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.

They didn't let me vote this time around

Italy just had a huge election. Silvio Berlusconi won by a large margin. Berlusconi is famous as Italy's richest man, owner of many TV stations, defendant against many fraud charges, and patient to many plastic surgeons. Basically he is a one man representation of modern Italian society. No one actually seems to like him, but somehow he managed to get 20 million votes or so. The one thing I am impressed about is that Italy really knows how to get an election done. In less than three months Italy went through an entire election cycle. It took less than three months to finish nominations, campaigning, having the election, and putting the winner in office. The US could learn a thing or two on the election front. I haven't heard much about Obama vs. Hilary recently. I assume everyone is sick of the whole thing.

Italy has about a million political parties from communist to fascist. This is a sign showing just some of the bigger parties.

Nostalgiaville, USA

So lately, I've been feeling nostalgic. Maybe you would call it home-sickness, but I'd rather call it nostalgia because it sounds less pathetic. Maybe I've been listening to too many sad country songs. I've found that no other type of music captures America like a sad country song. Please feel free to send me a list of your favorite sad country songs, I always need new recommendations. Here's a quick top 5 the moment. If I could make you a mix tape, I would.

1.Old Man - Neil Young
2.First Day of My Life – Bright Eyes
3.Doreen – Old 97's
4.New Madrid – Uncle Tupelo
5.Must've Had Your Reasons – Yonder Mountain String Band

Message: If you have been reading this journal but not sending me emails, you should send me a message (or Wint-o-green mints or something) and tell me what's up with you. I'm going to go ahead and call it your duty by reason of some sort of blog social bargain. Warning: if you don't contact me, I'll accuse you of internet stalking.

nick-speiser@utulsa.edu

Correggio Jazz

Correggio Jazz Festival

Last Sunday a couple of us went to the Correggio Jazz Festival to see Medeski Martin & Wood play. MMW is by far my favorite jazz band and probably my favorite band to see live. I was very excited when I found out that one of their european dates was only a few hours from me in Italy. The show was in a really fancy horseshoe shaped opera theater which was a bit of a change from seeing them at rock clubs in the US. The show was fantastic; I couldn't have been happier with it. The whole band was in top form and I had a great view from our box seats(!). I'm glad they didn't hold back because they were in a classy joint. As the show went on things got pretty rockin and funky. They encored with covers of Mercy Mercy Mercy and Hey Joe. It was also good to meet a couple Italian mmw fans.

Correggio is in the same region as Ferrara, so it shouldn't be too hard to travel there, right? Wrong. There's no train station there and no buses run at midnight on Sundays. It took us 5 hours to get home. Personally, I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday evening.

This is the king's box in Teatro Asioli
We sat in a box on the first level
Me and Meredith. I have a beard again.MMW wailing

Ferrara Jazz

Ferrara has a really great jazz club that I have been attending regularly as of late. It's free on every Monday, so it's a good start for the week. The club is located in the weirdest little round medieval building that is built into the city walls. Whoever saw this building and thought, “Hey, we should put a jazz club here and let people in for free,” is a genius, and I'd like to shake his hand. The bands are always different, sometimes local musicians and sometimes touring bands. Usually the music is really good. Last monday it was a band led by trombone and guitar, the week before it was a trumpet trio. One band was really bizarre. They were called Spaghetti Swing and had a chef cook onstage while the band played. The chef would flip the food, light stuff on fire, put a microphone up to sizzling sausage, and other such things. There was also a girl in a swishy white dress who at first seemed like a singer, but really she was just a glorified waitress to serve the food to the crowd and dance. She was the valletta of the band(A valletta is the beautiful female assistant on every Italian tv program. Something like 75% of female teenagers' top career choice is to be a valletta.). Spaghetti Swing also did a little bit of drama when the valletta pulled out a (fake) gun and shot the rest of the band. Everybody fell down on the stage and the show ended (like dying on the ice?). It was weird. Usually the bands have more dignity and “cool” than Spaghetti Swing.

Anyway, the jazz club is really cool and I wish it would come back to the US with me.

Jazz Club Ferrara

Grammar structures and other delights

Superlatives
One of the things I love about the Italian language is the ability to make superlatives out of every word. For example, you can add -issimo to just about any word to make it stronger. You can even turn a superlative like “sempre”, which means “always”, into a super-superlative: semprissimo!

This does lead to some interesting situations when a regular adjective is just not enough. In a way, it is offensive to a beautiful girl if you merely describe her as “bella”. You have to at least call her “bellissima” or, preferably, go one step further with “la piu bellissima” or you can even double up and say “bellissimissima” (this is rare, and sounds ridiculous to my ear).

Boh.
Sometimes in English, instead of saying, “I don't know,” a person will make a sound derived from that phrase and shrug their shoulders. I hope you know the sound that I mean. The Italian version of this sound is in no way related to the actual phrase for “I don't know” which is “non lo so”. Instead, the Italian sound is made with a slow puffing of the cheeks that emits the low sound of “Boh.” It is occasionally repeated over and over, making a motor boat sound, which I cannot help but laugh at. When I return to the states, don't be surprised if I say “Boh” to you; I don't know what's going on over there.