Without a Traceroute

I should say a few words about Stefania’s car. It’s a totally hilarious 22-year old beater. The roof leaks when it rains, so she has to always leave the windows open a crack so the interior can dry out. There’s a joint from a previous owner wedged deep in one of the air vents, so if you turn on the heater, the entire car smells like weed. There’s a broken radio from an even older car in the dash—when Stefania got the car, the radio didn’t work, so she replaced it with the radio from the car her father had owned when he met her mom, which he had kept as a memento (aww). Then that radio was destroyed by moisture after a few months. The back of the car is covered with tons of random bumper stickers, including a “01-20-09: Bush’s Last Day” sticker that an American friend of hers had insisted she put on the car. “It always confuses the Europeans, because they write the dates the other way,” she told me.

There was some question as to whether the car would make the 100km journey to Pisa without incident, but it performed like a champ.
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