Small European Town Actually Not At All Romantic
This past summer, Carnegie Mellon ran its annual language immersion program in Italy. For the first time, the program was held in the small Italian town of Cappuccinovecchio, right between that place you forgot from tenth grade history class and that place you forgot from eleventh grade history class. In the past, the program has garnered rave reviews.
“This program got me away from Pittsburgh, as advertised. I hate Pittsburgh, so I’m happy,” said one student. “I learned a lot of Italian words, like pizza, pasta, espresso, and merda,” reported another. “I love how many naked people there are in Europe,” said a third.
But this year, student reviews were less outstanding. “I wanted a romantic summer getaway to a beautiful and more importantly Instagrammable Italian destination,” one heartbroken student told Readmè. “Instead, I got heatstroke from the lack of ice in my coffee, couldn’t eat the disgusting fake Italian food, and don’t even have any STDs to show for it.”
The principal complaints from students mostly concern how dreadfully depressing and unromantic the town was. According to Google, Cappuccinovecchio has a population of 400 people, down from a peak of 4,000 people. The current median age sits at 65, which the same heartbroken student reported as “way too high.” The student then clarified, “I’m into old people, but not that old.”
Readmè has been made aware of one particularly egregious incident in which the cohort of students was invited to a party at a local college student’s house. The students were expecting a basement rager with cheap beer and whatever the Italian equivalent to frat bros is, and were disappointed to instead find an 80th birthday party for the local college student’s grandmother with artisan wines and a knitting competition. Worst of all, the grandmother didn’t even have any sick stories from her time in the mafia. “If I wanted artisan wines,” yet another heartbroken CMU student told Readmè, “I would’ve gone to… actually yeah I probably would’ve still gone to Italy. But I like my alcohol cheap and shitty, so there’s that.”
Among those who traveled to Cappuccinovecchio was a heterosexual couple. During their interview with Readmè, the pair expressed their disappointment with how unromantic Cappuccinovecchio was, a far cry from the expectations they said were set by the Duolingo owl’s sexiness. “I thought there’d be baskets of flowers hanging from all the buildings, romantic street music at every corner, and lovely little bakeries,” the guy from the heterosexual couple told Readmè. “So you can imagine my disappointment when instead there was graffiti on all of the buildings, and only some of it was vulgar. Plus, the town was deserted, I got banned from the only bakery on day three for calling the owner’s daughter hot, and the whole town reeked.”
“Wait, I kinda like how the place reeked. Are you not into that kind of thing?” asked the girl from the heterosexual couple angrily, which made the interviewer somewhat uncomfortable. The guy then shook his head, which made the interviewer slightly less uncomfortable. “Well then I don’t think we can be a couple anymore,” the girl said, and walked out. This made the interviewer very uncomfortable.
Ultimately, the most unromantic aspect of Cappuccinovecchio may have been the dissolution of a couple, which, for the record, Readmè had absolutely nothing to do with. This, combined with general complaints about the program’s poor choice of location, led Readmè to investigate further.
After a long, arduous investigation which consisted of sending a singular thirty-word email to the Italian immersion program director, Readmè can now report that the reason for the unromantic Italy immersion program was because of cost-cutting. In past years, the program had been held in Verona, famous for the notably successful romance between Romeo and Juliet. But this year, to make the program cheaper and more accessible to students, the program director lowered costs upon finding that CMU could simply buy one-Euro homes in Cappuccinovecchio. When asked what CMU’s plans were for these homes when summer programs are not in session, the program director said they were sitting empty. So dearest reader, if you know of any couples you want to break up, please email jyachtss@andrew.cmu.edu and we’ll arrange for a positively unromantic trip to Italy.