Sunday night after getting back from Sorrento, we all headed over to our local spot Elfo’s Pub to watch the Women’s World Cup Final. Due to the general Italian culture, combined with the fact that the staff had been working at the bar literally from 8 in the morning Saturday until close because of events at the Jazz Fest, they didn’t open until around 9:30 or 10, after the second half had already begun. We were also all heartbroken to learn that this would be their final month in business for a month, whether that is just the way things work in Perugia after such a large event or just some that the staff of 3 needed some vacation time after going so hard. It is a total bummer because I really liked the staff there as well as their selection of beers on draught. They had a lot of beers that I have yet to see anywhere else – lots from Germany and Belgium, which of course I was glad to try. Their wait staff is always helpful with my limited Italian knowledge, it was a great atmosphere that routinely showed ESPN America and played American rock music. As far as the game went, we seemingly didn’t miss anything important in the first half. We scored first which put us in a great mood, but we quickly blew it and put us all in a sour mood. Obviously objectively speaking, we outplayed Japan but terrible defending and horrible penalty kick attempts did us in. Quite the disappointing way to close down our time at Elfo’s, but we made sure to thank the owner for his hospitality and he made us promise to come back whenever we are next in Perugia – which I will totally do.
Because of a guest speaker, Tuesday class got pushed back to 3:00, so naturally Monday night was a great night to break out the Olympic Games again. The competition made it a lot of fun – it got a nice, friendly rivalry going and surrounded the night with a lot of excitement. Things didn’t get too crazy, we just had a few events to keep the games going after they had dropped off from the first week. Do to league restructuring and realignment, now Team Butter Noods took the aggregate lead 4-3 by the end of the night. In class the next day, we had someone come in to talk to us about business practices in Italy. Some of the things he mentioned were pretty useful and interesting to learn, but I disagreed with a lot of what he had to say – he overly generalized in my opinion; granted you kind of have to when you are talking about international marketing, but for him everything was black and white. It seemed like Dr. Baker was not totally in agreement either, based on the comments he was making – the speaker was someone brought in by the Institute, not through the professors, so I’m not sure if that was the type of presentation they were expecting.
Tuesday night we were able to – with questionable legality – finally see the final installment of Harry Potter e il Doni della Morte Parte Due. Ian, an American who works at the Institute, downloaded a version that had Russian subtitles but still had the original English dialogue. Despite our efforts to see it legitimately, we could not find anywhere in Perugia that was either showing it in English or with English subtitles, so at least we started with good intentions. A few of us fans along with Ian and the professors stuck around at school to watch it. I had a few issues with the way it was portrayed, but for the most part it followed the book pretty well – but after the raping of Goblet of Fire, I really have not come to expect much in terms of accuracy, as long as the visuals are done well. Afterwards it was a pretty quiet night – we nerdily walked around discussing the movie, got some gelato, and headed to the city wall where we saw some guys messing around on a parking sign and holding themselves parallel to the ground…a pretty impressive feat considering their questionable sobriety. When it started to rain, we moved it back to the apartment and just hung out for a while before eventually calling it a night. Next up this weekend, all of us are headed to the Cinque Terra with Dr. Baker to go hiking, see the beautiful cliffs, and then spend a day or two in Milan. I’m not really sure what we’re planning to do in Milan, but we are looking into touring AC and Inter’s stadium at some point. For the most part I just want to walk around and see things as I come across them, like I did in Bologna. I really don’t have any interest in seeing the Last Supper or an opera at La Scala, and apart from maybe some brief window shopping, I won’t be purchasing much in Italy’s fashion capital.
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