Where do we go from here?

On Thursday I finished my last exam of college. If I were in Tulsa I would have gone to graduation on Saturday. Instead I we had a barbecue at my house here in Italy. I'm going to go ahead and call that a good trade off (n.b. Italian barbecue sauce (salsa barbecue) is just spicy tomato sauce).

Everything is wrapping up here in Ferrara and it's kind of sad. My plans for the next few weeks are as follows. On May 15, Ben(a good friend from TU) is arriving in Ferrara and we are going to travel around together for the next couple weeks. Our planned itinerary is as follows: Ferrara to Rome to Cinque Terre to Madrid to Barcelona(where we will meet up with a couple other friends from TU for a few days) to Munich to Vienna. Ben will fly out of Vienna on June 7 and I will return to Ferrara to pick up my enormous bag. I leave Italy on June 8 from Venice and will arrive that evening in St. Louis. During these travels I probably won't be posting anything here. Just ask me in person to recount the last couple weeks because I'll be home soon.

During orientation in January we did an exercise where we wrote down goals for the semester. I found that piece of paper the other day and it made me reflect on the past couple months. I think I succeeded pretty well on my goals, but we'll have to wait awhile to see the lasting effects of this place.

Right now it's hard for me to think of my future outside of Ferrara. I think I'm ready to come home, but it breaks my heart to be leaving Ferrara and all the people I've met here.

Bassano del Grappa

A week ago on Sunday I went with Marco and Cristina to Cristina's home town of Bassano del Grappa. Bassano is located at the base of the foothills of the Alps and is quite beautiful. We came to celebrate Cristina's mother's birthday. Marco and I drove two hours north into the Veneto region and had very pleasant conversation the whole time. The whole day was very italian intensive for me, especially the drive with Marco because we were alone in a car together with no music. We met up with Cristina (who had gone the day before) and the rest of her family, consisting of mom Paola, dad Alessandro, brother, and brother's wife and 3 year old daughter, Chiara. I successfully read one of Chiara's books, although it did help that I already knew the story of the ugly duckling.

We had one of the best lunches ever at a agriturismo place in Bassano. We lunched on typical food from the region which was all delicious. The appetizer was typical sausages from the Veneto, and the sausages of Veneto rank among my favorites(which also include the spicy calabrian sausage). I had a special type of pasta with ragu for my first course and rabbit for my second course. For our contorno we had polenta and other assorted vegetable dishes. We started desert with chocolate cake (tenerina) and finished with frutta sotto grappa (fruit soaked in grappa). Then came the coffee and the the only grappa I've ever had that didn't taste like gasoline. A word on grappa: Grappa is a vodka type drink distilled from the skins of grapes. Grappa was first brewed in Bassano and it takes it's name from the mountain that overlooks Bassano. The grappa was so smooth and quite tasty, much better than the 5 euro bottle I bought in Rome, which was undrinkable according to me.

Sometime during the meal Chiara asked me to go play with her outside on the swings, which was fun. While swinging I had a nice conversation with Chiara's mother(I am blanking on her name, mi dispiace molto). Sometimes I have trouble talking to new people, but this particular conversation went very smoothly. I put conversations like this on my list of victories in Italy.

In the afternoon Marco, Cristina and I went to a small town called Marostica and climbed up to the castle at the top of the town. They just don't make castles like that in the US. Later Cristina gave me a guided tour all over the city center of Bassano, where they were gearing up for a special festival for the Alpini, who are a military brigade native to this part of the country. Whenever I come back to Italy, Bassano will on my list of places to spend more time.

Me overlooking Marostica

Part of the castle

Marco and Cristina

Bassano, from the Nuovo Ponte Vecchio or the New Old Bridge. The Americans destroyed the original during WWII. Non e' colpa mia!

Palio

Ferrara has a medieval festival called palio where eight neighborhoods compete against each other in such events as flag throwing, horse racing, donkey racing, and people racing. I saw the flag throwing event yesterday. Here are some pictures. When I get back you should ask me about the intense rivalries between the teams (contrade).

Gloating over the second place team

This is the second place team. This guy is looking at the guy from the previous picture. Note the guy in the background giving the finger to the San Giacomo contrada. San Giacomo is the Yankees of the palio.

This is italian masculinity, ferrara style

This guy is supposedly the best flag thrower in the world. He can do five flags at once.

They can hold and throw the flags with their legs.

Festival di Aquiloni

On Sunday I went to Ferrara's 29th Annual International Kite Festival. It was incredible. This festival embraced any wind-oriented activity, whether it be kites, frisbees, bubbles, windmills, balloons, etc. There were hundreds of people with kites, from the simple triangular kite to enormous fabric creations that somehow managed to get airborn. The sun was shining, but, unfortunately, the wind was not extremely strong, so the bigger kites mostly stayed on the ground. I found it interesting that there is an entire genre of kites that are shaped like umbrellas. The festival was kind of like a hippie music festival, but without the alcohol, rocknroll, and stoned wookies. It kind of made me want to buy a kite and become an aquilonista.

Facciamo fuoco

Last week I skipped a few classes and went to Budapest, Prague, and Vienna with three friends: Maddie, Tony, and Liz. The italian phrase for 'skipping class' is 'making fire'(fare fuoco), if you're interested in that sort of thing.

First: Budapest.

After 12 hours on a train and about three hours of sleep we arrived in Budapest on Tuesday morning. We had change over some money, which is a big hassle. It's also confusing because I have no idea if 1000 florints is a good price for a sandwich or not. We saw various sights around the city, my favorite being the Gellert Citadel which is on the Buda side of the Danube. Another favorite thing was walking down “Hungary's grandest boulevard” to Hero's Square. The architecture was neat. All three cities we visited had a serious Old Europe feel about them. We packed up our bags and jumped on a train for Prague.

Hero's Square

Prague

Our train ride to Prague was one of the most pleasant experiences I've had recently. The Hungarian/Slovakian/Czech countryside was beautiful, the train carriage very comfortable, and the companionship delightful. I'm not exactly sure why I liked Prague so much, but I did. Food and beverage were cheap. The city is beautiful. We climbed a big tower because we like to get on top of things. There was a park with a giant metronome. Maddie ordered 1300 grams of pork for dinner. I like dumplings. I have a new favorite cookie: Diskos! At the restaurant they apologized that the only seating they had left was in the non-smoking section. Half a liter of good beer is only a dollar. I shot the moon twice in one game. There were a million Italian tourists. Anyway, it was a good time. Then we rode a bus to Austria for 9 euros.

Tony, Liz, Maddie, Me

Vienna

In Vienna we had a really cool hostel in the hills outside the city. We ate well, as usual. Liz managed to attract the police's attention at Parliament. The modern art museum reminded me how stupid modern art can be sometimes.

Can you get more Austrian than wearing that hat and conducting music by Strauss inside the Habsburg palace?

na na na na hey hey hey Forza Spal

I went to a soccer (calcio) match last sunday here in Ferrara. It was Ferrara's team versus some no name town called Sansovino. Ferrara's team is called Spal. My favorite soccer team name is Inter, which is definitely not a word, just a prefix. We got tickets in the hooligan section of the stadium, Curva Ovest(the western curve). The whole game everybody chanted and clapped and sang along to some very colorful cheers. The other team scored in the 90th minute to tie the game and everybody went crazy, screaming obscenities, threats, etc. The game ended in a tie (2-2) which our side was not happy with because we were so close to winning. This soccer match was some of the best people watching I've done here in Italy. Everyone is so emotional; sometimes they scream ad alta voce and sometimes they choose to be silent and only use hand gestures(which, by the way, really is an equally effective means of communication in this country).

N.B. When I return, not only will I speak half in Italian to you, but the other half will all be hand gestures. Prepare yourself.

My lies are always wishes

Questions to consider:
1.Why did I want to come to Italy in the first place?
2.Why did I want to learn Italian in the first place?
3.How can I continue learning Italian?
4.Do I want to continue learning Italian?
5.Why would I want to continue learning Italian?
6.What's the point of learning Italian?

Sometimes people ask me why I am studying Italian. I can't even answer that question in english, much less in Italian, so I usually just say “I love Italy.” While that statement is mostly true, it doesn't answer the question. When speaking in Italian, I lie on a regular basis just so that I have something to say.


ps. Name the song I quoted in the subject line and maybe I'll bring you something special.