Tuesday, January 27, 2009

A Bologna...In the Rain

On Saturday I went to Bologna with the group. It rained all day, and I had no umbrella so I wore one of my scarves wrapped over my head like a nun or an old woman. We went to the cathedral and the municipal buildings, most of which still had their original frescos from the 1500s. It occurred to me that Bologna was lucky that Fascism did not erase their beautiful buildings and art.

I did not know that Bologna used to have over twenty brick towers, like San Gimignano in Toscana. It’s like other cities in Italy, founded by the Romans or the Etruscans and inhabited ever since. We climbed the taller of the only two towers that remain, and it is taller than almost any in the whole country. I took pictures, but it has plaques inside it that tell you exactly how high up you are. There is one that says, “55 meters. Leaning Tower of Pisa.” You then continue up about another 40 meters or so, and then you can see the whole city.

After everything, we met in the main piazza and the people who run the CIEE program took us back to the bus. The rain had really picked up, and we were walking along and talking because we were tired. Suddenly Ricardo (one of the organizers) started telling us to speed up, go faster, go faster…until we were literally running through the slippery streets and past the people dressed in fine clothing to the bus. As we were crossing the street to get on it, I looked to my right and saw tons of police lights, and the Caribineri (military branch of the police) filling the street. They hurried us onto the bus and told us to sit, because we were leaving right then.

It turns out there was a huge protest moving our way. All the people were yelling and carrying on, and we had to take the long way out of the city because they had blocked the main road. They were protesting the war in Gaza. And it occurred to me that people here have a very different view of war than people in the US do.

Right now, I am feeling the very heavy weight of the way they see and remember war on my heart. In Northern Italy there were whole cities flattened, like in other parts of Europe. In fact, the university at Bologna, which is the oldest in the Western World (yes, there were universities in the Middle East and Africa and Asia long before there were in Europe), was hit directly with a bomb in 1944. The anatomy room, which was used for dissections and contributed to the first modern knowledge of the human body, was destroyed. They have rebuilt it, but it was leveled.

I had been walking all day and feeling sicker and sicker, and we were about to all meet to go back home to Ferrara. I was with two other girls in the main square, and there was a huge memorial to the people who fought from 1943 to 1945 for the Italian resistance in Bologna. There was an entire wall, full of pictures and names…thousands. People who laid down their lives to stand up to Nazism. Men, women, children. A man who had Down’s Syndrome. Whole families, their names erased from future generations. Most of the pictures were high school graduation portraits, posed and not particularly notable. There were two pictures of two sisters side by side, and I noticed the quiet, unwavering stare they both gave in their portraits. It was like they were saying, “Yes. We are here. And we are not afraid.”

I don’t know the stories that led to their deaths, but I would like to believe that they were trying to hasten the war’s end. There was a photo of a man, tied to a roadsign. He was dead, and above his head was a sign that said he was an anti-German spy. That’s the kind of thing that I haven’t seen in the States, because I think we forget the realities of war. Because we haven’t had one on our own soil in a very long time, I believe that we feel collectively that war is something very distant. In Vietnam, in Iraq, in the Gulf…never in our own towns or our own lives. Or, we think that war is something we can wage on problems, like drugs or terrorism.

Tons of people were milling around in the piazza: talking, laughing, and carrying on with their lives. I would think that this was exactly what the people whose pictures are on the wall would have wanted for their city, sixty years after the war. Peaceful, prosperous, rebuilt, and above all compassionate for the wars that still exist in the world today. An old woman with a scarf over her head, like I had mine, walked past me. She seemed to be a reminder that people did go on with their lives, even though they remember the times that people were being killed for standing up to a seemingly insurmountable foe.

As we were driving to the airport before I left, my dad was talking about how I would be the first person in our family to spend this much time away from the States since the Korean War. I keep thinking about Uncle Joe, and how he was here when the war had flattened everything. I told Carmen that he was in Paris when the Allies freed the city, and that he helped liberate Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp. She looked at me and said, “Ah. Then he was a hero.” And he definitely was.

Basically, I feel the weight of the war itself on me tonight. There is always the question, “What would I have done, in the same situation?” I’d like to think that I would have been brave and fought, and stood up for those that had no voice. Of course, you can tell yourself that you would act courageously and that you would not fall victim to the persuasion of evil people…but you do not know it would not happen.

And what was on the TV when I got home? Schindler’s list.
Tonight a prayer for all of us, and that we may be given strength to do the right thing. And that we may always remember that those who are fallen were once alive and breathing, just like us.

“And God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes, and their shall be no more death; neither suffering nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away…” –Revelations 21:4

Here is the link to the photos:

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=10231884#/album.php?aid=2357482&id=10231884

Monday, January 26, 2009

Photos!

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=41551939&l=c899b&id=10231884

That's the link to my first facebook photo album, in case anyone could not see them.

Friday, January 23, 2009

And you are sitting right where Copernicus used to sit...

There is a big vote in the Italian Senate tonight, and I am watching the equivalent of CSPAN. I don’t understand everything because it is a lot of rhetoric and words meant to make oneself sound smart. Think how hard it would be to try to learn English from the proceedings of the House of Representatives in t he USA, and you will know how I feel. I think that it’s cool that I was right there on the Senate floor in Roma two summers ago for my tour.

I want to be able to talk about world politics with people, especially here because the Italian political system is so confusing and has so much history. Hardly anything ever gets done, and it’s a coalition government with many different parties and even those that are not recognized by the State. Like the Anarchists, of whom there are a ton at Ferrara’s University. A lot of them have dreadlocks down past their butts, and they hand out pamphlets about Gaza and write “Fasci Morti” (“Dead fascists”) on the walls of the school. They are nice though, and their hair makes me feel at home.

TV here (which the Italians call “la Tee-Voo) is ridiculous most of the time. I am going to try to take videos so that I can post them and you can all see just how weird it is. There are so many shows like American Idol here, and some of them involve just one person or teams of competitors. All have judges that are very strange to watch (for instance last night, I watched a show with a huge transvestite as one of the judges. S/he was wearing the biggest wig I have ever seen outside of a picture of Louis XIV of France or something. It was awesome.

I wish DD was here to watch the TV with me, because we always laugh at people who dance and sing ridiculously and every show (even ones that have nothing to do with song or dance) has random professional dancers who come out and dance whenever something is going on. Yesterday there were a bunch on the show with the transvestite judge who were men wearing tiny tiny spandex shorts and undulating around on the floor. I could not stop laughing.

Of course, the biggest show here is GrandeFratello (Big Brother). This is a perfect example of how women on Italian TV always dress up and put on tons of makeup. If you’ve ever seen the Spanish-language news shows in the USA, you know exactly what I mean. Here though, many of the famous personalities have had a lot of plastic surgery. The girls on Grande Fratello all have fake breasts, and it’s like the surgeon didn’t even try to make them look normal. Maybe that’s the point, like a status symbol to show that you had enough money to buy fake boobs. They shock me every time I see them though.

Carmen, my hostess is really nice. She is very patient with me because I am still struggling with my Italian on a moment by moment basis. I’m getting closer to stringing sentences together, but I almost always conjugate the verbs wrong and have to pause and sigh and hope they know what I was trying to say. Yesterday morning she told me that my perfume smells like the Italian equivalent of Yankee Candle. Haha! She also makes my food and gives me stuff for my room like rugs, and she even does my laundry!

I have a really bad cold that came on yesterday, and Carmen is sick too. She brought me some hot milk with honey in it and Nesquik, to make me feel better. Leo, her dog, is a hilarious little guy. He growls at Great Danes (he is tiny), but he is terrified of houseflies. He trembles and hides from them until you open a door, and then he flees the room! I’ve never seen anything like it.

I have a bike now, and it is a piece. I like it though, because it’s so much faster than walking. My brakes don’t really work, especially when it is raining, and it doesn’t have shocks. Keep in mind that just about every street in Ferrara is cobblestone. My bici (bike) makes a hellacious noise when I ride over the cobblestones, and I always feel like I’m waking people up since I’m rolling along their street at 7 AM with my bike going BANG-bangitty-bangitty-bang-bang-bangitty-EHRT (brakes squeaking). Also you have to ride very slowly here, since there are cars everywhere, and it’s hard to keep up enough speed to balance.

Today I almost ate it hardcore riding down the street in front of one of the university buildings today. I had to put my foot down and bounce off the curb, and an Italian guy laughed at me while he rode past me, gliding by on his not-POS bike. I find it really hard to steer and balance on my bike, and of course I always have my backpack on and that sucks for balancing too.

Yesterday I was incredibly hungry, and sense I haven’t been eating anything during the day, I went Birdisi, a bar that the Guiness Book of world records recognizes as the oldest wine bar in all of the world!!! How did I not know it was here in Ferrara?! It’s awesome. I had cappelaci (I’m not sure of the spelling) which are the pasta from Ferrara. They are shaped like little hats and are filled with pumpkin and served with a meat sauce. It’s seriously like eating pumpkin pie pasta. And Birdisi has the best I’ve had so far.

No one knows how old the wine bar actually is. The first mention of it is in a document in 1435, but by then it was already popular and famous in the surrounding areas. Tons of famous people used to frequent it, like Ariosto (a local writer), Rosetti (a famous architect), and the most famous of all, Nicolas COPERNICUS!!! In the 1970s, Pope John Paul II went there to commemorate the 400th birthday of the astronomer. Craziness!

I am doing well. I already feel like Carmen’s house is homey and nice, and I like it a lot. Tomorrow we are going to Bologna. Should be fun! I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. I learned that you say "Oh cavolo!" to say "Oh crap!". Cavolo is "Cabbage". Haha!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Where do I live?

I am at my homestay now and I am really excited!! I have a hostess who is named Carmen who has a dog named Leo. He is really cute. There is another girl from the States who is going to be living here, whose name is Laura. My room is huge! I think it is bigger than my room at home, and has really pretty orange curtains on the windows.

When we arrived on Saturday, Carmen was babysitting her niece and nephew, Alfonso and Marisola. He is 15 and she is two and four months. Nobody really speaks English at all, and I am really lucky to have Laura to help since she can speak pretty well. I understand almost everything, but it was like I was mute and couldn't answer.

We came in and we were shown our rooms and asked to unpack everything from our bags. I even have a couple shelves for my shoes! I have a table and a couch in my room, and even a TV (way different from the last time I was in Italy when I had nothing at all). DD will be happy to know that there is even a Turner Classic Movies in Italian channel!!

The housing I am staying at is really nice. There is even a backyard! I was confused as to where in the city we are exactly and I keep getting lost every day, but it gets easier. The Archeological Museum is about a block away, which is hilarious because I really wanted to go there. I need to go out of the house and explore a bit to get my bearings.

I spent a bunch of time with Carmen and everyone, and after about seven hours I felt like I had smoke coming out of my ears from trying to understand. I keep thinking I’m going to make a huge faux pas of some kind and really embarrass myself, and to be honest after all the time spent trying to understand, in a house I don’t know, and a new language, and feeling awkward beyond belief…I pretty much was trying to stave off a panic attack before bed. The following days have been much better. Carmen is really nice and she laughs that I understand better than she thought I did and I have never taking an Italian class. She says that in a month me and Laura will be speaking fluently-ish.

I am constantly lost here. The day before yesterday, I had to go with a friend to his homestay and his host mom had to show me how to get home. I keep thinking, "Where do I live? I don't know how to get there and all the buildings are in the way!!" But I'm learning.

I am cold all the time, as there isn’t any central heating in Italy. They see it as not only a hassle to install, but also a waste of energy and money. They are probably right, but I sometimes feel like I am camping! I have to wear long sleeves to bed and bury myself under the covers. I think I’m just going to have to deal with the cold. This is yet another example of Italy being energy efficient without even trying, and how they have been forever and ever. I took a shower a couple days ago and it was one of the coldest experiences of my life. Today I'm going to buy a hot water bottle so I don't freeze to death.I'm getting used to it, piano piano (step by step).

I think this is going to be a lot harder than I thought. I am hungry ALL of the time, because people eat a lot less here, and my language skills are kind of bad, even though they get better every day. I am SO much bigger (tall and wide wise) than most of the women here, which is also hard since I’m seriously conspicuously blonde and so people stare.

But I guess that if it’s really hard, I will grow a lot. It will get easier I am sure! I really like Italy and I really like the people and the food and the buildings. We have class for four hours a day, all in Italian, and I have never had so much homework for one class! Seriously, like 10 exercises a night or more. And then, when I go home for dinner, I have another "class" with my hostess because I have to speak at home and learn there too. I always wanted to be immersed in another language, because I know this is how you learn it, but IT IS HARD. Do not underestimate how humbling learning a new language is.

I walk around in a constant state of half-faintingness from low blood sugar. I have decided to eat chocolate during class to avoid this, but I don't really eat breakfast or lunch. I walk everywhere (probably 6-7 miles a day) and so I think I'm going to lose a bunch of weight here. I feel like my stomach is constantly eating itself. Today I've eaten a tiny piece of crunchy bread with marmelade, and a bar of chocolate. Oh yeah and a shot of espresso. I feel dizzy.

Now I have to leave to go to the police station and apply for my permesso di sogiorno (permit to stay in the country). I'd love to have emails from everyone!! Cmonroe161@gmail.com.

Love you all!

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Things you notice in transit

When you go from place to place, especially internationally, things tend to get interesting. I've been on the road 24 hours and now, from my vantage point in my hotel in Ferrara, I want to share a couple of the weird little things that have happened so far.

-I sat on the flight from Denver next to a woman who was also named Coleen

-I encountered my first "Euro-trash" teenager as soon as I stepped up to the gate at DIA

-Every annoucement is in a language that is confusing because it kinda sounds like English but isn't, like German. Mach Schnell!

-Real German beer is really good. Also every beer calls itself the king of beers.

-Janitors in Frankfurt's airport apparently do not care if they are following you into the bathroom of the opposite gender, and your looks of confusion do nothing to stop him.

-Ordering a bottle of champagne and putting it on the tab of the school is perfectly right, as is not asking beforehand and not offering it to all at the table

-Blisters are as inevitable as walking 15 km through winding airport terminals to get to your connecting flight