Photos and First Few Days in Scotland in Brief

Most pictures from Scotland are up on flickr, fyi, in several sets accessible on the right side, split up by days. And almost all of my photos on there are now mapped, using a "geotagging" feature which I think is just dandy for people like me who... like both maps and photography a lot. So, if anybody cares, you can actually see where things took place by looking at my map on flickr, too!

And now, my first few days in Scotland in brief (by my normal standards, at least), as a break from studying.

Day 0: Spending all day traveling, with a successful arrival. Only hiccups were when the customs man in London yelled at me for being American and for messing up the entry form a little bit, and when I thought the airplane being late in Italy made me miss my connecting flight to Edinburgh because I forgot about the time difference and freaked out for a little while as I ran through the airport. However, all went well in the end. Eleanor was nice and picked me up at the airport, and for dinner I had a wonderfully home-tasting meal of a BLT and a milkshake with Eleanor and her Irish flatmate Gareth, before chilling out with the amusing movie "American Splendor."

Day 1: Food shopping! Oh man, I am so jealous of the amount of diversity in Scottish markets - lots of variety of food types, for considerably less money that it is here, even with the pound-euro-dollar differences. One of many things that would occur over the week to make me feel more at home. Then came the German Christmas Market near the Prince's Street Gardens, where they have lots of Christmas-season goings-on. Apparently in Europe, the Germans are the only ones who really know how to do a Christmas Market, or so they say, so a whole bunch of Germans come to Edinburgh with their stalls and food and jewelry and neat little things and set up for a month and a half! Got some decent german food and some traditional mulled wine, talked for a long time, and spent a while looking at the pretty jewelry. Yay.

Then came going to a Buddhism class with Eleanor and seeing the really-old-manuscripts section of the New College (religion/philosophy/etc.) library; wandering around the city; visiting a small vintage store called the Rusty Zip, playing dress-up back at the flat with Eleanor's lots of fun/cute clothes (aka being girly), meeting Eleanor's flatmates and her friends Zoe and Mark; getting a chance to webcam for a little with my brother Alex; making dinner and hanging out talking for a long time. We intended to go dancing at Caberet Voltaire... and had too much fun talking until late. Fortunately or unfortunately, this became a trend for the week, and I was regularly too tired to go out past midnight. Not an easy schedule for me, probably to my brother's disappointment (he wanted me to see Cab Volt while there). O well. At least hanging out with new, lively, friendly and interesting people was a relief from my quiet life here in Italy.

Day 2: Heading up to St. Andrews to see Zoe, a friend and suitemate of mine from Arabic School, who is a Vermonter but goes to undergrad at St. Andrews all year round. It's a cute, little, medieval fishing/pilgrimage town, with lots of fantastic ruins just above the shore of the North Sea. There are only three main streets (whose shops oddly enough reminded me of Denville, near home in NJ, or of Middlebury), plus the university, the fishing neighborhoods and the ruins of the medieval cathedral, chapel, castle and some other things, which have whole walls missing and then a single wall or tower just rising up from the earth. They were as though ghost buildings, beautiful skeletons. A storm was brewing up and it rained on and off all afternoon, which unfortunately precluded some intended destinations, but the rain, wind and clouds just made the whole place more surreal and the ruins on the crashing sea the more wild and intriguing. So awesome, in several senses of the word. It was also great to see Zoe and get to catch up for the whole afternoon, talking over tea and Indian food and as we wandered through the very-much-ruins of the epic cathedral. I'm really glad I got to see her while in Scotland, even if it was just for one day. Feeling welcomed by friends was a constant and very key highlight to the trip, and was very comforting.

Day 3: A very full day. Started out with a trip to the Farmer's Market, which was down below the Grassmarket and near the foot of the cliff on which the Castle sits. Much of the food was quite tempting-looking, but we went for some porridge for breakfast. Wow was it good. Raspberries and oats and cream and I don't remember what all, but a good way to start the day. Next was Armstrongs, this enoooormous vintage store in the Grassmarket. Old clothes and accessories from the 1800s through to the 70s, although mainly, from what it appeared, from the early 20th century. More fragile or really unusual and not for sale items were hanging from the ceiling, so the store feels a whirlwind den of weird, colorful old things. SO MUCH COOL STUFF. We had fun playing dress up and digging up cool things from the racks for quite some time. This place would be a LARPers dream-store, I expect. I need to get the pictures of this morning from Eleanor at some point, since my camera was out of batteries, but that's the only point that I don't have, I think.

Afterwards, Eleanor had to study for an exam she had on the coming Monday, so I went off on my own to climb Arthur's Seat, the massive volcanic rock and heath-covered mound rising up in the middle of the city, on the side near the Firth of Forth (the bay-ish stretch of the North Sea reaching into the island near Edinburgh). There are several paths of various difficulties that wind back and forth up the rocky hill, and which lead to the grassy hillocks of the plateau at the top. The sun was starting to go down as I went up (not long after 3 pm...), which meant that I got some fantastic views of Edinburgh and this gorgeous sunset from the rocky volcanic highest point, where I hung out for a while with some other hikers and ravens braving the wind for the sake of the sunset.

The downside of seeing the sunset from the top, that I didn't think of until too late, was having to make my way down (the much smoother backside through a valley and past a ruined chapel!) in the near-dark, but luckily there were other people around and no problems. But I'm really glad I got to make it back up there (my dad, brother Alex and I climbed it last spring, too). I've discovered this fall something of a love for climbing iconic tall points in cities - it's exhilirating and brings great views! I think I want to hike more often once back in the States again, although nothing too intense for little me. I do go to school in Vermont, after all; why not take better advantage of the landscape?

But the busy day wasn't over yet! Eleanor, her friend Natasha (who I'd met for a while sometime earlier in the trip) and I went ice skating in the Prince's Street Gardens Christmas ice rink. They hadn't cleaned up the skater-shavings for several hours, so there was an odd layer of "snow" over the whole rink, and it was kind of crowded, but besides that it was quite fun! Last winter, I tried ice skating for the first time, and am glad that I did so, because I'm kind of awkward still but can do it without falling at all and definitely enjoy myself. We met up with Leah and Mary Katherine briefly afterwards, but they had had a long day of walking (with seeing an exciting penguin march at the zoo!) and were ready for an early night, and so I ended up back at Eleanor's flat to watch the strange but very funny movie "Wet, Hot American Summer" with her and Natasha, at the recommendation of the movie-store guy. (We hadn't intended to watch two "typical American (fill-in-the-blank) experience" movies, but ended up doing so somehow, I just realized). A relaxing way to end the day.

Days 4, 5 and 6: Coming Soon.

Immediate plans:

Well, I should get back to trying to be productive soon. This is going to be a very very busy week (after the last month of being quite busy but feeling unproductive and a lack of posting, sorry about that!), but I will do my best at writing about the other few days in Scotland and how life has been in general. My family (parents and Alex) are coming next Monday to Italy for over a week for Christmas, and I am sooooo looking forward to it.

I had been thinking of going to Rome next weekend for a short visit, since I haven't made it there at all yet, but cousin Gina has proposed, if things work out for her, staying with her and going for a short ski trip - over the border into Austria! Which would also be exciting. So, either way, once I make it through this busy week (and hopefully get some important things worked on), I will get to have a much-looked-forward-to vacation for a bit of time before the crazy exam month of January. That last bit I'm not eager about, as I don't feel at all prepared. I've learned a ton this term about emotionally taking care of and living by myself in a new environment, and some more Italian, of course, but very little academically, less than I need to know for exams (which is partly my fault, partly my language skills, partly the confusing set up here and how difficult it is to get books). I know that learning to take care of myself and learning about myself is the more important thing by far and what I care about more, but I'd like to do ok on exams, as the grades do actually count for Middlebury... I'll just have to keep plugging along with this frustrating university. Almost there! Almost there! Just keep swimming...

This has been a good experience over all, this fall, but I will be quite glad to get home. And in the meantime, I will be sooo happy to see my family next week. Ok. Back to work.

Fair Verona

So, as I mentioned, Leah and I went to Verona last weekend, the city that constitutes the setting of Romeo and Juliet. For those of you who read Leah’s blog, she gave a pretty good synopsis of the journey, so I will not discuss the exact same things. For those of you who don’t, I guess you just won’t get all the same details; but as my entries are generally lengthy at any rate, I hope you won’t mind.

For the first time in a while, my trip across town to get to the train station on time did not involve chasing any buses or begging the drivers to let me on. No trains were missed, and so all was well and lacking in stress. Yay! Leah had done the planning on this one, and so I just left things up to her and followed her intentions for the weekend. The hostel, which we found during the day so as to make life easier later on, was rather nice for having such a good price, with stone courtyards and a garden, large kitchen, balcony or two, and very Italian-looking rooms (i.e.: lots of stone-tiling and creamy stucco with wood beams in the ceilings). We got an 11-bed dormitory to ourselves, it turned out later on, as the other two girls with intentions to stay there actually got locked out for the night and came stumbling in in the morning to reclaim their stuff.

Wanderings in Verona

For several hours, we wandered at will through the streets of Verona, coming across what appeared to be an abandoned zoo in the park along the Wall, the old castle (named the same: Castelvecchio) along the way, and exploring the courtyard. A number of buildings in Verona, including the house section of the castle, have vaguely medieval-middle-eastern architecture, which surprised me: scalloped window frames with little carved geometric rosettes between the arches, and most obviously, the use of red-and-white alternating voussoirs – strips of alternatingly colored stone over arches and on the walls of buildings, famously found in, say, the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Cordoba. Not knowing much about Verona’s history or the culture in which those buildings were designed, I really have no clue why this would be so. But it created a once again very different visual character to the city. I think every place I’ve been so far here has had quite an individual seeming personality (both for the structures and the people), noticeable even from my short touristy visits. I wonder if that has to do with how they once were actual city-states and were very separate entities politically and somewhat culturally, and therefore developed such diverse identities?

We ended up going through a part of the Centro Storico (historic center) of Verona, an overwhelmingly crowded shopping district, and finally found ourselves in Piazza Brà, one of the larger squares in the city center. It’s the site of a Roman theater still in use today for the popular opera performances that Verona hosts every summer. We didn’t go inside because of the cost of tickets, but the outside was cool to look at – a miniature coliseum. It would’ve been a great experience to get to actually see an opera while in Italy, especially in Verona, since it’s such a part of the Italian artistic identity, but unfortunately the season has already ended for the year.

We had been headed towards Piazza Brà mainly because we had intended to catch a tour group meeting there… but the group never showed up... Ok, we figured, why not take the little street-train tour we saw earlier, even if it’s not as long as the one we originally wanted? But noooo, even though the conductor was supposed to be giving tours for another hour, he thought that two girls alone, instead of his normal 7-15 people, wouldn’t be worth the effort… and he kicked us out of the train. It was then too late for another tour to be found. So I can’t tell you very much about the history or the historic sights of Verona, although we at least walked past the main ones.

Juliet and Superstitions

And yes, we did visit the “house of Juliet”, which was indeed part of the “Capulet” (Capelli) family holdings, although no one resembling Juliet in Veronese history actually ever lived there. There is of course a statue of Juliet in the courtyard, with which people have their pictures taken, which in turn has led very specific pieces of the Juliet statue to be very brightly polished, while others are left to turn black over the years. So, if you look at my photo of the statue on my flickr, the fact that her right arm and breast are almost glowingly white is not a result of a flash. People just like to touch them a lot. I don’t know how that tradition started, but there you go.

The neat thing about Juliet’s courtyard is the entryway and its walls – hundreds of people leave wishes of love for Juliet to grant, or messages about couples staying together or love notes, etc. A few years ago, in order to preserve the walls, wanted to prohibit people from writing on them anymore, but couldn’t get the visitors to stop. Solution: cover the walls in a thin, invisible layer of plastic on which people could write, not knowing the difference and which then the museum could regularly replace! So the walls get almost every reachable square inch covered in letters, grafitti and gum, and become a rainbow messy wall of love.

Leah told me about something similar in Florence: a fence or something on which couples hang locks under the premise that their love will last until the lock breaks and falls off. Of course, there are so many locks hung that the authorities have to cut them off once a week. So much for that superstition to get good luck. Back in Verona again, there is an archway with a whale rib hanging from the center, with the prophecy that it will fall on the first person to pass underneath who has never told a lie. Leah and I stood under it for a while, but apparently the whale rib thought we weren’t honest enough to grace with its fall. Oh darn. I wonder how often the city checks to make sure that thing’s still screwed in tightly. Which is more valuable, liability or publicity?

The Labyrinth of the Giardini Giusti

My favorite part of the trip was our visit to the Giardini Giusti, famous for its labyrinths and winding garden paths, super-tall cypruses, and the fact that Goethe came up with an incorrect theory of evolution sometime before Darwin based on the leaves of the Gardens’ trees, with a cyprus in particular attributed to this event. These labyrinths didn’t involve David Bowie or goblins trying to delay us or the Bog of Eternal Stench (thank God), and were more manicured than the gardens in the Secret Garden, but I couldn’t help but think of these two favorite stories of mine as we wandered the twisting paths in the filtered morning light (the former references, for any deprived souls who haven’t seen it, are to the 80s movie “Labyrinth”). Some of the sections were actual mini-labyrinths, although only around thigh-high, probably to prevent anyone from getting seriously lost in there. There were also stone and pebbled paths winding this way and that among the trees, with statues silently emerging from the bushes, and not-quite-ruinous rooms of columns or pavilions, and stone benches speckling the corners of the paths. There was what seemed to be an old broken shrine in a strange cave, whose surface was lined with not only stones and stucco but also shards of glass and seashells, and of which I simply could not get a good photograph. There is a snarling face on the front of a balcony aligned with the center pathway through the Gardens, tucked into a wall of vines and sundry plantlife to look down upon those wandering the labyrinths, and a tower that brings you up to the highest plateau of the terraced hillside, leading to a great view over the roofs of Verona.

In short, a great place to spend a morning. It felt surreal at times, as though Leah and I should be ladies of some far gone time, ambling through the gardens in hoopskirts and trailing gowns, arm in arm and speaking of suitors. Or as though little fairies should be flitting from tree to tree, in the half-magical light between the cypruses and the mysterious turnings of the pathways. But eventually we found ourselves back at the beginning, and decided to make our way out into the more expectable world and towards the train station – which was harder than anticipated, as we’d gone off the map. But it all worked out in the end, as it always does. And there were no sketchy men met upon the way home this time!

I’m not planning on going anywhere this weekend, for the first time since my first weekend in Ferrara, so hopefully I will finally get to catch up somewhat on organizational errands, responding to people’s messages, and get to webcam chat with those of you who are available and to whom I haven’t spoken in too long. Tonight though, I hope to be able to do more cooking and hanging out with Leah, which should be a decent way to end the week. It’s very lonely at times not having yet been able to make friends with any Italians, but I am so glad that at least there is someone I’m pretty comfortable with here like Leah. Also, MK and I at least will be visiting Will Tucker in Germany in less than two weeks, so I am very excited to see the two of them. Chatting/email, webcams and ryanair = saving grace while abroad. Joy for the internet. (And joy for the fishies in the deep blue sea, joy for you and me.) Ok, I'm going to stop rambling now. Be well, all.

- Emmons, signing out.

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.