"Papà del Gnoco": the special Carnival in Verona

Next Tuesday will be Mardi Gras, which means that this coming Friday will be "Venardi Gnocolàr" (Gnocchi Friday)!!

Papà del Gnoco in Verona

The most important mask of Verona Carnival ("Bacanal del Gnoco" in Verona dialect) is certainly the Papà del Gnoco (Gnoco’s Dad), that is elected in the full Piazza San Zeno every year after a real electoral campaign. The person who is elected must be well respected among the population: wearing the Sire’s clothes is a really serious ritual. The costume that he'll wear must be sewn by a tailor. It’s a ivory-color dress where some scraps of red cloth are sewn on, with a beautiful mantle and a huge hat. The tick white beard is really characteristic, too, made of buffalo wool, and with long and straight hair. The right hand holds a big fork where a huge "gnocco" is stuck in.

Carnival parade in Verona

To wear the costume Papà del Gnoco spends at least half an hour, and during the rite he’s helped by a marshal. And if you want to participate to the next Papà elections you must know that to be eligible, besides being from Verona, you also have to be size XXXL!
The Papà del Gnoco distributes gnocos for free to the people during his parade, and he’s fallowed by Macaroni, dressed up too, that have been his supporters during the campaign for his election.

Australian Open Tennis Championships 2012

Melbourne is currently hosting the Australian Open 2012, which is said to bring over 800,000 people from all around the world to the beautiful Aussie city. Last week I was in Richmond, just a few minutes from Melbourne Park where the tournament is held, so I went to see what's happening.

It's really fun. The atmosphere was quite nice and you could hear any spoken language of the globe from the other visitors! Even though it was a bit cloudy on that day, some people got a bit sunburned. The sun here is Australia is really powerful, so need to be careful when exposed to its rays!

Melbourne Park

An exhibition game with Djokovic (1) and Nadal (2)

The house-and-roommate package

The time to look for an apartment has come. It took only a few hours on gumtree and easyrommate to find a place where I will spend the first period of my Oz stay. It depends on where you want to stay, but the price for a single room here is quite similar to what it is in Milan: between 500 and 800 dollars per month.
I made a couple calls and then got to see the apartments. I immediately fell in love with this two-story flat in Carlton (3053 Victoria). Really awesome one, and I love the house mates. What a lucky day!

Sun shines in Melbourne on Xmas time.

Kangaroos ahead!

It was nice getting to see some wild Aussie animals and jumping with some kangaroos at the Healesville Sanctuary park, located just an hour away from the city. I also learnt what a dingo and platypus are :-)

Warning: kangaroos ahead! 

A cute Koala hanging out with us :-)

Time to move to Melbourne

The first day I went to the city center I was with Chris, a couchsurfer I hosted in Milan last year. He's from Melbourne so he surely knew the best spots in town! There is nothing better than hanging out with locals when you're hungry and don't know which shop you want to crash in. Melbourne is quite an expensive city. A normal lunch ranges from 15 to 25 dollars per meal. But we got a large baguette for a modest $6.00. And, of course, there was a drink included with the deal! I'm loving these sunny days!

Read the ad on the tram at Swanson and Flinters Street.

City view from South Yarra.

A crowded street in Melbourne CBD.

A beautiful bar is just beneath the bridge!

New Year's eve rooftop party!

On NYE I had the best party ever. On a roof top, with loud music all night long, a fantastic drinking fountain with punch, and then saw a spectacular sunrise at the beach, in St. Kilda. I met the organizer through CouchSurfing (as usual) and got the invitation to her beautiful rooftop. I was really fun big time! Thanks!

Tall buildings in CBD

Palm trees welcome you to Melbourne city

My iPhone couldn't capture the fireworks very well,
but it's been really awesome entering 2012 from
the New Continent!

Transferring savings from one country to another is delicate

I finally decided to close my American banking account since I haven't used it for some time, and especially because I don't live in California anymore.
I will miss having a totally free of charge double-account, which I not only opened for free, I also received $40 to go from the bank. I will also miss the $280 reward they gave me after one year of "fidelity".
Today the AUD-EUR rate is pretty bad, then I wanted to keep my Euros for some more time, this might be tricky but I will come back to this a bit later.
The USD-AUD rate was instead pretty good, then it was the right time to transfer my savings from American dollars, onto my brand new Australian account.
To do that, I had to go through a number of security features to let me transfer the sum from one account to another. Such things like passwords, security codes sent via mobile, credit card check, and even stored image recognition.
Well, that was apparently not enough as it appeared that moving savings from USA to Australia, perhaps operated by an Italian, turns on security procedures and sends off an alert: I had then my account and credit card blocked, as well as the transfer canceled because reckoned fraud.
I appreciated their attempt to protect my savings. It was not big deal though, I only had to call my bank and state that the transfer was actually operated by me, not someone else.

It is funny if we consider the 19-hours difference, when I called it was 3pm in California, and I said: "Hi, I am calling from the future to save my money, here it is 10am of tomorrow!".