like Oprah, here’s some of my favorite things.

Favorite weekend in Florence: this past one, where Kathryn came to visit me!  We had a rockin good time celebrating 21st birthdays, getting free stuff from my favorite restaurant/potential crime ring front, seeing historical sites and testing gelato.  Oh, and that part where we caught up and got to hang out – that was a favorite thing, too.  I think I just about toured her head off, but her timing was perfect because being a tour guide turned out to be a pretty helpful studying gig before midterms this week!  At least we always kept it mature and classy during our touristy moments…

Me pretending to be burned alive on the spot where Savonarola was burned at the stake. Sensitive, huh?

Favorite thing in the Uffizi: Okay, I know it’s totally predictable, but I loved the Botticelli paintings the most.  But I’m in distinguished company: Botticelli was Lorenzo il Magnifico’s favorite painter as well.  I had a minor freak out and serious map consultation when I thought they were on loan elsewhere (the museum is shaped like a U, how was it even possible for us to miss the room the first time?), but it was totally worth it to hunt  for them. Plus, they’re huge! It’s not like the Alamo or the Mona Lisa where the real deal is so disappointingly tiny that all you see are tourists. As she should, Venus dwarfs the tourist who clamor around her.

Favorite season in Florence: Fall!  I like it best because it’s pleasant and the most conducive to stylish outfits. Unfortunately, this magical season is fleeting. I think Kathryn brought it with her, because the weekend was absolutely stunning and it bitingly cold and windy as soon as she left.  Winter is here! Time to buy my snuggly and touristy University of Florence sweatshirt at San Lorenzo Market this weekend!

View of the Ponte Vecchio and the Vasari Corridor from the Uffizi Galleries

Favorite Historical Site that I won’t get to see: The Vasari Corridor!  You can see the corridor as the red-roofed path going from the right of the photo above and then across the river on top of the Ponte Vecchio.  This was a “secret” tunnel the Medici built through Florence so they could get from their palace across the Arno into the Palazzo Vecchio without interacting with the common folk/potential assassins.  SO COOL, right? Well I’ve been trying to see it ever since I got here, but the tours are only given at strange hours on certain days.  Plus they have been for Italian citizens only for the past few weeks (or at least that’s what the rather bitchy woman on the phone led me to believe…) because they will soon be closed for a two year restoration!  Che tragedia!

Favorite new food discovery: Roasted chestnuts! Kathryn was totally jazzed when we saw street vendors selling these, and I didn’t understand her glee until I tried one. Delicious!! Hot and perfect for the cold weather!  They go great with this hot chocolate they serve here.  (It’s literally just melted chocolate. This place is heaven.)

look at that excitement! and at that adorable chestnut bag!

Favorite thing unrelated to Italy: I recently found a blog run by my favorite band, Delta Spirit.  If you don’t know them, you really should.  And their blog is pretty cute.  It’s sort of strange, but there’s lots of entertaining videos on it.

Fall break is next week! Tomorrow is actually my last midterm and class, so really I should say that fall break is Thursday!  I’m going to Perugia (for the European Chocolate Festival. My life might peak during that trip), Asissi (to see the home of St. Clare, for obvious and egotistical reasons), Fiesole (because it’s only 20 minutes away and pretty), Lucca (to ride a bike around the medieval city walls – adorable, right?), and Ireland (to see Kathryn!).

ps – my least favorite thing is that we’re about to have a fall break and we just had midterms, both of which imply that my time here is dwindling…

Fa freddo!

Apparently the locals here say that one day it is still a beautiful summer day, and the next day you wake up to fall.  While I was sweating (something that is always gross, but only more embarassing here because I don’t think Italians even have sweat glands), I idolized fall weather for it’s crispness and cute sweaters.  Who am I kidding? I am from a subtropical climate. Cold weather sucks.  But we woke up yesterday and it was fall.  Despite my displeasure with the cold (sitting in piazzas is a lot less fun when the stone freezes your butt), I do have to say I look totally boss in my smart leather jacket.

My last complaint: I had been buying special commemorative jars of nutella because a) they are smaller so I cannot consume such embarrassing quantities of this spreadable ambrosia in a week and b) they had Peanuts characters on them, which is just about the cutest thing ever.  But I went to the grocery store today and all they had was Looney Tunes characters.  Heartbreaking because they aren’t as cute and I didn’t have the whole Peanuts gang yet!! (ps: how hilarious is it that they really are called the Peanuts gang? I’m just tickled to death by the idea that Peanuts and MS-13 have something in common.)

CUTE

NOT CUTE

Ok, enough whining. I’ll make up for it by sharing a story where I look like such an idiot:

Remember when I said that volunteering with the Creativity Festival to improve my Italian seemed like exactly the sort of dumb stunt I would pull and end up being weird? Boy did I ever call this one.  Last night I volunteered with them to help put on their kickoff event… or so I thought.  People say artists and Italians are disorganized types of people, and I hate to buy into stereotypes, but this group of Italian artists sure didn’t have their stuff together.  After following a frantic little woman around the twisty passageways under Teatro della Pergola for about half an hour, we finally emerged in the main lobby.  Here I was tasked with straightening (not even laying out!) the piles of brochures on a table.  And then the frantic lady asked me something in rapidfire Italian. And then she realized I didn’t speak Italian very well.  And then she got more frantic.

After hanging out at the brochures table for a bit, I noticed a ruckus by this huge promotional poster by the entrance.  When I got over there, all the staff was standing around the poster and complaining about an error on it.  One of them goes, “Maybe no one will notice… see if she [points to me] can pick out the problem.” Well, I did notice an error.  On the English side, it said “Fringe Of Festival” instead of “Fringe Festival.”  So I said that.  This was not the same error they all saw (there’s was a misprinted date).  Then they all got more frantic and upset.

So, for those keeping score, here is what I did for these kind people at their event: I frustrated a woman with my lack of Italian skills, I straightened some brochures, and then I told them that all the signage they had for their entire festival had an error printed in huge, bright yellow font. Net impact? Decidedly negative.

2 more reasons Italians are great

1. Fanno una passaggiata ogni giorno! (They take strolls every day!)  While I was on a run today around the Fortezza da Basso, I was delighted to see how many people were actually out taking the evening strolls that guide books tell tourists about.  The tradition seems like one Americans would never go for – walking rather aimlessly with someone you care about to catch up and see the day come to a clsoe (no iPods or Blackberrys allowed!) – but definitely one that would make busy American families a lot closer.  I was out a little early for most Italians, but it was still a great time to be out because I saw lots of grandparents and grandchildren together!  Lots of older couples sat on benches around the park’s big fountain to watch the sunset and world go by.  I lingered in the park after I was finished stretching to people-watch, which was cute at first, but then sort of sickening because that wrinkly old grandma has a husband she still canoodles with on a park bench and wrinkle-free me is still single!
2. Coolest toast-giving tradition ever – When our visitors from Madrid came to see us this weekend, they brought a cool Spanish toast with them.  We felt left out because we only know the one from The Godfather (cent’anni), so we asked our program director’s Italian boyfriend for the toasting scoop.  It turns out a lot of Italians just raise their glass, say a nice line, and then go around the table and make a rhyme (easy since everything ends in vowels here) “so that each glass of wine is different from the one before it.” Um, CUTE.

Forza Vanderbilt is victorious! …sort of

-In bocca al lupo!

-Crepi lupo!

“In the mouth of the wolf!”

“May the wolf die!”

(How Italians say good luck to each other. Way more exciting than “break a leg,” right?)  Aria taught us this phrase just in time for us to stock up on luck before our last round of soccer matches last night.

We killed the wolf!  Or at least we think we did- we don’t actually know our standing yet, but it seems we may have scraped our way into the semi-finals.  Our record is 2-1-3, which may look bad to the untrained eye, but remember that we are technically a Vanderbilt team.  As such, we are fated to be generally mediocre with occasional moments of encouraging, Rudy-esque greatness.  Like real Commodores in the SEC, we were up against lots of huge state schools with mostly male teams.  We brought a lot of estrogen (and one scrappy Drew) to the tournament, and I think we held our own pretty well against giants with 5 o’clock shadow.  Plus we have no shin guards, so by last night our legs all looked like they’d been attacked by toddlers with nun-chucks.

Now that we’ve all had time to let our wounds heal from last night’s games, we’re going to celebrate our victory hooligan-style this weekend with visitors from Siena!

My weekend in Neverland

Florence is ugly….Elba is beautiful!  Ok, Florence is pretty too, but Elba was the most breathtakingly exquisite place I’ve ever seen. It was a scenic double threat, too: Portoferraio is a really cute town and the entire island is a picturesque natural wonder.  Elba is actually Neverland– it was that impossible and perfect.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Tupac and Elvis had villas there.  Some of Elba’s otherworldly delights: little coves everywhere, cacti (who knew??), wine in juiceboxes (!), a huge, old pirate ship-looking thing “guarding” the harbor, and a defunct but beautiful Medici fortress.  There were also lots of bars to sate the beer needs of the many German tourists who sound eerily like pirates when drunkenly sprech-ing deutsche.

Portoferraio - Neverland's biggest city

It was even more beautiful in real life and when seen right side up

cactus in the mediterranean? that can't be real.

School is finally starting to pick up, so now I’m on the hunt for a good study space.  Finding a quiet place to sit and study for a long time in Florence is harder than you think.  Florentines seem philosophically opposed to public sitting, especially for long spells.  The very few benches I have seen are located only in the city’s most trafficked areas. And you know how your mental picture of life in Europe includes lots of cafes with people calmly enjoying their cappuccino? That’s only for the lazy French, apparently.  Italians have these little bars called tabacchiere (sp?) that I like to think of as refueling stations for Italian people – you walk up to the bar (prices are a lot higher if you sit, and some places don’t even have seats) and order coffee, cigarettes, or a tiny croissant and then hurry the hell out of there to go stand somewhere else in the city.  They are marked with these black and white signs with a huge T, which seems to indicate their importance to Italians since the only other things with such consistent and blatant signage are hospitals and pharmacies.

Gah, before I started complaining about the lack of seating in Florence, I was going to tell you about my favorite study place thus far in my searh: La Biblioteca del Palagio di Parte Guelfa (The Library of the Palace of the Guelph).  On the outside it looks tiny and sad, but it’s actually really cool and huge inside.  Although my historical allegiances lie more with their rival Ghibellines, I am willing to put medieval political rivalries aside for free seating and convenient hours. How big of me, right?

Cool things I’ll be doing this week: Forza Vanderbilt’s first soccer team practice, free concert in Piazza Santa Croce with my UConn friends, seeing our program’s lone guy, Drew, perform at a new bar, and going to the Bargello museum with my Medici class!

I still have a Google Reader and too many podcasts to listen to while walking around Florence, so I have not totally lost touch with American goings-on.  3 thoughts on the Emmy red carpet:

1. Sigourney Weaver, you and your superhuman fitness and beauty are an inspiration to us all.
2. Even in an “ill-fitting tux and nerdy bowtie,” Jon Hamm was the hottest man in the room.  Or in all of Los Angeles.
3. The Kardashians were at the Emmys? WTF? Did my invite get lost in the mail or something?

So many pictures it’s like you’re living in my eyes!

It’s been sort of rainy in Florence, but I don’t mind because a) I have puddle-resistant and hip Converse, which all Italians covet greatly, b) it’s made it cooler, and c) I am the proud owner of one of these:

All classy Florentines wish they had one.

Yes, that IS the Duomo. Cheesy? Duh. Brilliant? Clearly.

Rain I can handle.  It would take a hurricane, or probably just a strong gust of wind, to crush my Duomo and take me off the streets.  But earthquakes? Those I cannot handle, as I learned during my first one last night.  It was so subtle that many people, including my roommate, didn’t even notice it.  I did notice it, and not it in a calm or collected manner.  You know how I react to stray hairs on me or in a shower? Multiply that by 100.

But I’m trying not to let a crippling fear of the earth splitting apart beneath me get in the way of real life, so here’s some other stuff I’ve (bravely) been up to:

Cooking class where we made gnocchi (from scratch!), veal sauce, and tiramisu (tough)! YUM

Hunting for Florence's best gelato- Vivoli and Gelateria de' Medici are tied

How I spend my lunch breaks during school. How pretty is my bruschetta??

I intentionally picked all food pictures because those will make you guys most jealous, but mostly because pictures of us in class or walking all the time and earning our feasts aren’t as cute.

During those gaps of time between meals called real life, I’m trying really hard to learn Italian so I can chat up hot Italian men feel a little less helpless doing things like grocery shopping or, well, anything.  Unfortunately, our class in school is moving at a positively glacial pace — I’ve learned more from those language tapes they play in restaurant bathrooms than I have from this stupid class!  Today I decided to take matters into my own hands with two moves to improve my Italian, one uncharacteristically intrepid and the other exactly the sort of stupid shenanigans you’d expect from me:

• Bold- I’m volunteering with Florence’s Festa della Creativita to translate/edit the plaques next to the visual exhibits into English.  I’m really excited about this! It’s supposed to be one of the coolest things that happens in Florence and everyone I’ve met around there is really nice and welcoming.
• Typical- As a little kid, I learned to read by working my way through Calvin and Hobbes anthologies.  Today I saw a book of Peanuts cartoons in Italian in a bookstore and decided to see if the trick would work a few years later with Italian… at the very least it will make me adopt a more adorably cynical and practical joke-prone tone.

Fun weekend coming up! Going to Elba for some Napoleon history and Mediterranean beauty, Pisa for shoddy tower engineering, and Chianti for a wine festival!

Mingling with the natives

First things first: Patti Smith was EXCELLENT.  She performed in Piazza di Santa Croce, which is my favorite piazza and she had everyone singing and dancing along like we were old friends.  Florentines seem to love Patti Smith as much as Germans love David Hasselhoff!  (I tried to explain the American joke about Germans and David Hasselhoff to our Italian roommate, but he didn’t think it was funny because “Gerrrrrmans are SO wee-eerd. I don’t even talk about them.”)  I took all these great pictures at Patti Smith, one of which was totally perfect for a cute new prof pic on facebook (don’t laugh. you do that too), but there was some sort miscommunication between me and iPhoto and that section of pictures got deleted.

Our Italian roommate has been giving us a hard time for our horrible American-ness and basically not being Italian, so this weekend we all went out to try and act/look more like the natives.  Some of my friends and I went to the market at San Lorenzo and tried to buy chic Italian girl costumes.  We bought some cool scarves and I got this ferociously awesome purse that Chiara, one of the other Italians, specifically said she liked! Why is that such a huge deal? Well, I like to think of Chiara as what I could be if I had reached my existence’s full potential. We’re similar, but she’s like the next model up. Her name is the Italian version of mine, she has a master’s in European history, she is unbelievably stylish, she sports stilettos 24/7 on these cobblestone roads, and she speaks like 4 languages.  Drew, the lone dude (and dude really is the perfect word for him) on our trip, really blew all of us out of the water in terms of assimilation efforts.  Yesterday he walked into a salon and asked for “a real Italian haircut.” Bold, right? He went from frat boy shaggy hair to flamboyant 12 year old in about 30 minutes.  As he said, “At least it was cheap…” Apparently only real Italian men can pull of fringe bangs and that much hair gel. Drew’s face looked like this pretty much the whole time:

First time with a blowdryer. Pleae note the terror.

I want to be like a real Italian and get a bike!  My lazy American feet are going to be bloody stumps by December.  We tried busing it around the city, but they’re full of angry old ladies who hit people with canes to make a path off the bus and sneaky pickpockets.  People on bikes seem a lot happier than us schmucks hoofing it over the cobblestones.  I might start saving up…

Off to do my homework! Our Italian Cultural History professor said if had interesting things to say tomorrow she would tell us the story of how she joined a neighborhood gang in Siena. I know, right?

Aren’t lists supposed to be concise? Sorry…

Good:

1. Today (Wednesday) is academic Friday – no class for the rest of the week!
2. the temperature. All I need is a scarf and I look so chic and Italian (or so I tell myself) that people have started asking me for directions and the time like I’m some knowing local.
3. The boys of Belfiore are making dinner for us tonight!

Better:

1. I’m getting better at Italian by the day! Read: I no longer blanch when forced to have verbal interactions, instead I play it cool by stammering out some Italian until they take pity on me and speak fluent English back at me…
2. Meeting lots of cool people who are also studying abroad in Florence.  Everyone in the Vanderbilt program is great, but it’s nice to have other people to talk to or hang out with for four months.  Especially when those other people are so interesting and friendly AND share my weird fascination with the preposterous graffiti taggers* around Florence.

Best:

1. Going to dance barefoot in Piazza Santa Croce with Patti Smith and some friends tomorrow night!
2. Festa della Rificolona was a million times more fun than I ever could have anticipated! There were cute kids with homemade lanterns everywhere (dangerous?) and I’m always a sucker for a parade.
3. After the lantern parade, some friends and I stumbled across a free rock concert happening in Oltrarno (literally the “other side” of the Arno, but really just a hip neighborhood).  This is my life here: meeting cool new friends, finding a free concert in a beautiful piazza, and cheap wine to keep me warm is par for the course on any old Monday night.
   

   Hundreds of kids with fiery lanterns in a crowded piazza=FUN.

4. My classes are all really interesting! Our Italian language professor is this sassy old lady who seems to have chosen this job as more of a hobby than a profession, I learned more in one session of Italian Cultural History than I have in whole semesters, my Medici class is SO COOL, and Renaissance Art and Architecture is sort of scarily overwhelming but the Dutch professor is funny.

Cool things coming up:

1. Patti Smith
2. Probably taking my first trip next weekend! I want to go to Lecce in the south, or really in the heel of the boot, while it’s still warm and see (sort of) where our family is from. Plus Lecce is called “the Florence of the south” because it’s supposed to be so beautiful, fun and Baroque-d out just like Florence is Renaissance Disneyland.
3. Trying Lauren Krensky’s gelato recommendation this weekend after trekking up to Piazzale Michelangelo for “the most beautiful view of Florence ever!”

* WordPress wouldn’t let me make a 2b, so I’m taking some grammatical and organizational liberties and making a sub-list here instead (obviously pictures will come soon):

Top 5 Florence graffiti tags:

1. Darth Vader stencil. This is my favorite one because the person clearly has a stencil, time, and stealth in great supply. Plus I love secretly love Star Wars, even when it’s defacing historical spots. Darth Vader glares at you all along the Arno, which is impressive because that’s a really heavily trafficked area.
2. YOGURT. That’s all it says, and it covers the city.  I like to think it’s Jamie Lee Curtis taking her message about digestive health to the streets.
3. Michael Jackson tributes. Florentines must really love MJ, because we see tons of glittery gloves, dancing silhouettes and even the occasional “MICHAEL (often amusingly misspelled as “MICHELE”) JACKSON IS STILL KING.”
4. X AMA X. Call me a romantic, but I think nothing says true love like “Francesco ama Maria” spray painted on a dumpster.
5. OGS. Who knows what it stands for? More important than the meaning of the acronym is the presentation: the letters are cleverly written in a distorted font that gives the overall impression of a penis. Classy, right?

The password is “American hangout”

You know how people always say, “oh it’s SO easy to travel around Europe – it’s just so darn cheap and fast!” like Europe is a shopping mall and the countries are fancy boutiques constantly holding epic sales for you to breeze through and pick up a bunch of fancy trinkets?  Well those people are middle aged and have 401(k) plans and luxury sedans.  They know about as much about what’s cheap as they do about how to work TV remotes.  I speak as a college kid grappling with midterms and budgets when I say Europe is actually rather expensive and time-consuming to place to travel around.

Don’t let anyone tell you to use Ryanair or Easyjet. Any cost savings on those airfares are totally negated by paying to transport yourself to and from the few and obscure airports they serve.  Trains are probably the best bet, except it’s hard to get away for a weekend when you’ll spend 17 of 48 hours traveling.  My roommates and I had planned all these fantastic trips, but then we had our dreams shattered during post-breakfast travel research.  I’d rather eat every day than see Greece, it turns out.

Our travel buzzkill would have spoiled the whole day if we hadn’t remembered the ultimate solution to all problems in Italy: gelato! And I did the whole transaction in Italian, like a boss. “Voglio un coppetta de crema di Medici, perfavore.” Most important phrase I’ve learned.

Last night we went to the fabled piranha-infested discotheque, AKA Space Electronica. Family portrait before we left:

Still optimistic about Space Electronica

Frankly, the name should have been our first clue that it may have been overhyped.  Turns out Space Electronica is one part karaoke club, one part techno sweatfest.  And not in an authentic Italian way. We heard 2 Bon Jovi songs on being wailed by someone with a midwestern accent.  And the “piranhas” (many of which bore a striking resemblance to koi) were just in a little tank under the bar.

People in our group are really heartbroken there isn’t a more lively club scene here. I’m heartbroken we keep ending up in seizure-inducing strobe lit pits filled with groping Italians and other Americans until 3 am. The emerging reality is that American students are the only people interested in paying a cover charge to listen to techno versions of Soulja Boy.  Maybe it’s just my inner Italian coming out, but I’m way more into the cheap, quiet, and soothingly lit wine bar scene our Italian hosts keep showing us.  (VITAL SIDENOTE: Everyone here can say my last name! They say it with flourish! I love it!)

Classes start tomorrow! I’m so excited! Mondays are Italian Language and Italian Culture and History.

I might be a little disappointed that we spent 6 euros for koi and Soulja Boy this weekend instead of ambiance and bottle of wine, but what’s really tragic is that I missed this priceless opportunity to attend Florence’s International Cat Convention:

"Bring YOUR OWN CAT!!"

Totally my scene. Can’t believe I missed this chance to meet Florentines who share my zest for cats!

Going to the Festa Della Rificolona tomorrow night!