Sicilia

My friend (and sorority sister) Valentina wants to be an Italian teacher, so when she graduated from Ursinus last spring she moved to Italy to live in Sicily for a year. Definitely a bold move, something I'm not sure I could do. Three of my friends (and also sorority sisters) came to Italy on their fall break, and after a two-day visit in Florence the four of us traveled down to Sicily to visit Val. It was really nice to see people I'm actually friends with. Don't get me wrong, the people who have been in Florence this whole time are all wonderful and I think we all get along really well. I've especially enjoyed getting to know a handful of people better and making friends. But there's something to be said for people who already know a lot about you and have already declared that they love you the way you are. And that's the feeling I get from these four girls.

Sicily seemed like another country. Sicilian is nothing like Italian, so I couldn't communicate with locals at all. The surroundings reminded me of Florida: lots of palm trees and tropical flowers, and the ocean and mountains within eyesight almost anywhere you go. It rained for a bit every day, but it was also sunny. Looking straigh ahead, you could see dark storm clouds. Looking behind, there'd be bright blue sky with fluffly white clouds. I saw three rainbows during our stay there!

Our first day in Sicily was bizarre (in the words of Kate, like a scene from "Moulin Rouge"). We started our day at 4:30 a.m. en route to the airport; we landed in Palermo around 8 a.m. and found a taxi, asking if he knew how to get to our address. He assured us that he did and we all got into the car. What should have been a ten-minute ride according to Val took at least 30 minutes with this driver. Every three minutes he would beep his horn and slow down to ask someone on the side of the road if they knew how to get to our address. They would make big hand gestures and say "No, I've never heard of it." He even got out of the car at one point to go into a pizzeria and ask for directions. Meanwhile, our cab fare was climbing at a rate of .30 Euro every 5 seconds. We also nearly killed someone in the road about ten times.

At last, we arrived at Val's nonna's house with a cabfare 40 Euro and ill stomachs. We dropped off our bags and Val's nonna asked if we wanted coffee. We said yes and she told us to get out the American coffee we brought for Val; she then explained (in Sicilian which we didn't understand) that we would take that coffee outside of the house and make it somewhere else. We had no idea what she meant but we followed her out of the door and down the street. About two houses down, she opens a separate door. Apparently, Val's nonna owns two houses on the same block: one is just a kitchen with a bathroom and a closet, the other is a kitchen with living room, dining room and bedrooms. She doesn't want to give up the extra house, however, because they only get water for four hours every other day. Why this is was never really made clear, I think the city just decided it was a good idea to conserve water.

So, Nonna makes us Val's American coffee and puts a salt shaker on the table, saying "This is sugar for your coffee." Megan puts a tidbit in her cup and drinks. Kate puts some in her cup, smells it, and it doesn't smell sweet, so she puts a lot more in. I break off part of a piece of biscotti, dunk it in Kate's coffee, take a bite, and nearly vomit. It was not, in fact, sugar--but actual SALT. We didn't want to say anything because we didn't want to embarass the nonna but it was impossible to drink that. So we just said "oh, we've had enough, thanks" and dumped it out. Val was still at school, and the four of us were exhausted from our 4:30 wake up time so we went upstairs to take a nap.

I'll interrupt here to say that the day before we left fo Sicily, they showed a movie at my school in Florence about the Sicilian mafia. It was about a man who protested the mafia with the radio and megaphones. As we were drifting off to sleep, we suddenly hear a man YELLING about something in Sicilian through a megaphone in the street. I immediately thought there was some Mafia scandal and got a little worried. Turns out, in this neighborhood there are men who drive around in trucks selling different things. So one man will drive by, saying "I've got potatoes! I've got potatoes and salt!" and another will yell about fruit or toilet paper, etc. If you live on a top floor and want whatever they're selling, you yell down to them and send down a rope, which they use to send up a bucket with your stuff. Definitely a smart idea, but made for terrible naps during our stay there.

On Saturday the group of us headed into Palermo for some sightseeing and city adventures. Unfortunately, none of us knew anything about the city and no one had a guidebook. We debated taking one of those tacky double-decker tour-buses but it was 20 Euro per person and we're all cheap college students, so we took their free map and wandered on our own instead. We got lost in some sketchy areas; like any city, there are parts of Palermo that are much like a dump. But all in all, it was a nice day, LOTS of walking but the weather was gorgeous. We visited the botanical gardens (where the top picture was taken) and had a great time just being together and enjoying Italy. Seeing those girls and travelling on my own at the end energized me even more for the rest of my stay here.

I'm glad that I'll be home in 35 days; I miss my family and my friends and the standard comforts at home. But at the same time, I'll hate not living in Florence. I've really grown to love this city and consider it home. I just hope I can stay aware of the reverse-culture shock and ease back into the home life slowly.

Fall Break

Mom and Sarah came to visit me for my fall break, but it wasn't easy for them to get here. As soon as they got in, we went to my home at Rosanna's where she had dinner waiting for us. I'm glad Mom got to taste what every meal is like for me, so now she can a) stop worrying about me being well-fed and b) be extremely jealous. We headed to our hotel via taxi around 10 p.m., and upon arriving the man at the front desk informed us that "there was a problem with the bathroom in your room so we booked you at another hotel." We walked the five blocks to that hotel, handled all the passport-exchanging business, settled into our room and then went to sleep. I was feeling consciously stressed out about trying to entertain Mom and Sarah, not having a hotel for that night, not knowing what our travel plans were--essentially, a general sense of not-knowing what was going on. Although I was feeling stressed, I knew at the same time that the experiences we were going to have trying to find hotels and deciding where to travel would help me learn to be more relaxed. And they did.

We left Florence for Como and Belaggio, via train to Milan. There we basically drank wine, enjoyed the view and talked to an Australian couple sitting next to us. Dinner that night was awful. I had lumps of fatty beef in melted hard cheese. We spent the night in the hotel and woke pu the next morning to head to Venice.

Venice is truly magical. Everyone knows they have water instead of roads, but you can't appreciate how different and almost bizarre it is until you see it for yourself. We spent an evening sitting in St. Mark's square, enjoying cocktails at the first cafe to serve coffee in Italy, listening to the competeing orchestras and watching people dance romantically in the square. That night we had dinner on the water, and it besides the waiter trying to convince Mom that the 12% service charge was in fact a "food tax", it was a lovely evening. The next morning started off with me realizing I left my medication in the hotel in Como, so we spent a few hours calling around to see how I could get it back. Once they guaranteed that they could mail it to our hotel inFlorence, I was relieved and able to appreciate being in Venice again.

The hotel clerk told us we got a free boat ride to Murano, where the infamous Murano glass is made. The boat would pick us up right at the hotel and take us down the Grand Canal, giving us on a tour of Murano and explaining how the glass is made. Well, the boat did pick us up. And it did take us to Murano. But once we were there, we were shuffled through 8 different show rooms where an older man explained to us the prices and value of items for sale. I certainly couldn't afford a 110 Euro pair of earrings, so we snuck out behind their scowls and eventually found our way to the boat that would take us back to Venice, a ride that took at least 45 minutes. When we went to visit "Doge's Palace", we discovered it was closed because the survellience team was on strike. After these bad experiences, however, we did find a nice older man who sold hand-made Murano glass items and had a lovely chat with him about America and democracy and many other important things.

From Venice, we returned to Florence to stay in a great hotel near the Arno where we were served a breakfast buffet and the staff was extra-accomodating. The rest of our vacation consisted of leisurely mornings in our hotel, day trips to places near Florence like Siena, Assisi and Greve, and relaxing evenings at restaurants in Florence. It was all slow-paced and enjoyable; exactly what I needed.

Recounting everything that happened in our ten days together would take more than one post, and I am much too lazy to devote that much time. I will say it was a much-needed break, and especially much-needed time with family and best friend. I've been having a hard time with some personal issues here, and getting to talk to them and think out loud made all the difference in my outlook for the next month and a half. Even though I was sad that they left, the next day I felt energized and excited about being here.

Oktoberfest

Haven't been able to post because I haven't had a steady internet connection for more than 15 minutes at a time. Now, however, I'll try to catch up on many of the places I've been.

About three weeks ago I went up to Munich, Germany, for Oktoberfest. The week before we were supposed to leave I debated dropping out because I was so tired from our trip to Sorrento and Capri, and I thought another weekend traveling would wipe me out. Instead, I decided to tough it out and take the trip, and I'm glad I did! It was great experience travelling into another country. We took an 8-hour train that left at midnight, so we crossed into Germany around 6 a.m. the next day. It was difficult to sleep in a 6-passenger car with 5 people, but I managed to get comfortable for about 30 minutes at a time. I knew we were crossing borders because my Italian cellphone sent me about 10 text messages saying "You are now in Germany" and policemen woke us up to check our passports. It was all very unofficial; all we had to do was flash our passport at them, they didn't even look inside.

In Germany we stayed with a family my friend Anjali knew of through her cousin because he stayed there last year. They were beyond wonderful. There were four of us travelling together, we each had a bed, we got free breakfast and dinner and they had a yellow lab. The man of the house, Roman, was actually born in New York but moved to Germany when he was 13, so he was fluent in both languages. His wife and son gave us advice on taking the subway and where to go around town. We then headed out to the subway to go straight to the main event. Coming out of the subway tunnel, we were bombarded by flashing lights and mobs of people, Oktoberfest was right there waiting for us.

We made our way into one of the tents and wandered around helplessly looking for a table until we found a group of what I assumed were Americans and asked them how they got a table. They let us scoot in next to them and there we stayed for three hours. There were a few men from Ireland and a few from other parts of Germany, and we all chatted and drank and ate. Drinking from those 1-liter beer steins is definitely an experience worth having.

For the rest of the stay, Anjali and I wandered around downtown Munich, taking photos of the beautiful buildings and appreciating a different culture. We also stopped in an art museum where we saw lots of Raphael, Rubens and even the first-known Da Vinci painting. We were scheduled to head back to Florence Saturday at midnight. But that happened to be the night that the Italian trains went on strike, so Anjali and I headed to the train station with Roman to negotiate our tickets for the next night, and then got to enjoy one more night at Oktoberfest. I had the world's best bratwurst the size of my torso.

I think the best part of going to Munich was coming back to Florence. Even hearing people speaking Italian was a relief. This place is finally starting to feel like home.