Palazzo Fava

My art history class got to visit the currently closed-to-the-public frescoes in Palazzo Fava last week--painted in 1584 by a  young Ludovico Carracci, the subject of the first half of our course, and his two cousins.

Tanti Auguri!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

La Vita Quotidiana

As the weather becomes colder (and nearly everyone I know comes down with a cold), I'm settling more and more into daily Italian life.  I know where to find all my basic food needs on the shelves of the Plenty Market, the people who run the fruit and vegetable stand nearby recognize me when I stop by on my way home from class, I never leave my grocery shopping for Sunday (since all the stores are closed) and my roommate no longer gives me constructive criticism every time I clean the bathroom.

My classes are nowhere near as good as the ones I've taken at Wesleyan--the language barrier contributes, but I also miss having the opportunity to participate in discussions and challenge the ideas brought up by our course material (in Italy, the professor's word is law).  I'm really getting into art history, though- I finally understood that thing my professor said about seeing works of art in person and in their original context when I was in Venice- I was transfixed for almost an hour by a Titian altar piece.

And while my weekends are still spent traveling, weekdays are dedicated to smaller, everyday adventures that become necessary once you've spent a prolonged amount of time somewhere.  For example, I could no longer see for my overgrown bangs and had to go get a haircut.  I studied up on vocabulary beforehand (solo una spuntatina- just a trim!) and the hairdresser patiently walked me through some that I had missed (I didn't want my hair angled, I wanted it scalata).  Even though my Italian hadn't seemed to fail me in this encounter, I still ended up with a way shorter cut than I had asked for.  I was upset for awhile, but I feel better knowing that it wasn't my fault- the hairdresser wanted to get rid of my rovinati ends, I didn't, and in a battle of wills, the one with the scissors usually wins.

Frustration from this encounter and the piles of reading that I'm forever behind on, I decided to check out a nearby gym.  So far, I've taken a kick-boxing and step-aerobics.  The step-aerobics class was eerily similar to those I've been to at home, right down to the music (sorry Zack, Black-Eyed Peas again!).  It made me feel a lot less homesick to be in a place where the only thing that was different was the instructor saying quattro, tre, due, uno instead of four, three, two, one.  The kick-boxing class was a bit different, but was totally worth it because I got to watch a bunch of tough-looking guys punch in time to Taylor Swift's "Love Story." I used to be disappointed that American music is played everywhere here, but in my cultural history class I learned that things can be much worse:



Recognize the tune? In the 60's, Italian singer Rita Pavone "covered" Pete Seeger's political anthem and turned it into a dance hit, with lyrics that more or less translate as "Give me a hammer so that I can hit people I don't like on the head." That's the spirit!

Venezia sta affondanda

The internet's been torturously slow lately (or at least that's my excuse for waiting so long to post)

Last weekend, the whole group went on a program-sponsored trip to Venice, only two hours away by train.  It was pretty much how I'd imagined it to be, which surprised me, because I hadn't been thoroughly convinced that a city built on water could actually be...real.  When I first walked out of the train station and looked out at the streets, it actually took me a few seconds to register what I was seeing.  I kind of just gazed out at the buildings for awhile before I even noticed that the street in front of me was full of boats instead of cars and buses.

There isn't too much to say about the trip--we stayed for one night and saw lots of churches, art, water, and glass jewelry.  I, of course, already broke my new glass earrings, but luckily I'll be going back next month with Mom, Dad, Danny and Zack.  Hopefully, it will still be there; sticks and mud are not the most solid of foundations, and the whole city is slowing sinking.

Sinking...

More amazing, overhead views

 

Napoli- Secondo Parte

Back to Napoli!

On Saturday, we left the city via train for Herculanuem, an ancient city that was destroyed by the same eruption that covered Pompeii.  Unlike it's more famous counterpart, Herculanuem is smaller, which made it easier to visit in the little time that we had.  It's also better preserved, and we were able to see a lot of the original mosaics from the buildings.

Next, we took a bus up to Vesuvius itself, and hiked for about half an hour to the top.  We were able to look inside the crater, where we were actually able to see steam rising up.  It was pretty foggy, so we weren't able to see much of the view, but it's amazing how close to the city of Napoli Vesuvius actually is--if the wind had been blowing in the opposite direction back in AD 67, Napoli never would've made it.

Vesuvius as seen from Napoli's waterfront

Vesuvius as seen from the edge of it's crater

During this leg of our journey, we met an American couple from Rhode Island.  Of course, we played the "what are the chances that we are somehow connected?" game, and somehow made our way through four degrees of separation.  Thus, the greatest text message ever sent, to our friend Claire, from Wesleyan, who's in Italy with us:

"We're on top of Vesuvius with your dad's dentist."

I'd also like to point out here that, on this trip, we never once missed a train, bus, boat, or other form of public transportation.  We did, however, cut it close getting back down from Vesuvius, but we saved face by telling people that the reason we were sprinting down the side of the volcano was that we wanted to relive the Pompeii experience.

I didn't bring my camera to the National Archeological Museum back in the city, where we went next, but it's just as well because the entire second floor, which houses all of the cool stuff from Pompeii that we'd wanted to see, turned out to be closed "for emergency renovations"--and has been since February.  So Italian. 

But we did get the always-welcome overhead view of the city at sunset when we took a funicular up a nearby hill.

On Sunday, we took a ferry over to Capri.  I was tempted to take back everything I've said about Corfu being beautiful, because this island was absolutely stunning.

We didn't have much of a plan, so we took a funicular up to the top of the island and just started walking.  By some amazing luck, we ended up at the natural arch that's one of Capri's main attractions. We walked some more and ended up at a private beach where it costs 16 euros to sit in the sand.  Even though it was a warm, beautiful day, we weren't buying it, especially since we still had to figure out a way to get back to the main harbor.  I was dreading this part, since we had walked down A LOT of stair to get to the beach.  However, our lucky streak wasn't over yet, and we met a group of Italian tourists who let us hop into their boat.  They dropped us off at a smaller harbor, where we enjoyed Caprese salads (what else?) before catching a bus back to our ferry port.

 

Our new friends were excited to have some young people join their trip.  We were excited to be saved from a literal tourist trap, so everyone was happy.

Last but not least, there was the food.  If you've read Eat Pray Love or seen the movie, you'll know that Napoli is famous for having the best pizza in the world--it is, after all, where the margherita pizza was invented.  It's also known for having the best coffee in Italy...something to do with the water.  Everything we'd heard was true.

The first night, we ate at Sorbillo's, a restaurant recommended by Giovanni.  We chose our pizzas from a list of 21 varieties- each named after one of the owner's 21 children.  Mine was called Ulderico, it had eggplants on it, and it was absolutely incredible.  Hope had the "Elena," with artichokes, and it was also amazing.  We tried our best to eat them "Italian stlye," making our way through with a fork and a knife instead of picking up slices.

If I had an Italian boyfriend, it would be Ulderico

The second night, we went to Da Michele (the "Eat Pray Love place").  We knew we had picked the right spot when we saw the huge crowd of people waiting outside what otherwise seemed like a pretty basic pizzeria.  We had to wait for over an hour for our number to be called, and this time there were only two varieties- margherita and marinara.  We both ordered the margherita, and dug in under a picture of Julia Roberts filming the movie.  In between bites, we struck up a conversation with the couple we shared a table with--they were both from Napoli and lived just around the corner.  We asked them if they'd seen the movie that glorified their local pizzeria, and it turns out they were going to see it right after dinner. Adorable.

Julia Roberts eats her pizza like an American

But not me!

We were pretty upset when we realized that our new friends had ordered their pizzas with doppia mozzarella (double cheese)- they claimed that this was actually the best pizza in the world. Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime, we ordered a third pie to go and took it back to the hostel for dessert.  It was so good that pizza's basically ruined for me forever.  But it was soooo worth it!

Aggiornamento in fretta

Wow.  Seems like all of a sudden I'm super busy all the time.  Which is great, but the blog is starting to suffer a bit.  In honor of soon-to-be-mentioned events, I'm going to do things Nicole Page style (http://nicolestudyablog.blogspot.com/- if anyone's interested in life abroad in Madrid) and list everything I need to catch up on.

 So, in the past few days I:

1) Bought a cute pair of Italian shoes on the oh-so-trendy Via Dell'Indipendenza.  They are grey and blue and purple, therefore matching most of my wardrobe, and after today's test run I can state with confidence that the heels are definitely doable.

2) Took a day trip to Florence and saw Nicole Page, one of my best friends from home and, as mentioned above, my blog rival/role model.  She's been touring the country with a bunch of her friends from Duke, a.k.a the most blonde people I've seen in one place in Italy.  I was there for just enough time to:

• Eat two delicious Italian meals (it's refreshing to eat with people who aren't yet sick of pasta and pizza)
• See Michelangelo's David.  Unlike the Mona Lisa, which I saw with Nicole back in high school and was kind of disappointed by, this was actually greater than I'd expected.  It was huge--much bigger than pictures suggest--and even without the hype, I could tell I was looking at something truly remarkable. 
• Hike up to the Piazzele Michelangelo for the best view of the city--at sunset, of course. You might be thinking that, by this point, I'd be sick of seeing amazing overhead views of Italian cities, but it really never gets old.  
• Convince everyone to skip Florence's branch of Grom and go to a different gelateria on their list instead.  And then wish that we'd gone to Grom.  Still trying to decide how I feel about that being the best gelato I've tasted. 

3) Went to 5th grade and taught English.  Enjoyed being the one who could speak the language fluently for once and realized how grateful I am that I'll never have to learn English. The kids asked me lots of cute questions, such as:

• "Do you like chicken and potatoes?"
• "What are your brothers' names?" (They were really excited that Zack has the same name as a Disney channel character)
• "I like Justin Bieber" 
• "Do you watch X-Files?"
• "How are you?" (this kid seemed to have less vocabulary to work with than the others)

After spending awhile basking in the attention, I helped them with some exercises.  The teacher spoke passable English, and they were working from a book, so I felt like, even as a native speaker, it wasn't my place to question what they were learning.  Still, maybe the various English teachers/enthusiasts who read this can help me out: is "The girl has got brown eyes" correct?  It's definitely a problem when the kids get confused and say "She got brown eyes," but is it otherwise worth mentioning to the teacher?  The other thing I'm worried about is that next week I'm supposed to start teaching from their workbook, which is all about England.  I'm going to have to start studying up on British geography, folklore, and alternative spellings or I have a feeling I'll lose some of my credibility.

4) Finally got my care package from home, which had been stuck in customs for the past few weeks.  Amazingly, mom's meringues tasted better than ever--probably because I've been waiting so impatiently for them to arrive.  A new top, peanut butter, and Aunt Susie Cake-flavored lip balm, among other treats, were also very appreciated.

5) Started my fourth class- a language workshop to help us write and speak academically.  We're reading The Solitude of Prime Numbers, which I read in English this summer and highly recommend, and I'm excited to read it in it's original language and to discuss it in-depth.

Now I must get back to reading for class, but I promise I'll finish my Napoli post soon!

Un Educazione

It's like the difference between seeing a photo of your loved one and actually standing in front of him.

That's how my art history professor, Vera Fortunati, describes the importance of seeing great works of art in person.  Fortunately for us, we live in a city full of such things, and this afternoon we're skipping the classroom entirely and meeting instead at the gallery.  We'll also be taking an overnight trip to Rome later in the semester to see even more.

In archaeology, my one class at UniBo, stranieri outnumber actual Italians, but that works in my favor--Professoressa Porta speaks more slowly than she otherwise would.  We're learning about medieval churches, and our first trip is to Santo Stefano, the chiesa right down the street from our classroom. 

In Italian Cultural History, we're learning about youth culture from the 1950s to today through film, music, and magazine ads.  From the example set by my other professors, I'm half expecting the teacher to bring some "real Italian kids" to class so that we can learn about them first-hand.

Wednesday nights, I head over to Rita's apartment, where she teaches us how to make real Italian food from scratch in true Italian fashion--this means knowing how to properly set a table, using idiomatic expressions, and, of course, rolling your hips alluringingly while flattening out the pasta dough. 

In other words, I'm getting a true Italian education!

Napoli- Prima Parte

This weekend in Napoli felt like my first real travel experience--only two of us instead of a big group, hostels instead of hotels, no itinerary, and a city that was so much more than a tourist destination.  I have so much to say and not much time before class, so I'll focus on the city for now and write more about our excursions to surrounding areas later.

At 1am Thursday night/Friday morning, Speranza and I hopped on a train at Bologna Centrale and arrived 8 hours later to a sunny morning in Napoli.  We transferred over to the metro and got off one stop later in the city's historical center, where we quickly found our hostel, Giovanni's Home, located on the third floor of a residential building.  Before we even had time to wash the train filth off of our sweaty selves, Giovanni sat us down with a map of the city and colorful guide books to help us make the most of our three days.  After giving us a quick run-down on Napoli's history, he highlighted a route through town that would take us past all of the places we'd been hoping to visit, adding in his own suggestions and advising us not to waste our time with others that we had thought might be interesting.  He also put a lot of effort into convincing us that Napoli wasn't as dangerous as a lot of people make it out to be--in his opinion, the presence of the Camorra, Napoli's version of the Mafia, means that organized crime replaces random acts of violence, which would be more likely to affect tourists.  In other words, as long as we stayed away from the areas highlighted in purple on our maps, where we could unintentionally end up in the middle of turf wars, we were actually safer than we would be in other, more petty-crime affected cities such as Rome.  He had a bunch of statistics to back this up, but just to be safe, he showed us a few surveillance videos of pick-pockets so we'd learn how to avoid being victims, and he recommended that we walk around with our money on our person instead of in a purse.

The one place where the Camorra's influence was immediately visible was in the amount of trash everywhere--a lot of their power comes from their control over garbage collection.

After a quick lunch of leftovers from the previous night's cooking class back in Bologna, we headed out to start exploring the city.  The first place we saw was the Cappella Sansevero, home to what Giovanni called the second-most beautiful sculpture in the world, next to Michelangelo's David.  Called the Veiled Christ, it's a portrayal of Jesus after the crucification, covered by a thin piece of cloth.  The entire thing was carved from marble, and his musculature is defined and vivid under the extremely realistic folds of the "material" over him.  Two other sculptures, another which was also veiled and one entwined in a marble net, were fascinating as well.

Napoli was without a doubt the busiest place I've ever been--the whole area consists of Greek ruins buried under Roman ruins buried under a modern-day city, itself covered in trash and graffiti, and over all of which swarm people: little boys kicking soccer balls, old woman hoisting buckets with goods from the street up through their windows, and cars and scooters barreling through streets so narrow that pedestrians are forced to press themselves up against the walls of buildings to avoid being run over. 

We got to check out some of the city's layers in an underground tour. Our tour guide spoke really fast (we, with perhaps a bit too much confidence, chose Italian over English), so I didn't pick up a lot of details, but the gist of it was that we were climbing down to a Greek city that the Romans used as an aqueduct and the WWII-era Italians used as a bomb shelter.  At one point, we used candles to explore unlit passageways that were so narrow, we had to walk sideways, which was slightly panic-inducing, but also really cool.

Greek or Roman quarry, can't remember which.

Exploring underground

According to Giovanni, there are Greek roads like these right underneath our hostel.

Back above ground, the city was still it's bustling self, and I never saw it calm down for a second--until Sunday, that is.  We ventured out in search of some fried pizza, one of Napoli's delicacies, and were surprised to find that absolutely nothing was open.  We were able to cross streets without fearing for our lives, and could walk for blocks without seeing another person.  We peered inside some open windows and realized that everyone was home, watching the Napoli vs Roma soccer match.  Each time Napoli scored a goal, the empty streets would erupt with noise--shouts and cheers bursting out from every building.  It gave us goosebumps.

Coming soon: The best pizza in the world and other local food, climbing Vesuvius, a visit to Capri, and new friends