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.

Update on Siena

Last Saturday, we went to Siena for the day, we being most of us Middkids in Ferrara, a handful of those in Florence, and the graduate students in Midd’s School in Italy. The trip was organized and sponsered by Middlebury, which on one hand is nice because it means being reimbursed and going somewhere I might not have otherwise. (It was a neat city, which I’ll get to in a minute. I need to gripe a little first…)

Warning: Complaining ahead.
On the other hand, the trip was actually a field trip for the grad students’ art history class, onto which we were just tagged without any consideration for the difficulty of getting there from Ferrara on their schedule (leaving very early and getting back very late), or for our level of interest in the professor who was giving the tour. I’m an art history major, as most of you already know, but I was very bored with the tour guide, regardless of it being “related” to my major. The trip had been advertised to us as a tour around the whole city, focusing on the history and a wide variety of places around said city. That would have probably been really cool, since Siena seemed like a pretty place with quite a lot of history.

False advertising it was – we spent the day in the Duomo (cathedral) and the Pinacoteca (national museum), being told either waaay too much detail to be interesting to most of us or being told what was quality and what wasn’t, instead of “letting” us have our own thoughts. Almost no history or context, mainly just judgements and repeated phrases, barely an intelligent observation – he kept telling us, this is notable, this is realistic and is therefore beautiful, this is abstract and therefore not worth looking at, this has good “light play”, this is good quality, this is medieval and therefore bad quality – NOT A WAY TO LEAD A TOUR. I’m not an expert in tour giving by any means and have only given a few museum tours (although I volunteered with a program at the college museum last year whose purpose is education and tours in museums, so I’ve thought about the process quite a bit). But I do think I have enough of a brain and teaching/tour-giving experience to appreciate when a guide engages the listeners (there are a number of ways to do so, of course) and be disappointed when they don’t. I was generally annoyed at the guide’s teaching methods and kept wandering away to look at things I prefered before being ushered into the next room to spend another 10 minutes with him babbling at us about a single image and saying nothing. I think he noticed my disdain, but whatever- he didn’t deserve my time and attention. Grrr.

In other words, it kept feeling like the Midd School in Italy (which is run by Italians, of course) was being cheap and lazy instead of giving us our own trip fitted to our level, interests and locations, and I don’t think they’re doing any other trips for us, unlike the several, more organized-sounding trips I’ve heard about from Middkids in other countries abroad. *cue minor jealousy* O well, that’s just the way it is!

More positive snapshots of Siena and Thoughts on Landscape
We got a little bit of time over lunch to do our own thing, luckily, and Leah and I went wandering around the city. (I’ve decided that wandering and exploring is one of my favorite hobbies, especially with so much new to see while here!) The city sits on a handful of tightly packed hills amidst the rolling Tuscan landscape. This gives it the feeling of being stacked, layered, pieced together like a 3d puzzle, or at least it does when you chance upon a view down a valley-side street or over the roofs. I love the visual and physical character of towns like that (I remember Edinburgh had a few cool views like that, since it is also on a series of hills, but because it’s more built up, I don’t think they were quite as clear.) This was definitely my favorite part of the city.

The open flats of the Pianura Padana floodplain I’m in here in Ferrara have mainly stopped feeling disconcerting; I’ve always loved wide horizons and the chance to see the sky, although because when I’m out on the pianura I’m generally in a train or I’m in a city with the horizon blocked by buildings, I haven’t had a chance to take much advantage of that for cloud watching, and have seen maybe 10 stars total since coming to Italy, none of which I saw from Ferrara (sadness!) However, traveling to regions of hills, forests, mountains, any variety in the landscape is inexpressibly comforting to me, whether it be in Tuscany or Friuli-Venezia-Giulia or the Veneto. I most miss the hills and forests (and mountains!) of Vermont and North Jersey, I miss our lake in my hometown, I miss the shores and ocean and salty smells of South Jersey, and I never would have thought I’d say this as it’s weird and surprising, but I kind of miss highways, or at least being in a car on long roads that you know are well maintained and can take you where you want to go. That last one I realized when I went to visit Will in Mainz and had to spend time on buses between cities. The lack of hills and forests has been weirding me out for the last 2 and a half months, frankly, even if I’m much more used to it by now. In short, I might have trouble living comfortably in most states of the US. It’s amazing how much landscape can get imbedded in your sense of a comforting world, of what so deeply feels right or unsettling.

Back to Siena: It seems that the architecture of every town I’ve been to has its own details differentiating it from the others (pictures are better for that than words, so I leave you to my flickr), along with different personalities that I pick up on (whether accurately or not I will never know) from the stores, the amount and friendliness of people interacting in the streets or just hanging out or completely ignoring everyone and everything, the level of bustle of the town. It’s very fun to observe these differences everywhere I go, although I haven’t spent enough time in any city but Ferrara to get much conclusion out of it. There were a lot of people just hanging out in the larger piazzas in Siena, even during the “pausa” – the Italian version of the well-known Spanish siesta, where shops shut down and everyone goes to eat and sleep for a few hours in the middle of the afternoon. It was certainly quieter than Florence and busier than Ferrara, though that’s not very hard to do on either account. A lot of ceramic tchotchke shops and stores selling wines, breads, meats, and of course gelato, etc. Winding streets and palm trees. Striped (zebrato – yes, like a zebra!) buildings. Many statues of baby Romulus and Remus with their mother wolf, apparently a mascot of not just Rome but Siena and several other nearby cities. Medieval icons, a Renaissance master named Duccio and Baroque extravagant interiors. Hills. Chianti Classico wine. Siena. Cool town, not the best day trip, but cool town. I think I’m glad I went.

And because I like lists and this blog has a lot to do with traveling anyway:
Places I’ve been up till now: Ferrara, Comacchio, Venezia, Firenze, Sacile, Aviano, the Dolomite foothills, Gargazo (the last 4 are in my cousin Gina’s area), Siena and Padova in Italy, and Mainz in Germany.

Places to visit in mainland Italy: Ravenna, Bologna, Rome, maybe Codigoro and Trieste/Duino (where Remy is at the UWC), skiing - hopefully in the Alps - with my family.

Ideas for places to visit in Sicily: Palermo, Siracusa, Leonforte, Mt. Etna.

Elsewhere in Europe: Scotland (in less than two weeks!), and maybe a few other places if I have time and money, but going to Sicily is a higher priority at the moment, so any other trips are on the backburner of merely brainstorming and might end up staying there. I’ve been recommended Vienna, Prague, Switzerland, among a few other places. But we’ll see. I’m just glad that traveling from Ferrara is pretty easy and economical in general! Also, I don’t know how we’ll be doing this, but Hannah R. and I will find some way to meet up during January, whether in Ireland or in Italy or elsewhere, I don’t know, but as I don’t want to go a full year without my dear friend Hannah, I’ll be eager to see her again.

I’ve begun planning my trip to Sicily, which has made me super excited. I’m thinking of going during the first week of January, visit the chapel on which I’m thinking of basing my senior thesis, visit our relatives in Leonforte, see the ruins in Siracusa and ancient amphitheater and climb Mt. Etna (volcano!) at the very least. I don’t know if I’ll have time/money to make it anywhere else while down there, but I could be satisfied with this beginning. I need to find safe but economical places to stay, and have found some useful-looking leads on convents that rent out rooms, which would be both a distinctly interesting Italian experience and a safe way to avoid dangerous hotels or way-too-expensive resorts.

I really like traveling and being someplace new. I like learning about this culture with which I’ve grown up but not really, as my Italian great-grandparents didn’t speak Italian to my grandmother and wanted to be as American as possible, but left behind for our family a pride in being Italian-American that my experiences here have challenged and highlighted in unexpectable ways. I’m sure I’m missing out on a lot of aspects of what it could be like to live in Italy, even what it could be like living with students here in Ferrara – but there’s only so much I can do in 5 months, and I do feel like I’m getting a lot out of my time here and learning a lot about myself. And even if there are problems with Italy and many frustrations along the way, all in all life is good.
Now, time to go to my last class period of Emilia Romagna art history! Comments about Padova and general life will be written up sometime later. Have a good afternoon all!

Photos of Siena

Photos are up (and should all finally be organized) on flickr of Siena, Germany, and November so far in Ferrara. And for those of you without the time to go look at my flickr: (this one is short, I swear!)

Me!

Bells on an old chapel in Siena


View across a valley of the hills of Siena


Cathedral (or at least a huge church) in Siena with Italian cyprus

View of the terraced streets and roofs of Siena from a side street, someone's laundry hanging out the window

Deutschland!

PS: Pictures in the previous post, video of the protest two posts ago, and pictures of the protest and some taken in november so far of around here are up on flickr, with the Germany pictures just started. Please forgive typos and grammatical errors in this post, as I don't have the energy to check it over now.


So, I should probably write about the trip to Germany before it gets too far away in my mind. Or more like before I go to Siena on Saturday and have more to talk about. Prelude: 3 friends from college, one studying in Edinburgh, Scotland (Mary Katherine, or MK), one in Mainz, Germany (Will), and one in Ferrara, Italy (me, of course) all meet up in Mainz for a long weekend of wandering, site seeing, movie-watching, american-speaking, and just plain fun with familiar souls.

On the Road Again
As I mentioned before, there were some lovely problems going both to and from Germany with trains *gasp!* leaving early and the ticketers taking their normal forever (they chat with each other and wander off randomly in the middle of selling tickets without warning to those who are, you know, hoping to catch a train), schedules changing unexpectedly, almost losing my backpack (that one was my fault), and best of all, having all the trains and buses going on strike after being redirected to almost the edge of Slovenia and spending several hours trying to find a way to not spend tons of money or stay the night in the airport. I love Italian public transport. (At least it goes most everywhere, is relatively cheap and often on time, despite the reputation). I am so grateful that cousin Gina lived a reasonable distance from where I was and Ferrara, and that she was generous enough to let me stay the night, once I found a way to get closer to her. Thank you Gina! I’m glad that I got to see her again, too, as Gina truly is a caring, bubbly person, and fun to talk with. But really, it didn’t turn out to be anything very trying. Probably the only thing that seriously freaked me out was almost losing my backpack. I’ve mostly gotten used to not being able to trust public transport to work out the way I expect, and to just chilling when things go wrong. But as you might have noticed from how often I’ve mentioned it, it’s still kind of a regular preoccupation of sorts… Meh.

Sites of Mainz
Besides that the weekend went quite well! Mary Katherine had already gotten to Mainz earlier on Thursday and stayed until Sunday, while I stayed until Monday. Friday involved a long shopping expedition amidst the many colors, tempting tastes, and unknown vegetables of the Mainz farmer’s market in one of the squares in the downtown (old city?) part of town. Most of Mainz was literally flattened in WWII, and in the great rebuilding process following the war, the Germans tried to make the city look as it did previously, with the old architecture, down to some ruined turrets of the cathedral and the fancier house facades, imitated in an apparently faithful manner. It was odd, because in the overall architectural style for the relevant areas, the buildings had the characteristics of old German construction – but still felt relatively new. It might have just been in comparison to the even older-looking buildings I’ve primarily seen in Italy, the different style, or the fact that everything there is so darn clean, I don’t know. But I was still impressed with the intentionality with which they had rebuilt Mainz. It has pretty places, a lot more trees and diversity in the building styles than Ferrara, and definitely … looks German.

Over Friday evening and the next few days, there was a lot of (semi-planned) wandering around the city, and visiting churches: the cathedral (St. Martin’s?) (which has sections as diverse as romanesque, gothic and baroque and has this fantastic layer-cake-like exterior made of sandstone), St. Augustine’s (?) (which was super baroque and therefore kind of gaudy, and is now used as a training church for new priests), and coolest of all, St. Stephan’s, all of whose stained glass windows were designed by Marc Chagall (whose work is usually very dreamlike, with lots of bright colors, and an odd mix between wistfully sad and surreally happy). It was awesome. The windows were almost all this bright blue, with perhaps no artificial lights inside, leaving the interior this surreal, underwater color. It was very peaceful and calmly inspiring. I wish I could have spent more time there, maybe do some meditation or prayer if I’d been there by myself, but there was a large German group “for meditation on the windows” starting up and we felt we should move on. Cool place though.

We also visited the old citadel, now filled with administrative offices, but still with the ramparts intact and explorable, complete with guard towers on the corners and lots of moss. Nearby, we found a playground crowned by a large windmill – up which you can climb and get to a long squiggly slide with too much friction but good niches for sitting and taking reflecting photos of others in the slide. There were also swings, a seesaw and a climbing tower looking out over the city. No, we totally aren’t kids still at heart. We’re college juniors, we swear… although that almost never means maturity, so it doesn’t actually preclude acting like little kids and playing with big toys. :)

Food and Reflections on the Protest
Then we found this little very German restaurant that the director had recommended to Will for lunch near St. Augustine’s (?). And the food was good! Will had a sausage that tasted a lot like kielbasa I though, I had some goulash (it was surprisingly like chili), and MK had this yummy cheese/yogurt spread. The customers mainly shared tables with multiple groups, the lighting was dim, people actually talked to strangers (which Will says is a phenomenom basically only found in restaurants), there were many, many sausages around the room, the sparkling apple juice was great, (we had already tried another local specialty the day before, the young sparkling apple wine… which was interesting), and the décor had a distinctly German feel that I can’t remember in enough detail to pin down. For the other meals we cooked simple but good food together in Will’s dorm, but it was nice to actually get some typically German food while there.

Other highlights of the trip included getting to see the industrial-park-looking University of Mainz where Will spends much of his time, the Gutenberg Museum (lots of old printing presses, wooh! And actual Gutenberg Bibles in a vault with walls at least a foot thick.), the River Rhein, watching the movie Iron Man (ooo, technology envy…), and having a Firefly watching marathon, as I had never seen the whole series before (joy).

Oh yeah, and coming back to the great big student protest the other day, which I already discussed somewhat. The most striking things about the protest were 1) how many students were not only participating, but getting really into the demonstration, and 2) the amusement, curiosity and, most of all, pride on the looks of the adults watching as they hung out of windows and stopped work to emerge from their shops and cheer the students on. This place normally feels so sleepy and rudely apathetic that it was rather a shock to feel that much enthusiasm in the air again; I am reassured by all those proud faces, by the dancing in the streets, by the voices raised in chant and song. That state of action is not my normal phase of being or experience – I have never even seen a demonstration like that in my life. But the energy felt closer to home, felt like Ferrara has life in it yet. This place is confusing in that way: the atmosphere feels oppresive after a while, as though the early winter fog and the emptiness of the floodplains are reitterative reflections with the culture of the town and region; but every now and then, something breaks out that reminds me of the living energy that exists somewhere in the quiet mist of the Ferraresi, like how happy people were after the American election or this massive protest. It’s easy to forget, though, but there are many things in life that are easy to forget that don’t simply disappear because they are hidden or temporarily out of mind. I wonder if one could say the same about the Ferraresi’s need to care and ability to get riled up.

Friends and Random Observations
Back to Germany. Of course, the best part of the vacation was hanging out with Will and MK. I am so grateful that Leah is also in Ferrara and that we get to hang out together here, don’t get me wrong, but it was great to see those two again. I’ve been feeling, albeit inexplicably very tired/having sleeping problems, much more emotionally at ease this week. It might be having my final paper and oral for literature done with, it might be that the election is over and I was happy with most of the results, it might be that I really am half way to going home now. But I’m pretty darn sure that getting to see good friends (in English!) who are going through some similar study-abroad experiences, not having to think about homework, and just getting to be somewhere new with people I care about all added up to a more relaxed Emmons. Excellent weekend, all in all, I must say.

Oh yeah, and I changed my name on here back to Emmons, although I have stopped asking the Italians to call me Emmons, as it just doesn’t seem to work. It felt strangely relieving to be “Emmons” for the weekend instead of just Elisabeth, as I am here. “Elisabeth” is a part of me, and I wouldn’t ever get rid of my first name, but I don’t feel quite myself when I’m called Elisabeth all the time. There are times when it feels that just Emmons doesn’t fit me either, but it does so way better and more often than any other name I’ve had or even heard of. I am Elisabeth Emmons Hahn, and proud to have pieces of the names of both my mother and my father. I’ve never managed to quite explain or even figure out what it is about the way names fit or don’t and how my name is such a part of my identity. And I’ve certainly thought about it a number of times, having had several score nicknames in my life (quite literally: in 8th grade, I remember, I counted up all the nicknames I could think of that I’d had, and it was over 50 at the time. I wish I still had that list) perhaps beginning somewhere around “Busy Lizzy” and with the most recent addition being “Mushu” (like the dragon in Mulan, thanks to my suitemate Zoe in Arabic School). Even as a little kid, I obviously struggled with finding a name that fit me, bouncing from Lizzy, once it stopped matching me as well, to Libby, Elisa, and several others before settling on E. Emmons/ just Emmons… And I miss feeling quite like myself here, with a number of little things feeling askew in abstract ways, one of which being my name. One more thing that separates me from home here.

I don’t really know where this is going. I was strangely energetic and unable to fall asleep at a normal hour, hence why I am finishing this up now, but as I’m started to finally get sleepy, I think I’ve also gotten more rambly, like usual. Aaaand, I will have to get up early tomorrow, as we in Ferrara have to catch an unfortunately early train to go to Florence to meet up with the others before heading down to Siena for a daytrip sponsored by Middlebury. The trip should be pretty cool, the getting up early and coming back to Ferrara late, not so much. But I really should go to sleep now, so I bid you all good night, and for those of you on Xenia Final Pledge tonight, I hope it went wonderfully and look forward to hearing about it.

Can has photos? (ok, I know this is what flickr should be for, but I got behind on my regular photo updates, so here's a big one...)

So... it isn't exactly just one per day here... The ones from the sunset to the airport are from Germany, the ones after in Ferrara, and the ones before from the protest. I forgot to take pictures the last few days, I must admit. But! Lots o' photos, so it's ok! PS: video of the protest in my previous post.

Police and protesters with red arm bands.

Listening to a speaker during the sit-in and chanting with him.

View of the protest down Corso Giovecca from my room.

Sunset from the plane.

Blossoming!

Will and Me in Mainz.

Some of the Marc Chagall windows in St. Stephan's. The entire church was blue like this; it felt like we were underwater. Beautiful place.

MK!

Will in the windmill slide near the citadel.

Windmill slide near the Citadel.

The loaves and the fishes, door to St. Stephen's.

Pretty melon in the farmer's market!

I have an airport named after me! Well, kind of.

Loving Alien? (there is " "fill-in-the-blank" Alien" grafitti all over this part of town, particularly near the university builidings. I'm kind of collecting them.) (Back in Ferrara) - 6 Nov.

I think you can guess what these are. :) Also, note how the bottom newspaper was a picture of the Earth from the moon, with the title "New World". High expectations, eh? The Italians were sooo happy.

The cross on the wall of one of my classrooms - 4 Nov.

Branch of the Po that goes through Ferrara - 3 Nov.

Arches and covered walkway somewhere on the south side of the city (note all the bikes and the repetition of structures...) - 2 Nov.

Close up of the colorful candy stall (see below)- 1 Nov.

Evening candy and nut stall in the Piazza - 1 Nov.

Returning from Germany

Oh, adventures adventures. My long weekend in Germany went quite well, and it was awesome to see Will and MK again. But I will write about that later. First. I got back to Ferrara today around noon, over half a day later than I had expected but with no serious mishaps. There easily could have been some real problems, but it all worked out somehow. There was, of course, a strike of all trains and buses yesterday of which I had been previously unaware, so on top of almost losing my backpack and having the airplane be rerouted by quite some distance due to superfog, I almost got stranded near Slovenia for the night. That was fun, I can tell you. There were a number of moments, both going to Germany and with this mess coming back to Italy where I just had to sigh, shake the head, and figure out what to do next while seeing lots of other people around freaking out (although I admittedly had a few brief moments of freakout, too). However, for me at least, a series of fortunate events occured, and I was able to meet up with my cousin Gina, who kindly let me stay at her place again! I'm grateful to have someone in this general area whom I'm comfortable calling for help, as well as the fact that it was good to see her again. And we're planning on going skiing together, too, about which I'm pretty darn excited! Luckily, the strike stopped today, so I was able to catch a ride back to Ferrara in time for class.

But the adventure of returning from Germany didn't stop there! Upon returning to Ferrara, I found that half the main road in town was stopped still from traffic - because the other half of the entire length of the road (Giovecca) was full of a student protest! They were striking classes, had a sit-in in front of some of the main university buildings, had speeches in the piazza near the cathedral, and made enough noise that probably at least a quarter of the inner city could have heard them clearly at any one time. Probably several thousand students, plus some teachers and parents, too, all cheering, singing, holding posters, some dancing, many dressed up, and followed on the rims by grumpy looking squads of police and carabinieri. It was a strange kind of ordered chaos, with the definition of "order" dependent on what stretch of the crowd you were in and what happened to be the current musical accompaniment. Perhaps needless to say, I couldn't even have gotten near my classroom with all the chaos (I was supposed to have a linguistics class that was extended to this week from being cancelled by the last student protest...), but at least I think they usually cancel class during protests, so I'm hoping it isn't a problem. Real Italian experience, all these strikes in the last few days, apparently.

Really, I've never seen anything like it. I think there were a number of things they were protesting, but the main ones seemed to be something about research, the quality of the education, and the cost of the university, which made me want to laugh out loud. Supposedly, any students with demonstrated financial need already don't pay anything, and those who can afford it pay little more than a thousand euros a year (maybe 1500 at the most). I think they need some perspective on the potential cost of a good education. However, it was certainly interesting to see that many people all together for something and being really excited about it, as I've never seen a serious protest, strike or demonstration of any kind before. I snaked through the crowds for a while to get some photos and to see what was going on, so I'll put those up on flickr sometime soon. I also, of course, took a bunch of pictures of our time in Germany, and will get around to those, and writing an entry actually about the weekend.

That will have to be delayed for a bit though, as I have the final battle for Hogwarts, sleep and an 8:30-12:00 in the morning class awaiting me currently. And then LOTs of housework, emails that need returning, a post on Germany to write, laundry, finding an English copy of the Bible if possible (oh yeah, my hw for my medieval art class for the next lesson is to read the gospels and compare them, and I don't think I will have the time to do so in Italian... this will be interesting), make final decisions for class registration on Thursday, and sleep somewhere along the way tomorrow. Lots to do, lots to do.

But on the whole, I am feeling well and am both re-energized and calmed by my vacation in Mainz, for which I'm thankful. And in a few days I will be half way through until I get to go home for February break. I can do this! I think. Ok, now that I've alerted the necessaries to my safe, however rocky, return to Ferrara, I think I am off to sleep.

Also, err, happy or, perhaps more appropriately, remembrancefull, Armistice/ Veteran's day !

Halfway There (with classes at least)

8 weeks down. 7 until I see my family. 12 total until I go home. 4.5 weeks until visiting Scotland. 4 days until I see Will and MK in Germany. 2 more Linguistics classes. No more Geography classes. 1 more paper for Literature, due in 4 days. 1 oral defense of said paper. 17 more classes of Emilia Romagna art history. 2 other classes to start and finish. 7 weeks of class left. 5 oral exams. 8 weeks down. 12 to go...

I'm grateful that I knew beforehand that I wouldn't want to stay for the year, because I can deal with less-than-two seasons of Italy, but not almost-four. This place has done weird things to my work ethic as it is, I think (although I really shouldn't be blaming Italy for that, that's something I should control). Either way, I'm glad to be here in a handful of ways but know that I will also be sooooo glad to be home when this is over. In the meantime, I just want to be a bum and travel around Europe learning about history and art first hand instead of going to class and listening to boring lectures. But then I might fail, and my parents would freak (as would I, my self-respect, my gpa and my bank account), so I'm not going to do that. But I can dream of that freedom. :)

Halloween Day itself was rather uneventful, as nothing really happens here for it, beyond the rare decoration in a store window and some drunken Americans in the night. However, Lizzie brought me into the Xenia kitchen for several wonderful hours of feeling like I was actually able to hang around with my friends and talk and laugh, even if I had no control over my location and my vision was somewhat fuzzy and I couldn't actually taste the yummy-looking homecooked food that Roger pretended to feed me and then ate himself (ie: I was looking through a camera eyeball and sitting in a laptop). But that's totally ok, because it was more than worth it. Thanks guys, I needed that. Thus, the first few hours of Ognissanti (All Saints Day) were passed happily and in quite some amusement at the antics of a party across the great ocean. Last night was another moment of relief, as Leah and I went out for cappellacci di zucca al ragu' (excellent local specialty of pumpkin ravioli with light meat sauce) and hung out for a while afterwards.

I didn't end up going to Padova this weekend, since I figured it was more worthwhile to try and get some work done for my final literature paper. I had hoped to be able to sit down and crank out the paper this weekend, but that didn't happen. Being at a loss for a topic, I instead spent many hours going back through the short stories and poems we read as a review. I think I have some more cohesive, although probably not very original, ideas at this point, but that will have to do. As long as I can write it out tomorrow, I should be fine with editing it and getting a chance to prepare for the oral, pack for Germany, and watch the election news with baited breath in time to head to Venice Thursday afternoon with the knowledge of having finished a class completely and, most importantly, of who our next President will be. Oh, I am so hoping for good news November 4th/5th.

Then I just need to figure out how I'm getting to Scotland and Sicily. But first come my paper and a visit to Mainz. (So excited for next weekend!) Oh man. Half way done with classes. I can do this. Right?

Third Post in Less than 24 Hours... Maybe I need a life away from the computer.

This post is mainly for myself. If you want something more interesting to read and actually care to do so, go down to my previous two posts, the more recent about how I've been doing, and the second most recent about school and problems with Italian culture.
-Also, does anyone know how to do an equivalent of LJcuts for blogspot? Because that would be useful in moments like this.

Here's the book I finished reading yesterday, which I mentioned at the end of my last post. "The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: The Birthplace of the Western World". If you like history, this is an easy and fun read about the great minds of old Alex- I would recommend it.

Photo of 10.29.08

(top image- I can't get these captions to line up right with the pictures, sorry about that): The Night Bridge. I know I've taken pictures of the castle's arches over the moat before, but I like the curves and the reflections. It's too bad my camera doesn't get better resolution at night, but it's a decent camera anyway, so I'm more than happy with it. As you might be able to tell from the massive number of photos I take in general... :) 10.30.08

Unfortunately, plane tickets around Christmas time are ridiculous for going from Europe to the States at the beginning and viceversa at the end of the holiday period, meaning that I can't go home during the break, which is something of a disappointment. On the upside, tickets with the opposite directions (US coming to Europe) are quite reasonably low, so my family (parents and brother Alex) will be visiting me! I am so excited. Also, it will give me a much sooner time to count down until (in comparison with the beginning of February). In the meantime though, there is one week until I see Will and MK in Mainz, and just over a month until Leah and I go to Scotland to visit MK in Edinburgh. These breaks and visits will be a great way to encourage me to get through my classes. Joy for seeing friends and family.

LIST MAKING (for myself mainly and because why not)

Things to do in Ferrara or nearby (I reeeally need to get on this stuff, which means I'm not allowed to complain that there's nothing to do here until I actually do all this).
------------------------------------

[]-make it all the way around the Wall

[x]-the Balloon Festival

[x]-Massari Park

[x]-explore the medieval neighborhoods, old ghetto and historic center

[x]-explore some of the renaissance neighborhoods

[x]-actually go into and explore the castle, not just the courtyards

[x]-look around inside the Duomo

[x]-Grounds of Palazzo di Marfisa D'Este

[]-House of Palazzo di Marfisa D'Este

[x]-Palazzo Schifanoia

[]-Archeological Museum

[]-Casa Romei

[]-go to Pomposa

[]-reach the Po River

[]-learn some traditional Italian recipes from Gardenia.

------------------------------------------------

Places to visit outside Ferrara but in Italy (most of these I don't have full lists yet, and will have to update them with better plans at some point).

-------------------------------------

Venice

[x]-St. Mark's Cathedral

[x]-St. Mark's Piazza

[x]- The Rialto

[]-The Ducal Palace and historical museum

[]-The museum in the Jewish neighborhood

[] -Explore some "normal people" 's neighborhoods

[x]-Ride a vaporetto

[]-Ride a gondola

-------------------------
Florence

[x]-The Duomo, including Tower and Dome (if possible, climb again)

[x]-The Ponte Vecchio

[x]-Various Medici Palaces and Chapels

[x]-Santa Croce

[]-The Accademia

[]-The Uffizi

[]-See Michaelangelo's David.

---------------------------

Siena

[x]-Duomo

[x]-Pinacoteca

--------------------------
Verona

[x]-Casa di Giulietta

[x]-Roman Theater

[x]-Piazza Bra'

[x]-Giardini Giusti.

---------------------------

Comacchio

[x]-see the Po Delta and the fishermen

[x]-visit beaches

[x]-touch the Adriatic (the water was too gross to go swimming)

[x]-visit their version of the Boardwalk.

---------------------------
Sacile

[x]-visit Gina (intend to do again) and see around Sacile

[x]-visit Dolomites

[x]-visit the airbase where Gina works

[]-go skiing with Gina

[]-go skiing in the Alps or Dolomites somewhere awesome.

-------------------------------------

Bergamo

[]-meet the cousins.

--------------------------------------

Padova

[x]-Scrovegni/Giotto Chapel

[x]-Basilica di San Antonio

[x]-Prato delle Valle

---------------------------------------

Ravenna

[]-Mausoleum of Galla Placidia

[]-Basilica of San Vitale

[]-as many of the other major sites of masterwork mosaics I can get to while there.

-----------------------------------------

Trieste Area

[]-visit Remy Franklin at the UWC and maybe travel around in the area with him.

----------------------------

Bologna

?

-----------------------------------------

Rome

...soooo many things to see (plus meeting with Rikako if she's still in the country). Will make list another time.

-----------------------------------------

Sicily

[]-go to Leonforte. Meet the family again.

[]-go to Taormina and see the Greek Theater, the Roman Baths, and the Mazzaro Bay

[]-maybe go to Siracusa, because it's supposed to be really cool

[]-get to the top of Mount Etna (the volcano)

[]-go to Palermo, visit the Cappella Palatina, figure out a few other things to see there

[]-not run into any problems with the Mafia or the regular dangers of being in Sicily... oh please Lord.

[]-maybe stay in a convent and see how the nuns live, since all of Sicily's small handful of hostels should apparently be closed by then.

--------------------------------------------

Beyond visiting Will and MK, there are a few other places in Europe that, time and money allowing, I'd like to go (like Prague and Vienna, for example). But since those are so variable and less likely, I will not make lists of them now. Being here is for primarily learning about Italy rather than all of Europe, and since I'm considering these short trips to be a valuable part of my education here, I've decided they're worth the time and money - with reason, that is. Farther trips to elsewhere in Europe are going to be harder than I anticipated, but oh well. Ok, so it's good to see all these goals laid out like this - between all these and homework and applications for things to do next summer (for both of which I have additional lists), I am officially not allowed to comment that I have nothing to do. Nope nope nope. So I should go and be productive now. Or at least pretend to be. Night!

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.

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!