week 3 in italy

I can't believe I've been here three weeks already. It feels like it's been both ages longer than that and much shorter.

Last week was an exhausting week, with classes from 10 to 3 every day and several hours' worth of homework after that. And add in the fact that it takes a half hour to walk from the apartment to classes. Now that I've just put that in writing, it doesn't seem like all that much, but for some reason I was never able to get enough sleep. And this weekend, there's been no relaxing either... Saturday we were up bright and early for a day trip to Ferrara with the program, and today for a day trip to Florence with my roommates Dana and Eric.

Ferrara is a little town in Emilia-Romagna, just half an hour from Bologna by train. There's not a whole lot to see there, aside from a fifteenth-century castle, but it's a picturesque, well-preserved Renaissance city. It's most well-known in my mind as the setting for The Garden of the Finzi-Contini, a film and a book by Giorgio Bassani about Italian Jews during the Holocaust.

Anyway, it would have been fun to have just been able to wander around and explore, but with these program trips, we're stuck following a guide around the whole time. In theory, it would be great to have an opportunity to hear about the background and significance behind all of the buildings we see. But in reality, I have an attention span of about forty-five minutes and the guided tours last four hours. Plus, listening to someone speak in Italian, especially the dreary monotone voice that this woman had, requires extra effort and thus leads to spacing out. How long can you stand in front of one building and listen to someone describe it?

There a couple of program-sponsored day trips left, one to Padova and one to Mantova (Padua and Mantua in English). My roommates have been talking about it, and both of those are places we want to see, but we're not sure if we want to do the program-led guided tour thing again. We'll see.

My roommates, Eric and Dana, and I decided to go to Florence on Sunday for a day trip of our own. Dana had heard from a mutual friend of ours who's studying there that there was going to be a chocolate festival, so we decided to go check it out. It was exciting for me because it was my first time venturing outside of Emilia-Romagna and my first time really traveling independently, with friends and without adults.

It was fun, even though I wasn't thoroughly impressed with Florence. It's a beautiful city, with lots of little narrow streets and Renaissance buildings, but it's incredibly touristy. We probably came across three times as many Americans in one day in Florence than we have in 3 weeks in Bologna. Being there reminded me why I chose to study in Bologna... as hard as it is to feel integrated into Bolognese life, it would be impossible in Florence to ever stop feeling like a tourist.

Still, it was nice just to be able to wander around without chaperones, go in whatever direction we felt like, not have to worry about a schedule or itinerary, lose ourselves in swarms of Asian tourists and just absorb the atmosphere. We managed to cover a lot of the city, even without a planned agenda - we saw the Duomo, climbed the bell tower, wandered through the chocolate festival, hiked to the San Michelangelo park overlooking the city, and had an amazing lunch. It was comprehensive, but relaxed at the same time.

Being in Florence also made me realize that when I travel this semester, I really want to avoid big touristy cities in favor of smaller places that are more authentic representatives of their cultures. Lately we've been talking a lot about our travel plans for the semester, and naturally each of us has a different list of places we want to see. The big priorities among my roommates are Paris, London, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Copenhagen... but if I leave Europe having just seen the biggest, well-known cities. If I go to France, I want to go to Marseilles or Bourdeaux, and if I go to the U.K., I'd rather see a few smaller cities in England and Ireland, and so on. I know I'll be really disappointed. I'm pushing for Budapest, Prague, San Sebastian, Stockholm, and Sicily, but I'm not sure I'll be able to find traveling companions for all of those. I don't want to let that stop me from seeing the places I want to see, though, so I think I'll be traveling alone part of the time.

The idea of wandering around an unfamiliar city where I don't speak the local language is a little scary, but the fact that it scares me makes me all the more eager to try it. I know several girls who've traveled alone and not only survived but said it was a really positive experience for them. I'm sure some places are probably safer than others to be traveling alone, so I'll have to do some research beforehand. But I don't want to let the fact that I'm a girl keep me from having a fuller experience.

A few pictures of Florence:




A chocolate castle at the chocolate festival

This is the slightly sketchy deserted train station on the outskirts of Florence where we took our train back to Bologna. The little figure in the center is my roommate Eric.

So Dana and I headed over to the bathroom, and as we were walking up to it we saw a woman waiting outside with her back to us. When we were right next to her she turned around and we saw that she was holding a ferret in her arms. I was so taken aback by it that I said "Oh my god" really embarrassingly loudly. Then she asked us, in Italian, if we could hold it for her while she went to the bathroom. Both of us were so stunned that it took us a few moments to get out a "si, si." And as soon as she went into the bathroom we burst out laughing at the absurdity of the situation, standing outside a dark, deserted, sketchy train station holding an Italian ferret. Anyway, even though my pictures didn't come out well, here's Dana with her chocolate and the ferret :

A really adorable dog that I followed around taking pictures of creepily.

Awkward childhood encounter outside the cathedral in Ferrara

My roommates Jennie and Dana with another kid in our program, Max, in Ferrara, where apparently balloon animals are all the rage.