Gardabubs

The 'Gardabubs' weekend came to me courtesy of the same group of friends with whom I shared the 'Super Happy Fun Day' in Venice. 'Gardabubs' was to be made up of two events - hence the composite word 'Gardabubs'. I shall deal with each separately:

Garda

The Garda of 'Gardabubs' refers to the day we were going to spend at 'Gardaland', a theme park on the southerly bank of Lake Garda. It's no Alton Towers, but it was certainly respectable and gave us a jolly fun day full of in-jokes and banter that I won't bore you with now.

Bubs

Now 'Bubs' refers to an event on the following day - when Michael Buble came to town. He was playing a gig at the Arena in Verona and a couple of my friends were going. I didn't want to spend 50Eur on a ticket because, let's face it, the Arena doesn't have a top so even if I was sitting at home in my apartment, I could still hear his dulcet tones drifting over.

The combination of these two magnificent events, however, meant that the only logical next step was to give the weekend a name, and this is where 'Gardabubs' came from.

To celebrate this, it only really makes sense to do one more thing: take a commemorative jumping photo:

Another summer day has come and gone away in Paris and Rome (and Gardaland)...

Gardaland, Lake Garda, Italy, 2010

Trenta Tre Trentini

My radio involvement was going nicely. I was properly established as part of the team and we were actually making some headway with the student body. Our plans were gradually getting more and more elaborate and after a version of CSI, a remake of the original Star Wars films, it only made sense that now we go for three Top Gear-inspired races across Bella Italia.

The first race pitted a lift against my legs and a flight of stairs; the second saw a three-way spat across Verona - who would win out of a runner, a bike, and a bus? The third race was going to have to be something special - it was going to have to take us outside the medieval walls of the city, but where?

We chose Trento.

We chose Trento because it took one hour on the train and one hour in the car - I genuinely didn't know who was going to win. I was on the train with one co-presenter, and the other had some merry men to deal with in the form of some other Erasmus students.

We raced. If you want to know who won, watch the video. But after all that, we were in Trento, an hour out of Verona and to be honest once we'd wandered round for a while, we all got bored. The only solution to our problems was first, to Grom, second to jump...

The Victory Jump

Trento, Italy, 2010

...and third, to go home.

Radio Gaga

You may have read that when I was in Verona I got involved with student radio. This was a lot of fun. We had a show aimed at other Erasmus students and we discussed everything foreign from habits to haute cuisine. It was actually quite a success. We'd get hundreds of downloads each week on our podcasts and we created quite a stir on the station.

Despite this the station was undergoing some changes in staffing and let's say they needed a kick up the bum in order to publicise their shows. we may have got 1,000 downloads for our podcast about Verona, but if there was one thing we could guarantee it was that the listeners weren't coming from the university. In fact they weren't aware the university had a radio station.

My co-presenters and I felt that we needed to change this and embarked on an ambitious campaign of printing tshirts and orgainising events for our fellow students. This was something we managed to do quite easily in the end and begged the question, why haven't we done this before? (Or rather why haven't they done this before).

So one evening we took our box of tshirts and went to the local pub (that was really the only 'pub' in Verona). We handed out our tshirts, did a spot of publicity, and tried to get the student population to listen to our show - this actually involved explaining to them what student radio was. It was a little hopeless really.

Still, what wasn't hopeless was the jumping picture we took to mark the occasion.

Lost in Translation, only on Fuori Aula Network

Verona, Italy, 2010

The Pant Bug

There are many, many things I love about Italy: the culture, the people, the buildings, the food. I could go on for hours. There is, however, one thing I am partial to above all else - fashion. When in Rome, I decided to do as the Romans, and I bought the same clothes as they did (at least I tried, there were some that were a little out of my budget...).

I continued in this vein for the entire year and found a small collection of shops that tickled my fancy in a way that H&M and New Look had ceased to do in the UK. I will tell you a few of these as I feel it's important comsumer research: Promod, Bershka, Tezenis, Yamamay, Calzedonia, and my absolute favourite, Brandy & Melville.

I really miss it.

One of the things that I loved buying above all else was nice pants. I don't know why that was, but it started when a friend of mine tried to eek out his pants so that he wouldn't have to do any washing. This inevitably meant he had to buy some more. When in Italy, why not buy Italian pants. Anyway, this inspired me so much, I also invested in a pair.

It was months later, on the radio, that we mentioned our pants in passing and my friend said to me that he gave me the pant bug. Unfortunately this sounds quite a lot like an STD and it made us laugh quite a lot. There's only one way to celebrate something like that...

Fuelled by Diesel

Verona, Italy, 2010

High Ceilings

In Italy the ceilings are high. Really high. I'm not sure why that is because in an apartment block, if the ceilings were the standard 7-8' that you get in Britain, then you would probably be able to fit an extra floor into the building.

Still they've obviously done it for a very good reason - maybe it helps air circulation. I don't know. I don't really care, because on one evening it gave me and my friend the perfect opportunity for a little game... see who can touch the ceiling.

Easy.

No. It really wasn't.

In fact we didn't manage it. The ceilings must have been 10' and when you're jumping from the ground and not something that will give you a little leverage, it really is an impossible task. But I like a challenge and I wasn't going to be beaten, at least not without giving it a jolly good go first.

We jumped.

'Who was higher?'

'I dunno' my friend replied.

This was proving to be an ineffective competition.

'I know! Let's take a photo to see who's highest.'

This is what we did, the results of which you can see below.

Reach for the Stars

Verona, Italy, 2010

So though we didn't reach our goal, we had a lot of fun in the process. It lulled us into a false sense of security in a way because my roommate casually mentioned to me the following day that we ought to be careful about the amount of jumping we do, as the girls in the apartment below may not be loving our competition as much as we were.

All Things to All Men

I'd been in Verona quite a while and I'd got involved in all sorts. One of the little projects I had was student radio. Now radio isn't really what I want to go into full-time, no, that would be television, but as the University of Verona didn't have a TV station, radio was certainly the next best thing.

Still I'm not one to go down without a fight and decided that the solution to my problems was to do a few films and videos to accompany certain episodes of our highly successful show. We did it all - CSI:Verona, Star Wars, Top Gear - they may not have gone viral, but they were so much fun to film.

Having said all of this, we were limited by a number of issues:

1. We were using my poxy digital camera that makes people sound like they're lisping when they talk.

2. We were using very basic editing software - no Oscar nominations for us.

3. We were in Verona.

Now why does being in Verona hamper our chances at making a decent film? Locations.

Fair enough CSI:Verona was set in Verona, but Star Wars wasn't. We had to trawl the city looking for the Death Star, Cloud City, Tattooine, Jabba's Palace, the Millenium Falcon and so on...

In the end we used what we could and it turned out ok. George Lucas isn't quaking in his space boots, but considering the things we were up against, it's not too shabby. We categorised all the scenes and worked out what we could film where and set to it. My friend lived in a reasonably plain flat which became Cloud City, the Death Star, the Millenium Falcon, and many, many more places.

It seemed only right, therefore, that at the end of this escapade we jumped to celebrate.

Using the Force

Verona, Italy, 2010