Ciao!

This time from Italy. It’s been already a month again since my last post – time just flies by!

Sadly my laptop is broken now, which makes writing and editing my blog a little bit difficult, but I try my best to keep it running :)).

Via Graz, Ljubljana, Venice somehow then to Gavi

Our last stop, which I reported about, was with my dad’s cool and hip (just to not make him sound too old, inserted at his request 😉) cousin Jan and his girlfriend Emily in Graz.
We were greeted on Monday evening with a very delicious Vietnamese bread!
Of course, we spent our three days in Graz looking at the beautiful city and going hiking. Finding the exit from the house was so difficult that we missed our bus on the first day (at this point I would just skip the fact, that we had an hour time to find it and were just running late …) and therefore hiked to the Schöckl on Wednesday.
Of course, we also tried the typical Stairian cuisine and were once again advised on our study decision, among other things by the fact that we looked at the university of Graz together with Emily and Jan on Tuesday evening.
Since they had friends coming to stay with them on Wednesday, we moved on to a couch surfer for the last two nights. Unfortunately, Nadja was ill and therefore could not spend the days with us as she had originally planned. Which was a shame, because she has traveled a lot through Europe by bike and I think, we would have had a lot to talk about. Well, now we have one more reason to come back to Graz ;). Nevertheless, we were allowed to stay in Nadja’s apartment while she stayed at her boyfriends place.

On Friday, early in the morning, we continued our journey to Ljubljana, where we went on another free guided tour and leaned alot about the history and culture of Slovenia, which is only around 30 years old.

In thehe last post about Luxembourg I had already briefly reported on this type of city tour, but I would like to go into more detail about it. The idea behind it is to give travelers who cannot (or do not want to) afford a private tour an insight into the culture and history of a city and the country. Most of the tours are done by locals and in groups of up to 20 people for about 2 hours (this varies from city to city, of course). At the end of a tour, each guest can decide for themselves how much they want to pay for the tour, as the guides are only funded by their tips. In our experience, most major cities offer such tours and they are easily found online by searching for „Free Guided Tour“ and then the relevant city. So far we have done three such tours (Luxembourg, Ljubljana, Venice) and are really big fans, because you get a good overview of the region right at the beginning and usually also see the most important sights without having to do research before going there (which may sound weird, but it’s very relaxing for short and spontaneous trips). Often they tell you some pretty funny stories too.
After our tour we met up with Katja, a student from Ljubljana, who we met through Couchsurfing. We went with her to Ljubljana’s Castle and had a beer. I’m actually not a big beer fan (or better: probably not yet), but the Slovenian beer Union (unfiltered) is really delicious and I can only recommend it!

On Saturday we finally went to Bella Italia! And that in a kind of „private taxi“, since our booked bus was a small van and only one other person was traveling with us. The driver was really kind and drove us to downtown Venice instead of dropping us off at the main station on the mainland. We spent the two days in Venice together with Maria. Here, too, we did a free guided tour on the first day. Otherwise we walked through the city, enjoyed some Aperol Spritz, which by the way was invented in Venice, and visited the island of Burano with its colorful houses on Sunday. On Saturday evening we met two girls from Pakistan we met through Host a sister for pizza and aperol, which was also very cool.

Non mi piaciono i treni italiani! – I don’t like Italian trains!

On Sunday evening the nightmare with the Italian railway started.

In Venice we were talking about getting suspicious when things went too smoothly for a while and that difficulties have to appear at some point and then we stood in the train at the station in Verona for an hour, because the train was too full to leave. So we arrived in Brescia at 10:00 p.m. at our booked accommodation.
Of course, we were charged €10 extra without warning, because we had asked if we could check out a little later and we were an hour late.
On Tuesday we visited the city, which by the way is also worth seeing, and had dinner in the evening, since our plan was to take the latest train to Arquata Scrivia, where Lorenzo, our next host, wanted to pick us up at around 9 p.m.

However, the Italian railways had other plans for us.
Our first train to Milano was of course late, so that we would miss our connecting train. So we had to cancel our train ticket and look for accommodation in Milano. Luckily, a couch surfer was able to host us spontaneously.
But that wasn’t enough.
On Wednesday the Italian railways went on strike, so that no direct train ran from Milano to Arquata Scrivia. We had to change trains in Tortona, a small town, and find a bus there. That turned out to be not so easy, since apparently not even the locals knew when and where the bus would leave. On top of that, the station display showed a train to Arquata Scrivia, which made us very happy and of course we bought a train ticket. Unluckily the train was canceled 10 minutes before departure.
In the end we luckily found the bus, because an Italian, who had the same destination as us, was at least as confused and with whom we communicated with hands, feet and Google translator, helped us.
So on Wednesday evening we arrived at a pizzeria in Arquata Scrivia, where we waited three hours until Lorenzo came to pick us up.

Work on the vineyard

Since Wednesday, March 9th, we have been with Lorenzo and his parents Peter and Laura on the wine farm. In the beginning we were a total of 7 workawayers from all over the world, with whom we got on really well.

Lorenzo’s vineyard is the smallest in Gavi and the surrounding area, yet it has an incredible number of fields and there is definitely enough to do.

The work was hard, but not because it was very physically demanding, but rather because we worked 5 hours at a time (and mostly in the morning and without breakfast) in the field and that requires (especially mental) stamina. At the beginning we pulled the pruned vine branches out of the wire mesh, which was actually physically demanding, but kept you warm very well. For the last two weeks we have been bending and attaching all the new branches, that will later carry the grapes, so that they grow nicely to the side along the wires. To attach the branches, we had a kind of „pistol“ with which you somehow feel like a superhero.

We always worked in two shifts, one in the morning from about 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and one after lunch, into which we were always divided. Lina and I mostly worked in the mornings and had time in the afternoons to learn Italian (a lot with Laura, who hardly speaks English, and Peter, who was able to explain a lot to us), to explore the area, to walk to the nearest supermarket in Gavi or to let us show from Peter, how to properly bake bread and good cakes.

The last two and a half weeks have been really cool!

It was a bit cold in the first two weeks, since we could only turn on the heater, which runs on wood, in the evenings to be able to take a warm shower and run the heaters, but it was really great to meet so many different people and luckily, last week the sun was shining all the time, so we got a nice tan at work.

We got to know a lot of different people from Denmark, Mexico, the USA, Germany and of course Italy and made new friends again. The family is also very dear to us and somehow it feels like Laura and Peter are our Italian grandparents ;)).

On our first weekend we were all together in Genova and the last weekend we walked from Santa Margherita along the coast to Protofino.

The sun was shining very nicely, we even went swimming and enjoyed the beautiful landscape and city.

On Sunday we moved on to Perugia in Tuscany for our next workaway on an olive farm. Loredana and Tim are very nice people too and I think, we’re gonna have great two weeks here :)).

That’s it for now!

Ciao!