars that allows them to find out most information about your car, including if you payed your insurance! I'm pretty sure they don't have data on foreign cars, but even though you shouldn't push your luck too much... And it's also a matter of safety, of course!

Anyway, another important information is that we do have tolls in most of our highways. There are 3 ways to pay it: 

1) you take a ticket from a machine once you get in the highway and pay it when you leave the highway to a person or machine in those little boxes in the middle of the road (you know what I mean!)

2) Via Verde - one of the smartestes things Portuguese people ever invented! It's an electronic device that you pay regularly to own and allows you to move through the toll without stopping, which will be then charged on your credit card. Usually only residents in Portugal have it, so if you don't have it, DO NOT go on the tolls with the bright and shiny green signs VV!! Or you'll get a ticket, and you don't want that to ruin your holidays!

3) electronic tolls - this one is very recent in Portugal and caused a lot of controversy. It's a system where you just have some signs on the side of the road with the prices, the you pass below a structure that detects you licence plate and the bill will be sent to your home for you to pay withing a certain amount of time. Don't ask me how can they know the adress of foreign people cause I have no idea! Maybe they don't? Feel free to inform me if you know some more information about it! (Anyway I'll try to search something about it)

                                  

Now regarding our service areas (that's the name in Portuguese I'm not sure how is it called in other languages, but it's the nice places where you can go the toilet, put some fuel in your car and spend a huge amount of money in some coffe).

Actually most of them are quite good, except for one somewhere in A1 (North highway) where they still don't know what a toilet is and so you just have a hole on the floor for you to do whatever you need to. I think it's in Aveiras but I'm not 100% sure. Anyway, it's really just a picnic area but remember to stop somewhere else if you don't want to use a latrine!

However most of the service areas in Portugal are quite good and you can find all kinds of stuff to buy there, from food to souvenirs typical from the area you are in. Just remember you'll have to pay at least twice than if you would buy it somewhere else! Even fuel is more expensive on highways than in any other place in Portugal! I know it's still cheap compared to most of your countries but if you prefer to use that extra money to spend on better things avoid stoping in the service areas. I only use them to use the toilet or in case of emergency actually...

Continuing my journey, Spain is very similar to Portugal. The rules are pretty much the same and the fuel prices are actually very similar to the ones in Portugal! (Which I was not expecting since that everyone in Portugal is always complaining how we pay so much more for fuel than Spain...). The tolls in Spain are not that expensive and are also similar to the Portuguese ones, so it's very easy to understand where you have to go and how you have to pay.

     

(Did I mention the centre of Spain as the most boring landscape I ever saw? It is beautiful... But after 5hs it gets a little annoying that everything is still yellow!)

On the other hand, France is a totally different story! First of all, from all 4 countries that was the one we payed the most in tolls! Fuel is also more expensive but we already knew about it, so we filled up the tank when we were still in Spain.

The service areas are located in the exits of the highway! But don't be afraid to use it cause you can come again into the main road without needing to drive an immense amount of extra kms! (It took me a really long time to find that out do use my knowledge and don't panic when you see the name of a city you really don't want to go to written next to the "service area" sign).

Another very important thing in France is that they DO NOT have ATMs in the service areas! The also don't take debit cards in the tolls, only money or credit cards! So make sure you have some money with you before hiting the road and bring a credit card (that's actually one of the main tips for travelers and most people who travel know about it, but here's one big example of why you should have it with you!).

                               

By the way, the road between South France and Italy is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen! It also looks like an endless giant snake, which make it perfect for those of you who get motion sick, but it's still beautiful anyway!

(Just one tiny tip for those who think of passing there: stop in Monaco! You'll see what I mean in some other post that I will  eventually write)

Finally Italy! They really are crazy driving! It's not just a myth! But so are French! I actually think French are worst because they simply don't know how to drive... In Italy they do know how to drive, they just don't have rules... Or don't care about them!

The prices are similar to France but the tolls are definitely not as pricy as in France (or maybe there's just not as many of it as in France).

                                       

In both countries the speed limit is 130km/h on highways, so you get to go a little faster in these countries!

So, keep in mind these nice advice that I just gave you in case you are thinking of traveling 2500km through the south of Europe in the next few days and you should be just fine! :) 

Hope it was helpful!

Enjoy your ride!

The Hostels

We used our dear Internet to help us find some hostels, of course! I love the Booking website (www.booking.com) but it's better to search for hotels rather than hostels. So this time we used Hostel World (www.hostelworld.com).

Of course we wanted to stay in cheap hostels during our trip, specially because it would be only for one night, but with the minimal conditions to sleep! By this I mean, clean! That's about the only thing I really want in a cheap hostel!

Unfortunately that was not the case in Valencia... The hostel (Center Valencia), was in a very good location, practically in the city centre, but it didn't smell that good and you could see the toilets were not the cleanest thing in the world. I'm sorry, but I'm a bit picky about that! In conclusion, I don't intend to ever go back there, even though the guy at the reception was very friendly (and Italian by the way!) and I will not recommend you to go there.

                            

Despite all this, the positive sides of it was that they have big lockers for you to put your bags at the rooms and free wifi everywhere at the hostel.

We were also lucky to have nobody else sharing the room, which consisted of 3 bunks in quite a small room. 

Also, they did have a place were you could cook (or at least a microwave to heat your food) and a common room to chill out. However we did not had the chance to use much of it, since we only stayed one night.

The second night was in Avignon.

By the time we got there we were already quite tired from driving (I will tell you all about it in another post), but the first sight we had once we got there was absolutely breathtaking! It was certainly one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in my life! 

We arrived at sunset and immediately saw a beautiful walled city, much similar to a castle, just standing on the other side of the river, reflecting the "orangeness" of a summer sunset.

                  

The hostel (Auberge Bagatelle) was on the opposite side of the river and we found out once we got there that it was on a camping park, very quiet and also very beautiful. 

The rooms and toilets were much better than the first one and were tidy and clean. We stayed in a shared room with a Japanese girl, also consisting of 3 bunks but much bigger than the one in Valencia.

                                

Unfortunately the wifi was not as easy to find as in Valencia. You had to go to one of the two restaurants in the camping park and have a drink or eat something before you could have access to the internet password.

Anyway, it was a nice experience and a hostel I would definitely recommend you to visit!

Boguinhas, the Car

The idea of bringing the car was brought up for several reasons:

- the huge amount of things we would like to bring to our one year experience in a foreign country, that we wouldn't have to buy once we got there;

- the fact that our faculty in Padova would be about 10km from the actual city, which would mean we would have to travel quite a lot everyday to get there and pay for public transports;

- the commodity of being able to travel around Italy with our own car;

- and of course, because of the adventure it would be to travel across 4 different countries by car!

     

My car is actually quite big, comfortable and in a very good condition, which for me was a requirement to take such a long trip. 

In any case, it's important to make sure everything is ok with the car and that it will be able to make a lot of kms! 

So I did take it to the mechanics, who made some small adjustments such as changing the oil, checking the tyre pressure and replacing the windshield cleaners (which I have no idea of how to say in English!).

All of this did not cost me much, but it will depend on the condition of your car and your own country of course.

After the general check up, I was ready to fill up the gas tank and drive away from Portugal!

The Plan

As soon as we decided to travel by car from Portugal to Italy, we knew there was a lot of planning involved, especially because we had a specific date to arrive.

I had some exams to do in September and didn't have a lot of time during summer to plan it, so I started planing it quite earlier, around April.

We didn't want to take a long time to get to our destination, so after asking our friend Google a couple of times we found some nice websites to help us planing the route. My favourite is the very famous ViaMichelin (www.viamichelin.com), which tells you the best routes you can take to get to a certain place anywhere in the world and an estimative of how much it will cost you.

                                   

We decided that 3 days would be enough to get to Padova, which would be our final destination for Erasmus. This way we only had to stop twice and sleep somewhere along the way. 

As we had a specific day to arrive in Padova, we checked for hostels and booked one in Valencia, Spain and the other one in Avignon, France.

It may not be the most direct way to getting there, but we had a friend in Valencia so we thought it would be a good idea to visit him.

Having everything booked and planed, it was time to start thinking about what should we bring to Padova and how would we fit it in the car! ;)

The beginning

Hello everyone!
Let me start by explaining the origin of this blog...
First of all let me say I will write it in English because I think it is important people from everywhere can read it and hopefully see some of their doubts answered here.
It all started when me and a friend of mine decided to go on Erasmus. For those who do not know what it is, it's an exchange program that exists in Europe, where university students can go to most European countries to study for a period of 3, 6 or 9 months, according to their university and course.
As Portuguese students from Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária (FMV), Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (UTL), we could only go in our 4th year of studies, for a period of 9 months, to either Spain, Italy or Hungary.

After a lot of thinking and researching on several websites, as well as asking a lot of different opinions from some friends and family, we decided to go to Italy! I had never been there and thought it could be a good opportunity to finally get to know this amazing country. Also, I thought the language wouldn't be that different from Portuguese, since we are all Latin countries from South Europe.
Anyway, the next step was to decide how to get there. I've always wanted to do some kind of road trip across Europe and figured this could be the perfect time to do it. However I didn't want to go by myself in such a long drive and so Inês (the friend who came with me in Erasmus) decided to come with me.
So as you can imagine, this will be a place where we will write our adventures driving across Europe an living in a totally different lovely country called Italy!! :)