"Presente"

This weekend we had a field trip to Trieste, Padua and Acquilea.  Trieste especially was a fascinating city: it was controlled for centuries by the Austrian-Hungarian empire, and today it still seems very anti-Italian.  It's a sort of melting pot of European cultures in a similar fashion to the United States.  It has architecture that looks both French and German, and food from all over.  Even the dialect changes depending on where in the city you are.  Overall, it reminded me a lot of Nice and Munich... very surprising, but these are my comparisons. It was clean with white buildings, beautiful clock towers, and wide streets. 

         Anyways, it honestly wasn’t that exciting of a field trip (very "educational" but a lot of pretty inconsequential facts) so I’m only going to spend time talking about the good parts.  Padua wasn’t that exciting: we stopped for lunch and then got back on the bus, so that was that.  We arrived in Trieste Friday night and I was exhausted but much more in awe of Trieste than I had been of Padua.  We got split up into these beautiful quaint “hotel” rooms (they looked like apartments to me) in one section of the city.  It was fun to be on a trip with the rest of our Elon group.  I think we all connected pretty well because of all the time we had together outside of the classroom and also because we’ve spent this entire journey together, more or less.

Anyways, I’ll start with the coolest part of the trip: we went to a World War I memorial in Acquileia.  We climbed 300 steps to the top.  Our teacher told us that Mussolini had built this memorial.  He’d been frustrated with a memorial across the street because it had evoked depressing emotions with those who visited; it was barren and had war equipment besides the buried men.  So he built this grand and sleek memorial sight with these huge granite steps that climbed to the top of a mountain.  Apparently he thought this would help people view fighting in war as something honorable and as something worth dying for (not that it isn't, but some Italians viewed war as unnecessary until Mussolini came along and showed them that war can win you immortality).  He thought people might view this memorial as a symbol of what could happen if you die in war: you could get a "fast pass" to Heaven and immediate access to God (since the memorial ends at the top of the mountain).  This was fascinating, and uniquely, eerily beautiful to me.  

The steps that climb to the top also say “PRESENTE” on them, one after another, hundreds of them.  Apparently, during roll call in World War 1 (perhaps they still do this, but I was told the story specifically regarding the first World War), after each man’s name was called, he’d say, “present”(or presente, since he was Italian).  They wrote this word on the stairs as a way of saying that they are all still here and that they are all still present, or at least that they were here, that they were present, and they need to be respected and remembered for that.

         That was one of my favorite facts learned on this trip, topped only by this one: apparently, when a soldier died and his name was called, all of them, every single soldier, would say “PRESENTE.”  In their unique way this was like carrying the dead man with them by saying, “yes, he is still here.  He is within us.”

         So I loved everything about Acquileia. 

         

We did a walking tour of Trieste on Sunday with our literature professor and saw Italo Sveno’s house (we’ve been reading him this semester) as well as James Joyces house (which made me really frustrated that we haven’t been reading him instead, because our teacher said he wrote the “single greatest English novel ever written” – Ulysses).  That wasn’t that exciting, but then we saw a café that a lot of great authors have written in (besides James Joyce, Hemingway wrote in it), which I loved.  The trip would have been a lot better, in my opinion, if we’d just stayed in this café. But instead our teacher took us to three different cafes to try different Trieste coffee, because I guess their known for it. I don’t like coffee, so it was relatively pointless for me.  Coffee is disgusting to me no matter where you drink it. 

         We had a lot of free time.  One night we stood outside and drank wine in the rain.  That was a lot of fun.  On the way home we stopped at a concentration camp, the only concentration camp that exists (or has ever existed) in Italy.  It was heartbreaking, of course, but also interesting to compare with the one I saw in Germany.  Perhaps it was more heartbreaking because it was smaller and just seemed like a couple of brick buildings - it didn't seem as momentous as the other one.  There were letters inside that some of the men had written.

We also visited a small town and a cathedral and a chapel.  The chapel was painted by Giotto and beautiful.  The other cathedral was interesting because of how old it was.  The city, actually, was around before Ancient Rome and had a lot of cool old artifacts. 

We Travel Not to Escape Life, But For Life Not to Escape Us

            There are certain people in your life who challenge you: to be smarter, to be stronger, to be better. To think differently and to laugh more loudly and to feel more alive.  These are the people you should aspire to meet on your travels, but they are also the people you should aspire to travel with.  This week, I was lucky enough to have one of my best friends, Ashley, visit me in Florence.  For me, she is precisely one of these people.

            The first night she got here, we went out to dinner so I could show her a true Italian meal.  We caught up for over two hours over my first Italian lasagne (delicious because it came out of the oven still boiling), and then got drinks at Colle Bereto, a bar I’d visited on my first night.  We went to bed early because the next day we were getting up early for a Chianti wine tour… in Tuscany at a family-owned wine vineyard… on FIAT 500s.

           

In November, Florence experiences tourist off-season.  I have found this time to be my favorite.  Had I done this tour another time, it would have been hectic and chaotic and stressful.  As it was, Ashley and I arrived at the train station at 8:45 Sunday morning to find that we were the only two people on our tour, accompanied by one older Italian man, Ducco.  We’d requested a FIAT for just the two of us, so we could enjoy the rolling Tuscan hills and the fall colors in our own solitude.  This was before we found out the car was not automatic.

            Neither Ashley nor I have ever driven stick.  However, our guide seemed (perhaps unrightfully) confident that we could do it easily.  We drove out to Siena where we were introduced to our FIAT – a little rustic orange car that was at least 30 years old with an old suitcase strapped to it’s trunk.  Not only was it clown-size tiny, but it was beautifully antique and old-fashioned, with an old-fashioned radio and speed meter and roll down windows and black leather seats.

            Ashley nominated herself to attempt to drive first.  I was glad to take backseat.  Turning the key, she put the stick into reverse and we lurched to a stop.  Driving a stick is a careful balance, but the trick is figuring out that you don’t need to quickly take your foot off the clutch as you press down on the gas – you just need to do it, as slowly as you want.  This took a while for me to understand.

            After a few more faulty starts, we slowly drove out onto the road.  I hadn’t realized until a couple minutes later that the man believed this was our test-drive… driving on the open road in direction of our next destination, leaning a little more to the right when a tiny Italian car came whizzing at us in the opposite direction, slowing down when we picked up speed going downhill and clutching the seat because we expected to fly off the side.

            Somehow, miraculously, the man was right.  We figured it out.  We talked casually as we drove, and from the back I was able to marvel at the beauty of an Italian countryside in autumn: the reds and yellows of the trees look different here, like they’re from a different time period.  They match the yellows and the greens of the wide-open fields, fields that are so squared-off and organized that from a distance the countryside looks like a checkerboard.  As Ducco said later, as we looked out at the great expanse before us, “it’s just so geometric and coordinated, isn’t it?”

  We arrived at our first destination, a small town outside Siena where some who live in Florence now use as a second-house vacation spot when living in the city becomes too overwhelming.  During medieval times, when Florence and Siena were rivals and fighting for more Tuscan land, Siena built this fortress on a hill; when Florentine soldiers were arriving, they would see them from the tower and let out a smoke-signal to alert Siena of the intruders.  Now, it’s just a beautiful and quaint town to walk around.  Some even walk long pilgrimages, from Barcelona to Siena, for example, and stop in this town to rest and get food.  This pilgrimage used to be a necessity for travellers; now, some who are battling cancer walk the path to show they can overcome any obstacle. 

            He gave us 20 minutes at this spot, so it wasn’t much time to do anything.  We walked into a few small shops.  Ashley bought a leather-bound journal; I bought a 50-cent bookmark.  Then we climbed to the top of the fortress tower and took these pictures:

         After, he took us to another town on top of a hill – it was pretty inconsequential.  Most of the shops were closed because it was a Sunday, so we just got gelato (Ashley’s first!) and walked around for our 20-minute stop.

            Finally, we pulled up in our little FIAT to a family’s wine vineyard.  We walked in between the rows of grapes to the top of a hill where a cabin-esque brick building was located.  We were greeted by a 45-year-old man who escorted us away from our guide and into the rooms with the large barrels of wine. 

            There wasn’t much I learned during our information session that I didn’t already know about making wine, but it was great to see someone’s small and humble family-owned vineyard.  He then brought us to a small table upstairs in the middle of an entirely empty restaurant.  It was set with wine glasses and a white tablecloth and a breadbasket in the middle, ready for us.  He told us we were lucky: “during busy tourist season, this place is so busy.  Up to 4,000 people visit us.  Now, in November-December, it’s basically empty… so this is the best time to come.”  

Clearly, he was right.  They were great hosts.  They gave us pieces of bread with toppings like oil and salt, sundried tomatoes, and anchovies.  I loved it.  Then they gave us our “first” course (in America, it would be our main course), of ziti pasta, tomato sauce, and cheese.  Of course it was delicious.  I haven’t had this experience so far in Italy, but following our pasta we were served the most delicious plate of different types of cheese and different choices of dip: a sweet and thick honey, a balsamic vinegar that was 20-years-old and so sweet, or a red jam.  This was my favorite part of the meal:  

Accompanying our food, of course, were various wines.  We were given 6 different wines throughout our meal – two white (except one I don’t know if you can call white… grappa, which was really more like rum), and 4 red.  I am not a red wine fan, but I enjoyed tasting the different types of wine, especially since some of them were older and we could taste the difference between younger (lighter, sweeter) and older wine (bitter, stronger).  Ashley, a wine connoisseur, loved them all.  We dipped biscotti in grappa, and although grappa was (in my opinion) disgusting, it wasn’t as bad with the biscotti.   

            
The more we drank the friendlier we became.  Soon we were asking this older man, the 45-year-old who’d shown us the wine cellar, about his life story.  He was very interesting.  He’d lived in Italy his entire life, but had lived in different regions.  He’d lived for 10 years in Florence, and when I asked him if he liked it in the countryside or in Florence better, he said Florence.  He’d planned on staying in Florence but then his mother got sick, so he’d returned to Siena and the countryside to take care of her.  “Siena, it’s nice… but it is so boring at night!” He’d said.  Then, leaning a little closer to our table, he said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but my twin brother, he lives right over here…” He walked to a picture on the wall and pointed to a spot over the hill from where we were.  Then, returning, he said, “my brother and I are trying to start our own wine vineyard.  He has some great wine.  If you and your friends ever want to return and try, please email or call me, I will give you my number.”  

Of course, there’s a chance that this was a dangerous proposition – why does he want to introduce two 20-somethings to his brother’s wine vineyard with the offer of free wine and a free ride from Florence?  But there’s the alternative choice, that I choose to believe because I hate to imagine the worst: perhaps this is just how Italian’s are.  Perhaps we’ve grown up in a culture and in a generation that rightfully feels a duty to warn us of all the dangers in the world, but perhaps all the warnings and brochures and safety precautions have taken away the simple joy of talking to new people and discovering new things simply because it is enjoyable.  Perhaps Italians are like this – inclined to offer more than what is necessary, always wanting to share what they love with others, to share pieces of their passions with anyone who is interested.  (Later, on the drive home, Ducco even said, “come by my shop in Florence, I will let you ride a motorbike.” In America, an older man offering such a thing would be ridiculous, and people have taken cues and stopped making such offers because we think of it as dangerous and even creepy.  But in Florence, they do it with the (presumably) humble impression that this is just a kind gesture.)

            Anyways, then we asked our wine-friend what his favorite dessert was.  He said that he loved vanilla ice cream with balsamic vinegar.  Then, watching us for a moment, he said, “I’ll be right back.”  He returned with two small bowls of ice cream drizzled in balsamic vinegar.  Placing them on the table, he said, “This isn’t part of your tour.  I have never in 5 years offered this, but you ladies just seem so… so kind and fun and… you are simple yet educated.”  He was searching for words in a language that wasn’t natively his, so his statement was awkward, but we were so grateful and the ice cream was delicious.  

As we ate, Ashley remarked: “isn’t it interesting, how sometimes when someone is trying to come up with a word in their second language that matches what they want to say in their first, they end up saying something more true?”  I knew what she meant – at first, we’d both laughed when he’d said “simple” because we know the word to be slightly offensive – simple like basic, like ordinary (exactly terms us American’s strive to rebel against).  But really, simple is just the opposite of complicated.  And it’s true, in that sense, that we are simple.  We are in our 20’s, our greatest worries are our classes, and we are given the chance to travel and spend Sunday’s in wine vineyards.  So, he was precisely right – in his pursuit to find the right words, he found more interesting ones.  We are simple yet educated.

         After, we climbed back into the FIAT (never getting a proper goodbye from our new friend, who we probably won’t visit).  We drove further up the mountain, further away from any semblance of society.  Land stretched out before us forever.  On our drive, we passed this sign:    

    

 Ducco told us an interesting story.  He said that in the 1800’s, Florence and Siena wanted to end their rivalry.  They’d realized that they were “too modern” and “too civilized” for such barbaric fighting, something that belonged in the past.  So, they agreed to this: one man on horseback would leave at the crack of dawn from each city, and the horse would run along a road until it reached the other horse; and that would be how the land was divided.  Of course, at this time, they didn’t have timers.  So, they agreed to tell the time by roosters: when the first rooster sang at dawn, the horse would run.  Florence, being conniving and apparently untrustworthy, came up with a plan.  They didn’t feed their rooster the night before this was to take place.  The rooster, hungry and annoyed, woke up early because it wanted breakfast, so it sang before dawn.  Florence, thus, has more land than Siena. 

 We spent some time looking out at the countryside as the sun was setting.  It felt like we were apart of history, in a way.  We’d parked a FIAT 500 on the side of the road, for one.  And we couldn’t see a house or building in any direction.  We spent a little time in the last town, similar to the rest, and then we headed home (he let me drive part of the way. So much fun). It was one of the best days I've had.  

^And then, to finish off the most amazing day, we went to a Florentina soccer match that night! Also, Ashley tried her first espresso shot! 


And here is a video from the last town we visited, because I thought it might capture the mood better than I even could (the music is great!): 

And a video from a soccer game, so it is as if you are there: 

Siena, Volterra, and Florence

I haven't written since my parents came, so it's been a while.  A lot of minor things have happened, but nothing too major.  The most time-consuming thing that's happened in my life are my classes.  All of a sudden all these projects/papers/tests have appeared out of nowhere (yes, they were written on the syllabus, but I don't think any of us realized how quickly the due date would be approaching).  So I've been so busy working on school projects that I've had no time to blog or breathe, really.  But finally it's the weekend.

My good friend Emma from Elon visited me last weekend.  That was great, because I saw the city (once again) through someone else's eyes.  On Wednesday we went to another Florence soccer game. I did my best to cheer in Italian like everyone else in the stands.  We were sectioned off with some of our American classmates anyway.  I tried to talk to a guy sitting near me in Italian, but it didn't get me far.  He didn't know much English, surprisingly, so we both just watched the game.

After Italian class Thursday morning I met up with Emma and her friends to take them to my new favourite place, the Boboli gardens.  For someone who wants to learn how to appreciate Florence - go here.  It's the perfect combination of city and nature.  You have a beautiful landscaped green park with big areas of grass to sit and pathways lined with trees, but there's also a view of the city in front of you.  We walked around for a little while but then we had to leave so that we'd have time for lunch before my Art History class.  I took them to Gusta pizza and they were as impressed with the pizza as I've always been.

In Art History we visited the San Lorenzo church, which was beautiful and fascinating.  I will never tire of visiting churches the way I might a museum.  There's something particularly special about such beautiful artwork being chosen to be shown in such a sacred space.  And it's so peacefully quiet and the natural light coming in through stain-glassed windows creates this alternate-universe atmosphere.

That night we went to a fun bar, Uncle Jimmy's, and did Karaoke.  We ended the night at a new club, Full Up, which was fun - neon lights, loud music, a downstairs room, pretty typical - but the Italian men (and I do mean men... at least 30) were creeping us all out because they wanted to dance with us and we wanted to be left alone.

The next day, Friday, I had the day to spend with Emma.  We had breakfast and brainstormed about what to do.  Finally we decided climb the Duomo (which was great but exactly the same as the first time) and then we'd rent some bikes and bike to this spot, Piazzale Michaelangelo, where you have a view of the whole city.

I didn't have incredibly high expectations, but it turned out to be one of my favourite things I've done abroad.

First off, biking was incredible.  There were leaves on the ground, it was finally cold (it's been August-weather until literally last week), and it struck me as the first Suburban-looking area I've seen: people out walking their dogs, small modest houses with wire fences, cars that drive down curving roads.  Emma and I got a great chance to talk leisurely as we pressed on, upward on a curving bike trail.  Finally, we reached the spot.

Part of it was the timing of it all.  The sun was setting and the sky was bright pink.  And slowly, one by one across the city, we watched as lights turned on.  It felt as if I was able to see two different cities in two minutes.  First, Florence with tan buildings and red roofs and brown cobblestone streets. Then, like a light switch had flicked on, a city that was immersed in light.  It was truly glowing.  The lights shone on the water of the Arno.  It was magical.

^For the record, this picture doesn't capture it in the same way you feel it.

After Emma left, we had a few pretty stressful but uneventful school days (Except once... I went to buy this beautiful journal that is handmade, and no two are the same... anyways, so I'm in the middle of picking out my journal when this old man approaches and begins trying to help, suggesting different colours, etc.  All of a sudden he asks me to follow him into the back room.  I do, and it looks like he's going to show me how he paints the journals - but then he starts handing ME tools and asking me to do it.  All of a sudden he says, "everyone, come here!" Next thing I know, I am demonstrating something I've never done to a room full of strangers.  But I got a discount on my journal, so that was good).  Anyways, then this weekend we had a field trip to Volterra (where Twilight was filmed) and Siena.  Siena is one of the prettiest places I've seen.  It has this center of town that is circular.  The shops sit atop this circle, and then it goes downhill like a drain to the center point in the middle.  The city is built on a hill so I guess they decided when they built it that the center of town should be where everything meets at the bottom of the hills.  It also has a fascinating history.  It was supposed to be like another Rome or Florence, but the Black Plague wiped out 60% of their population and they never fully recovered.  Florence took over, which is why they now have some Florence-styled architecture.  They also attempted to build the largest cathedral in Italy, but again, when the black plague happened their plans were abandoned.

After, we went to Volterra.  This was a beautiful and very tiny and quaint town.  It was on top of a hill, and as the sun was setting we had the most magnificent view - endless green fields reaching back and disappearing into the mountains.  I could see a few houses but not many, and not many roads, so when it got dark the entire landscape fell black - there weren't any streetlights to light it up.  We were there for a truffle festival, but seeing as I didn't have 1,000 for a truffle (they are so valued because they are so rare and hard to find... they are underground and you have to hunt them with trained dogs), I basically just tested the cheese and bought some chocolate.  The drive home was one of my favourite parts.  It was dark but the lights from the bus lit up the road in front of us.  I saw flashes of plain open fields and then these beautiful trees and things being harvested and growing.

This week we visited Santa Croce, which I'm surprised I haven't seen sooner. It's three minutes from my apartment building, and it houses the "remains" (our teacher was skeptical) of Michaelangelo, Dante, Galileo.  It was breathtakingly beautiful, and I loved the story we heard about Saint Francis.

That's all that's really been happening - other than how immensely fast our time is flying by.  Next weekend we have a field trip to an area near the Austrian border and which I've heard has Austrian influence, so I'm excited for that.  The following weekend is my last weekend in Florence (terrifying), and the following weekend I'm spending Thanksgiving in Paris (no complaints here).

Then finals and then I am home.

Part of me is excited to be home, but another part of me is terrified to leave this place - I'm saddest about leaving the little things: the woman who owns the shop beside our apartment and has been here her whole life, over 70 years.  The sandwich shop man who always says buongiorno in the morning, starting my day off right.  The guy at the coffee place who knows my name.  Such a strange thought that these people, these places, these things won't always be right beside me.