Kevin goes to Sicilia!

Only a month late but here is my post on Sicily, or part of the weekend anyway. Carnivale will come eventually it will just require me to sit down and do it. Then I will do Paris and then Venice..........


I’ve come to the conclusion that I have a terrible tendency to forget conversations and events ever happened. Rachel knows all about this disorder I have, I mean I could not begin to quantify how many times I have had this conversation:

Rachel: So about the (insert subject here)
Me: What the hell are you talking about?
Rachel: Ugh, we talked about this last night.
Me: Um.....no we didn’t.
Rachel: Yes we did!
Me: No we did not.
Rachel: You never #@*$?%! listen to me when I talk.

And then I’m left with an honestly confused and bewildered look on my face.

Anyway that’s neither here nor there, for the purpose of this post is not to prove my insanity nor my blatant case of early onset Alzheimer’s but to transcribe, as accurately as possible, the thoughts and events of one of the most interesting experiences of my life. I know I have other posts to make but I figured I would try and get this one of the way as soon as possible before the short term memo..........why the fuck am I on a train right now and who is this long haired freak sitting next to me?

Well without further ado here is my trip to the land of many words, 99% of which I can not comprehend.

The Voyage

Well since I have posted previously on my disdain for air travel I will keep this as brief as possible , but in all likelihood I will ramble and you my good sir or madam will grow tired and either give up or jump ahead . Do as you wish but if I found out you didn’t read it......

The journey can be summed up in a few points about the journey.

1.I got amazing views of both the Alps and Mt. Etna thanks to it being a daytime flight and Alitalia making it a point to fly by at a slower speed so those onboard can take decent pictures. Thank you Alitalia!

2.Alitalia has so far provided the best in-flight food I have had to date, decent sandwich and a free MARS bar.

3.McDonald Douglas makes one loud fucking engine.

4.All three airports I visited bothered me for different reasons, here they are as follows.
a.Brussels: Like IKEA Brussels airport takes you through everything thing they offer even through you aren’t going to buy anything.
b.Milan: Build more terminals or make travelers disembark in the rain?
c.Catania: Now I know this will make me sound like an alcoholic but why doesn’t Catania have a decent bar? All I wanted to do was sit at a bar and drink crappy Italian beer, is that too much to ask?

5.My fifth and final point is probably the most disturbing. Turbulence used to scare the shit out of me , it made me realize that “Holy shit I’m thousands of feet above the earth!” It left me clutching my arm rest, breathing deeply and whispering “Serenity now!”

Now it doesn’t bother me, its like hitting a bump on the highway, the car shutters and then everything’s fine. Don’t get me wrong this development is great for my nerves and for those of the people around me, but take a dislike with what transpired in my head while en route from Milan to Brussels. While flying we hit a bout of turbulence, and since I am now apparently a veteran of flight my nerves of steel did not break. But instead I thought to myself.

“I hope we don’t crash right now, because I really need to get back to school”

Read that again.

Did I forget something? Oh yeah I forgot the fact that if my plane plummeted 32,000 feet I would most likely die and never get back to school. But noooooooo I’m concerned about how it wouldn’t fit into my life plan at the moment. Am I that self-centered, or just crazy?

The Arrival

Upon arriving to Catania I went through the motions of disembarking the plane and what not, the sudden realization that the plane is packed, the awkward “should I say good bye in the local vernacular or in English?” moment, then the “Where the fuck is my luggage moment?”

Well the “where the fuck is my luggage moment” lasted way longer than expected. The wonderful people that work in Catania national airport decided unilaterally, and without telling me I might add, to put all the luggage from all the arrivals onto one of the 6 conveyor belts.

I think now is an appropriate time to tell you about my struggles with the Italian language. I have taken six year of Italian since 7th grade even graduating High School as a two year member of Honors Italian. Yet after finishing my final senior year I was told that there was no way I could be given a grade for what was an “attempt” at taking my final. So needless to say when my luggage had not turned up after 20 minutes I was up the proverbial creek.

At this point I am now frantically trying to locate the guy who sat next to me on the plane because in my mind if I can find him I will find my luggage, its a simple correlation. But there is only one problem, , my brain loves to make my life a living hell. That man could be wearing a blue suit, glasses and an obvious comb over but my addled brain would have me believing he had a clown suit on with a pink Afro, so no help there.

My next course of action was to randomly choose a belt and hope to god it was the right one. I chose the one at the far end and just went with it, doubting my course of action the entire time. For the record my hunch was correct and I got my luggage eventually but only after enduring the death stare from Rachel piercing my back. I was afraid that if I didn’t get out of the luggage area in the time allotted by Rachel’s brain she was going to smash the glass barrier and then drag me out by my hair. Nothing gets between Rachel and me when she hasn’t seen me in two and a half weeks.

But I finally got my luggage walked out the gate kissed Rachel, met Fabio and there was much rejoicing.

The Car Ride

Italians drive like Belgians ride bicycles with little to no regard for the rules of the road. To put it bluntly they drive like crazy people. This coming from a man (yes I called myself a man) who boasts that no one (and I mean no one) passes on the highway.

I mean it is perfectly acceptable to pass someone any where at any time as long as you can avoid a car wreck you’re all good.

Needless to say the first time Fabio pulled into the oncoming lane of traffic and nearly collided with a truck I nearly shit my pants. I immediately grabbed the seatbelt and jammed it into the buckle only to be told that in Italy one does not need to wear a seatbelt in the backseat. So they really are crazy! I’m sure that my look of bewilderment/horror at this statement is what caused Fabio to slow down and avoid passing people for the rest of the ride. That and he kept asking if he was driving to fast every 5 minutes.

The Family

It would not be an Italian experience if I didn’t meet the entire family the first night I was there. When I first met Rachel’s whole family in the states I said it was akin to Ian meeting Toula’s family in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” My first night in Syracusa one upped even Ian’s first night with the Portokalos.

Here are 12 points about the evening:

1. Not a single Sicilian I met the entire weekend spoke English, and the little English the family knew I knew the same words in Italian. Useless.

2.Rachel had decided without consulting me that she would not speak English to me in front of the Italians. Perfectly logical, because it just so happened that during my flight I had developed the ability the ability to communicate telepathically, what an amazing coincidence! And who wants to be able to communicate with at least one person over a five day period? Not me!

I love sarcasm! And exclamation points!!!!!

3.Like Ian no one can say my name correctly. My first name all week was “Kayvin”, and in the one up department my last name all weekend was “Costner” as in Kevin Costner, this was because the only Kevin anyone knows in Italy is Kevin Costner. If anything this development has convinced me that cooler Kevins must be developed before the next time I go to Sicily.

4.The meal I had had so many courses that I don’t remember how many I actually had. I just remember there being five forks on the table and by the end of the evening I was asking for extras. Pasta, fish, shrimp, crabs, meat, squid, mussels (first time btw), Italian ice and much more.

5.English? Let me check, nope fresh out of it.

6.Ezio kept pouring glass after glass of wine, pretty sure they all think I’m an alcoholic

7.When someone gives you the limp wrist signal you immediately think gay, right? So when someone yells down the table “Kayvin, Darrio” and then the limp wrist signal is thrown out there, tou respond with “Gay” but because you are in Italy and you know the word for gay in Italian you try and be cool and shout “Finocio!”

Well a limp wrist does not mean gay in Italy and I had just insulted the person whose room I would be sleeping in for the next four nights, in front of his whole family. I turned a rare form of red.

8.Rachel received birthday gifts from 20 people she had known for a week. I brought myself. A rarer form of red.

9.We sat down to eat at 9:30 PM and I think that was early for them.

10.The whole kissing of both cheeks greeting really fucks with my head and I never know when it applies. Tonight was no exception.

11.Bringing an Italian-English dictionary is always fun especially with little kids around, and old crazy men.

12.At one point during the evening a clip from CSI came on the TV and Fabio looked over at me and said “CSI.” Now I have never seen CSI, never had the urge, but for some reason or another the mention of the show’s name caused me to start talking in English for a sold minute or so before I noticed the blank stares I was getting from the rest of the table. This is when I realized this was going to be an interesting weekend.