(Eat)aly

Next year, I will be traveling to New Delhi, India and Bali, Indonesia and I am very excited. Somehow, when I made that decision, I was thinking about Eat, Pray, and Love. The movie reinforced my desire to visit India, which I believe is one of the most historically and culturally rich countries in the world. Everything in India seems to be in high-definition and everyone likes it high-def, right?

If you asked me a couple of years back about countries that I would like to visit, Indonesia was not part of the list for several reasons. Some of them were too controversial to disclose and were due to close-mindedness. I apologize. But over the past years, having the opportunity to work with Indonesians who are doing great stuff for the world and seeing more about the country has to offer in magazines and films, I think I will enjoy my stay in BALI!!!!!

But we will reserve the stories for next year. Have you noticed that Indonesia and India are the pray and love parts of the novel? When I traveled to Switzerland last month, I saw the opportunity to fulfill the first bit of traveling, Elizabeth Gilbert-style.

Together with three people I met in the conference, we head to the Italian side of the world. We met at Zurich's HB train station after lunch. We initially wanted to go to Germany but we decided against it since we want to go somewhere un-German.

With Angela and Reese at Zurich HB

The train ride from Switzerland to Italy was reminiscent of the movie Before Sunrise. Matter-of-fact, it was the peg of our in-train photoshoot, it was just that no Ethan Hawke to feed our fantasy.

Philippines represent.

Why are you looking so pensive? Dont worry, he loves you.

What we saw during the two-hour train ride was phenomenal. Europe has always been lush with greens and browns. It was my third time in Europe and the feeling of happiness never gets old whenever you see the magnificence of nature.

We arrived about 6 in the afternoon and decided to get dinner. We went to this Pizzeria called Soave10 and it was really inexpensive. It was a welcomed change from Zurich's everything-here-is-fucking-expensive nature. 

I made a major major mistake, however, during the dessert part of the meal. 

Anchovies and olives, good food, great serving. This was like a thousand pesos, not bad at all.

Uh oh. Major major fail.

As planned, we got gelato, at least my companions did. When asked for what flavor I'm getting, I said "chocolate", not realizing that we were in Italy and chocolate is different from ciocolatto, at least in comparison between ice cream and gelato. So, I ended up getting a chocolate ice cream, not an authentic ciocolatto gelato. Bad times. 

We left around eight in the evening and arrived in Zurich about 11:30, and that meant I had to take a cab back to the hotel which cost me about 30CHF. Not so good, but I couldnt whine about it considering that I had a great time over the Italian side.

As Alain de Boton said in his book, The Art of Travel, "Journeys are the midwives of thoughts." In Italian, its translated as Viaggi sono le levatrici del pensiero. I like it better in Italian.

Till my next journey. Ciao!