In Deutscheland

I've been in Germany for the past few days, hanging out with my brother Cliff. He made it home early from wherever he was and it's been really great having him around. No offense to the other best friends out there but there's really no one else in this world I'd rather spend time with. We got extremely plastered on Tuesday night and the past few days have been pretty slow and laid back. Tonight I'm heading to Mannheim for a Schnekenhof, which is a German college party, and I'm fired up.

I left Italy on Monday and I was really sad to go. Everything about the experience was awesome: the people I met, the food I ate, the things I saw, and of course the friends I got to see. Kristi and Davide, the couple we stayed with, are two of the nicest people you'll ever meet. They cooked for us, showed us around Florence, drove us to the beach, laughed, played and drank with us. They really could not have been better hosts.

On Saturday, we drove out to the beach town of Tonfano and partied it up. The beaches in Tuscany are pretty wack...the entire beach is divided into 20-foot sections, each owned by a different guy, and you have to pay some insane fee to rent space under one of the umbrellas that he has on his stretch of beach. There is no public beach and it creates kind of a lame atmosphere: rich old people lying around getting tan. If you want to see something sad, look up Tonfano, Italy on maps.google.com and put the map on the "satellite" setting. Look at the millions of umbrellas covering the beach and shed a tear for humanity.

Regardless, I had fun playing beach volleyball with Davide and his friends. One of his friends is a member at one of the clubs so it was cheap for us to get in. Afterwards we went to his beach house and started to prefunk for that night out. The high class beach clubs become high class night clubs at night time. We ordered a ton of pizza and bought a bunch of beer and vodka. When the pizza arrived, there were 16 of us and one table that could seat 6-8 people comfortably. I got my pizza and was going to look for somewhere to sit in the living room or wherever but Davide grabbed me a chair and told me to sit at the table. Everyone ended up crowding around this table, eating pizza, drinking beer and chatting about nonsense. The moment really struck me because I know that back home, the scene would never happen. People would break up into small groups all around the house, watch TV, etc. Basically, the whole moment of 16 people crowding around a small table showed the importance of family and dinner time in Italy. I really liked it and the next time I have a pizza and beer party at my house, I'm going to make everyone crowd around my small dining room table and we're going to have real conversations. Word.

Anyway, that just symbolizes the feeling I had during my entire trip. I loved how much the Italians valued their friends and family and they were all kind enough to make me feel like I belonged in that circle. I will be back in Florence soon, that's for sure.

On Saturday, I'm heading to London for one small poker tournament and one big concert featuring Coldplay and Jay Z. I've never seen either act in concert before and I'm really pumped to see them together. I leave London on Wednesday then 4 of my best friends fly into Frankfurt on Friday and we'll embark on the greatest Western European road trip of all time. I can't wait. I'm really missing home but having them around will help with that a lot.

Here are some final pics from Italy. Holler.