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Greetings from Pescara, Italy

Two p.m; I've just rolled out of bed, brewed some espresso, cut myself a piece of fresh apple torte, and sat down to write on this fine Sunday morning in Pescara, Italy.

We are having a kicking time here, if last night was any indication. Tyler took off for the weekend, so it was just us four girls in town. We decided to play it low-key, and take Saturday afternoon to start preparing for school.

It started with an innocent phone call to Gabriele asking about art supply stores; transformed into an afternoon coffee meeting; progressed into a smallish, impromptu dinner party; and somehow escalated into a dozen Italian-speaking strangers hanging out and drinking prosecco in our living room. We have an awesome apartment here, fully furnished — including matching porcelain and 10 year's worth of Vogue back issues.

It's great for entertaining. Last night, the entire social spectrum of Pescara was present in our apartment. The chief representative from the upper crust was the nephew of our posh landlady. He was sent to check in on us Culturally Displaced Foreign Girls All Alone in a Strange City. The visit was preceded by a letter of introduction left at our doorstep earlier in the afternoon, in an envelope computer-printed with a Canadian Flag ("I would be glad to meet you and to show you some nice places which could interest you. To be enriched by your pleasant company and to listen to your voices would be for me the greatest reward.")

Turns out he's a Prada-shod, exceptionally well-groomed, private-school prep boy, in a pink designer-shirt and tight, waist high pants. Pinky High-Pants rings the bell cradling champagne in one arm and bearing a cake in the other, waltzing through the door with "May I come in?"

We're already entertaining, so we figure the more the merrier. Our dinner guests from earlier in the evening are a group of left wing socialists. That's headed by Gabriele, the long-curly-haired architecture exchange student, who was in Waterloo in second year, and still looks exactly the same. He came over with fun friends and lots of red wine. Two Italian women, architecture students whom we met the other day, complete the party.

It was great playing off between the two camps. They fought over who would get to drive us downtown, we ended up in Pinky-Highpants' fancy new Audi. The whole mainstream nightlife of Pescara is concentrated into two streets, and what a nightlife it is! Pinky searched for parking; we ogled the herds of cute Italian boys.

It's great being a foreigner in this place. It's enough to speak a sentence of English to attract instant attention. Plus, Esther and I are the only two Asians in the whole city.

There was barely elbow room in the first club, a top-40 playing narrow dance bar with a DJ who kept singing along to the songs, stuffed with Italian cutie-petuties. Every space was lined with enough boys to convince any healthy homosexual that the place was the local gay bar. The guy-girl ratio was appallingÃ- actually, as a straight woman, it was great. We managed to stick it out and dance up a storm until 3 a.m.

Then the divide occurs between the Greasers and Socies. Gabriele wants to split from the rich kids: "they break my balls". We choose to go with the poor architects in the beat-up car. We drive off, leaving Pinky and his Burberry-scarf clad, Alfa-Romeo friend to take their new Italian girls to another locale.

The architects take us to an underground bar that they themselves describe as a merdaio – a shithole. It's great, full of long-haired, pot smoking artsies. There's broken glass everywhere and the dance floor periodically becomes a giant mosh pit, beer flying everywhere. We're head banging to ska music, screaming along to Lenny Kravitz tunes, it's completely wild and wonderful.

Two clubs and six hours of dancing later, we land back in our humble abode. Exhausted and happy beyond belief! At this time it's 4:30 a.m.

At 5 am, the doorbell rings: it's the prep boys that we ditched after the first club. Berry-scarf boy left his Christian Dior sunglasses in our apartment, can they come up to look for them? Esther lets them in. Pinky, Berry and company prance into the living room, searching frantically. Esther's trying to help:

What do they look likeÃ- those giant gold shiny sunglasses, with yellow lenses?

Yes, those are the ones – they're Christian Dior! the boys whine.

You mean the ones that you were wearing when we were driving at night?

It's hard to forget Berry Shiny Glasses prancing around wearing sunglasses that would have been ridiculous even in daylight. The excuse is pretty thin. Eventually the boys back down — oh yes, now I remember, I had them at the bar. They leave warning us, "Those other boys, they were bad boys. BAD BOYS!"

As the door closes, we four Canadian girls glance at each other. Then we break down, laughing.

Subscribe to TravelBlogs Posted by Elsa Lam on May 4th, 2006 in Articles.