Quick comment

I have to say that I love how Gardenia and Giorgio blast excellent classical music from downstairs and how I can kind of hear it up here as I clean up from dinner. Joy. And that one of the house phones has the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as the ring tone.

Also, something that those of you who have ever walked anywhere with me might find funny:

I walk faster than most Italians.

Given that normally I am the slow one in everything, this fact gives me regular amusement, although I can't tell if I'm walking faster when I go out here than I usually do at home or if the Italians really are just that laid-back and slow-at-everything as they seem to be.

Now, back to washing dishes in my utility sink. :)

Trip to Florence no. 1, part two

General Life Comments:

I am so grateful that Middlebury has laundry machines; taking half an afternoon+ to hand wash all one’s clothes would be difficult to manage amid all the work and whatnot. But I can deal with it while here, at least, given that I don’t have an immediate time constraint on most of my assignments for the term. Hah, the other night I was chatting with someone from Middlebury and they mentioned having to spend all day doing homework, and the really odd thing was that my brain went “……….. oh! That’s right, there is lots of very time-consuming work back at Middlebury! I almost forgot!” Given that I’ve never had a lack of homework back at Midd, plus working one or two jobs at a time, plus something of a social life, I’m amused at what 2 months away from that super-busy-ness has done to my memory, even after having been through language school.

Today has been generally uneventful, although I guess I can say that I continue to quite enjoy my linguistics class, I’m getting an idea about the intended scope of my geography class, am still quite relieved that that doctor won’t be living here, and have found that I can once again appreciate listening to some music that was emotionally off-limits for the last half-year, or at least start to do so. All of which are good things! Oh! I also finally received my absentee ballot in the mail! Exciting! I get to be a participating, responsible citizen and vote for the first time! (Ok, that’s too many exclamation points there…) I’ll be heading over to the post office first thing after class tomorrow morning, and will proceed to once again negotiate with the postal workers about the best way to mail something quickly. Goody.

That reminds me: some people long ago asked for my mailing address, and at the time I wasn’t sure what it would be or if I could actually reliably receive anything here. I most definitely would not trust packages to arrive in either a timely fashion (i.e.: before I go back to the US) or in one piece (as I’ve heard enough theft stories), but simple, flat letters should be able to arrive, if anyone is interested in sending me anything ever. My address is: Elisabeth Hahn, Corso della Giovecca 168, Ferrara 44100, Italia. It’s best to have my name like that, since my landlords might possibly be confused if any of my other names/nicknames were on the envelope instead. I also need to get around to sending postcards to people at some point…


Immigrant-Watching in Florence:

So where was I? Oh yes, on the Ponte Vecchio. Something interesting that we observed on the bridge, and then actually intentionally watched for a little bit on the other side was … the immigrants. Sounds terrible of me, I know, but it was true. Let me explain. You see, Italy has a huge issue with illegal immigrants, with the bulk coming from northern Africa and the Middle East, logically enough. This is some of what I know about the immigrant situation here, which I’m sure is not the whole picture, given that I am neither a specialist in this, an Italian, or one of these people. They are usually extremely poor where they come from, young, and the most common way for them to be able to afford the journey to Europe is to make a deal with someone who functions rather like a pimp. This boss gets them into Europe illegally, gives them a place to stay with other immigrants (usually horrific conditions at first), teaches them a bit of the language of whatever country they end up in, and gives them merchandise to sell, focusing on the tourist market. These people then sell low-quality touristy wares on the city streets, and have to give a large percentage of the profits back to the boss – hence the pimp aspect, or perhaps indentured servitude – and get stuck in this position for years.

This is, however, waaaay better than what happens to the majority in Italy that get jobs working for such bosses in agriculture or factories. Unfortunately, the higher the immigrant population in an area, the vastly greater the crime rates, which builds the Italian prejudice against them, making it more difficult to get an education and better jobs, making more desperate idiots resort to crime as an additional source of income beyond their terrible farm/tourist-rip-off payments. This is true of Ferrara, which is surrounded by farmland, and has just enough bustle in the commercial/tourist center to have a few Africans selling fake designer handbags on the streets, as well as a strong correlation in rising crime to rising immigrant numbers.

As Florence is such a major tourist attraction, even for Italians, I saw literally a few dozen groups of these hawkers in a relatively small city area in just one day. They work in teams on a particular block, with at least one person on the lookout on the corners to warn about approaching police (which is what leads to why they can be interesting to watch in turn). I even saw what I’m taking as evidence within these groups of the pimp/boss system: across the variety of neighborhoods through which I walked, ALL the Arabs had the same sets of poster-prints of famous Florentine art which they laid out in rows along the street with the same techniques, almost ALL the Africans had the same kinds of fake designer handbags which they carried in/laid out on square white sheets of apparently the same size, and ALL the Asians each had the same three sets of wares (toy cars, mini camera tripods and woven-grass animals on strings) that they carried in shopping bags. Totally and absolutely divided by race, not even talking to each other and never having the same products as the other kinds of immigrants, although they did give each other the warning signals when on the same street.

Being illegal immigrants and not allowed to harass tourists or local citizens for their wares as they do, these people seem to be absolutely terrified of the police, who in turn seem to enjoy terrifying them as though it were a game – the cops slowly drive around the block again and again, and every time the car is spotted coming, a signal’s given and the panicking sellers scoop up 20 feet of posters in one smooth move (they’re overlapped carefully for this purpose) or wrap up their sheet of bags or toss the toys and tripods into the shopping bag in maybe 5 seconds.

It’s frankly impressive to see a street lined with such sellers frantically and suddenly disappear into the crowd in 5-10 seconds as a cop car pulls around the corner, and then reemerge a quarter block down, quickly set up, and soon after repeat the whole process. I feel bad for these people, but I don’t need to waste my money on pieces of crap that I don’t need, were probably badly made, and are probably damaged by the constant movement, so of course I didn’t buy anything. Nor did anyone else I saw in the streets for the whole day and a half; and I only saw one succeed in selling some cute toys to a family with kids in Venice (the sets of merchandise are different in Venice, and the sellers less common). All that seemed to be missing from the similar situations we talked about in the Global Economy and Italian 252 was the famous line “Vu compra?” that is the stereotypical immigrant butchering of the Italian question “will you buy?” or “do you want to buy?”

So yeah. That was interesting to actually get to observe, having heard from the distance of a Vermont college classroom about this European underclass and their organization. The rest of Friday night consisted of a delicious dinner, talking more with the family, and my first ever by-myself ride in a taxi or stay in a hostel.

I’m going to split this up now, in case I get too tired to finish tonight and to make the pieces more easily identifiable for those of you who read my super long posts in installments. Next up: 1754 stairs and a most satisfying view.

Trip to Florence, no. 1, part one

(pictures from Florence are on flickr under the Duomo set)

I managed to massacre my dinner tonight while trying out a new recipe from my mediterranean cookbook … But hey, really screwing up only once in 5 weeks of feeding myself (although I admittedly haven’t made anything terribly complicated) is not a bad record, right? :) Besides that, today went alright – I spent most of it working on an essay for my Ferrarese literature class, had two classes, and couldn’t find the third. Meh. It happens.

YAY! I just found out from Gardenia that the doctor is actually not going to live here! Turns out it’s too expensive. I am so very relieved, I truly am. There is apparently a 30-ish woman now also looking at room, but not in the immediate future. I’d rather have the little fridge and little bathroom to myself, but as long as it’s not a strange man sharing the space, I can’t really complain at all, especially given the economy and that I know extra money would be useful of course for Gardenia and Giorgio. So… that is a huge relief that that man won't be here. Yay for good luck for me. May he find somewhere else suitable to live - just not with me.

Ok, now onto Florence! As I mentioned in my various “where’s-Emmons-now?” posts a few days ago, I went to Florence for Friday night and Saturday, prompted by the presence there of my grandma and two aunts, who were finishing up their 2 week visit to northern Italy (they’re all Americans, although this is the grandmother who is full-blood Italian, just for the record). Gina didn’t make it this time, but that is understandable, as it would be quite a trip for her; I’m glad to be living somewhere where I can easily get to the disparate locations of Gina’s, Venice, and Florence, among a handful of other smaller but also cool cities which I am planning on visiting eventually, like Padova, Rimini and Ravenna.

I don’t think I’ve talked much at all about the vagaries of the Italian transport system yet, beyond my difficulties on my initial journey into Ferrara. I can now say that yes, the trains here do sometimes run late, but not as often as we are led to believe. I have actually had a train leave early (gasp!), and have several times literally had to chase down buses because they left the stops early (and when I was about one building away…). I have also had buses come 20 minutes late, or have the busride doubled due to traffic leading me to miss my train by no-joke FIVE seconds (the door closed in my face), and a train shut down and sit waiting a tiny bit outside the station for half an hour (all of these last few happened when trying to go see family in the last week. Great timing, eh?) There are sometimes funny things that happen with different kinds of tickets, and some you have to validate and some you don’t, too. It’s been interesting to have to figure out, but it really isn’t too bad. That is, if you have to patience to wait an hour for the next train when the above things go wrong – which I have definitely learned to do by now.

Rising up around Florence are small mountains, which I think are part of the general ridge of the Alpinini that run N-S down the lenth of the penninsula. It is so reassuring for me to see mountains I’ve realized, being in the flood plain of Emilia Romagna and being made much happier when I’ve gone enough to the east or north-west to find any increases in elevation. These particular ones were quite lovely, still very green, and spotted with lots of little villages and graded terraces for agriculture, which is something I remember seeing in Sicily when little. Of course, I couldn’t really see these in the city for the buildings, except when I climbed the Dome and the Belltower, but I’ll get to that in a bit. Regardless, it was a very scenic trainride east.

Beyond a build-up of small transport mishaps on my way to Florence taking away some time with the family members, all went quite smoothly for the rest of the trip, in part because I can thank-God read a map, and was able to navigate my way to where Lynne was, and then the next day get around the city on my own. Getting off the train, I was immediately struck by the immensity of difference in the scale and energy of Florence in comparison with Ferrara. It is one serious city, as well as very much tourist-geared. I of course only got to see the historical/cultural center of the city, so that might be a slightly biased view, but from what I’ve been told much of the city retains that personality – there are several score museums across the city, and every few blocks is a piazza that had something famous or other occur there. I can also see why there can be 130 study-abroad programs situated in Florence, 128 of which do not require knowledge of Italian – there were of course plenty of Italians speaking Italian, and I bet many of whom didn’t know (much) English, but there was also a large enough population of English speakers evident everywhere so that reasonably many signs were in Italian on the top and English on the bottom. Most definitely not Ferrara. This place is way to quiet to be comparable with Florence, but at the same time, I was so incredibly glad to come back here after a busy city like that, and know that I made the right choice in picking Ferrara over Florence.

After meeting up with Lynne, Grandma and Kathy, we made our way over to Santa Croce, which is one of the major churches in Florence. I don’t know how much it’s used for actual services any more, but it is pretty on the outside, encased in a similar style of white, pink and green marble that is the great Duomo. Within, the main attractions are the tombs and monuments of such notable persons as Galileo, Michaelangelo, Donatello, Marconi, Fermi, and many others of whom I had never heard, but I assume were decently important when alive such as nobility. There is also an intended tomb for Dante Alighieri: he was exiled from his native Florence during life for his political views, and his body remains in the city of his banished days. However, sometime after his death, Florence realized how brilliant and historically important Dante was, and has been trying to get him back ever since, even building a tomb for his bones in anticipation. Needless to say, I was amused by the irony.

Also perhaps needless to say, I was somewhat in awe at the idea of being next to the tombs of such great thinkers and creators. For me, living in Italy feels like being a pilgrim, paying homage to a land of history, art and centuries of innovation and wisdom. And so, beginning my visit to Florence, one of the historically greatest cultural centers of Europe, by visiting the tombs of men such as Galileo and Michaelangelo felt very fitting.

Afterwards we wandered down to the Ponte Vecchio not long before it closed. The Ponte Vecchio is the bridge you always see in pictures of Florence, with the layers of shops sticking out the sides and the covered walkway going overhead. The bridge was on the route from the Medici palace on the other side of the Arno river into the city center, but used to be covered in butcher shops, the smell of which apparently displeased the Medicis. And so, they passed a law that only fine jewelry shops could be situated on the bridge, and they also built the long enclosed corridor that extends not only over the bridge but a ways into the neighborhoods on either side, so that the family would not have to associate with the common folk of Florence. What I thought was actually pretty cool about the shops on the bridge was the way they closed up for the night. Of course, several dozen gold shops all lined up must have fantastic appeal for theives, and so not only do the shops remove and lock away all the pieces in their displays, but they also envelop their shop windows and doors in thick wooden walls that can be pulled out of the roof. The result is that they all look like enormous old travelers’ chests or toy boxes, or as it were, heavy-duty jewelry boxes. It was neat to see them all start wrapping themselves up at 7 prompt, as the moon was rising over the Arno and the light all turning purple and gray for the evening.

And this update should have been finished and posted hours ago, but as I got distracted and ended up chatting with someone from Midd instead, and it is now very late, this will have to do for now.

Until tomorrow!