wine festival..

Sooo the rest of this weekend was awesome.

On Saturday Jessie and I made our way to Ostia Antica- basically it's an ancient city. Most of it is in ruins, but for the mostpart it's pretty intact (due to it being an old port city an hour outside of Roma herself). It's also off the beaten path.. meaning that very few tourists bother to leave the Colosseo or Foro to visit it. Jess and I were there all afternoon climbing on ancient buildings, walls, and an amazingly intact amphitheater with PERFECT acoustics (I could hear her whispering even when I was sitting in the nosebleed section). We took tons of pictures- she told me that her dad went in the pit of the Colosseo when he was our age, and now if you try that you're shot by the italian militia. So we speculate that in 20+ years no one will be allowed to treat Ostia Antica as a playground like we did. I had SO MUCH FUN jumping and climbing everything- we saw ancient Roman baths, a wrestling arena, pipes meant for taking the hot water underneath the tiles of the steam rooms, a palazzo, and so many columns. AWESOME.

Part 3 of my amazing weekend started at the one Ukie church in Roma-- Santi Sergio e Bacci. Seriously I felt like I was back in Kyiv, as all the Roman Ukrainians are prosto z Ukrainy. I loved it and it made me miss Ukraina that much more. But so yea, FINALLY got to hear ukrainska mova for a solid 1.5 hours.
Weekend of Amazing continued with yesterday's wine festival in Marino, Italy. Um. So the train to Marino resembled the B line of the Metro= CROWDED. Standing room only. And it was mostly italiani.. we get to Marino and to the Sagra dell'uva (wine fest) and it turns out to be the cutest little Italian town ever. Apparently the stars of this show are the town's white wine, i panini con porchetta (pork sandwiches), and ciambelle (kind of like paska, actually). And the italiani each have a liter of wine in their hands. So we decide to do the same. The only thing I can liken the experience to was an Italian Oktoberfest, with wine instead of beer. Everyone in the entire town was drinking themselves to oblivion. The thing is, Italians do not do the drunk thing. It goes against their la bella figura mentality, that appearance is everything.
On the train ride home we met a bunch of American guys and made friends with them. I checked out the contents of my purse: the phone numbers of not one, but two italiani (Fabio and Gaia) and a pencil that did not come with me to Marino. I still feel sick. But it was so worth it. You're only young and insane once, right?