we're in venezia, give me a drink...

(aka venice, italy, not california)

alright well i guess this is where my little semester abroad, vacation, whatever you want to call it, gets kind of sad.

so after our dinner in verona with the accordian and violin player, the people who drove in the new fiat ducato van (ross, jody, stephanie, lisa, kari and myself) are joined by john and yoolee to go back to the hostel. so we get back and we see coy,our instructor, with leili and the back door of the bmw is open. coy is sitting in the back door and we're like "what's going on?!" and he's like "the car got broken into."

at this point everyone's jaw is on the cobblestone road, and questions about what got stolen are asked. basically the car was parked on an open street outside of verona and a rock was used to break the window and all of the stuff in the back was stolen. everyone's stuff was stolen, including an ipod, clothes, camera chargers and cameras. the only things left were kari's luggage but they went through her bag and stole her shoes and make up. i think the saddest thing was that yoolee's computer was stolen. if you dont' know yoolee she's probably one the sweetest girls. she's got the charm of any asian girl, but she's got this undercover side to her. i think she's working on getting a new one to use here.

coy thinks that it was a group of gypsies that broke into the car and stole the stuff. just another reason to be angry/scared/mad at those people. hopefully this is the only instance of this happening to us (knock on wood!). i would have been crying...

that night a few of them go to the police station to file a report in the hope that they're stuff could be found, which was doubtful, but so that maybe insurance could replace the stolen articles.

so after having a really horrible night and a not so great rest the group decides to head out to venice. we get to the hostel and first of all, all of us are kind of bummed and pissed off that we get accommadations at hostels, not even hotels!!! dude, we're adults, graduate students, not 18 year olds or young kinds that just got out of high school or college and are backpacking through europe! (no offense if you did that, i think that great) but i think that most people our age are passed that and want some decent, not fancy, accomodations. so we get to our hostel in venice and we actually dont' know where it is. we have an address and when we find it it's this big mideval looking door. and a small ass sign that says "BAXPAX HOSTEL." all i got to say is, if you're ever in venice don't go there. anyways so we're knocking on the door and i'm almost waiting for one of the panels on the door to open and have a hunchback stick his head out and say "WE DON'T WANT WHAT YOU'RE SELLING!"

and then just shut the door. but that doesn't happen. so we continue to knock on the door for like ten minutes and then this black guy with an italian accent goes up to us and says "are you de group from swiss?"

and all of us who are just emotionally drained go "yes."

so he goes "follow me."

so we follow this guy and he leads us to this back alley. we're all thinking, about how non-legit this guy seems and how he's going to kill us and take all of our money. he leads us to the top of this building and shows us our accomodations. there is a seperate boys and girls room with mattressess that are stained with blood and what ever other fluids and black satinish, non cotton and non comfortable sheets. the walls are also covered in bad art, like this jackson pollack wanna be painting, and dead bugs. so basically we spend the rest of the day looking for hotels and not really enjoying the city. and we end up eating at this restaurant at like 12am that is italian but run by some northern african people. what a day!!!

at least the sun setting was beautiful...