Some wires

A while ago I posted a long blog post about being "unwired". One of the major points of that blog was the lack of a cell phone. Well, I caved, and now have an Italian cell phone number.

(I do warn you that this may be a very techy post, so bear with me if it's not your thing and I'll try and explain it clearly)

For the first two weeks I was attempting to buy the skype phone offered by the mobile carrier 3(tre). What I found though is that the service provider 3 is not very good in Italy. I'm a tech junkie. When I go to get a new piece of technology I do my research. I had been researching cell phones abroad for months before I left. So when I went into the 3 store, I knew what I wanted and that they offered it. The salesperson disagreed with me. I was told even though it is advertised all over their website that I could not only not purchase the skypephone, but I could not get a pay as you go plan from them at all unless I signed a 24 month contract. After a frustrating argument, with the sales person speaking broken english and myself speaking very, very broken Italian, I left empty handed only to walk a block down to the TIM store, where I purchased a SIM card (I already had the phone from a friend, thanks Tim!(not TIM the cell company, Tim the person, confusing I know))

For all the non-techy readers, cell phone contracts work a little differently in Europe than in the States. You do not normally sign your freedom away to a service provider for 2 years. You instead buy a phone(cheaper than in the U.S I may add), and then buy a SIM card from one of the providers here. A SIM card is universal and can go into any phone. It is assigned your number so any phone you put your card in automatically gets connected with your number and service provider. Pretty cool huh? Well it gets better: As I mentioned, contracts don't really exist. Instead you pay-as-you-go. You put 10 euro or however much on your phone. You have an agreement with your service provider that you will pay x amount of money per minute for all calls you make. In my case, this is 10 cents a minute for every call I make. Notice how I said every call you make, because receiving calls is totally free. When you run out, you put more money on your account, either online or buying a prepaid recharge card from any "tobacco store" (tabacchi in Italian, basically a convenience store).

Now lets compare this to the American system of cell contracts. We will ignore exchange rates because for natives of the respective countries that's not important, and I'm going to refer to all currencies as dollars or $. Right now Verizon Wireless' cheapest individual plan is $40 for 450 minutes per month. That includes no text messaging, just 450 minutes of using your cell phone's main function, talking (I know hard to believe that's what they were made for, right?). I'm sure that includes free nights and weekends, but to me that doesn't really factor in, what matters is the ability to call someone at any time.

Take that same $40 and apply it to my rate. That's 400 minutes if you pay 10 cents a minute. Very similar isn't it. In fact, Verizon might even look more appealing at first glance. I think not. Those 400 minutes I have from the $40 I placed on my account, they don't disappear at the end of the month. I'm not restricted per month. Okay, so AT&T has rollover minutes don't they? So if you only use 200 minutes one month you get to keep the extra 200 minutes (we've all seen the commercials, "those minutes are still good!") Yes you get those minutes, but you are still paying $40 again that 2nd month for another 400 minutes. Now why do you need another 400 minutes if you just rolled over 200? See what I'm getting at?

$40 dollars prepaid. It lasts for as long as I need it. If I use 400 minutes a month, poof they're gone when I've used them all. If I only need 200 minutes a month, well then look at that I really only paid $20 a month. Busy month? Lots of gossip? Simply put more money into your account, for the same rate you've been paying all along. Verizon charges 45 cents per every minute you go over your monthly allowance. I might be beating a dead horse but lets do a little math. 600 minutes in a month? If you're using my prepaid service that will cost you $60. Verizon's 450 minute contract? $40 for the first 450 minutes, + $0.45 x 150 = $107.50. In other words, for less than it costs to pay for those 150 extra minutes, you could have 600 minutes on prepaid. Not to mention you don't pay for any calls received! (Sticking with the math theme: Free incoming calls > Free nights and weekends)

Phone break? Not happy with the one you have? Just want to upgrade? Sure, pick which one you want, buy it, and put your SIM card in, none of this waiting 2 years to get a new phone.

Anyone feel ripped off by their U.S. cell contract? I sure do. I'm not going to even get into the whole data/internet on phones argument, this post is already borderline rant, but for those interested one line of stats:

On ANY phone: Verizon: $15 per month for 25mb of data over the entire month, TIM: $10 a month for 50mb of data a day (You see where the rant would come in?)

The phones are better, the plans and pricing is better, and the coverage from what I've seen is the same if not better. All those ready to switch to the European system raise your hand...

Lets answer some questions!

So I'm making this my first of many "interactive" posts. By that I mean I would really like to take some questions from the comment sections of my posts and answer them. I have been waiting for a good day to do this, and seeing as my 6 year old cousin has just posed some questions she would like answered, I figured it would be a perfect day to finally dedicate a post to this.

So to answer your questions Carly...

Q: What Kind of Instruments do they Play in Italy:
A: Great question, and it's right up my alley. One of the fun things about Rome I have found is the street performers throughout the area. Public performances in piazza's (squares) seem to be legal, even if they get pretty loud. Musicians play sorts of stringed and wind instruments, such as violins, saxophones, trumpets, and my favorite, guitars. Some even plug into speakers, their music filling up the surrounding streets. I am trying to get my hands on a guitar so I can try this out for a day, go sit in a piazza and see how much I can make off of tips (could be an interesting blog post). I haven't seen any unique instruments so far, but I'll keep my eye out for any good ones.

Q: Do you understand the Language?
A: This is where my Italian tutor comes in. Carlotta has been great in helping us all learn pretty quickly how to manage around the city with Italian. After only 5 days of 3 hour classes I feel much more confident with the language. Understanding it tends to be much easier than speaking it. Some words are familiar to the English translation, others to a word in French I somehow remember, and even more are somewhat recognizable in the context of who it is that is talking, and where I am. If I go into the cafe and try and order a sandwich, and the person behind the counter asks whether I want it for here or to go, I can understand what they are asking and answer them. If I have to ask for directions though, it is a bit harder to have an actual conversation with someone, and to initiate the conversation. Both my understanding and ability to speak Italian has gotten much better every day, and I've come a long way from trying to order regular tap water on the airplane on the way over here (I was given seltzer water twice out of three tries). Hopefully in a couple weeks I'll be able to hold a real conversation in Italian!

If you have any questions that you'd like to be answered, post them in the comments of this post and I'll be sure to answer them. If they are short answers, I'll just edit this post and add them on, if it's something I think would make for a good post then I may hold off and use it for another full post like this one.

Thanks for the questions Carly!

Just Around the Corner

You never know what you're going to find just around the corner here in Rome. That's something I've come to accept this past week or so. It's been just over a week since I got here and I've seen a lot, and sure feel like I know where I'm going when I walk around the city.

A few of us went for a walk tonight to get out and explore yet again. Maybe we all have K.I.A instincts (Know it All) like myself, but we've been stubborn not to use a map to find where we are headed. That or we head out with no real bearing and just pick a road to see where it takes us.

The Spanish Steps had been until tonight eluding us, and seeing as their a gigantic set of steps, we felt they couldn't be that hard to miss. We started off going in a general direction we believed them to be in, past the Pantheon to Via del Corso. All the way up Via Del Corso and then to the right, (so we thought). What we found was instead a large piazza with fountains and statues (Piazza del Popolo), with a hill behind it which had an amazing view it all. From there we went back down a main street that ran adjacent to Via del Corso. And what do you know, the Spanish steps were at the end of that road. Up the steps, just in time to see a 10 minute display of fireworks (all green).

Feeling adventurous, we continued from the top of the steps down the mainstreet, up a large hill and then down a side street to another Piazza (Piazza del Quirinale) heading down the hill as we knew we needed to go down in elevation to get to anywhere familiar. Out of pretty much sheer luck we happened to stumble upon the Trevi fountain.

All in all about 5km, an hour and a half with stopping. It definitely wasn't the most direct route to any of our points of interest, but we found it ourselves, and I guess that's what counts.


Our route mapped out on google maps (try streetview out by dragging the little man above the zoom bar to any one of our stops!):

http://bit.ly/7jmV3R

My Life in Euros

There’s a big deal made about exchange rates all the time, and rightfully so. The Euro to American Dollar rate is 1.44 right now, which is much better than it was a year ago, but is by no means good. So just by flying from Newark to Rome, My bank account was basically cut by 30 percent.

It only took me about 3 days to get used to using the Euro. By that I mean getting used to the frequent use of coins. The European Union has perfected the use of the euro and 2 euro coins, something that the United States tried to do a few years back with the dollar coin, but failed miserably. The easiest, most convenient and effective way to pay for anything under 5 euros is using coins, which brings me to my next point.

The Euro is cheaper to live on. We’ll disregard the currency exchange rates for now and take the euro for a euro. A sandwich at a local caffe is on average 2-3 euro. A cone of gelato is no more than 2 euro on average. A slice of pizza, priced by the kilogram, 2-3 euro (we’re talking a good slice, maybe even 2 by American standards). A nice sit down meal with homemade pastas, 10 euro. So why is it that the same sandwich would cost me 6 or 7 dollars in the US? Why is an ice cream cone 4 dollars? And above all, how is it that the ingredients are fresher and better yet I’m paying less?

If someone has an answer, leave it in the comments below, because I’d really like to hear.

P.S. Thank you to everyone who has commented and left some awesome messages. It makes writing this every day a lot more fun knowing people are reading it. So if you haven’t already, feel free to comment or ask questions on any of the topics, or post about something you think or would like to hear about and I’ll see what I can do.

First day of work at the Vatican tomorrow… 3 hours of Italian tutoring!