I’m actually halfway trough writing a rather long and boring article on the Erasmus For Young Entrepreneurs application process, but in the meantime, here are some random thoughts and tidbits.
Just around the corner of my block, there’s a number of fences in front of a big house, and guards patrol at night. Somebody casually informed me this was because a judge disliked by the mafia like lives there.
The problem with judges disliked by the mafia, is that they tend to get blown up. Mental note: do not look any deeper into the average blast radius of mafia bombs.
People are really, really serious about ice cream here. While finding a decent supermarket near my place took me about a week, I run into a new awesome gelateria about every 2 days. As casually as Belgians go out to grab a beer together, here they do the same with a gelato. Count me in!
Gelati!
Another upcoming post will talk about my strategies (and the absence thereof) for learning/improving Italian while I’m here. Until then, just let me say that the fastest way of charming the locals is apparently demonstrating knowledge of the local dialect, in particular if that knowledge is mostly comprised of dirty words. To all the cugliuni and margiali out there take note, I’m on to you. Any suggestions for language learning that are not ‘taking one of the overpriced courses for foreigners’ here are welcome.
(and of course, let’s not overlook the obvious, as far as learning Italian goes, the fact that I am actually living in Italy by itself should be pretty helpful.)
I had my first extremely typical erasmus-ish experience: hanging out at a loud bar blasting pop-with-beats, crowded with anything but Italians (but lots of Spanish of course. Chicos, instead of studying political science abroad you guys should be fixing your local economy. Just kidding, I love those ‘foreign-minded’ Spanish students.), meeting a lot of new people (and people I already know! Lecce is small really) and getting invited to the next house party, instantly forgetting the vast majority within seconds after the introduction, but also cherishing some genuinely cool ones, exchanging contact data, and hoping for the best.
Worst. Picture pose. Ever. The ‘aperitivo’ was so delicious I’m surprised it’s legal though.
I had my first weekend with a very special Belgian visitor, and what an unforgettable weekend it was! Got around to actually swimming in that beautiful sea for the first time, savoring the prettiest sea+sun+green+gentle slopes+thebestpossiblecompany, had an unexpectedly great and affordable dinner (Gnocchi! Risotto with a little piece of actual gold on top!) on an outside terrace somewhere around midnight, my first orechiette, my first taste of being the one to decide where to direct the strolling around (answer: a bit everywhere and nowhere), and of course simply enjoying the sun in our face on the rooftop terrace for the 6212th time. Never gets old, and even better with 2!
Wouter en Anneke aan de Pugliese zee
I gave a presentation in Italian! Introduced the wonders of selling on Facebook with MyShoppingTab to Italy on local startup event Kublai In Campo. It was only 5 minutes (+3 minutes of Q&A), and I was just one of a long line of presenters, but cazzo was I nervous as hell. I was the first to get some genuine laughter of the crowd (of about 70 perhaps) though, always a good sign for presentations! Afterwards there were interesting ‘workshops’ discussing ideas with fellow startup people.
Kublai in campo – startup workshops
Apart from attending startup events, work’s been pretty great! At web/communication agency ZeroDD (my ‘host entrepreneur’) I’ve been learning about the possibilities, intricacies (and annoyances) of Joomla! and its zillion ‘components’, ‘modules’, ‘templates’ and whatnot. I also met a great fellow PHP programmer from sportclub focused CMS platform Slyvy, and have been spending quite some time at their office since, exchanging ideas, learning from each other’s experience, and taking advantage of their wireless to actually do some MyShoppingTab programming (selling printable gift vouchers from your Facebook page, coming soon!) etc etc.
Italians kiss each other twice on the cheek when greeting, including guys with other guys. In general they are waaaay more touchy here among friends than in Belgium – when I’m introduced to a new group of people, it’s pretty impossible to understand who exactly the couples are. They are also louder and more energetic, and even worse in English than the Spanish. (half of the young people speaks literally zero English, the other half speaks it but with an extremely strong accent)
Oh, right: turns out pizza made by true Napolians (Napolitans?) really is better.
(In true scientific tradition, I am going to check out Napoli together with my flatmate soon to make sure)