Sagra di Asti and Imigration

The wine festival was excellent on Sunday. As you can imagine a great deal of wine was involved. There is a group in Europe called BEST, which stands for best European students of technology I thing, and they organized the trip to the fest. We had a group of 11 people, four Italians and a mix of others.

The wine theme was wines of the Asti region: Barbera, Brachetto, and several others that I’ll have to look up when I have the internet. For the most part you had to buy food from a stand to get a free glass of wine with it. Eventually we found a place selling three bottles for €11. Needless to say that was the last stop of the night. At a Euro per person it was hard to go wrong. We found a place on the ground nearby and started the process of drinking our way through 9 bottles. By the end we were acting fairly silly and singing drinking songs in different languages.

The only person that managed to get out of control was this guy from Estonia. As we were leaving the festival he jumped on the back of a pick-up in the parking lot. It made for a good picture. He then jumped off, but then back on when he realized it was going the same direction as us, or so he thought. It ended up heading off North with him. I shouted for him to get off, but he didn’t. The next day we found out he slept somewhere in Asti, but doesn’t remember what happened, plus his glasses and cell phone were missing. Lesson here is don’t jump on the back of trucks while drunk, or at least get off when told to.

The second group of international students went to the immigration office yesterday to apply for residence permits. Let me just start by saying that Italy’s government is 20 years behind the U.S., and the U.S. is verging on archaic when it comes to paperwork. Here’s an overview:

• The application still wants to know what border you crossed. Do you really cross a boarder when you fly? And if so what border?
• Why do the some of the officials not know that Cypress is part of the EU and doesn’t need a duty stamp or Italian insurance?
• Why did I have to get both hands smeared with ink to give, finger, palm, and hand prints? Scanners, hello! Like you would ever look through paper records to find my hand prints, you’re Italians.

Speaking of “you’re Italians,” it is becoming more and more evident that the idea of Italian laziness has a hint of truth to it. It is so bad at times that Dorota says it reminds her of home. Come on now. Poland only has 260 miles of highways, and they aren’t even connected or connecting anything.