So. Venice was over a week ago, and in that week, I have accomplished much.

Visited Siena and Monteriggioni. Siena is awesome… something like Florence in terms of size, but without the tourists. And actually, the tourists in Florence aren’t so bad. Anyway, Siena was totally sweet. We found this awesome Trattoria Papei place, and I got rabbit sauce pasta. Sweet. (oh by the way, I’ve taken something like 300 pictures so far, so I’ll have plenty of stuff to show everyone when I get back.. plus when I get to Rome we have a computer lab so hopefully I’ll be able to upload some pictures then. I have some fantastic ones). Then, we went and got the second best Gelatto I’ve had here so far. The first best is at this little place by the Arnot, right next to the Ponte Vecchio. I get pistachio and chocolate almost every time I go there.. I’m not usually a creature of habit, but then again, the pistachio there is a gift from God himself, so I figure its ok not to branch out constantly. Their hazelnut is ridiculously good too. Anyway. After this gelatto, we went on a tour of Siena, which was pretty cool, because it showed off the Duomo, which is gorgeous. (There are, by the way, Duomos all over the place. They are all made with green and pink marble, and they all have this striped look… they are all ridiculously big, too).

On the subject of gelatto, our program did a Gelatto tasting trip, where they took anybody from the program that wanted to around to three places in the city, getting us double scoops of whatever we wanted at each place. Naturally, when we came back from the trip anybody who hadn’t gone on the trip got made fun of mercilessly for days. Best gita (field trip) we’ve done yet.

I’m definitely starting to miss home a bit. Being in a foreign country is great, but there are minor drawbacks that are unfortunate sometimes. Food portions are smaller, which is great… but then again, I MISS large quantities of food. Cover charges are wierd.. every time you sit down at a restaurant you are usually smacked with a 1.50 cover per person. Water costs in the vicinity of 1.80 for a large bottle, and you can usually get glasses of wine for around 1.50 if everyone at the table goes in on a bottle. Its cool, but if you think about it, thats 4.50 worth of charges on top of most meals. Anyhoo. Oh, and I’m starting to get sick of Chianti. You really have to drink it with steak, and we’re not doign so much steak-eating here. You can, of course (bistecca alla fiorentina is the regional dish) but it costs too much to do routinely. It’ll be nice to move down to Roma and get some sweeter stuff.

Pisa was pretty neat. When you go there, avoid the tower, and go instead into the dome-looking thing to the west of it. Our guide informed us that it has perfect acoustics. Cool, yeah, whatever, so all us kids were shouting and stuff, making general nuisances of ourselves. So, a policewoman comes in and yelled at us, shutting us up. Then she walks to the middle of the floor, stands on the pedestal there, and starts singing, forming harmonics with herself. Because of the echoes and such, all these amazing tones started coming out that she hadn’t even sung. It was one of the coolest experiences I’ve had here so far. Beautiful. Turns out she was a voice major in college… go figure.

Walked to the hills today, got some incredible views over Florence. We’re doing so much walking here, and not so much eating as at home… definately good for me.

It snowed yesterday… just a slight amount, but everyone has been talkign about it, since it NEVER snows in Italy. NEVER. It hasn’t been that cold, though.

Alright, all, I’m out for now. We bus to Rome on Saturday, and I’m living in Trastevere, which is the most authentic, Roman part of Rome. I’m so excited… the food there is supposedly better, the nightlife and the neighborhoods more Italian… This program is really fantastic. I wish you could all be here with me. Tell other people that I’m actually keeping up on this journal thing… I didn’t expect to be doing it myself.

Ciao!

Ciao, ragazzi!

So, I believe that the newest update is about Venice and Ravenna, which is where I went this past weekend. Unfortunately, our trip was rather poorly planned, in that we arrived in Ravenna during Siesta (Italians are notorious for taking long breaks in the middle of the day, essentially shutting down the entire city between 12 and 3. Our trip was planned so that we were in Ravenna from 12 to 3:30. Blech), so we basically saw nothing. I stood outside of Dante’s tomb, snapped a few photos, and was ready to go. Had some Pasta alla Puttanesca that was quite inferior to the one my mother makes (go mom!), got separated from the group of people I was walking around with, asked a friendly Gelateria-ist what her favorite type of Gelato was (a big feat for me, since my Italian is certainly not up to snuff…), and promptly got lost. Ravenna has this cool little organizational system where there are smoother tiles in the center of the walkway, where the bikes go, and rougher cobblestones on the outskirts where pedestrians go. We Americans didn’t know this, and walked in the middle for quite too long, until we realized what was going on. All of this is relatively unimportant, though, since I got so lost that I found my way into the paved, motorini-ridden roads without sidewalks. Bleh. Got a fantastic cappucino for €.80, though. Seriously, fantastic.

Anyhow, the further busride got us in to Venice late at night with nowhere to eat. A couple of things will help you understand the predicament this put us in.

1) Venitians have their own dialect of Italian. Scuola in normal Italian means “school”. Scuola in Venitian means (roughly) “a large gathering of artisans who form their own mini-republic inside the republic of Venice as a whole”. Hence, speaking Italian (which I don’t) doesn’t help you in understanding Venitians. What this means is that we all got to speak English, which doesn’t foster feelings of friendship and amicability between, say, you and the waiter. Which brings me to my next point…

2) Venitians are nasty to foreigners. Very nasty. See, there are only 50,000 people who live in Venice, which means that the ENTIRE economy is built on tourism. There aren’t really any locals… and I can see how that makes people into bitter, angry people who don’t really want to help you with anything. What this also means is that unlike in Florence, I felt very, very unwelcome/foreign. Furthermore, it raises prices, because foreigners don’t know any better.

3) Venice, being built on islands, has no kind of organization whatsoever to it. It is impossible not to get lost.

4) It was raining.

5) It was cold.

In summation, our first night in Venice was not really so fantastic. The food was overpriced, the waiter lukewarm (unlike lunch the next day, where the waiter seemed as though he wanted to chop our heads off with the knives he gave us with our meals), and we got marginally lost.

The next day, we went to see the Gallerie della Accademia, the incredible Basilica di San Marco, and several other, minor churches. The churches were cool, the weather, totally awful. And I forgot my umbrella. And my raincoat. And my jacket. (I know, I know… how stupid can you be? At least that night we had awesome food. There is a dish, the specialty of the region (which, by the way, is heavily dependant on fish), called Spaghetti alle Seppie Neri. Translation: Pasta with Black Squid. The dish is made with the squid and the ink sack is used to color the sauce. Me being the adventurous sort, I was the only one out of the whole program who tried it… and it was AWESOME. And our waiters were really nice (Venice has killer white wine… goes well with fish), so we went back to the same place the next afternoon for lunch before heading back to Florence. Not something
we would normally do, but due to reasons 1-5, finding a nice restaurant with friendly waiters was a gigantic coup.

The last important thing to point out about Venice is that we went to the Guggenheim the day we left. The Guggenheim has a lot of modern art, and though I dont’ usually go in for that sort of thing, there were a couple of pieces there that were so incredible I coulndt stop staring- one was by Umberto Bozzini, called Materia, and the other was the Poet by Picasso. Great stuff.

So, now I’m back in Florence. I have a wine tasting today, and I think I’m going to go back to that hole in the wall Trattoria later on tonight, because the food there was absolutely incredible.

Ciao!

Alright, so. As of last entry, I was about to go out and experience “real” italian food. We went to this place that was really posh, and was sponsored by my program. Turns out, the food wasn’t all that great, and the wine was definately subpar. *edit* What I was trying to say by pointing that out is that the real enjoyment in being here is with the small, Italian places. The ones that are bigger and more commercialized like that are less good… expensive here DEFINATELY does not equal better. In fact, its the inverse. Best places are the ones that have no sitting room and have a single, jovial looking italian person behind the counter, waiting to say hi and chat when you come inOn the other hand, LAST night was totally fantastic. I went to this tiny, tiny little trattoria just past the Duomo (by the way, I haven’t really hit up very many art things yet. That comes later… and I’m going to Venice this weekend, so I should have interesting stuff from that after I get back). This trattoria though…. myself and 6 other people, for a grand total of 55 euro got a ridiculously fantastic meal- a huge bottle of the house chianti (which, by the way, was the best wine I have ever had, period), different pastas, stews, meats, etc. The waiter was classic Italian, the food arrived 5
minutes after we got it, and we just sat and talked for hours. It was fantastic. After that, we went out to a ridiculously trendy bar on the Arnot, just off the Ponte Vecchio, which had been rented out by our program. Everybody was there, everybody had a fantastic time (they were serving champagne, which was only decent… the wine from dinner was by far and away better).

There are a couple of things, though, that really should be said about Italy (and, in specific, Florence, currently). The real enjoyment of being here is being a part of the life. People here are not hurried, are not rushed. They sit back in a little bar at 8 in the morning, getting ready for the day, sipping the best cappucino I have ever had. Daily on my way to school, I cross the Ponte Vecchio, glance over at the Duomo, see the fake David in front of the Uffizi, and drink better coffee than I have ever had in the states, bar none. Even without going to museums and art galleries, the pacing of life here is just so fantastic I feel right at home.

I placed into Intermediate Italian, which is fantastic because my teacher speaks in the rapidest Italian, doesn’t understand English, and knows exactly how to teach a class. Fantastico, as they say.

Well, everyone, I miss you all, but I must say… being here is extremely enjoyable. I might just never come home…

Ciao!
-Zac

FIRENZE! ITALIA!

Well, after the fiasco that was London, I must say, Florence is incredible (and this only after 1 day!). I’ve got quite a bit to get through, so I’ll do my best, chronologically.

London was awful. The food was bad, I felt like an outsider speaking American (because wiht an english-speaking country, you can’t try to match your accent to theirs- people jus task you what the hell you are doing and why are you bothering. In a foreign country, you can at least struggle and try to speak in Italian, thusly having nice shopkeepers smile at you and help you out. I find I fit in much better in Florence… maybe because it’s a friendlier city). The food….. I don’t even want to speak of the food. Let me say only this- Britons can screw up even a Tuna Fish Sandwich, which is one of the easiest things to make, ever. EVER. It was awful. This was after I was getting just totally sick of British food and wanted something that wouldn’t taste like boiled… water. Enough of Britain, let us not speak of it again. No postcards from London for any of you.

But FLORENCE! Magnifico! Actually, last night I was assigned a group of roommates that made me absolutely terrified. They ran out really quick to get wine and then proceeded to be SO LOUD (in a 4 star hotel, mind you) that they were on the verge of getting kicked out. I was scared for my life- the night warden was threatening to call the police and my roommates were ARGUING with him. Combative drunks, I suppose. I’m moving out today, back in with this cool armenian guy named Krikor who was my London roommate. He’s a good guy, and has a couple other good guys living wiht him. My definintion, by the way, of “good guy” is people that are interested in being part of Italy, not using it as a way to get plastered and wasted, screaming in loud American all over the place and generally making nuisances of themselves. There is most certainly a reason for stereotypes, and I certainly don’t want to be pegged as American as much as I possibly can while I’m over here. Blah.

So, the good. My little band of friends and I went touring this morning (I’ll try to bring my laptop into this internet cafe later on in the week so I can get some pictures up). Walked around for several hours, stopping in at random cafes and getting fantastic little sandwiches. People were really, really friendly, especially when I tried to speak Italian, which I most certianly will be doing from now on. I seem to be one of the few people on the program who has experience with Italian previously, so a couple people want me to do such things as order food for them. HA.

Anyway, I have to run off to dinner now, after a stern reprimand from our resident director to “all the students” about “keeping the noise down at night”. Yes, that would be directed at my roommates. No less than 5 noise complaints were called in against them. Good lord. And they were SO INSISTENT that they weren’t doing anything wrong, either! Jeez.

Dinner, with my first taste of real italian dinner, wine, and dessert.

Ciao!!

Zac

Good lord, I am completely exhausted. This is my second day in London, and once again, I dislike the food TERRIBLY. Of course, London itself is fantastic- a group of people and I went around a goodly chunk of the city, saw the London Museum of Natural History (fantastic!) and the Tower after having taken a tour. I made the huge mistake of falling asleep yesterday at 4:30 PM London time… which meant that I woke up at 11 PM when my roommate came back, then couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. I’m so tired right now, its awful. Furthermore, I really just want to eat some good food, but of course Londonish food is all fish and chips, boiled, etc. I can’t wait to get to Italy.

I think my nerves are acting up as well, because I haven’t been able to eat that much although I’m really very hungry. Of course, that could be the awful state of the food…

The Underground is one of the most fantastic city transits ever devised by man. I could ride that thing all day long. So awesome.

Alright, folks, I’m out. We’re gonna try to go find a pizza place, then maybe hit up a pub and turn in early. It’ll be a miracle if I turn in past 9PM.

So, it’s the 7th… the night before I fly over the Atlantic to LONDON. I’ll be there until the 11th (arriving the 8th, London time, I believe). Then it’s down to Florence.. I’m not sure what kind of internet service they have in either of these two places so I may or may not be somewhat incommunicado for the next 3 weeks, roughly. However, in that period of time, I will have completed an entire course worth of Italian, had complementary dinners all around Florence, possibly visited Venice, Tuscany, and other places (all of which are side trips off the 3 week Florence one), and seen the David.

Wish me luck! I miss you all, and hope you all have a good start to the semester. Hug Katie for me if you see her around. I expect you all to keep her company while I’m gone. Oh, and stop giving me eprops. They’re lame.