Still in Bern on Saturday night, we hit the town and boogied all night long – well, that is until Fabs wilted with exhaustion and decided the time for bed was nigh. (Not a true Aussie, obviously.)

Of course, by this stage I’d had ‘a lemonade or two’ and was keen to party on, so Fabs left me with good tidings and strict instructions as to who to speak or not to speak with, who to accept a ride home with, how to negotiate her astronomically steep driveway in stilettos, and how to lock the door behind me (a seemingly simple task but extraordinarily difficult to a foreigner unfamiliar with the mysterious technology of Swiss doorknobs, particularly one in stilettos and full of ‘lemonade’) - all of which I promptly forgot.

I also managed to forget my credit card PIN number, which caused minor dramas en route to buy my return ticket to Konstanz on Sunday, but only for a short period because I’d also managed to forget that you don’t actually need to use the PIN code when you can just sign.

Eventually we bid each other a merry farewell and I arrived back in Konstanz safe and sound that night, having had only one small panic attack in Zurich when the train pulled out from the station in the same direction from which it had arrived, prompting me to fret that maybe I was supposed to change there and was now heading back to Bern (but as it turns out, the route out of Zurich is just a bit ‘curly’).

All in all, a perfect weekend in a perfect city.

To Switzerland it was then. Somehow I managed to negotiate my way through the ridiculously overpriced Swiss public transport, changed trains in Zurich without incident, and arrived safely in Bern to visit my old exchange student buddy Fabiana. Except that I found myself alone, with no credit on my mobile, and Fabs nowhere in sight.

Turns out it makes rather a significant difference whether you turn right or left after disembarking from the train, and I managed to unwittingly put about 2kms of distance between the two of us before she finally caught up with me. Nevertheless, it was a happy but breathless reunion because she was parked in a no standing zone, so 60 francs worth of parking fine later we made it to her home safe and sound, cursing the parking police and their blasted Swiss efficiency.

I spent the entire weekend gorging myself on about twelve meals per day of strawberries swimming in cream and yoghurt, plus salty chocolate croissants for breakfast, pre-morning tea, morning tea, post-morning tea, lunch, pre-afternoon tea, afternoon tea, etc etc, and marveling at what a truly perfect city Bern is.

All the downtown terraces are perfect with their perfect little red rooves and perfect BMW lined streets and perfect pine trees and perfect churches and perfect cleanliness, and most of all perfectly lovely people. It seemed that everyone was rich, beautiful and spoke at least five languages fluently and studied either medicine or law, and were all perfectly nice to boot.

Fabs’s delightful boyfriend took us on a tour of the old city on the back of his vintage Vespa which putted around a bit with both of us girls squashed on behind him, but made up in style and charm what it lacked in oomph. No better way to potter around in Europe!

Misunderstandings.

Daylight savings has been known to mess me up. Language bits and pieces, too. Sounds like I’m not the only one. Check out this expose on the awkwardness of the ‘A-word’ as UK greeting. And the Aussie equivalent?

Owyagowinmateorroight?

Sometimes it appears that the world holds a particular grudge against me personally for no apparent reason. The morning I was to leave Italy, having livin’ la dolce vita’d enough for a good while, was no exception.

My flight back to Zurich was to depart at 9.25 on a Sunday morning. Now: what are the chances of daylight savings falling on that very morning? Probable to high, obviously. And what are the chances of us being aware of that fact? Slim to none.

Of course this unexpected turn of events resulted in my missing the flight and doing what any girl in such a situation (ie. being stranded at an international airport where you don’t speak the language, have meagre finances and no way of contacting anyone due to semi-paralytic German mobile phone and impossibility of Italisn payphones) is wont to due: I threw myself onto the nearest seat and blubbered like a five year old.

Eventually, deciding that the chances of Prince William wandering by at that very moment and rescuing me were slim, especially with my face all splotchy like, I sought out a ticket to Zurich for later in the day.

So in essence, despite all my nervous breakdown-esque melodramatics, I got to chill for a few extra hours, catch up on some reading, belt out a few letters, buy some tacky souvenirs then made the trip back to Zurich without further incident.

And so it was that my first trip to Italy drew to a close, and with the benefit of hindsight, it pleases me greatly that I am now officially one of those totally cultured and slightly up-themselves people who can legitimately claim, ‘Well, when I was in the Italian Alps [insert wanky sentence here]…’

Casting minor ethical dilemmas such as being an atheist amongst diehard Christian fanatics, what better time to embrace the mentality of pious Roman Catholics than on Easter Friday in a small Italian mountain town? (Yes, given that it was Easter, this story clearly happened some time ago – but no doubt they’ve still got snaps of our mugs on the police station wall).

It was evening when Kylz and I lined the streets of L’Aquila with every other man, woman, child, dog and homeless person in anticipation for the annual Easter parade, a solemn procession at which Jesus Christ himself was said to be making an appearance (or so the posters all around the town proclaimed). From what we could gather, the townspeople were actually intending to recreate the events of the crucifixion.

Well – this was simply too much. We couldn’t help ourselves. We kept giggling and poking and saying entirely inappropriate and disrespectful things like ‘Run, Jesus, run! No, don’t go in that door!’ and ‘Shh, don’t tell me what happens - I haven’t seen this one yet!’ This was much to the consternation of the solemn and mournful crowd, who continually shushed us and muttered grumpily about ‘rude Americans’ (and for the sake of preserving Australia’s dignity, we were happy to let this slide).

I can’t say I’d be happy to let my own kids witness in such graphic detail the morbid death of Christ, but, as dear Kylie so eloquently put it, ‘Home is where you hang your crucifix,’ and in L’Aquila, it would appear, that’s everywhere.

The thing about churches, I’ve noticed, is that they’re always called some vaguely painful and unnecessarily lengthy name, like The Holy Roman Church of the Saints of the Suffering and Horrible Torture and Lots of Blood and Gory Sacrifice. In L’Aquila, however, there’s a level of sheer morbidity I’ve witnessed never before.

First of all, every church doorway is topped by an exposed skull, its sunken eyeballs and hollow cheeks staring evilly down at all who cross the threshold. On top of this, some of them even have rows of little headless statues, supposedly the decapitated remnants of saints. (I can’t even begin to wonder at this.) And inside you will often find a glass display box encasing what is purportedly the remains of Jesus Christ, replete with bodily wounds and oozing blood. Am I the only person in the world who finds this all a little disturbing?

The truth is, I’ve lost track of the number of churches and cathedrals we’ve visited (and the bizarre things that go on in them). Once, in a chapel in the Vittoriana in Rom (a monstrous building that bears more than a passing resemblance to a huge wedding cake) I saw people leaving literally piles upon piles of letters and the feet of a statue of the Holy Infant. Oddly ambitious, I thought, because quite frankly I’m not entirely convinced the infant can read [insert sarcasm here].

While I’m on about interesting features of Italian life such as the existential lack of the letter ‘k’, I might as well open another can of worms: the social taboo of women going out on the town without the presence of an appropriate male escort, ie. a brother, cousin or boyfriend. No doubt perfectly acceptable in cosmopolitan Rome, it’s absolutely Not Done in ‘mountain towns’ like L’Aquila.

Now, Kylz – a fellow Aussie like myself – has gone and befriended the only other English speakers in town, a gaggle of brash British girls. Picture the scene when they all – unescorted, no less - enter a bar packed with Italian men, and with hands on hips survey the hordes of staring Italians and announce in posh English boarding school accents ‘Well? Oh my GOD, what the bloody hell are you all staring at, you bunch of bloody OAFS? If we want to get bloody royally hammered then we can bloody well go and do it! Piss off, you bloody perves!’

It was here, at Bar Cavour, that I was introduced to possibly the most brilliant of all Italian inventions, the apperitivi - trays of finger food served free every night at a certain hour. Because the international girls have a certain rapport, shall we say, with the barmen here (two of them actually have cocktails named after them), we ate, drank and were merry well into the wee hours of the morning, and left eventually without having parted with a single euro cent. How Italian bars ever make a profit, one can only imagine.

Looks like naming babies is not the only thing with lasting impact. Though I suppose some people might consider the baconator their baby…!

One of the delights of being abroad is – for once – having a fabulously foreign-sounding name. Now, if you’ve been afflicted with something as callously boring as Alison Edwards – with NO middle name, might I add – this is really something to get excited about.

In Italy, the names of Kylie and I, not being the most dazzling of monikers in English (thanks parentals), seem to frequently confound our European counterparts. The letter ‘K’ does not even exist in Italian, so try spelling that over the phone to bank or tax officials. When out in bars this hurdle is most commonly overcome by explaining ‘Kylie - like Kylie Minogue’. This unfailingly results in said Italians thumping the table and shouting excitedly ‘Ahh, capisco!’ followed by an impromptu jig of ‘I’m - spinning - around….’

As for my name, Italians simply cannot comprehend the concept of a girl’s name not ending in a vowel: I say ‘Alison’, they say ‘Ah, Alessandra!’ ‘No, scusi, ALISON.’ ‘Ah, Alessa! That is a beautiful name…’ Yes indeedy, it may be a beautiful name, but it’s not my name…!

In L’Aquila, where Kylie lived as an exchange student, we spent a plum couple of weeks.

We strolled, we cafe’d, we had genial ‘Ciao’s and ‘Buon giorno’s bestowed on us from all directions by well-wishing locals, we visited cathedrals, took photos of statues, lolled in parks and ate gelato by ancient fountains.

We giggled and pointed at little 3-wheeled trucks trundling down cobbled lanes, oohed and aahed over the cutest stray puppies, we perused tiny art houses and watched kids playing soccer in an alleyway with an old tin can (this might have freaked them out a little).

Kylz pointed out the communist cafe (called ‘Boss’, not a little ironically), where people mill outside and call on passers by to throw off the shackles of their imperialist masters (or so we imagined).

To our endless amusement, we also spent hours sipping lattes in a cafe overloooking the town piazza, giggling at the sight of men of all ages greeting each other with kisses on both cheeks (where else in the world?).