So, Caserma Ederle (the name of the post here) is soooo small. I am really bad with estimates, but Taylor says it is about 3/4 - 1 mile across. It is comparable to a small college campus. Everyone is walking or riding a bike and buildings are really close. When I met the Battalion Commander's wife she said it was like a fish bowl and that you see that same people all the time. She was so right! There is a high school here on post and since we have been here I have seen the same high school girl every single day!
It is nice that it is so small, because we do not have access to our car here (yet) so we walk everywhere. But, it doesn't really feel like we are in Italy. In fact, I have been calling it "Little America." Anytime we are able to get off post, even if it is to walk a block to a restaurant or drive to the Italian's versions of the DMV, we are so excited to leave this fish bowl!
So tonight we got to really swim outside of the fish bowl! Our friends, the Speakes' (that we knew from Fort Hood and Benning) knew the Marshall's that have lived here in Vicenza for about a year and got us in contact with each other. I have e mailed Sara several times asking for advice on what to bring to Italy, where to live, etc. Tonight they picked us up and showed us around town. We are so much more excited about living here now!!!!! Below you will see a picture of down town from Monte Berico (I think...we are still figuring out the names of places). The picture is taken from an I phone so it isn't the best. Better pics will come later! This was another one of those, "Holy crap, we are really living in Italy" moments. They took us down town to see their apartment and went to eat at a restaurant and had some wine and birra (beer) at at a few bars down town. They are an awesome couple and glad that we were linked up with them! Unfortunately they are Aggies and they drink Coors light...but so did all the friends we had at Hood (except thee Moores' and Kennedy's) so we are used to it by now. :)
Update on our housing situation: Two days ago they showed us two houses. One was in Grossa and one in Camisano which are little suburbs outside of Vicenza. They were both really nice 4 bedroom houses, but we are really wanting to live down town where all the "action" is and have no need for so many bedrooms!!! After having a meeting with the management of housing where we "wheeled and dealed our way out of these houses, we were able to get permission to look for housing through private realtors. After we left her office, I told Taylor that I felt like we had just made some kind of drug deal, because there are so many rules and policies pertaining to housing and to be able to look elsewhere you have to get "special permission." Hopefully next week we will get this ball rolling and be able to start looking for apartments in the down town area.
In other news after many hours of late night studying, we both passed our Italian Driver's License Test today!!! Actually it wasn't too many hours of studying, but there are some crazy Italian road signs! For instance...
This means that any trucks carrying over 3.5 tons of pollutants are prohibited from entering on that road! Who would have thunk it? Oh, and in case you needed to know which type of animals would be crossing the road, we have: watch for domestic animals (on the left) and watch for wild animals (on the right).
Tomorrow we plan on going down town during the day and checking everything out, so I will have more pictures later!!
Ciao!
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