Ugly Americans Visit Italy

by Shea’s Mom & Dad

We were honored when Shea asked us to write this ‘guest blog.’  We couldn’t duplicate Shea’s inspiring writing, so we wrote this primarily to remember our trip (thus the long length and excessive detail).

We arrived safely in Rome (the flight was a story I’m not allowed to tell).  Shea met us in our hotel near Piazza del Popolo, and we ventured out with our private tour guide.  Her knowledge of the Italian language and art history were only surpassed by her extensive knowledge of Italian food and wine.  The long walk to the Spanish Steps and the Trevi fountain (MUCH larger in life than pictures can capture) was exactly what the Doctor ordered for our jet lag.  We wandered from the Trevi into the highlight of Dad’s trip: the Pantheon.  We saw so many wonderful things, but the ancient perfection of the Pantheon was striking.  The interior view of the spherical dome, built before Christ, and its layered-square patterns made us think that architecture hasn’t improved much since then.  We wondered how many people have visited the Pantheon over the last couple thousand years.  We continued our walk to Piazza Navona, and back up along the Tiber.  After a nice dinner at a table on the street, we walked back to our hotel for a well-deserved sleep.

 

Our second day was a lesson in planning and managing our blood-sugar levels.  We took the metro to Circus Maximus, and walked entirely around the Circus and Palentine Hill (because the entrance to the Forum was almost exactly opposite of the Metro stop that Dad chose).  Fortunately it was sunny and only about 100 degrees (if you subtract 32 degrees and divide by 1.8, that’s approximately 1000 Celsius), and Mom only infrequently reminded Dad of how stupid his mistake was.  We found ourselves at Piazza del Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo, and the Capitoline museums.  The bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius was amazingly realistic, and only survived the church’s purge because people thought it was a statue of Constantine (making us think that the quality of fundamentalist Christian education hasn’t changed much).  We had a great view of the Roman Forum and the Arch of Severus Snape.  Walking around the Forum, Dad was absolutely pissed to see that Mussolini built a major road, Dei Fori Imperiali, right over the Forum, and Shea was quick to point out that the road was not even in his Top 10 Atrocities list.  We walked around the Colosseum and took a break at the Arch of Constantine.  The next stop in our plan was ‘St. Pietro in Vincoli’ (St. Peter in chains), which should be named ‘St. Pietro nel Mezzo di in Nessun Posto’ (St. Peter in the middle of nowhere).  We tried to reach it through the Domus Aurea ruins, which would have been a lovely walk if we weren’t overheated and unrested.  When we finally found the middle of nowhere, the church had just closed for the early afternoon.  This was when the ‘ugly Americans’ made their appearance.  We showed the locals that they don’t have the market cornered on quick tempers and fits of rage.  Shea was finally able to stop us from yelling at each other and convinced us that we needed to stop at a café for lunch.  Within minutes, our moods lifted and we enjoyed a long lunch.  By the time we were done, St. Peter in Chains was open again, and we saw Michelangelo’s Moses and the altar with the chains of St. Peter.  With our new appreciation of high blood-sugar levels, we stopped for gelato (and did so every 10 minutes for the rest of the week).  This helped, because when we finally reached the entrance to the Forum and found that it was closing, we just accepted the fact that we made a mistake, and would have to return some day with Luke.  It’s amazing how European culture can transform uptight Americans into people who really don’t give a shit.  We continued on to Piazza Venezia with the Trajan Column, walked up the Emanuele monument for another good view of the Forum.  We walked across the tiny medieval island (Isola Tiberina) to Trastevere.  We went into Santa Maria in Trastevere and had another beautiful dinner on a small piazza.  We took a tram back over the Tiber, and walked from the Area Sacra (Roman ruins) back to the hotel.

The next day we visited the Vatican.  We went through most of the Vatican museums in the morning, including Egyptian and Etruscan museums, the hundreds of statues in the Chiaramonti and Pio-Clementine Museums.  The Greek statue of Ajax, which only has its torso remaining, was significant, because Michelangelo kind of had a statue-crush on it (even though he thought it was Hercules) and modeled many of his male torsos after it.  We probably spent too much time looking at the sculptures, because the Gallery of Tapestries and the Gallery of Map were mobbed.  By the time we got to the Raphael Rooms, we could only squeeze our way through, and we didn’t recognize that we passed by the School of Athens (we’ll also have to see that on our next visit).  We spent almost an hour in the Sistine Chapel, and we probably could have spent another hour there.  Its small size didn’t detract from the impact of Michelangelo’s ceiling and the Last Judgment.  Between the statues and the paintings, we must have seen a thousand penises that day (about 300 in the Sistine Chapel alone) – not to mention many manly women (Renaissance Rome and Florence must have had kick-ass field hockey teams).  We went into St. Peter’s Basilica, which was more immense than can be described.  Michelangelo’s Pieta and Bernini’s altar (with bronze stripped from the Pantheon) were just a couple of the highlights.  We exited into Piazza de St. Pietro.  We had cappuccini on a street café near the Vatican, went back to the hotel for our bags, took a Metro to the Termini, and got a fast train for Florence.  We had an excellent Florentine dinner and stayed in Shea’s apartment.

We started our first day in Florence with a trip to the market.  Mom was in heaven to see all of the fresh produce, dried fruits, mushrooms, cheese, meats, and fish.  We supplied ourselves for a nice lunch at Shea’s apartment of salami, cheese, bread, olives and figs.  We went into the Duomo.  The interior is disappointing compared to the exterior, but the mosaics in the Baptistry are amazing.  Shea explained the significance of the Baptistry doors.  The differences between the original doors and Gilberti’s 2^nd set of doors are subtle, but capture the beginning of the Renaissance, with more realistic, human poses and perspectives.  The 3^rd set of doors, also by Gilberti, are called the doors of Paradise, because Michelangelo said that if he could take anything to heaven with him it would be Gilberti’s doors (he also chose ‘War and Peace’ and ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ as his favorite book and album that he’d take).  With Shea’s apartment overlooking the Baptistry, we took a moment each time we passed the doors to enjoy them.  We went to the Gallaria dell’Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David.  David is worth the hype (exaggeratedly large head and hands, but only modest manlihood).  The Gallery is small but adds to the David experience.  Michelangelo’s four slaves and St. Matthew were left as works in progress, and they show Michelangelo’s approach to sculpture and his genius.  Mere mortals will sketch the image in two dimensions on each side of the marble block, and carve off large chunks so the block takes the rough dimensions of the statue; but Michelangelo just started sculpting from front to back, letting the form emerge from the marble.  St. Matthew and the four slaves are crawling out of their blocks in various stages of emersion. The contrast to Michelangelo’s approach is apparent when you see the large gallery of plaster casts with wire frames that other sculptors used to ‘see’ the form before sculpting.  We went to Santa Croce and saw the tombs of Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Galileo and a chapel by Brunelleschi.  We were shocked to see how rundown the frescos were, but then saw pictures of the flood and how much damage was done to the church in the museum.  Ciambue’s crucifix in the museum is also an early milestone of the Renaissance, being an orthodox crucifix, with a more human Christ that is less iconic.  We wandered back through Piazza della Signoria, Dad’s favorite place in Florence, with the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, the Neptune fountain, copies of Michelangelo’s David, Hercules, an open area with Roman and Renaissance statues (Perseus, Hercules and the centaur, Rape of the Sabine women, …), street performers outside the Uffizi, with statues of prominent Florentines (da Vinci, Michelangelo, Donatello, Dante, Galileo, Machiavelli, Boccaccio, Vespucci).  It’s incredible how many revolutionary people came from this small city under the patronage of the Medici’s during the Renaissance (an example of how tolerance and investment in education, arts & sciences can elevate an oppressed society to greatness).  We had a small dinner (a rare occasion on this vacation) at a Pizzeria.  We probably had a little too much wine, because we alternated between high-volume giggling and yelling.  At one point Shea loudly scolded Dad for his views on modern art (something like ‘not appreciating modern art is similar to not believing in evolution’).  However, after another round of gelato on the walk back to Shea’s apartment, we agreed that she’d begin showing Dad the significance of modern art, starting with the Renaissance.

The next day we started out over the Ponte Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli gardens.  It was a nice walk to the top of the hill to get a view of the city on one side and the Tuscan hills on the other.  Then, we left Florence in a rental car and set out for the Chianti region.  Renting a car in Italy had disaster written all over it, but it worked out well.  We got a nice little Fiat 5-speed, and the driving was fun… for Dad.  We headed out toward Greve, and made a turn to see Montefieoralle, a small, medieval walled village on the top of a high hill.  The road was narrow and twisting (it was essentially a paved goat path near the top).  Mom didn’t see much, because her eyes were shut tight.  We continued through Chianti and stopped for cappuccini at Castellina, another hill-top fortified town. Our next stop was San Gimignano (pronounced San Jimin…. you know?), a walled city with many high towers that is frozen in Medieval times.  Although most of these walled cities had towers, built by prominent families, most of them were destroyed as the power of their builders diminished and the Church demanded that no tower be higher than its cathedral’s duomo.  San Gimignano was once a powerful city, on the pilgrimage route to Rome, but when the route changed to include Assisi (the new hot pilgrim destination), it became a ghost town (scene on the road to Assisi: fat, gay monk on a donkey- ‘Oh, nobody goes to there any more!’ dirty peasant- ‘where?’ monk- ‘San Jimin…. you know!’).  We drove to our hotel in Sienna, and our perfect week of weather changed.  It was lightly drizzling when we set out from our hotel outside the walls, but the rain got heavier as we made our way into Sienna.  The silver lining is that we ducked into a great restaurant for one of the best meals of our trip.

In the morning, we set out in our little Fiat for a winery tour at Castello di Brolio.  The drive was pretty and enjoyable, until we realized that we were lost.  We had a reservation for the winery tour, so after we figured out where we were, Dad raced through the twisty, narrow roads (ignoring the protests of Shea and Mom) to get to the winery.  We were late, and missed the grape pressing portion of the tour, but saw the large warehouse of casks, bottling and wine tasting.  Arden and Shea suggested that we walk up to the castle, which was just a ploy to sober Dad up before we got back into the Fiat.  The castle had a beautiful view of the surrounding hills with vineyards and olive groves.  On our walk back down to the car, we saw a small crew of men harvesting olives.  Olives are one of Mom’s favorite things in the world (probably from her traditional, pseudo-Greek upbringing in Astoria), but she made the mistake of picking a ripe olive off a tree and eating it – I don’t think it ever reached her stomach.  We drove on to have nice lunch in Volpaia, a hill-top village.  On our walk around the small town, we saw the real deal: grapes had just been pressed in a small winery, and transferred to vats.  The grape casings were loaded into a small cart, men were carrying pails of grape juice, and the cobblestone streets were stained bright, Chianti red.  We drove back to our hotel and walked into Sienna.  We visited the Piazza del Campo, with the inclined, scallop-shaped square and the famous tower.  The Duomo in Sienna was more elaborate than Florence’s, and the Piccolomini Library had amazingly bright frescos that depicted the life of the Pope from Sienna.  After a brief visit by the ugly Americans who argued over the most appropriate bakery to buy panforte, all was made well by a few glasses of chilled sambuca back at the hotel. 

The next day we left Siena and returned to Florence.  We stopped in Monteriggioni, yet another walled, hilltop village that had been deserted and was re-established in the 1960s.  It’s the destination of many Medieval geeks who are software developers by day and knights in their dreams (presumably still searching for the fair maiden who will see the knight within).  We drove on to Volterra, a large, walled, windy City.  We visited the Roman theater and baths, a small harvest fair, the fortress, and the Etruscan acropolis, the oldest landmark of our trip (~500 BC).  After our drive back to Florence, we returned the rental car, and had a dinner of apertifos and shared a bottle of nice Chianti at Shea’s apartment (Dad wanted to eat some liver with fava beans for the full effect, but Mom didn’t see the humor).

Back in Florence, the next morning we walked to the Piazza San Marco and Piazza Santissima Annunziata.  We saw the shrine of the Madonna and the annunciation, painted by a no-name friar.  His other paintings mustn’t have been so good, because people believe he was miraculously helped by an angel (kind of a Renaissance art version of a ‘one-hit wonder’).  There was an open market in the Piazza which must have inspired us, because we bee-lined it to the larger San Lorenzo market and bought one of everything (wallet, belts, scarves, pair of boots, pair of gloves).  We walked over Ponte Vecchio to have lunch in Piazza del Santo Spirito.  After lunch, we went to the Bargello, an old city palace with a large courtyard, and a museum with Michelangelo’s Bacchus Drunk (apparently modeled after a college freshman), Donatello’s St. George (his David was being restored), Verrocchio’s David, and Giambologna’s Mercury.  Our attempt at adopting a European eating schedule kind of backfired.  After another bottle of Chianti at Shea’s apartment, we began looking for a restaurant.  It was Saturday night and All-Saints’ Day, so the streets and restaurants were packed.  After another brief visit from the ugly Americans, we found a restaurant that was unassuming from the street, but seemed to be popular with the locals.  We had to wait for a table, but we enjoyed watching the grill chef at work.  The meal was worth the wait, and we finished with biscotti, vin Santo and limoncello.

Our last day in Florence, we took a bus across the Arno to San Miniato al Monte and Piazzale Michelangelo.  The ride was a nice way to see other parts of the city, including the Porta Roma.  San Miniato was a small church with a large cemetery and crypt, so it was beautiful and creepy.  Saint Minias was an early Christian martyr who was decapitated down by the river, but realizing that a church in his name would be more popular if it overlooked Florence, he picked up his head and walked up the hill.  His bones are on an altar in the lower level of the church.  There was a lone nun kneeling in prayer in front of the relic and a young man playing the huge pipe organ, making the experience simultaneously scary and uplifting.  Piazzale Michelangelo has a view of the entire city and was a popular strolling location for Florentines, and for some strange reason it’s also a common place for Asian weddings (?).  We took a bus back to the city, walked by Santa Maria Novella, Piazza Republica, Piazza della Signoria (again), and had lunch at Piazza Santa Croce.  We had cappuccini and gelato at Vivoli, stopped one last time at the Baptistry doors, and said ‘ciao’ to Shea.  We took a slow train back to Rome and flew out the next morning.

We saw much of Rome, Florence, Sienna and other parts of Tuscany.  The deep, layered history was something we’ve never seen before.  We often saw ancient Roman or Etruscan ruins, alongside Medieval and Renaissance buildings, melded with modern Italian culture.  It was wonderful to hear that each statue, monument or painting had a story (some places must have thousands of stories).  Despite the many wonderful places we visited, we think the long lunches at street-side cafés, or slowly sharing a bottle of Chianti and enjoying each other’s company are what we’ll remember most.  Thanks, Shea.

Things I've Been Doing

This weekend was the first in over a month and a half that I didn’t have any plans and it was great to just hang out and do nothing in Florence. It felt good to sleep in, sit and talk with my roommates, and do a little homework too. Friday night I went to a café/bar/library/jazz club that I’ve been dying to get to for a while. It’s a really cool place and definitely somewhere I want to go back to during the day. Afterwards we wandered around and ended up meeting some kids that we hung out with for the rest of the weekend. They all study at Florence’s University and live outside of the city near Fiesole. Eventually one of the guys started talking about how he was related to the Medicis and owns a hotel near the Duomo. I didn’t believe him at all – until he showed us the hotel! They’re more stereotypical “Italian” than other Italians we’ve been hanging out with when it comes to appearances. None of them are ashamed to admit that they’re very into they way they look and one of them even talked about how much he likes his style. It’s fun to talk to them about it, because that’s something so completely different than guys in the United States. Last night we taught them some American card games and had a Connect Four tournament. Luckily they’re just as dorky as we are and actually enjoyed it.

Earlier in the week I went to a soccer game with a bunch of girls from SACI. Fiorentina was playing Bayern Munich so there were Germans everywhere before the game. There was a carnival feel in the air all day – especially because the Germans hanging out and drinking on the steps of the Duomo were chanting and singing. In the stadium they have a whole section for fans of the opposing team with plexiglass dividers and security guards keeping people at least 20 feet back. The stands were packed and the fans were loud. It was great. Florence scored early in the game, but Bayern Munich got a goal toward the end and it finished in a tie. It was cool to see the differences between the game and sports at home. We realized that people cheered happily when someone almost scored a goal, even if they missed, just because they did a good job.

Classes have been going well. They’re easier than the ones at home so I haven’t been stressed out yet. We’ve finally started going to contemporary art museums in my Museology class, which I’m very happy about. Every time I go to one it’s like a breath of fresh air. Being surrounded by the Renaissance has made me a little tired of it (only a very little though – it’s impossible to not be in awe almost all the time). A lot of these museums have awesome libraries too and it’s been great to look at all the books. My Italian is getting better. I probably wouldn’t even be able to be friends with the guys we met this weekend if we didn’t know a little. I’ve gotten used to grocery shopping a few times a week and I’ve figured out which stands in the market are better for certain things, but I still don’t know how to cook. The days are getting shorter. Luckily we’re having an unusually warm fall, but the nights have started to get pretty cold. And luckily the second stage of culture shock didn’t last too long. I admit that there are still some things that bother me about Italy, but I can laugh about it now and accept it for what it is. I’m also amazed that I only have a month left and it’s hard to hate something when you’re trying to savor every moment! 

PS - Go Obama! I watched some of the election in an "American" bar but I had to leave because the Americans were being so obnoxiously American. 

Halfway Through

I’ve obviously fallen behind with my blog, so stay tuned for a fall break guest post from my parents. We just spent a great week seeing the sights and getting fat in Rome, Florence, and the Tuscan countryside, but I’ll let them tell you about it. I’ll also try to get some more pictures online soon. My internet connection’s pretty bad (it took me forever just to get this post up) and I’ve taken more than 700 pictures in the last two and a half weeks, so it could take a while.

Now that my parents are gone I’m starting to get homesick. I think it’s a phase that will pass soon and I’m sure it has also something to do with the fact that I’m trying to register for classes and get an internship and work out my living situation and follow the elections, all from Italy. Being with my parents also reminded me of a lot of things I love about home. I’m getting tired of little things like not being able to wear sweatshirts, paying to sit down everywhere, feeling lost and clueless about simple things like where to buy super glue, and basically feeling like dumb American tourist almost all the time. It’s the second stage of culture-shock. I thought I had skipped right from euphoria to integration, but I guess there are defined stages for a reason! Luckily, even though I'm feeling slightly anti-Italy, there are still so many things I love about it. Just looking out my window at the crowd of people ooohing and aahing helps me realize that I'll be able to find superglue and that paying an extra euro to sit down really isn't that bad.

[Edit: Sorry for the grumpy post. After two art classes, seeing and talking to my friends, and walking around Florence I realized I'm dumb and I love Italy.]

Barcelona

Sorry so late, but here’s another weekend travel post: this time Barcelona! (I wrote this two weeks ago after I got back and never posted it.) I finally wore myself out this weekend. Traveling the previous weekends and exploring Florence on the weekdays caught up to me and now, four days later, I’m still tired.

The trip started out a little stressful – I had class all morning, I didn’t pack until two hours before we needed to leave, and there was a train strike, so the first train we could catch to the airport was cutting it close. We ended up sitting on the train tracks once we got on the train, then running to the check-in counter just in time! We finally got to our hostel in Barcelona around 11:30. Luckily, everything in Barcelona, and I think all of Spain, starts really late, so we still had plenty of time to unpack and get ready to go out.

That night we went to Razzmatazz to see of Montreal and I met up with Jess, who was in Barcelona with her study abroad program. It was great to see her and I met all of her friends from her school. The club was a lot of fun and the show was great – of Montreal is known for their wild shows that include things like mini-skits, animal costumes, and body paint. We stayed until the band was finished, took a walk to see the beach, then finally rolled into bed at our hostel at 7:30 in the morning, almost delirious from lack of sleep.

We knew we would regret not waking up and doing things during the day, so we headed out around 11:30 to go to Las Ramblas, the main strip of Barcelona. Unfortunately it was drizzling and cloudy, but it was easy to see how beautiful the city was. It was also much more “cosmopolitan” than Florence, and we spent the morning doing things I still feel a little guilty about, but were almost like getting a taste of home. They have Dunkin Donuts in Spain! I don’t even have Dunkin Donuts in Washington, DC, so I obviously had to get an iced coffee. Allison went into Starbucks and got an iced tea, which they also don’t have in Florence, and we both spent some time looking around H&M.

After we got through with our American guilty pleasures, we met up with Allison’s friend from home who’s studying in Barcelona. She brought us around some of Gaudí’s apartment buildings and we went up to Parc Güell. I was surprised – I don’t really like Gaudís architecture at all. I love his tile work and I think his ideas were interesting, but I thought the overall structures of his buildings were ugly. I’m hoping one day someone will talk some sense into me and I can go back and appreciate his work.

Later that afternoon I met up with Jess and two of her friends to walk around and look for a place to grab some tapas. It was fun because they’ve all been living in Spain so they were able to translate the menus and talk to the waiters for me. We sat around drinking sangria and talking until they had to go back to their hotel and I met up with Allison and her friend. We wandered around the gothic quarter hopping into different bars and listening to the street musicians. Before this, I was a little disappointed by Barcelona, but strolling around the gothic area changed my opinion. The streets were narrow and dimly lit. The bars were all a little funky and really cute. I think I liked it because it was so anti- everything I had done that morning. Later that night we sat on a bench people watching on Las Ramblas, and of course, we ended up meeting some Italians!

Sunday was sunnier than Saturday and it made me wonder if my earlier disappointment in Barcelona was just because of the weather. Allison and I headed back to the gothic quarter to walk around and take pictures. We found a lot of cute shops and galleries and we stumbled upon a teeny, tiny bar in a little plaza that had murals and colored lights hanging around. The bar had nachos with cheese and jalapeños! I’ve been craving nachos since I’ve been in Europe and that was great. After walking around for a while we took the metro up to see La Sagrada Familia – Gaudí’s cathedral. Again, I wasn’t really impressed. I think if we had gone inside I may have liked I more, but I thought it was uglier than traditional cathedrals, and I didn’t see the point of most of the decorations. Before we left for the airport, we had a long lunch of tapas, paella, and sangria to complete our Spanish experience.

This trip made me realize that it’s impossible to do a city, especially one like Barcelona, in just two days. It also made me realize that when you only have two days, you need to try to find the flavor of the city or do the toursity things. Trying to do both is just too exhausting! 

Sardinia

Like I said in an earlier post, each day here surpasses the last. I just had an unbelievable weekend that was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I went with Allison and Jessica to visit Lucio at his family’s apartment in Cagliari, Sardinia. I want to give a little forward to this post with a description of what a character Lucio is. We met him at Santo Spirito the first night we went (when I posted the video of Jessica) and then met up with him again the next day. The second time we talked to him he explained that he was just stopping to visit a friend in Florence (we see his friend around all the time now) and that he actually lives in Sardinia. Long story short, he invited us to visit him while we could still enjoy the summer weather in Cagliari and we booked a flight within the next few days. Lucio is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. He seems like a character taken out of some book. His mother was Austrian, so he doesn’t look Italian, he’s about 6’5, and if he’s not gay, then he’s extremely metro sexual. And the way he speaks English is hilarious. It’s not that he can’t speak it – he’s almost fluent – it’s the flamboyant way he says things and the way he flails his arms around when he gestures that made all of us constantly laugh at him all weekend.  What’s more interesting is the way he lives and thinks about life. He’s 27 (which is still pretty young in Europe) but he doesn’t have a career, and doesn’t plan on having one anytime soon. He floats around Europe finding ways to make money. Allison keeps calling him the Italian Jack Kerouac. For a while he worked with a youth mobility group that traveled around Europe. Last year, he was in London bartending at a gay bar. Just last month he was in Morocco living with an author. Now that he’s back in Cagliari, he’s trying to earn some more money so he can go someplace else. We spent all four days there sitting around talking, so he was able to explain a lot of his philosophies on life. For example, he always talks about how he will never be able to live a routine life. He thinks it’s pointless to work so hard to simply be content. He says, “I want to rise naked from the dirt every day.” That way even a piece of bread or a place to sleep makes him incredibly happy. Or, another example, when we bought him a cake at a bakery, he cut it up into pieces and served everyone, but stared at and fiddled with his piece for a while. He explained that he knows the expectation of how great something will taste is just as good as how it actually tastes, but he can make the expectation last as long as he wants. Clearly these things work for him too, because he seems to be one of the happiest people I know. He’s indescribable, but I hope that puts a picture in your head.

Cagliari is a city on the southern tip of Sardinia, which is an island off the coast of Italy. Lucio is an interesting character, but the place he comes from is even more intriguing. I won’t go into the whole history of the place (if you’re interested check this out). Basically, the island’s a little bit Italian, a little bit Spanish, but essentially its own culture. It was really cool to try and spot the influences of other cultures and to find what made Sardinia Sardinian. The first thing I noticed was how proud Sardinians are of where they live. Lucio’s friend had “Sardegna” tattooed all over his arms and everyone was excited to answer questions I had about the place. They have a unique language, their own beer (Ichnusa), their own wines, a special liquor called mirto, and even unique kinds of bread. Halfway through the trip I realized that things were reminding me of Mexico and Costa Rica because of the Spanish influence. Also, I don’t know if it’s the company Lucio keeps (I’m sure that has something to do with it), but every Sardinian I met was extremely friendly, happy, and generous. People were constantly dropping by Lucio’s apartment just to say hi or play some music. When they greeted each other, and sometimes us, they acted like they hadn’t seen each other in years, and when we left they acted like they wouldn’t meet again for years. Everyone made us feel at home and like one of them.

I can’t go into everything we did when we were there, we were up until sunrise every night, but I’ll explain some highlights. The trip wasn’t very touristy. In fact, when we walked through Castello, Lucio told us we should probably go ask a tour group if we wanted historical information about the place, because he really didn't know much. We spent a lot of time sitting around Lucio’s apartment, which is aweomse. It’s almost near the top of one of the hills of Cagliari, and it’s at the top of the building. It has a terrace overlooking the city and the water in the distance. He lives there with his younger sister, Erika, and her boyfriend of 8 years, Maurizio. This weekend, his father was also staying in the flat because he was fighting with his wife. Normally, he lives with her further north in Sardinia. It was a great experience staying with them because none of them spoke English! We spent a lot of time on the terrace listening to Lucio and his friends play guitar, Jessica play her violin, or just talking about whatever we felt like talking about at the time. Lucio tried to teach us how to cook every time he made us a meal and even taught us the proper way to make Moroccon tea (It was the best tea I’ve ever had in my life.)  Every morning he fixed us caffe lattes while we sat and soaked up our last opportunity for sun before the winter comes.

Our first night, after dinner, we went to a tapas bar for an open mic. Open mics aren’t very common in Italy, but Lucio’s friend, Alessio, has spent time in London and LA so he’s been trying to get them started in Cagliari. Alessio is another person with an interesting life story. He toured with his band around the US and Canada for a few years, then got married to a forty-year-old lesbian so he could stay in LA. Before his paperwork was finalized he accidentally took a bus to Mexico and ended up in jail! Everyone in Cagliari was obsessed with the blues, and the open mic was incredible. We sat until 3:30 in the morning watching some of the most amazing musicians I’ve ever met play together. There were a lot of guitarists but there was also a keyboardist, a saxophone player, a few people used Jessica’s violin, and there were a lot of amazing vocalists. Throughout the whole trip I realized that everyone in Sardinia tries to participate in music-making in some way – even if it’s simply keeping beat or singing along.

After the open mic we walked around the tiny, ancient streets to a few more places. Many of the bars we went to had no signs indicating that they were anything more than a door on a wall. Inside, the places were always packed, and it was great to finally be the only Americans in a bar. Our first night, after visiting a few bars, we stopped at a bakery to grab food. The bakery opens at midnight to start cooking pastries for the bars (in the Italian sense of the word) throughout Cagliari. Lucio and his friend brought us to the back door where we could see them kneading the dough and packing up the finished products.  We got pizzettas, little flaky pastries with tomato paste inside. I don’t know if they’re a Sardinian thing or if I just haven’t found them yet in Florence, but I’m definitely going to look for them!

On Saturday, after Erika fixed the family risotto, we drove down to the main beach in Cagliari, Poetto. Lucio was originally planning on bringing us to the less touristy beaches, but even Poetto was gorgeous. It was long and straight and there was so much sand. It wasn’t too crowded; Lucio said not many people go to the beach this time of year and it was also really windy. We had to go into the Mediterranean at least once though, and the water wasn't bad. The waves were good for body surfing and it was a lot of fun to be in the ocean again.

That night was one of my favorite moments from my stay in Italy so far. Lucio cooked for us, and we all sat down and had a family dinner. It doesn’t sound very exciting, but Allison, Jessica, and I all agreed that it was our favorite part of the trip. The food was great, and we were even able to eat boar sausage that Lucio’s grandfather recently made. The best part of the meal was communicating with Lucio’s family. There was such a language barrier, but we were still able to talk. Lucio translated a lot, but we also tried to speak in Italian. This weekend made me much more confident in speaking Italian because unlike Florence, I was forced to use it to talk to people. Lucio’s family was fun and we had a great time. Later in the trip, Lucio told us he was happy because his dad doesn’t usually like having people around, but he enjoyed spending time with us. They were all very interested in the United States. This trip made me feel a little prouder to be an American. Everyone I talked to, and Lucio especially, has so much respect for our country. Lucio talks all the time about how badly he wants to live there. When we tried to tell him it wasn’t worth it, he told us, “You don’t understand, because for you it seems like such a simple idea, but your country is made by men for men. To me, that has so much meaning.” He went on to explain how he loves America because it always lands on its feet. And despite how much he hates the consumerism of America, he would move there just for the music!

Another highlight of my trip was the next afternoon. We had been lounging around all day, watching movies in Italian and singing and playing guitar. Lucio’s friend Dani was with us, and when I found out he did Tai Chi I asked him to teach me. Within minutes everyone was outside on the terrace breathing in through our nose and out through our mouth, stretching, and just relaxing. Again, it sounds like a strange favorite moment, but it was beautiful to watch the sunset on the city while everyone around me was relaxing and stretching.

That night we drove half an hour to Dani’s beach villa in Villasimas. The drive was absolutely stunning, but unfortunately we left after dark and I don’t feel like I saw half of how stunning it really is. The road was all along the coast, and because the island is mountainous, it was curvy and turny and hilly and exciting. Jessica got carsick! The drive back was even more amazing, because by the time we left, the moon had risen high in the sky and lit up a lot of the coast. We stopped at one viewpoint and stared at the ocean for a long time.

Before we left the next day we had a great lunch at a restaurant nearby. The first wine they brought out to us was to acidic for Lucio, so they brought us some Cannonau which is good wine from the north of Sardinia. We got to talking about America again during lunch and Lucio made a point about Italian culture that I found very interesting. When he said he wants to move to America because we actually have culture, we were shocked and told him we thought Italy had much more culture than we’ll ever have. It was difficult for him to translate what he thought, but he argued that Italy used to have culture, and now it’s living on a stereotype of what that culture was. His example was Carnevale in Venice. He said that in the Renaissance they dressed up and wore masks so that they could run around and do whatever they wanted with who ever they wanted. Now, people wear masks because they used to wear masks in the Renaissance, and that's the only reason. He said he feels like Italy’s culture is slowly dieing.

I’m sorry for such a long post. I hope you can tell how exciting and inspiring this weekend was for me. Something about Sardinia made me feel different, a little more alive. Since coming back to Florence it’s been difficult for me to get the smile off my face. I may not “rise up naked from the dirt” every day, but I’m certainly trying to appreciate everything like Lucio and his friends do! 

Oktoberfest

This weekend was my first trip out of Italy and I realized that I’ll probably love every place in Europe. I went to Germany for Oktoberfest and even though it was rainy and cold, I still had a great time.  We left Florence at midnight and got to Munich the next morning around 8:30. I was asleep for most of the bus ride, but every time I woke up the view was gorgeous. This is the map of the route we took:

View Larger Map

We drove over a lot of really high bridges and through a lot of tunnels and at points I woke up because my ears were popping. I was awake for a few minutes right before the sun rose so there was enough light to see and it was snowing! In each valley there was a huge cloud, and the snow-covered mountain peaks were rising up through them. Just a few minutes out of Munich were fields and farms and cows. It was great to see so much open space.

It was surprisingly difficult to get a beer once we were in Oktoberfest. There are several “tents” owned by breweries, which are essentially huge buildings filled with tables. We thought we’d be hanging out in them, but we found out you either need a reservation or to show up before 7am. We tried to get into a few places, but once we gave up we had much more fun. Each tent also had a “Biergarten” which were tables that had heaters over them. I spent the whole day wandering around drinking huge beers at different tents and eating food I couldn’t pronounce. It was really crowded and I was surprised by how many people were wearing traditional German clothes. I probably saw thousands of lederhosen!

We were all damp from standing in the rain all day and once it got dark we got really cold. Two girls from SACI and I decided to go into a restaurant. They’re easier to get into because you need to buy a meal and they don’t approve of people sitting around hanging out. We didn’t really care because we were so cold. We had a great meal of grilled duck and noodles and a ton of soft pretzels. Halfway through the meal, the Greeks we were at the table with finished and they put a group of German-speaking guys with us. It turns out they were actually Italian. (We met a lot more Italians than anyone else throughout the day. It made me think I chose a good country to meet people in!) These Italians were from the northern-most part of Italy where they speak German and are of German descent. They were a lot of fun and our waitress got mad at us because we stayed there until we needed to leave to catch our bus. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to a German accent with a straight face though. It’s such a funny language!

I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to get into Munich. We thought about it a few times but always gave up because we were cold or wet or wanted another beer. But even from the few streets I saw, it looked like Munich was an interesting city and definitely a place I’d like to visit again. It was great to see a “real” city again. I saw subways – the underground train kind and the sandwich place! It made me a little sad that Florence wasn’t more “Americanized” but at the end of the day I think I’ll get a better experience by finding new ways to do things. 

Greve

On Saturday, Allison, Jessica and I took a trip to Chianti. It was so beautiful that Jessica and Allison literally cried! We took the bus to Greve in Chianti, halfway between Florence and Siena. The hour-long bus ride alone was worth the trip and the views were stunning. We drove by villas and vineyards and little villages. (It was much different than the bus ride we took the night before which brought us to an industrial suburb of Florence near the airport. That trip was interesting too, but I think I prefer the landscape of Chianti!)

After walking around the town of Greve for a while, we took a hike up to the top of a nearby hill that had a castle. The walk wasn’t far, but we took forever because we needed to stop every two minutes to gasp and take a picture. As we climbed, clouds began to roll in and it made the views so dramatic. We could see people harvesting grapes on the hill across the valley and the rooftops of almost every building in Greve. We even stole a few grapes as we walked around the vineyards and olive groves.

The castle at the top, Montefioralle, was great. It wasn’t what I expected a castle to be, although I really had no idea what to imagin. I think it’s actually called a “fortified city” and it was basically a maze of really old buildings surrounded by a wall.  What I found most interesting about Montefioralle was that people still lived there. I’m used to the United States, where something like that would become a national park or a tourist trap. I’ve noticed that around Florence (and probably in most places in Europe) historical monuments are forced to blend in with and become a part of modern life. All of Florence would be a museum if they treated things like they do in the US. I still have trouble comprehending how old everything I’ve been seeing is, especially because these ancient buildings are used like regular ones at home. I noticed how strange it seemed to me when I saw a group of kids playing around Montefioralle. Imagine growing up in a fortified city in Chianti!

After a walk back to Greve filled with philosophical thoughts and plans for our future, we stopped for some lunch at a Pizzaria. We decided to go all out and get appetizers, dessert, and even an “expensive” bottle of Chianti Classico. (We’ve been buying 2 euro wine – this cost us a whopping 16!) We spent three hours eating and it was interesting to notice how the waiter treated us over the course of the meal. At first, he clearly thought we were dumb American tourists (which we are) and he wasn’t rude, but he wasn’t friendly. He left halfway through his break and seemed surprised that we were still sitting at the table chatting and laughing when he got back. By the time we finally finished our dessert and coffee and asked for the bill, he had given us free limoncello and his phone number!

 

It seems unbelievable that I’ve only been here for one month, yet at the same time, I can’t believe I’m almost 1/3 of the way through my stay here! Like I knew they would, my days here are becoming more routine. I know where I’m going and where things are. I can speak a lot more Italian than I could a month ago and can pick up on what people are saying as they walk by. Florence is quickly becoming my home. And although we talk about how great it would be if every time we saw the Duomo we felt like we did the first time, Florence still has so much to offer. It’s small enough that we run into friends we made the night before and big enough that I’m not even close to halfway through my list of Things to Do in Florence!