Ferrara takes its time, I have noticed. Practically all of Italy does. Maybe not all the Italians, but the city and the country do. What does this mean? It means that here, it takes a few days to get things done, like, for example, getting my student discount ticket for the trains reprinted (I lost the paper ticket that gives me discounts, which they gave me when I bought the cartaviaggio... the cartaviaggio card itself arrives in about a month. Again, taking its time) . It means that if you want milk Sunday afternoon, you can go out and buy it Monday when the supermarkets open again. But it also means that there is time to exchange a smile, a "ciao," or due chiacchiere. There's time to cook a pizza slowly so that it comes out just right. There's time to give help and (often unsolicited) advice to strangers.
Just a few minutes ago, I went to a copisteria to photocopy the chapters I need from one of the books for my theatre class. I don't think I'm a felon yet, since I copied only a few dozen pages out of a couple hundred, but it really wouldn't have mattered if I had wanted to copy the entire thing three times and sell it to my friends for a marked-up price, because the girls who work there would still smile and let me, as some one's little brother came in with his big, black dog. I had copied 31 pages, at a rate of €0,04 per page, based on what I gathered from to the card that was keeping track of my copies. When I went to pay, the girl took my card, fed it to the machine, and after she read the screen, said "€1,24, quindi, diciamo €1,20... anzi, €1,00." I took out a Euro and a 20 cent piece, but she would only take the Euro. "Uno sconto," she told me. I don't know of any business in the US would let 24 cents slip away so easily, but it happens all the time in Italy, enough that it probably karmaically rounds out in the end. Then when I went to the library to return the book that I had just copied, the woman there took the time to teach the new intern how to enter a book back into the system on the computer while I stood there. They assume that you have the time to spend. And so you give it to them. And then when all the business is done, you smile at each other, thank each other, and bid each other farewell. If you ever come to Italy, and I encourage you to do so, don't save anything for the last minute, because your sense of temporal proportion will be all off. In the US, you can run in anywhere, grab what you want, throw some money on the counter, and before you know if the person behind the counter was a person at all, you've got your change and you're out the door. Here in Ferrara, budget in some extra time for the... I don't know what to call this demeanor, so let's say... the Ferraresità.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Rain, rain, go away
Rainy day! boo! Rainy Sundays here are pretty dreary, since there really is absolutely nothing to do. I'm currently sitting outside one of the University buildings, precariously sheilding my laptop from any rain that might blow in my direction. Yesterday, Adam, our three guests and I went to Venice for the afternoon/evening. It was nice, and we took a water bus, so I was glad to have gotten onto the water, since the buildings on the water are really a sight, but I still need to go back and spend a full day there. Both times I've been, I've really only walked around, had dinner, and then left. There must be so many more things to do and see and enter. I might just have to take some time for myself some weekend and explore it at my own pace.
Anyway, here's another little post that I wrote last night:
Saturday, March 24
Gli amici dei miei amici sono i miei amici
I'm really liking my linguistics class now. We've moved past the things that I had memorized long ago (IPA chart... what? It's cool) and are getting into some definitions of concepts that I either didn't have a good grasp on before, or that I had never heard of, so it's definitely feeling like I'm learning now.
More importantly, however, class itself has recently gotten much more fun. See, it's a class of maybe fifty students, and I'm the only American. It was kinda intimidating for a while, since everyone seemed to know most at least one other person. So, for the first few weeks I sat alone and was pretty self-conscious of the fact that I clearly had no friends in this roomful of people. But, that has now changed! Those kids that I talked to the other day in class have taken a liking to me, and now I sit with them. I talk a lot with one of them in particular, Giuseppe. A week after we met, I showed up at the University building, and I see him and Manuel, one of the others that I met. Giuseppe tells me that class has been cancelled. Oh, Italy. Manuel had things to do, but Giuseppe and I had the rest of the day basically free. He lamented that he basically got up out of bed for nothing. He didn't feel like studying, so he asked me, "facciamo un giro?" I said "sì," we got on our bikes, and started biking aimlessly through the city. We wandered for maybe fort-five minutes, talking about various things, until we ended up back at the building we started at. We parked our bikes, went inside to sit down, and then just kept on talking for nearly another two hours. It was amazing! He studies English, so sometimes I teach him little things here and there, and he'll help me with my Italian. It's a really good feeling to be having conversations, making friendships, and making someone laugh, in italiano. I haven't been getting enough of that lately. We've got three houseguests presently, so it's hard to practice Italian. So, I really treasure my interactions with Giuseppe and the others. He lives generally in the same direction as I do, so yesterday he and I biked together until we got to my apartment (which couldn't really possibly be completely on his way) but he took me in a slightly different route that doesn't involve the kinda intense cobblestones of Via Ercole I d'Este, so I think I'm going to keep with that one.
On my way to class I had fallen off my bike, scraped up my knee decently and bruised my shoulder. It was on my street, which was empty, so I wanted to see how fast I could go. Well, the left handlebar grip, which I had noticed had been wiggling for a while, under all the pressure I was putting on it came off the bar, thus placing all of my upper body force onto the right handlebar. Physics, gravity, acceleration, inertia, pavement. An old woman turned the corner as I was picking my bike up off the ground (I think she probably heard me cursing in English while I was walking off the pain). She asked if I had fallen, if I had hurt myself, told me to tell the bike-store man about what happened since it's a rent-a-bike and it would be bad if the same thing happened to other people, and when I said that I was renting it for a few months, she gave me directions to the bike mechanic's. I thanked her, and although I wasn't really interested in going to the mechanic since a little bit of glue should fix it, it was good to know that when someone falls there are people who would help him out. Maybe that's why I smile.
Anyway, here's another little post that I wrote last night:
Saturday, March 24
Gli amici dei miei amici sono i miei amici
I'm really liking my linguistics class now. We've moved past the things that I had memorized long ago (IPA chart... what? It's cool) and are getting into some definitions of concepts that I either didn't have a good grasp on before, or that I had never heard of, so it's definitely feeling like I'm learning now.
More importantly, however, class itself has recently gotten much more fun. See, it's a class of maybe fifty students, and I'm the only American. It was kinda intimidating for a while, since everyone seemed to know most at least one other person. So, for the first few weeks I sat alone and was pretty self-conscious of the fact that I clearly had no friends in this roomful of people. But, that has now changed! Those kids that I talked to the other day in class have taken a liking to me, and now I sit with them. I talk a lot with one of them in particular, Giuseppe. A week after we met, I showed up at the University building, and I see him and Manuel, one of the others that I met. Giuseppe tells me that class has been cancelled. Oh, Italy. Manuel had things to do, but Giuseppe and I had the rest of the day basically free. He lamented that he basically got up out of bed for nothing. He didn't feel like studying, so he asked me, "facciamo un giro?" I said "sì," we got on our bikes, and started biking aimlessly through the city. We wandered for maybe fort-five minutes, talking about various things, until we ended up back at the building we started at. We parked our bikes, went inside to sit down, and then just kept on talking for nearly another two hours. It was amazing! He studies English, so sometimes I teach him little things here and there, and he'll help me with my Italian. It's a really good feeling to be having conversations, making friendships, and making someone laugh, in italiano. I haven't been getting enough of that lately. We've got three houseguests presently, so it's hard to practice Italian. So, I really treasure my interactions with Giuseppe and the others. He lives generally in the same direction as I do, so yesterday he and I biked together until we got to my apartment (which couldn't really possibly be completely on his way) but he took me in a slightly different route that doesn't involve the kinda intense cobblestones of Via Ercole I d'Este, so I think I'm going to keep with that one.
On my way to class I had fallen off my bike, scraped up my knee decently and bruised my shoulder. It was on my street, which was empty, so I wanted to see how fast I could go. Well, the left handlebar grip, which I had noticed had been wiggling for a while, under all the pressure I was putting on it came off the bar, thus placing all of my upper body force onto the right handlebar. Physics, gravity, acceleration, inertia, pavement. An old woman turned the corner as I was picking my bike up off the ground (I think she probably heard me cursing in English while I was walking off the pain). She asked if I had fallen, if I had hurt myself, told me to tell the bike-store man about what happened since it's a rent-a-bike and it would be bad if the same thing happened to other people, and when I said that I was renting it for a few months, she gave me directions to the bike mechanic's. I thanked her, and although I wasn't really interested in going to the mechanic since a little bit of glue should fix it, it was good to know that when someone falls there are people who would help him out. Maybe that's why I smile.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Floodgates after a drought
Hi everybody! I've got a lot of blogging for y'all today. In the past couple of days, I've gotten onto a kick of writing, but haven't been able to find time to get online. I wrote everything on, er, WordPad (Agatha lost Microsoft Word... explanation later) and now I've organized it all into three "posts", dated either by date of writing, or date of the events described. Enjoy! (Don't expect that this explosion means that posts will become more regular, or anything like that. Everything I do is result of freak accident. No rhyme, no reason. Sorry, but that's how it happens in this mind.)
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
That's Bologna!
Written Monday, March 12
I like this. This is cool. I'm smiling, and a lot. Okay, where to begin? Well, I just went to a class that I'm not enrolled in, because in my linguistics class today the professor told us that if we had the time, we should go to this class, because it would be on sign language today. Easy choice. I'm there. It was just fun to learn a little bit about the structure of LIS (Italian sign language), even though we just barely touched the surface. Oh, and there was a word that took me a very long time to understand, but I finally got it. The professor was talking about questions: there are yes/no questions, and eiquworhfiuqehwof questions. I couldn't decipher what he said at all, at first. Then, slowly, I began to piece together the sounds and figure out the meaning. "doppiavuacca" questions. What is that? you might ask. Literally, "double-u aitch" questions. wh- questions. Is that what they really call those in Italian? Has English so totally corrupted the Italian language that the description of a grammatical concept relies on our "who", "what", "when", "where", "why" and "which", in stead of their "chi", "cosa", "quando", "dove", "perché" and "quale"? I love how Italian is slowly becoming English.
Another thing: before the class began, I arrived in the classroom, which looks out over the courtyard of the faculty. All of a sudden, I hear singing from outside. Somebody had just graduated (there are little groups of graduates basically every week, here. I guess that not everyone graduates at the same time, so every so often I'll find a huge mass of relatives crowding the place, taking pictures and talking with their enrobed daughter/son, niece/nephew, whathaveyou) and her friends were all crowded around her, in front of a poster that they had made for her, singing Gaudeamus Igitur. Let us rejoice, therefore. That brings me way back to sixth grade Latin, where we learned the traditional graduation song. Crazy.
AND! I finally got the chutzpah to talk with some of the kids in my linguistics class (the one that I'm actually enrolled in [not that I'm actually enrolled - you don't enroll for classes, you enroll for the exams, and this doesn't happen until later, I think], not the one I went to today for the hell of it). I am planning on attaching to them like a remora for the remainder of the class. They were three Ferrarese guys, and I've sat near them a few times and heard them throwing out little phrases in English, so today before class started I asked them if they study English. Obviously, they do, and I explained that that's my mother tongue (is there a less awkward way to express this in English? All I can think of right now is the Italian word "madrelingua"... boh). They ask, and so I tell them that I'm from the USA, little town near Boston, you know, the standard questions. (none of them asked me what I see from out my window...) We got to talking and joking (! I can make people laugh in Italian!) and it was just generally a nice exchange. Next Friday's objective: learn their names.
Oh, and I took a trip to Bologna yesterday by myself. It was short, and I didn't see too much, but I did get to the the archeological museum.
The basement is entirely on Egypt and is really cool. I loved learning about the various writing systems they had - hyrogliphics also had a "cursive" version, and then as Egypt was Christianized, the Greek alphabet was borrowed and adapted for their language and for the first time, they had vowels! Or, at least that's what I think the signs said. Whatever, it was cool. And then upstairs was a shitton of Roman, Greek and Etruscan stuff, most of which was specifically Bolognese. It was an overwhelming amount of material - you really can't appreciate every individual piece, because there are just too many, and they aren't really individually labeled in a museum-type fashion. It's more like a library, if you ask me: if you were curious about the arm ornament that was found in a specific tomb in a specific locality in Bologna, you could find it and look at it. But otherwise, it almost just mixes in with all the other findings. And the last thing I did before I returned was stop at the Nutelleria and order a piadina alla Nutella. Which is basically a toasted pita filled with Nutella and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Yeah, happy day. Better than Saturday's Midd-sponsored trip to Siena, which just kinda sucked. I'm going to have to re-do that one with the family.
I've still got a bit of a cold, but I have managed to get a whole lot of sleep every night, which is nice. Okay, to the next post!
I like this. This is cool. I'm smiling, and a lot. Okay, where to begin? Well, I just went to a class that I'm not enrolled in, because in my linguistics class today the professor told us that if we had the time, we should go to this class, because it would be on sign language today. Easy choice. I'm there. It was just fun to learn a little bit about the structure of LIS (Italian sign language), even though we just barely touched the surface. Oh, and there was a word that took me a very long time to understand, but I finally got it. The professor was talking about questions: there are yes/no questions, and eiquworhfiuqehwof questions. I couldn't decipher what he said at all, at first. Then, slowly, I began to piece together the sounds and figure out the meaning. "doppiavuacca" questions. What is that? you might ask. Literally, "double-u aitch" questions. wh- questions. Is that what they really call those in Italian? Has English so totally corrupted the Italian language that the description of a grammatical concept relies on our "who", "what", "when", "where", "why" and "which", in stead of their "chi", "cosa", "quando", "dove", "perché" and "quale"? I love how Italian is slowly becoming English.
Another thing: before the class began, I arrived in the classroom, which looks out over the courtyard of the faculty. All of a sudden, I hear singing from outside. Somebody had just graduated (there are little groups of graduates basically every week, here. I guess that not everyone graduates at the same time, so every so often I'll find a huge mass of relatives crowding the place, taking pictures and talking with their enrobed daughter/son, niece/nephew, whathaveyou) and her friends were all crowded around her, in front of a poster that they had made for her, singing Gaudeamus Igitur. Let us rejoice, therefore. That brings me way back to sixth grade Latin, where we learned the traditional graduation song. Crazy.
AND! I finally got the chutzpah to talk with some of the kids in my linguistics class (the one that I'm actually enrolled in [not that I'm actually enrolled - you don't enroll for classes, you enroll for the exams, and this doesn't happen until later, I think], not the one I went to today for the hell of it). I am planning on attaching to them like a remora for the remainder of the class. They were three Ferrarese guys, and I've sat near them a few times and heard them throwing out little phrases in English, so today before class started I asked them if they study English. Obviously, they do, and I explained that that's my mother tongue (is there a less awkward way to express this in English? All I can think of right now is the Italian word "madrelingua"... boh). They ask, and so I tell them that I'm from the USA, little town near Boston, you know, the standard questions. (none of them asked me what I see from out my window...) We got to talking and joking (! I can make people laugh in Italian!) and it was just generally a nice exchange. Next Friday's objective: learn their names.
Oh, and I took a trip to Bologna yesterday by myself. It was short, and I didn't see too much, but I did get to the the archeological museum.
The basement is entirely on Egypt and is really cool. I loved learning about the various writing systems they had - hyrogliphics also had a "cursive" version, and then as Egypt was Christianized, the Greek alphabet was borrowed and adapted for their language and for the first time, they had vowels! Or, at least that's what I think the signs said. Whatever, it was cool. And then upstairs was a shitton of Roman, Greek and Etruscan stuff, most of which was specifically Bolognese. It was an overwhelming amount of material - you really can't appreciate every individual piece, because there are just too many, and they aren't really individually labeled in a museum-type fashion. It's more like a library, if you ask me: if you were curious about the arm ornament that was found in a specific tomb in a specific locality in Bologna, you could find it and look at it. But otherwise, it almost just mixes in with all the other findings. And the last thing I did before I returned was stop at the Nutelleria and order a piadina alla Nutella. Which is basically a toasted pita filled with Nutella and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Yeah, happy day. Better than Saturday's Midd-sponsored trip to Siena, which just kinda sucked. I'm going to have to re-do that one with the family.I've still got a bit of a cold, but I have managed to get a whole lot of sleep every night, which is nice. Okay, to the next post!
"If you are lucky" should not appear on any message from tech support
Written Friday, March 9
I just cooked myself a delicious, balanced meal. I may have cooked too much, but I ate it all, and my stomach is quite content right now. Chicken nuggets under ziti in a tomato sauce with eggplant, peppers and zucchini. It was simple, yes, but I did it all myself and did it right. I've done good pasta before, but this is the first time that I neither burned nor undercooked the nuggets. And it all went together with a healthy sprinkling of parmegiano cheese. That's a good feeling. Maybe it just tasted so good because it was 8:30 in the evening and all that I had had to eat was two turkey sandwiches at noon. Maybe it was because today was speckled with little things that went wrong and this was something that went absolutely right. Nothing too major, really. Missing a call from my landlady (no big deal, it turned out, she was just calling to tell me that the guy she was going to show around the apartment on Sunday called and cancelled), not being able to figure out how to request a book from the library, the copisteria being closed early when I went to get some packets for a class, dropping some groceries, losing track of time and nearly forgetting to go to class, forgetting to turn off my cell phone in class and getting two (honestly barely audible) text messages, breaking the drying rack, not having the guts to start a conversation with an Italian before class started. Little things, but things that can really get you down. But truth be told, there's really a lot more positive than negative in my life here in Ferrara. The weather's getting much better, and I often go out without a jacket. Tomorrow I'm going with a bunch of other students in the Middlebury program in both Ferrara and Florence on a paid-for-by-Middlebury (minus lunch... whatever) trip to Siena, which is supposed to be gorgeous, though I know nearly nothing about it.
After having issues with my computer, reinstalling the hard drive and continuing to have issues, I called Dell again and a guy from Dell Italy came to the apartment, gave me a new motherboard and memory, and I haven't had any real problems since. Seeing as the computer was basically given new life, I have decided to give it a new name. Henceforth, she shall be known as Agatha. She's still old, but hopefully she will indeed be "good". I like all of my classes and professors, and one of the (two) Italians in my music class started a conversation with me the other day, curious about things in America, like how the universities are different. Anyway, hopefully everything continues on this positive trend.
I just cooked myself a delicious, balanced meal. I may have cooked too much, but I ate it all, and my stomach is quite content right now. Chicken nuggets under ziti in a tomato sauce with eggplant, peppers and zucchini. It was simple, yes, but I did it all myself and did it right. I've done good pasta before, but this is the first time that I neither burned nor undercooked the nuggets. And it all went together with a healthy sprinkling of parmegiano cheese. That's a good feeling. Maybe it just tasted so good because it was 8:30 in the evening and all that I had had to eat was two turkey sandwiches at noon. Maybe it was because today was speckled with little things that went wrong and this was something that went absolutely right. Nothing too major, really. Missing a call from my landlady (no big deal, it turned out, she was just calling to tell me that the guy she was going to show around the apartment on Sunday called and cancelled), not being able to figure out how to request a book from the library, the copisteria being closed early when I went to get some packets for a class, dropping some groceries, losing track of time and nearly forgetting to go to class, forgetting to turn off my cell phone in class and getting two (honestly barely audible) text messages, breaking the drying rack, not having the guts to start a conversation with an Italian before class started. Little things, but things that can really get you down. But truth be told, there's really a lot more positive than negative in my life here in Ferrara. The weather's getting much better, and I often go out without a jacket. Tomorrow I'm going with a bunch of other students in the Middlebury program in both Ferrara and Florence on a paid-for-by-Middlebury (minus lunch... whatever) trip to Siena, which is supposed to be gorgeous, though I know nearly nothing about it.
After having issues with my computer, reinstalling the hard drive and continuing to have issues, I called Dell again and a guy from Dell Italy came to the apartment, gave me a new motherboard and memory, and I haven't had any real problems since. Seeing as the computer was basically given new life, I have decided to give it a new name. Henceforth, she shall be known as Agatha. She's still old, but hopefully she will indeed be "good". I like all of my classes and professors, and one of the (two) Italians in my music class started a conversation with me the other day, curious about things in America, like how the universities are different. Anyway, hopefully everything continues on this positive trend.
What do you see when you look out your window in the morning?
Events of Saturday, March 3
Well, Jen, Taber, Adam and I decided to go to Verona. Jen and Taber got on the earlier bus while Adam and I slept in, getting there seperately. Adam had friends in Verona that he wanted to meet up with, so he took a bus directly from the train station in the general direction of where they were, and so I was left alone at the train station with a freshly bought map of Verona (in italiano!) and a text message from Jen telling me to meet them at Castelvecchio. I march out of the station, not really sure in which direction I'm going, hoping to get my bearings by finding a main road and identifying it on the map. So as I'm at a street corner, map unfolded, I hear someone speaking to me - scusi, signore, ma Lei è un turista anche? - It's a girl about my age, accompanied by a boy aslo of my age. She had asked me if I was also a tourist. I tell her yes, and she says that they are, too, and that they don't know where they're going, and so she asks if they can follow me for a while, since I've got a map. I say sure, and so the three of us set off together. Oh, yeah, I still hadn't really gotten my bearings yet, so I still am not totally sure where we are. So after a few - questa via potrebb'essere... se non sbaglio... non sono certo... andiamoci! - from me, the girl stops another man we pass in a little piazza with gardens. I take out my map, which promptly falls apart, the map separating from the cover. Well, I give the map to the man, pocket the cover, and we establish for certain where we are, and where we're going. They want to go to the arena ( -c'è un arena? - I ask) but I need to meet the girls at Castelvecchio. It's pretty easy to get from one to the other, so we head towards Castelvecchio, where we will split up and go our separate ways.
On the walk we had some great conversation. I told them that I was from the United States, and they were instantly curious. - Quando Le sveglia nella mattina, che cosa vede dalla Sua finestra? - she asked me. That was possibly my favorite question. I told her that when I wake up in the morning, I see the woods outside of my window.
I asked them where they were from. She's from Sicilia, and he's from Trieste, which is great, he says, since he's so close to Slovenia, where cigarettes cost half of what they do in Italy! I tell him that I'll have to visit. They ask me about American universities, and I explain to them that there's a lot more choice in the courses that you take, but the workload is intense, and you've constantly got things to do. When I told them that I study theatre, they got really excited. It seems that not a lot of students actually study theatre in Italian universitie; if you want to go into the theatre, you go to a much more specialized sort of school. We walked at a leisurely pace, and the girl would get excited and stop at various things that caught her eye: some of the most lavish-looking gelato displays we'd ever seen, and a store that was displaying fairy figurines. - Mi piacciono tanto le fate! - she shouted. The whole walk was filled with questions, descriptions of where we all lived, and lots of smiles. We finally arrive at Castelvecchio, where Taber and Jen had been waiting probably for a decent while, do some quick introductions (she's Cristina, and he's Stefano), Jen takes a picture of us, and the Italians are off towards the arena. Thinking about them now, I still can't help smiling. They were so friendly and curious, and I felt comfortable talking with them in Italian. It was a little strange that Cristina (I'm not sure if Stefano did this) always adressed me as "signore" and used the formal, which is something that people generally do when talking with people of some sort of higher status or while conducting official business, although you can use it when talking to a stranger, but this was the first time that another young person used it while speaking with me. I was fortunately able to avoid the decision between tu and Lei ("you" informal and "you" formal) by just using voi ("you" plural).
The rest of the Verona trip was also very snazzy. The girls and I went then to the arena, which just happens to be the third largest Roman gladatorial arena. Not too shabby. There was (re-?)construction going on in the center, but we got to climb up into the audience and check it all out. Nowadays the arena is used for operas and ballets, but it was crazy to think of all the things that the people of the Roman empire saw in there: gladitorial fights, wild animals from regions they'd only dreamed of, and a heck a lot of blood. Times have changed, I suppose.
The next stop was the Piazza delle Erbe, where there used to be herb-selling markets. Now they've got all sorts of little stands and restaurants. The notable thing about this place is the frescos on the faces of the buildings. These are people's apartments now. How amazing would it be to live in the heart of Verona with a I-don't-know-how-many year-old fresco on your balcony? Pretty sweet. There's also a giant pillar with the Lion of St. Mark on the top at one end of the piazza. St. Mark is the patron saint of Verona, so you see those all over the place. Reminded me of high school, not going to lie. Go blue and white, what do we eat?, zebra meat!, yeah yeah yeah. We waited around there for a while before Adam showed up with his two friends, Ruma and Rachel. They're doing a program with UGA in Verona, which is not a bad deal at all. We had a lunch of paninis, and then Ruma had to go to some appointment, but not before we all went to see a big statue of Dante, who came to live in Verona after being exiled from Florence. So then it was the four Middkids and Rachel, who has an incredible memory for fun historical factoids. She had been on a brief tour of Verona, and basically recited everything back to us, which was fantastic, because we wouldn't have noticed so many details otherwise.
The next thing we wanted to see was the amphitheatre and monastery. On the way there, Rachel pointed out a big bridge spanning the river. It was mostly brick, but a large part of it was white stone. Apparetnly, the white stone is original from about 2500 years ago. We dubbed it the "Jesus Bridge" since it was around when Jesus was. Adam was really excited to walk on a bridge that Jesus had been on. We pointed out that Jerusalem is actually pretty far from Verona, but Taber pointed out that God wouldn't have let his only son die without seeing Italy, so clearly, Jesus had in fact walked on that bridge.
So anyway, we get to the amphitheatre and I just freak out. It's a Roman amphitheatre. Like the arena, I just marveled at how the Romans just really knew how to build things and we just plain don't. The acoustics are amazing, and seating isn't plush velvet, but it sure is easy. Everyone else started wandering up the stairs on the hillside towards the monastery, but I lingered in the amphitheatre, making sure to explore every crack and crevice before I ascended. It felt simply amazing.
Okay, this post is huge. Congrats for making it this far. I've covered my favorite things, so I'll start to wrap it up here. We went to see the monastery/archeological museum, Juliett's house, and a nice bar with awesome aperitivi. I think we did gelato, too. Anyway, I am definitely dragging my family back there when they come in July, because it was just that much fun and I want to do it all over again.
That's all for now, folks! Love to all!
Well, Jen, Taber, Adam and I decided to go to Verona. Jen and Taber got on the earlier bus while Adam and I slept in, getting there seperately. Adam had friends in Verona that he wanted to meet up with, so he took a bus directly from the train station in the general direction of where they were, and so I was left alone at the train station with a freshly bought map of Verona (in italiano!) and a text message from Jen telling me to meet them at Castelvecchio. I march out of the station, not really sure in which direction I'm going, hoping to get my bearings by finding a main road and identifying it on the map. So as I'm at a street corner, map unfolded, I hear someone speaking to me - scusi, signore, ma Lei è un turista anche? - It's a girl about my age, accompanied by a boy aslo of my age. She had asked me if I was also a tourist. I tell her yes, and she says that they are, too, and that they don't know where they're going, and so she asks if they can follow me for a while, since I've got a map. I say sure, and so the three of us set off together. Oh, yeah, I still hadn't really gotten my bearings yet, so I still am not totally sure where we are. So after a few - questa via potrebb'essere... se non sbaglio... non sono certo... andiamoci! - from me, the girl stops another man we pass in a little piazza with gardens. I take out my map, which promptly falls apart, the map separating from the cover. Well, I give the map to the man, pocket the cover, and we establish for certain where we are, and where we're going. They want to go to the arena ( -c'è un arena? - I ask) but I need to meet the girls at Castelvecchio. It's pretty easy to get from one to the other, so we head towards Castelvecchio, where we will split up and go our separate ways.
On the walk we had some great conversation. I told them that I was from the United States, and they were instantly curious. - Quando Le sveglia nella mattina, che cosa vede dalla Sua finestra? - she asked me. That was possibly my favorite question. I told her that when I wake up in the morning, I see the woods outside of my window.
I asked them where they were from. She's from Sicilia, and he's from Trieste, which is great, he says, since he's so close to Slovenia, where cigarettes cost half of what they do in Italy! I tell him that I'll have to visit. They ask me about American universities, and I explain to them that there's a lot more choice in the courses that you take, but the workload is intense, and you've constantly got things to do. When I told them that I study theatre, they got really excited. It seems that not a lot of students actually study theatre in Italian universitie; if you want to go into the theatre, you go to a much more specialized sort of school. We walked at a leisurely pace, and the girl would get excited and stop at various things that caught her eye: some of the most lavish-looking gelato displays we'd ever seen, and a store that was displaying fairy figurines. - Mi piacciono tanto le fate! - she shouted. The whole walk was filled with questions, descriptions of where we all lived, and lots of smiles. We finally arrive at Castelvecchio, where Taber and Jen had been waiting probably for a decent while, do some quick introductions (she's Cristina, and he's Stefano), Jen takes a picture of us, and the Italians are off towards the arena. Thinking about them now, I still can't help smiling. They were so friendly and curious, and I felt comfortable talking with them in Italian. It was a little strange that Cristina (I'm not sure if Stefano did this) always adressed me as "signore" and used the formal, which is something that people generally do when talking with people of some sort of higher status or while conducting official business, although you can use it when talking to a stranger, but this was the first time that another young person used it while speaking with me. I was fortunately able to avoid the decision between tu and Lei ("you" informal and "you" formal) by just using voi ("you" plural).
The rest of the Verona trip was also very snazzy. The girls and I went then to the arena, which just happens to be the third largest Roman gladatorial arena. Not too shabby. There was (re-?)construction going on in the center, but we got to climb up into the audience and check it all out. Nowadays the arena is used for operas and ballets, but it was crazy to think of all the things that the people of the Roman empire saw in there: gladitorial fights, wild animals from regions they'd only dreamed of, and a heck a lot of blood. Times have changed, I suppose.
The next stop was the Piazza delle Erbe, where there used to be herb-selling markets. Now they've got all sorts of little stands and restaurants. The notable thing about this place is the frescos on the faces of the buildings. These are people's apartments now. How amazing would it be to live in the heart of Verona with a I-don't-know-how-many year-old fresco on your balcony? Pretty sweet. There's also a giant pillar with the Lion of St. Mark on the top at one end of the piazza. St. Mark is the patron saint of Verona, so you see those all over the place. Reminded me of high school, not going to lie. Go blue and white, what do we eat?, zebra meat!, yeah yeah yeah. We waited around there for a while before Adam showed up with his two friends, Ruma and Rachel. They're doing a program with UGA in Verona, which is not a bad deal at all. We had a lunch of paninis, and then Ruma had to go to some appointment, but not before we all went to see a big statue of Dante, who came to live in Verona after being exiled from Florence. So then it was the four Middkids and Rachel, who has an incredible memory for fun historical factoids. She had been on a brief tour of Verona, and basically recited everything back to us, which was fantastic, because we wouldn't have noticed so many details otherwise.
The next thing we wanted to see was the amphitheatre and monastery. On the way there, Rachel pointed out a big bridge spanning the river. It was mostly brick, but a large part of it was white stone. Apparetnly, the white stone is original from about 2500 years ago. We dubbed it the "Jesus Bridge" since it was around when Jesus was. Adam was really excited to walk on a bridge that Jesus had been on. We pointed out that Jerusalem is actually pretty far from Verona, but Taber pointed out that God wouldn't have let his only son die without seeing Italy, so clearly, Jesus had in fact walked on that bridge.
So anyway, we get to the amphitheatre and I just freak out. It's a Roman amphitheatre. Like the arena, I just marveled at how the Romans just really knew how to build things and we just plain don't. The acoustics are amazing, and seating isn't plush velvet, but it sure is easy. Everyone else started wandering up the stairs on the hillside towards the monastery, but I lingered in the amphitheatre, making sure to explore every crack and crevice before I ascended. It felt simply amazing.
Okay, this post is huge. Congrats for making it this far. I've covered my favorite things, so I'll start to wrap it up here. We went to see the monastery/archeological museum, Juliett's house, and a nice bar with awesome aperitivi. I think we did gelato, too. Anyway, I am definitely dragging my family back there when they come in July, because it was just that much fun and I want to do it all over again.
That's all for now, folks! Love to all!
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