It's "Caffè". Not "Coffee". Stupid American.

Editor's Note: Ha! I called myself the editor...I'm awesome. Anyway, we have our very first guest post today, courtesy of the little woman. I promised this was coming a couple of weeks ago, but she didn't get around to writing it for the crappy excuse of having an actual life to lead. Oh well. Enjoy some estrogen-laced ranting!

So, as all two of you know, the Grump and I were lucky enough to travel to Florence (Italy not New Jersey) for our honeymoon. It was an amazing trip and I'm sure you guys have kept up with the hub's posts concerning our awesome time there. While most of the things that the Grump saw as major enjoyment roadblocks (like not knowing the language...oh, wah) I simply ignored as I most likely had a glass of chianti in hand at the time. However, as a coffee drinker, my honeymoon buzz was nearly disrupted by the lack of a decent cup of joe anywhere in the country.

I started drinking coffee in college, mostly just to get going for my 10:00 a.m. classes. God, I miss college. Anyway, I was introduced to coffee through the roach trucks on campus.

Mmm.Grease.

This is coffee that had been brewing for about three days before the cup was shoved into your hand by Vlad, who may or may not be a convicted felon in the old country. Zombie-like, you totter the first few feet towards your class while taking your first tongue scalding sip. What happens internally is only what I can describe as a Van Damme kick to your frontal cortex, tongue and vital organs. Externally, for me anyway, it looks and sounds something like this:

Needlessly to say, I reached the point where this kung fu showdown with my early morning brain function is something that I now require to start off my day. So, imagine my surprise when I asked for a coffee in Italy and the waiter plunked this down in front of me:

"I feel like I'm gonna break this damned thing."

I know what you guys are thinking. "Mrs.Grump, (because you guys are polite) that appears to be an espresso. Coffee-zilla. Even for an addict like yourself, it should be more than sufficient to satisfy your coffee jones." Well, Grumpites, it's not. I like to enjoy my caffeine buzz. Savor it, if you will. And I just can't do that when there's only a quarter of an inch of metallic tasting liquid with an entire pack of sugar thrown in.

Puzzled, I consulted my trusty Frommer's. Skipping past the potential set up they give you for being roofied by someone named Gio the second you step into a bar, "caffè" is listed as the Italian word for coffee....and espresso. Seriously? So a couple of days and almost one full espresso cup later, I overhear a table of French tourists ordering a "caffè americano". I know, right? The last group you would think would order anything "americano". So I give that a whirl and I'm given a cup of something that was quite obviously espresso watered down with the spit of the cafe waiters. Ugh. Good thing it's socially acceptable to order wine at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday here, otherwise there would be dead bodies littering the piazza.

So to bring this rambling post to a conclusion, my coffee confusion was cleared up about a month later when I stumbled upon this post by The Oatmeal, who I absolutely love and am also a little afraid of. While I don't agree with his assessment of the whole Italian/American coffee situation (Espresso with or without water blows goats either way in the categories of taste and strength), I'd recommend reading it before you venture off into the land of Italy. Or just have a backup cup of diner coffee waiting for you like I did when you land.

The Grumps' Italian Adventure: Day 8, or Random Thoughts On Italy

OK, so as it turns out I didn't have enough material for 10 days of posting. I don't think 8 days is too shabby, however. As I don't really have any topics worthy of a full post, I'll just share a few things that have been rattling around in my head since I got back:

• I don't fly well. I guess I never noticed this because I'd never been on a plane for 10 hours before. But I can really be quite the bastard at the end of a flight. I blame this on my family's problem of having really bad ears when it comes to pressure changes. While I know that a popping sensation in one's ears is normal during airline travel, I don't think it's normal to feel like someone stuck a screwdriver in my ear hours after I got off the fucking plane. So I must admit, by the time I get off the actual plane, I'm less than cordial, even to my lovely wife. Sorry baby.
  

• Airline policies suck ass. I may be a prick when I fly, but I refuse to take all of the blame. If you're not supposed to bring meat products back from other countries, then that information should be readily available to read BEFORE you've purchased almost 50 bucks worth of Italian salami and gotten it 90% of the way through U.S. customs. Not to mention that this was after about 14 hours worth of going through inefficient security stations and boarding procedures. I think what gets me the most pissed off about airlines is that their security is reactionary. Perhaps if these schmucks would think far enough ahead to create some kind of technology that's flexible enough to catch the crap that they didn't think of before, then they wouldn't have to update their carry-on policies every five minutes. Oh, someone managed to put a bomb in a shoe? Then you'll have to take yours off and put it through the x-ray machine every time you fly. Someone made a bomb out of liquid?
  Then you can only have less than 3 ounces on the plane from now on. I'd hate to see what would happen if someone managed to plant a bomb in one of his testicles. I'm picturing a small guillotine next to the metal detector.

• We must be actively trying to become obese in the U.S. I spent ten days in Italy, making absolutely no attempt to watch what I ate. Yet somehow, I managed to lose two pounds. That's not much, I know, but considering I ate enough prosciutto to risk a swine shortage in the Chianti region, I should be about 300 pounds by now. I don't know what we're putting in our food here, but we should seriously look into switching to what they're having. Although, my weight loss may also have been due to the fact that everything in the Chianti region is at least at a 30 degree incline. It's unreal. I always laughed when an elderly person would say they had to walk uphill both ways to get to school everyday. But now I realized they weren't full of shit if they grew up in Italy.

• Being worried about acting like a stereotypical arrogant American while traveling abroad is the most surefire way of acting like a stereotypical arrogant American while traveling abroad. I so didn't want to be that guy. But within a day of arriving at our hotel I managed to call the guy working the counter "Matt" about 13 times before I realized his name was Andreas. And I managed to pull off the ever-helpful language barrier busting technique of yelling things slowly and obnoxiously in English. Because, after all, anyone should be able to understand English as long as you speak it to them as if they are a deaf child. Shockingly, I don't think I turned into the hotel's favorite guest. My natural reaction to this suspicion was to think they were the assholes, because anyone who doesn't think I'm awesome is clearly a douche bag.
  

• The final conclusion that I pull from everything I've posted about this trip is pretty simple. I am one lucky guy to be married to Mrs. Grump. I'd imagine that traveling with me is similar to going on vacation with an ill-tempered gorilla that can form basic sentences. Yet even so, Mrs. Grump made sure we had an excellent honeymoon. We saw sights that I'd probably only ever see on a computer screen if left to my own devices. I ate food that makes me tear up a little bit just to think about it (On a side note, if you ever have a chance to eat food that has wild boar in it, do it. Don't think about it. Just do it). I even managed to pick up a phrases of Italian. I think my favorite was "due." It's nothing special. It just means "two." But it was the word I used the most often because anything I ordered or purchased was always in duplicate to accommodate my new wife. And that makes me happy.

Speaking of the wife, stay tuned for a special guest post sometime next week from Mrs. Grump herself. I don't drink coffee, but according to Mrs. Grump, anything good you've heard about Italian coffee is a bold-faced lie. Check in sometime next week to find out why.

The Grumps' Italian Adventure: Day 4, or Cocks Are Big In Italy

Today's title is wordplay at it's finest, folks. First, the innocent layer: Mrs. Grump and I stayed in the town of Greve, whose official emblem is the black cock. In this instance, cock is just a rooster, plenty of which can be found around town.

You can't miss my gate. It's the one with the big, black cock on it.

Cock a doodle doo, indeed.....right?

Don't trust any wine that doesn't have a black cock right on the label.

I have to say I'd be very interested in seeing how the town would look if black cock took on the other meaning, especially considering that black stereotypes are alive and well in Italy...

That actually may be the most obscene picture that I show you today. And that's including the next pictures that prove that roosters aren't the only kind of popular cock in the area.

Can anyone please explain this sculpture to me in a way that doesn't include a man being forced to wear a Trojan War Helmet at clubpoint?

Insert joke about giving head here.

Pretty much everything about this statue deeply disturbs me.

So, like I said, cocks are big in Italy. But wait! There is also a delightful layer of irony in that sentence. If you notice, in terms of proportion, all of the cocks in the above examples are actually quite small. Mrs. Grump informed me that this was due to artists of the time feeling that a long ding dong would be in bad taste. So, it's cool for a dude to hold a severed head while in the nude, just as long as his winky isn't taking up too much space. Michelangelo's "David" is another good example of that mindset, but Mrs. Grump didn't get any pictures of little David. I guess she was trying to keep some semblance of scruples for our photo album.

Hm...never mind, then.

Excuse Me, Can You Tell Me How To Get To The Sexy Time?

This may very well be my last post for the rest of the month. I've only got 6 more days until I've officially tricked Mrs. Grump-to-be into marrying me, and there is much to be done until then. After that, I've got ten days of Italiantastic adventures planned for the honeymoon.

One of the things we did today to get ready for the trip was to pick up a copy of Frommer's Italian PhraseFinder and Dictionary. We may look like douchey tourists with it, but I think it's a small price to pay to be able to phonetically stumble through phrases like "Do you know English?" and "We don't know Italian."

After a bit of studying, however, I've come to realize that the people at Frommer's know that people don't just go on family vacations or school trips to Italy. They also realize that some people go to Italy for the same reason that anyone goes anywhere: to find themselves a nice piece of ass. Tucked in between the "Golfing" and "Casino" sections is a category entitled "Nightclubbing." But I'm pretty sure they should have just called it "One Night Stands." Here is a sample conversation you studly fellas can have with the pretty ladies of Italy based on phrases learned in the Frommer's guide:

Stud:Mi scusi, posso offrirle qualcosa da bere?
Excuse me, may I buy you a drink?

Bella: Si.
Yes.

Stud: Che begli occhi che ha!
You have nice eyes.

Bella: Grazie.
Thank you.

(Cut to Stud's place)

Stud: Sei bellisima. Vuoi entrare?
You are beautiful. Would you like to come in?

Bella: Sei bellisimo....si.
You are handsome...yes.

(Cut to Stud's bedroom)

Stud: Vuoi che ti massagi la schiena?
Would you like a massage?

Bella: No, per favore, non farlo...hai un preservativo?
Please don't do that...do you have a condom?

Stud: Ho un preservato. Prendi la pillola?
I have a condom. Are you on birth control?

(30 seconds later)

Stud: Li?
There?

Bella: No, non cosi.
That's not it.

(15 seconds later)

Bella: Li...piu veloce...piu profondo.
There...faster...deeper.

Stud: Piano! Piu lento!
Easy! Slower!

(5 seconds later)

Stud: Stai qui, ti preparo la colazione.
Stay, I'll make you breakfast.

Bella: Credo che questo sia stato un errore.
I think this was a mistake.

Fortunately for me, I'll have Mrs. Grump to disappoint in my own language. My only worry is that with intimate phrases included in our translation guide, a few errors could lead to something like this:



Enjoy the rest of your October, folks.