An Introduction to Ferrara

Please note the link to photo-age and the plea for recipes and food suggestions in the previous post. Grazie!

My hosts are Gardenia and Giorgio, and they aren’t really a host family (not feeding me anything, for one thing), but are (at least Gardenia is) paying more attention to me than one might expect of a simple landlord-tenant relationship. It seems like this will be a good arrangement. They are very pleasant, and Gardenia reminds me a bit of my Italian grandmother. I haven’t spoken much with Giorgio yet. Or seen him much, actually. He’s in his late 80s, and somehow disappears during the day, and certainly not to work, especially since he's retired and his offices are in this building. Perhaps he just disappears to elsewhere in the house. Gardenia is somewhat younger, although also retired, and is very bubbly and helpful, although sometimes I can’t tell if she is frustrated with my language skills or if it’s just the way she and many other Italians sometimes sound aggressive since they often talk progressively louder and louder, even about non-controversial subjects. Her cousin, Andrea, who is also retired and has been visiting Ferrara for quite some time, comes and goes from the house regularly, although he seems to be here much of the time. He and Gardenia speak some English, which they like to practice with me occasionally. That seems to be part of the deal with me getting such a nice place to live, although they are starting to speak to me more in Italian as they realize what I can understand. Andrea will be leaving soon, to go to Rome to take care of his horses (which I think has been his career in some way, he didn’t explain it very clearly), where Gardenia’s son lives and works as a politician in an opposition party. Apparently, the rest of the family lives in Ferrara, as they have for generations, and at least the daughter and granddaughters regularly interact with Gardenia and Giorgio, as I have found out repeatedly in the last two days.

The house turns out to be on the same side of the street as the University, a few buildings down, and is about a block from the old city wall. I put up pictures of some parts of the house and neighborhood on my flickr. I have a decent sized bedroom, a living/dining room with a set of mini-kitchen appliances, and a bathroom, mostly to myself. The exit of the bedroom is through their computer room, which is a little awkward, but o well. The house is several centuries old, although I’m not sure exactly how much, and has quite a number of little rooms tucked away to accommodate the enormous library of my hosts. There is also another guest bedroom next to mine, in which Gardenia offered to let me guest any friends or family who come to visit (*nudge nudge*). There are tiles, and stucco and stone most everywhere, with old furniture and lots of paintings, and a small garden that leads to yet more archival space. Plus there’s wireless internet, which is very convenient, despite the 54 mbps, also with occasional air-conditioning, and cable TV with Italian, French, German, British, and Arabic TV. Not that I normally watch much tv, but hey, it’s still cool to have in case I want to do so. I have no idea how I managed to get this lucky. As I’ve mentioned before, the house is on the main road through old Ferrara, which in this section is called Corso della Giovecca, in case you hear me reference that later. Unlike what I had been told by who-knows-who, there are plenty of cars in the old town, but there are still an enormous amount of cyclists, and way more scooters than I’ve seen in my entire life. It’s a good thing I did a little bit of biking practice with my dad before coming here, because I think I’m going to need to get one, as much as the idea of biking next to all these crazy drivers scares me… And like they say, the Italians are definitely somewhat crazy drivers. You don’t jay-walk here, and you only cross where there’s a light, unless you like being scared for your life or are on a small side street where there are no lights. Good lesson to have learned quickly, seriously.

The architecture has been fun to look at, although it’s way more uniform than in the States. There’s lots of brick and stucco, of course, all in reds and yellows and peaches, with red tile roofs and tall shuttered windows. At least on this, the east, end of town, there’s a park following part of the medieval wall, on which I took a walk yesterday, before wandering down Giovecca to the castle in the center of town. Again, go to my flickr for some visuals. There are very few trees here, even in the park and gardens, which is already becoming slightly unnerving. I am so not a city person, and at least this is a very low, reasonably small city for my small-town dispostion. It might take a while to get used to the lack of green, the amount of noise and smells, and in the winter, the apparent total lack of snow. It still feels like the middle of July here, so I’m hoping to get over to the ocean sometime soon before it cools down too much, and plan on taking regular refuge in the parks for my dose of plantlife.

Ok, time for a second splitting of the post. In the future, I will write less at at a time, but given the busy-ness of the last few days, there is much to say, particularly to let my family know what this has been like so far. This next one I can’t promise to finish before going to sleep, however, but I will try.