Saturday 28th-Saturday 4th (under construction)

Hello! Sorry for the lack of blogging. Have been alternately very busy and completely dead of tiredness. I shall take this week day by day. It starts interestingly, and finishes interestingly with a blank in the middle due to exteme tiredness.

Saturday 28th: Basically was a quiet day. I think this might have been when I went to Lucie's and we watched the film Cube. Its a horror film about people stuck in this massive maze of cubes. It was pretty cool.

Sunday 29th: Woke up at about 11. It was raining so I didn't think that Italians would be too bothered about getting their early so I set off to get the bus about 4. Bad idea. I searched for about an hour in the rain before I finally found the stop. By this time my feet and jeans were totally soaked through and mostly stayed this way until the rest of the day. It was properly misrible weather. Eventually I got the bus and felt alot better about finally being on my way, but I was still worried about where to get off as this place is fairly far out past the motorway. In the event it was all ok and, when getting off the bus, I struck up a conversation with 3 Italians. Two girls and a guy.
Both the girls study English with another language, and one of them had spent her erasmus in Reading so they could help me when I didn't talk Italian. I found it was mostly ok though and we had a great time chatting. We arrived at the venue and I had been right about there not being a massive queue. It was about 6pm and there was very few people in a massive huddle (no queue, obviously, them being Italian). We chatted, they had a beer, I shared some vodka lemonade and crisps. The mass of tents that everyone had made something that looked very like a roof. The rain didn't stop.
Eventually we got into the venue. Its a really cool place and we carried on chatting. I was second row from the front, and the whole concert was brilliant! I'll probaly do a review of it in my other blog if people want to know exactly how good, but i'll not bore everyone here. After that we had a very very long wait for the cloakroom, with some drunken idiots generally annoying everyone. I went to the loo at this point and there was anothe drunken guy singing the italian lyrics to the last song Franz had played! the English lyrics are "this fire is out of control, gunna burn this city burn this city" and he was singing "questo fuoco e' fiuori controlo, sta brunciano la citta' sta bruciano la citta'" which is the same words. It was great and there was a breif sing along. The toilets were amazing, the best i've ever seen in a club/gig venue ever! After this we walked to the bus stop and went home. Great night!

Monday 30th: Woke up at 7.30 but was so tired. I thought I had time to sleep a bit more but when I woke up next it was 10.20 and I had promised to meet Lucie at 11.30! I was massively stressed and had no time for a shower so I pulled on the clothes from the night before (with different shoes, as those ones were still soaking) and rushed everything together before 11 when I had to leave. I was ready early so I went to the shop and got a load of food for the evening. I got to the MacDonalds outside the trainstation 10 mintues early!! I was exhausted though. Lucie arrived and we got a big meal. The train journey passed without incident. When we arrived in Mantova it was sunny! Finding a bus took us some time but once we did it everything went pretty smoothly. We arrived at the venue to the sound of the soundcheck.
Our hotel was really near, and we were suprised when we arrived. It was 4 star! properly luxury rooms! It was an experience to say the the least. We organised ourselves, dumped our overnight stuff and headed for the queue. There was a massive variety in dress, and to a certain extent in age. One girl there looked about 11, and there were some big burly guys who looked in their 20s. Either way, everyone seemed happy, and one guy was doing his German homework! We didn't feel that hungry after the huge McD lunch. When the gates were opened there was massive shoving. The guards had to close the gate again and tell everyone to calm down.
Once inside we were in the 5th row behind two massive guys, 6ft plus, and none of us could see anything. They were keeping "space" at the front that could have been taken up by people being nearer. I kept trying to get through them but realised that him and his gf weren't going to be split up so I tried to get through him and the other tall guy. This guy got pissed off. At one point there was a surge in the crowd and I got through! This caused the guy to shove me, pretty hard, into the other people and it did hurt. His gf then did the same thing, but with less effect. Lucie and a crowd of girls behind me were shocked, she tried to talk to him but he screamed at her. This was all during the support bands. I felt bad for Lucie that this was her gig and she couldn't see. Later on this girl next to me (who was with the people who shoved me) told me to get back to my place, I was I was ok here and she was shocked. I told here in gigs there are no "places". She was annoyed at me but I didn't move. Later I got shoved back by this girl in between the two tall guys. This helped everyone behind me to finally see so I stayed there the whole way through the concert. After the concert me and Lucie looked at each others photos and waited outside the other gate to see if the band would come out. Eventually the keyboard player (who is Lucies favouite) came out with the singer from one of the support bands. We waited for the others but they didn't come. We then went back to the hotel, found our balcony which we loved, and went to bed.

Tuesday 31st: We woke up at half past 10 (as we had agreed to, due to needing to have enough time to have showers and leave. I had a shower and washed my hair with the hotel shampoo. It was amazing and I felt so clean! We had some snacks from the cupboard and packed up. Bus into Mantova was simple to get to. We arrived in the piazza and went to an inn to get food. I had risotto alla Mantovanese (risotto rice with sausage cubes) and Lucie had lasagna. It was great. We then spent the rest of the time wandering around on our way back to the train station, stopping at a random chapel on the way. It was pretty, but raining. Monday seemed to be as dead as Sunday in Mantova. Train home I mostly read, we were too tired to talk much. We got back to Bologna and I went home and basically died for the rest of the day!

Wednesday 1st: April fools. I only got fooled properly once! I spent most of the day pretty tired, although I did make it to my lecture.
Thursday 2nd: Lectures again. Less tired

Friday 3rd: Lectures in the daytime. I had text my friends from the Franz gig and they had said I should come out with them in the night. She text me and told me they were going out at 1am. I found the place fairly easily and went in, but didn't find anyone. Got myself a drink, but I couldn't see them. Waited around for a while. When I finally went out to the front door at about 2 they finally arrived! We got drinks and danced. The Dj was amazingly good. He mixed brilliant songs like the gossip and smells like teen sprit. There were the usual weirdo guys, but mostly it was really cool! We danced until 4am! I saw Hannah's friend Lackie, and we had the drunken conversations i'm getting used to having with him now. At 4 we all left, me and Micheala walked home singing songs and chatting. It was fun and then I crawled into bed.
Saturday 4th: Nothing to report all day but Olivia arrived! We chatted about many things, looked at photos and caught up on news. Then we got my room sorted for a visitor and went to bed. Great day!