La Resistenza

            I should really be asleep at this point of the day. Here, it’s almost three a.m. and although to the average college student that may not seem very late, tomorrow and the weekend that will follow are going to both be very busy. I could use as much sleep as possible, but after today’s events, I just really felt the need to write some things down. Also, as I just mentioned, this weekend will be busy: me and a few other girls are going to Venice for the weekend to celebrate Carnevale. I wanted to write about today before I left for that trip, but I should probably warn you: most of this post will probably be a bit of a Debbie-downer. But not everything in life is puppies and pink champagne, so here it goes…

            This week, in class, we’re studying La Resistenza; that is, the Italian resistance to Nazi Germany’s invasion and occupation of Italy during World War II. I’ve had a sort of morbid fascination with World War II and the Holocaust since I was about nine years old; in Italian school, I had to memorize the chronology of the entire war, the geography of Germany, how an atomic bomb works, and various poems written by Italian Jews who survived the concentration camps. All of this was a part of my final exam in fifth grade, in which I graduated from elementary school, and all of it had a profound effect on me. I’ve made the mistake of saying, “I love World War II!” multiple times, before realizing that I should clarify and explain that I don’t actually love the existence of an awful war. I love studying it.

            With that being said, it should be no surprise that when we were told that we’d be traveling just outside of Bologna’s city limits, into the mountains, where there is a key landmark of Italy’s history (or at least Bologna's history) of resistance during the war, I was extremely excited.

            The bus wound its way up hills and small roads that would barely fit an SUV, let alone a vehicle filled with 20+ students and various professors. The surrounding hills and valleys were beautiful, with little orange, red, and brown villas and farmhouses scattered around, with steep vineyards and cliffs dividing them. After about thirty minutes, we arrived at our destination: a small memorial on the side of the road. It looked like the sort of thing that you could easily drive by if you didn’t know it was there.

            It seems like a simple little place, at first. Just a wall with the words: “A memorial for the fallen partisans at Sabbiuno.” There’s an old farmhouse further up the hill (where the museum is housed) and the fog from the early morning blocks almost everything below in the valley from sight, besides the pale sun that fights its way through the clouds.

            And then Professor Pretti, a UNIBO professor, and an elderly man from the memorial museum step in front of us and they both tell us the story of this cliff and these people.

            It’s hard to give you an accurate representation of the significance of this hillside to the Italian people (or at least the Bolognese) and what it symbolizes without an extensive background of Italy’s participation in WWII. I feel that some knowledge of history would help put it in perspective and I guess the best way to make you understand (if you don’t already know your European history) is that at this point in the war, Italy is in a state of chaos. An armistice has been signed, so Italy has officially pulled from the war, but apparently these orders are not sent to everybody, so there’s some confusion. The Allied Forces are marching through Italy from the South, slowly but surely moving towards the heart of Europe. The Third Reich obviously doesn’t like this and Hitler also sees Italy as a traitor in their little alliance, so he sends a large amount of troops into Italy from the North. Let’s not forget that the Italian fascists are there too, so there’s also a bit of a civil war going on between Italian fascists and Italian ‘rebels,’ which come in many forms. One type of rebel? The partisans; or rather, i partigiani: the farmers and factory workers and the occasional student who saw the Germans as invaders of their own land and decided to engage in guerilla warfare to drive them from the Italian countryside.

            An ambitious endeavor. They had some success and it’s certainly noteworthy that they fought back, but these acts of rebellion resulted in serious retaliation from the Nazi’s, as can be seen on the little hill of the area of Paderno right outside of Bologna, where I was this morning.

            Over one hundred young men were rounded up and kept in the prisons of Bologna, suspected of being partigiani. Some of the men were indeed rebels, others were just farmers who had been kind enough to provide a roof and some food to the partigiani. Regardless, they were held captive and tortured for information for a good amount of time in a building that now belongs to the University until December of 1944, when this group of over one hundred young men was marched up into the hills surrounding Bologna. They were brought to Sabbiuno di Paderno, on a tall hill that overlooks a peaceful little valley. They stood on the edge of the cliff and were then executed, en masse, by the Nazi soldiers. Their bodies rolled down the cliff and were buried by the snow in the valley until the following summer, when the snow melted and a hunter found them.

            This is where I was today. I stood right there, almost precisely where they would have stood. Where boys—some no older than twelve or thirteen—stood shaking in the snow, facing the muzzles of German automatic weapons. They were so young. Younger than me. Braver than me. How do you do that? How do you, as a poor farmer, take on the immense power of the Third Reich? I think that’s what amazes me the most: the fact that these men (and women—although in this case there weren’t any women killed, there were certainly plenty killed in other instances) took this incredibly huge risk, but not for a political motive or even for an ideological one. The did it for their land. As we watched L'uomo che verrà in class this week (a film depicting the tragic mass murder of partigiani and innocent farmers—women and children alike—in an area called Montesole, also very near Bologna), they kept emphasizing that idea. This was their land, their home, and it always had been. That was why they fought.

            I am always amazed by the connection Italians seem to feel to the land. I’ve had a lot of Italians tell me that the U.S. is much more patriotic than their country and in some cases that’s true, but I see a very individual sort of patriotism in Italy. Americans are often patriotic for an ideal: the American dream. The idea that you can do anything, if you try hard enough. The flashing lights of New York City, the beaches of California, the cowboy boots of Texas. We’re patriotic for the red, white, and blue because we’re proud of this immensely expansive country that has been a country for all of two hundred years.

            But Italians? They’re proud of the land they’re standing on. That hillside, with the trees sloping down the cliff to lead to a giant, white cross to mark the spot of the bodies? That’s what they’re proud of: the tangible home that you can reach out and touch, not an ideal of stars and stripes. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being proud of those stars and stripes (I will admit to singing my fair share of hard-core American country ballads). But when Italians tell me that there’s no patriotism in their country, I think that they’re wrong. I can hear it in their voices when they talk about their people; the ones who fought back against the impossibly-strong force of the Third Reich of Nazi Germany. I see it at Rita’s table in our cooking classes, when she explains the differences in wine that are particular to each region of Italy. I feel it in the way my housemate, Marta, describes her family and shows me the pictures of her backyard, where she and her cousins used to play beneath the shadow of the Alps.

            We listened to our elderly tour guide describe not the movement of armies, but the names of the partigiani. Dante Drusiani? He was a ladies-man and apparently very charismatic. He was also very short, so he was sometimes teased by the other rebels; he chose the codename Tempesta (Storm), to seem more fierce. He ended up being one of their best fighters, until he was killed. For some reason, hearing these small details was even more crushing than looking at the overall statistics of how many people were killed in the war. It made it so much more real, as we were walking along the cliff-side, where each man that had been identified had his name inscribed on a large stone. I read every single name. I felt that if I had been willing to die for something, I would want people to remember my name. I would want them to read it out loud and wonder who I was and what I had done or what I would have done.

            That’s what’s so beautiful about Italy. The past isn’t in old history books or museums—it’s on the streets, it’s in the mountains, it’s in the old ladies who shuffle by with canes to keep themselves upright, clearly old enough to remember a time when three different world powers marched themselves through their countryside. I love that history is just a part of daily life here.

            After we walked around the cliff and our fingers were numb with cold, we were brought down to the lower level of the farmhouse, which used to be the barn, where “the old lady has made you some tea and food.” Literally, an exact translation. Waiting for us was steaming lemon tea and homemade pizza and foccaccia. Our elderly tour guide took turns coming up to each of us and telling us how beautiful we are. He especially insisted on staring into our eyes and marveling at their colors, so it’s good to know that after the age of 75, you’re still allowed to flirt with people fifty years your junior.

            Then later this evening, I had my third cooking class with Rita. We made pasta fresca; that is, we made tagliatelle from scratch and they were delicious. Kneading the dough required a sort of swaying motion, so Rita put on the equivalent of Italian salsa and told us to dance while kneading the dough. When we apparently weren't moving in the correct way, she told us to pretend there was a handsome man at our backs, watching us. As we got into the dancing, Rita laughed, clapped her hands, and proclaimed: "You see? Pasta is sexy!" 

Enough said. 

With the tagliatelle, we made a ragu’ sauce! And then a salad with some sort of green lettuce, slices of blood-orange, fennel, raisins, pine nuts, slices of pecorino romano, and a balsamic vinaigrette (AMAZING). Then we made tiramisu’! Again. Everything was so great. Rita gave us a small lesson on wine while her husband Giovanni made jokes down at the end of the table. We talked about America’s tendency for binge-drinking and how drinking wine “con calma” (calmly) makes you appreciate alcohol so much more. I’ve been trying to drink wine with dinner; I’m not a huge fan of the taste, but I’m getting used to it. When in Rome [or Bologna]…

            With the morning having such a heavy subject, ending the night with the cooking class was nice. It’s almost impossible not to be in a good mood when leaving Rita’s house, with all the amazing food, interesting conversation, and good company. We spent a large portion of the evening trying to explain the words “awkward” and “clumsy” to Giovanni. Of course, there is no exact translation for either of these words into Italian because Italians are neither awkward nor clumsy. Ever. Giovanni really liked exchanging English colloquialisms for Sicilian ones, so I think it’s safe to say that both sides are learning something.

            I’d also like to say that Sami (another American) and I successfully did laundry for the first time in over three weeks! Don’t ask me how I’ve survived this long with the clothes that I’ve had. Also, chances are I’ll be doing laundry very infrequently. Seeing as the laundry room used to be the morgue, it is absolutely terrifying. I actually was planning on taking a picture of it to post on here to show you, but I was legitimately afraid of offending some random spirit. For the record, I do not believe in ghosts…except for maybe in the laundry room of this building. It’s dark down there and things rattle and it’s just…incredibly creepy. Pictures will come soon once I’m brave enough to take them.

            Now it’s really late and I should probably get to bed. This Friday I’ll be off to Venice and you’ll get another update after that. Hopefully I won’t fall into a canal because, unlike the Italians, I am clumsy.

Once again, thanks for reading! I hope my overly-passionate history lesson didn’t turn you off from tuning in next week for a Venice update. I hope you have a spectacular rest of your day! I’ll leave you with this quote that was on a sign overlooking the cliff:

"Better men will be born to us. The generation that will come will be better than those born from the earth, from the iron and from the fire."

-Nazim Hikmet, 8th grader

Buona notte, ragazzi!

Danielle 

© Copyright Danielle DeSimone. 2013.

The Beauty of Balsamic Vinegar & Albanian History

Well hey there!

            This, ladies and gentlemen, is the voice of a girl who has been keeping up with the late-night Italian lifestyle for almost three weeks now and is finally at a breaking point. Today is a day filled with homework, finally braving the laundry room (it really does look like a morgue), catching up with people back home, and writing this blog post. I’ve been so tired from the past two weeks of non-stop adventure that today, I’m just taking it easy.  

            This week has been a week of settling in: we’ve been getting into a rhythm of going to the gym, buying groceries, doing homework, and fighting with the Italian post office in the process of wiring money to help fellow Americans in distress who have lost their debit card. I’ve started to watch Italian tv rather than listen to music when going to the gym, which makes episodes of White Collar very amusing, but not nearly as fun with the lack of Matt Bomer’s voice. The good news is, I can successfully describe how to rob a bank in Italian now—who says you can’t learn stuff at the gym? Our daily visits to Café Max have now become so essential to my existence in Bologna that on those rare mornings when I wake up too late to stop for coffee, the rest of my day seems completely unbalanced. Max now greets us through the glass panes of his door each time we stroll by on our way back to Forni in the afternoon, which often ends up being the highlight of my day.

            In class, we’ve continued our study of the opera and Ivan’s extreme passion for the tragic love story of Turiddu and Santuzza in the Sicilian-based opera Cavalleria Rusticana has kept me entertained despite the seemingly-dry subject. It’s been a long time since I’ve had this amount of love for a professor. He somehow manages to get us all interested in whatever he teaches us and I’m not afraid to make grammatical mistakes when speaking Italian, because the worst reaction I get from him is a slightly scrunched-up face—like a child who is being forced to eat bitter broccoli—and a quick shake of the head, before he corrects me.  

            We went to our second cooking class with Rita! This time, we were in a much smaller group, as ECCO had divided us up. Rather than our entire program packed into Rita’s kitchen, it was just the six of us in our Intensive Italian course, so we had many more opportunities to get hands-on experience. First, Rita gave us a course on table manners and place settings; everything was very formal and elegant and I felt like I was receiving princess lessons (yes, thank you, I’m ready to assume the throne of Genovia now). Of course, a lot of the rules were also extremely archaic and sexist and Rita’s suggestions on general table decorum were occasionally frustrating for an American girl living in the twenty-first century. But at least I know what fork to use with my salad.

            After princess lessons, we went into the kitchen (with matching aprons, I might add) and began making our meal: GNOCCHI. Yeah, you heard me. Gnocchi—from scratch. We made two different kinds: one regular type, with flour, eggs, potatoes, etc.; and then another kind, which included fresh spinach, which we mashed up in a blender and molded into our dough, to make bright green gnocchi. We then rolled it out and cut out our little gnocchi to be boiled on the stove (you know they’re done cooking when they float to the surface of the water), but not before Rita attempted to teach us this snazzy way of rolling the gnocchi with the tips of your fingers so that you make a sort of hybrid-tube-gnocchi to absorb the sauce. I utterly failed at this tube-creation-process, so I stuck to cutting out the little squares of pasta and passing them along to more dexterous people to roll. So…

            Gnocchi plate #1: plain gnocchi with arugula pesto

            Gnocchi plate #2: spinach gnocchi with a gorgonzola cream sauce

And then we had a plate of raw vegetables to dip into olive oil, along with a chocolate pudding we made from scratch (which we let cool off on the windowsill of Rita’s apartment after cooking) and everything was so delicious.

            The dinner itself was really fun. Rita and her husband, Giovanni, were wonderful hosts. I was sitting closer to Giovanni’s end of the table, which ended up working out perfectly because while Rita was teaching us typical Bolognese dialect words of the north, Giovanni was instructing us on how to speak Sicilian, of the south. I tend to have a soft spot for southern Italy, on the whole, so it became even more amusing when the couple began to jokingly yell at each other in different dialects and Giovanni proclaimed that his end of the table was the southern side of Italy. Giovanni then made a face and waved his hands, saying: “It is one thing for the north and south to be forced together. But for the two to be joined as husband and wife?” He closed his eyes dramatically and threw his arms up in the air. “It is a very terrible thing!”

            Rita then promptly insulted him in an Italian dialect we were not familiar with, and we all laughed along even though we didn’t understand a word of it. I’m pretty sure this was Rita’s intention.

            The conversation soon moved to politics, as most conversations with Italians do, and we had a really interesting talk on Obama and the elections and the possibility for next term’s president. Seeing the American Presidency from an outsider’s view is fascinating, but what got even more interesting was when we moved to Italian politics. My knowledge of Italian politics is currently limited to the basics, so it was surprising to hear all of the different problems within Italy’s political system, occasionally corrupt as it is, from the mouths of two intelligent, successful adults who claimed there was nothing to do to stop or change it. Giovanni hated Berlusconi in particular, and was very eager to tell us so. Inevitably, he told us, Berlusconi would probably win the election again this year, despite his somewhat-recent scandal and the slightly-less-than-honorable policies. We left Rita’s that night with full stomachs and an explicably excited feeling, knowing that we had essentially just been adopted by new Italian parents and had had an intelligent conversation in Italian. There may even have been a group cheer at the end of the night, beyond earshot of Rita’s apartment, but that’s debatable.  

            Yesterday we took a class trip to Modena, which is just about 30 minutes away from Bologna by train. For those of you who don’t know, Modena is home to balsamic vinegar, a military academy, Ferrari’s, Lamborghini’s, Maserati’s, and Luciano Pavarotti. It’s a relatively small town, with lots of wide, cobblestone streets and surprisingly kind and patient people (having lived in Bologna for almost three weeks has prepared me for immediate rejection from local Italians upon my first grammatical mistake, if you remember). Modena is also home to the famous Professor Ivan Tassi, which only made the day better. He met us at the train station and from there, began to walk us through the city. He was constantly reminding us to be careful when crossing the streets because people drive very fast here in Modena (as opposed to everywhere else in Italy, where they abide by all traffic rules and drive at a normal, safe speed?).

            We received a tour of the duomo of Modena, which was incredibly beautiful. Ivan kept reiterating the fact that you could “read the duomo like a book” because the outside walls have carvings in them that tell biblical stories, which you can read from left to right. The inside was very much like every other grand, Catholic Church in Italy, but very impressive all the same. I heard a few of my classmates whispering, “Oh well this is a cheerful religion” as they looked at all the paintings of an anguished Jesus being stabbed to death. Welcome to Catholicism in Italy, folks. It’s slightly different than the twelve years of Catholic education I’ve received throughout my life, certainly, but I’ve seen my fair share of death-by-sword-paintings. The nice thing about being Catholic and having had so many Catholic religion classes is that the Churches in Italy actually mean something to me, and I understand a lot of the symbolism carved into the walls.

The wonderful Ivan Tassi!

            But really, the Church was beautiful. There were alcoves painted with reflective gold, so that when the sun came through the windows, everything glittered. Down below, in the crypt, was the skeleton of the patron saint of Modena, dressed in nice, saintly garb. The devout old lady praying her rosary in front of the tomb was not happy when almost twenty Americans surrounded her to gawk at San Geminiano in the middle of her Holy Mary.

            After our tour of the Church, we were set free into Modena with a train ticket that would get us back to Bologna at whatever time we wanted. We had the entire afternoon and we immediately began searching for the Trattoria Aldina that Ivan had suggested we go to. We were unfortunately moving in a pack of approximately twelve girls, which is never good for eating out in Italy. It’s always better to go out in small groups, so that you’re less conspicuous as Americans (A.K.A., not as loud) and also it makes it easier to pay the bill (like England, Italy does not like to split checks—so frustrating). A few people broke off and four of us somehow managed to wander away from the rest of the group, getting slightly lost in back alleyways. We ended up returning to the same street we had started looking on and were extremely perplexed as to why the restaurant was not on the street that the map told us it was on, when a girl named Michelle pointed to an unremarkably small sign on the wall and said: “Oh look. The restaurant is on the second floor of this apartment building.”

            Of course it is. Where else would you put a restaurant?

            Because we’re American, we arrived precisely when they opened (12 pm) and felt slightly awkward about going in so early (obviously, in Italy, lunch is eaten around 1 or 2 pm). So we stood next to someone’s apartment door for about ten minutes until we felt it was appropriately past 12 pm and then entered. The room was as unremarkable as the sign outside the building, but let me tell you something: this meal was the best meal I have had since coming to Italy. This meal had the type of food that made you want to cry while you ate it. Each time I put my fork to my plate, I felt like I was dying a little inside, knowing that with each bite, there would be less food for me to eat.

            You think I’m being dramatic? I’m not. I’m completely serious.

            As I said before, Modena is known for balsamic vinegar. So when I ordered pumpkin risotto, with parmigiano reggiano melted through it and balsamic vinegar drizzled on top…I knew that I had just had a near-religious experience. That plate of risotto was life-changing. I am in love. We are already planning weekly day-trips to Modena just to eat at that restaurant which, combined with a heavenly desert of mascarpone and chocolate cake (imagine eating sweet, fluffy clouds with bursts of chocolate) and a liter of water and the cover charge…it all cost twelve euro each. TWELVE EURO for one of the best meals of my life. I need to live here forever.

I'M IN LOVE

            Anyways, after our fabulous meal, we strolled around the covered market, which was an assault on the senses. The rank smell of raw meat and fresh fish, blooms of vegetables, rows of cheese and people yelling, all combined in an explosion of sights and smells and sounds. I was really determined to find some good balsamic vinegar. I approached a place that was selling meat and pasta along with what I knew to be little dark bottles of vinegar and I asked the woman how much they cost. The lady, with bright red hair and a laugh that made you jump about a foot in the air, pointed to the bottles on the shelves beside me and I noticed that they were all about ten euro. Never a good sign. Ten euro vinegar was about the equivalent of Wish Bone salad dressing. I told her I was looking for something a little more, well…real. She then reached back in the shelves behind her and pulled out what looked like an ancient potions bottle, filled with a liquid so dark that it almost looked purple.

            “This is mine,” She told me. “My family has been making balsamic vinegar for years and years and years.” I asked her how old the aged vinegar in her hands was. She squinted at it for a moment before shrugging and saying, “About fifty years.”

            FIFTY YEAR-OLD BALSAMIC VINEGAR.

            The food-fanatic in me is squealing with joy and when the woman starts to uncork the bottle and pull out a little spoon, doling out a small taste of the vinegar for me to try, it’s taking all my self-control not to start jumping up and down. After fifty years, that vinegar was extremely strong, but so good, and the woman seemed pleased when I told her so and then passed what was left on the spoon for the other girls who were waiting for me to try it. Of course, fifty years does not come cheap: a euro for every year, the woman told me. And as much as I would have loved to spend fifty euro on a bottle of balsamic vinegar from a woman who has been making vinegar since she was a child, and her mother before her…I really actually could not spend that much money. But I thanked her profusely and gave her a wave as we walked out of the food market towards the antique market.

            There, we found old maps and advertisement posters from Italy, which were great. I picked up an old Nutella print from the 1950’s, which I plan on framing someday and hanging in a kitchen. Some of the other girls managed to charm a man into giving them two maps from the 1800’s for 35 euro, rather than the 80 euro they were originally priced at. We’re professional hagglers.

            Saturday was just…great. As we got back on the train to Bologna, we couldn’t stop talking about everything we had done and the fact that there was finally sunshine. As I write this right now, I can even see sun streaming in through my window, despite Bologna’s unique geographical position that usually guarantees clouds and fog. I’m hoping this sunshine will continue? At least for a little while.

The Market

            Last night I hung out with Viola-Uno (my roommate) for a while. She cooked me and Viola-Due an Albanian dinner, which consisted of a sort of very spicy stew of potatoes, carrots, beans, and tomatoes. She was very proud of herself and was very excited to share Albanian food with me, since most of the emphasis on cultural exchange in the apartment is with Italian customs. And then Viola was determined to make this molten chocolate cake, so she made me help her and I’m glad I did. Not only did I get cake, but I also got to spend even more time with my wonderful roommate. I could not be happier about my housing arrangement. Although Letizia (the housemate from Cameroon) is still occasionally difficult to get along with (for everyone, not just me), Marta and Viola-Uno (and Viola-Due, since she basically lives here anyways) are just amazing. A few of the other American girls actually come to my apartment to hang out around my roommates, because they love them almost as much as I do. As Viola-Uno and I cooked and ate together, she gave me a little history lesson on Albania, and I just feel so incredibly lucky sometimes to be sitting in my kitchen in Italy, listening to my roommate tell me about their national hero, George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, and how he helped hold off the Ottoman Empire from completely dominating her country. These are the stories we tell our children about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but while our heroes are out in the woods chopping down cherry trees, Albania’s hero is charging into battle against the same people who kidnapped him as a child and forced him into their military service. As Viola recounted his entire life story, I felt like I was watching some sort of Russell Crowe movie, except it’s real history, not a critic review of Gladiator.

            And now it’s already the afternoon here and I have a paper to write and courses to figure out and professors to email. I occasionally forget to keep up with the business-side of things here, since I feel like I’m living in a perpetual dream. At the end of this week, a group of us will be going to Venice to celebrate Carnevale, but hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in one more blog post before then. I hope that whoever is reading this, you’re having a spectacular day. Thanks for stopping by and keeping up with me! And if you have a free moment today, check out George Kastrioti Skanderbeg. He led a pretty interesting life.

A dopo!

Danielle


© Copyright Danielle DeSimone. 2013.

Fitting in, Eating too much, and Surviving IKEA

So in the description section of this blog, I mention the world “exploration,” which, if we’re being honest, seems like a pretty lofty and pretentious word. Exploration? It’s not as if I’m a pioneer heading off to the great unknown. The cobblestones of these streets are smooth from the amount of feet that have passed over them; Bologna has been experienced by millions and I am just one of many to stroll under its porticoes every morning, breathing in that lovely combination of engine exhaust and cigarette smoke. But even though this “exploration” of mine isn’t off to somewhere distant that is completely alien to me, it is still an exploration. Not just of the city, or this country or the continent around it, but also an exploration of how I will handle taking myself out of the familiar, daily grind of America and traveling to a place where people stroll down the sidewalks slower than a wheelchair race in a retirement home.

            The “orientation” that the ECCO program provided us during the first week was, essentially, a self-guided exploration of this massive city. I’m notoriously awful at remembering street names, so I’ve been guiding myself with landmarks such as le due torre (the two towers), the cell phone store, the pharmacy, the corner where the man plays the violin, etc. Unfortunately, even those directions can be a little shaky, so I typically just follow people who know where they’re going. Every day, we’ve been venturing out into the city. The ECCO office is on the outer edge of the center of the city. It takes just about five minutes to reach the main piazza from the office, which has led to many lunches out, particularly at Osteria del’Orsa, which is my current favorite and apparently an essential component to the Bologna experience (the picture of the tagliatelle from the previous post was from that restaurant). I have now eaten there approximately…five times.  

            We’ve been divided into three groups for these next three weeks until the beginning of February, with each group studying a particular level of Italian. Every day, from 9:30 am until 1:00 pm (or 13:00, if you’re reading Italian time), we’re all in our Intensive Italian Language course. I’ve been placed in the higher level, which means I get to have Ivan Tassi as my professor. The only way I can describe Ivan is fabulous, sassy, and a simply wonderful teacher. I’m going to try to secretly videotape him as he teaches class someday, because he physically can’t keep still. He literally dances around the classroom as he lectures and he’s so interesting and intelligent. So far we’ve been learning about Italy in the 60’s and 70’s (protests are the backbone of Bologna history and culture) and the medieval ages, along with some grammar. Today we began studying opera, which was…interesting. My patience for opera is limited to listening to a few Pavarotti songs while I cook Italian food with my dad, but I guess I’m going to have to start liking it, since in a few weeks our entire program will be going to the theatre (cue fancy British accent here) to go see a 3-4 hour opera performance of Macbeth. This may sound painful, but I think it’s going to be really interesting and classy. Also, Lily and I are planning on sneaking panini/entire pizzas into our bags, so we will be well-fed and entertained. I’m actually really enjoying the language class so far, since it’s very informal and, well…we have Ivan and his dancing.

            Once February comes, we’ll all begin ECCO classes and whatever UNIBO (University of Bologna) classes we choose. I’m currently debating between Italian Medieval History, Italian Contemporary History, and Modern Italian Literature. There are actually at least twenty classes that I’d love to take (such variety!) but unfortunately it’s just not possible.

            In the meantime, I wake up and am out the door at around 9 am to walk with the other Forni (our studentato = dorm, if you remember) girls to ECCO. Along the way, we stop by Café Max, where a portly, bald man dressed every day in a crisp grey suit greets us with: “Ciao ragazze!” or, more recently, “Ciao bimbe!” We’ve been going to his café for the past two weeks or so and the other day we had such a wonderful experience! We walked into the tiny bar, squeezing past disgruntled Italians clutching their little espresso cups, and “our guy” immediately knew our order: five cappuccino’s (or as he says, “cappuch”) and each of our pastry orders. He remembered everything. Café Max is officially our place to go in the morning before class to grab some breakfast. We didn’t know the man’s name so we decided to call him Umberto just because, but we recently discovered that (surprise!) his name is Max. I plan on calling him Umberto regardless.

            Another bit of exciting news: I’ve signed up for a gym! Along with a few of the other American girls, I decided that with all this pasta and bread and pizza and wine, I probably needed some exercise besides the casual and approximate six to ten kilometers I walk every day around town. The gym is wonderful. It’s also, unfortunately, about two kilometers away from my dorm, but that’s just part of the workout. There, I get the satisfaction of seeing Italian men’s jaws drop as Lily, our varsity swimmer in the group, casually runs five kilometers and lift weights for over an hour while they struggle to keep up a brisk pace on the treadmill. I have yet to reach this level of intensity, but I’m working on it. We’ve also been making friends with the Italian employees there, to the point where we have actually gone out with Chiara and Davide on the weekends. I think they see us as their little crowd of pet Americans, but it’s fine: they gave us a student discount, and that’s all that matters. Another plus is that the showers at the gym are gorgeous and really big—much bigger than our showers in the apartments. We’ve started to go to the gym just so that at the end of our workout, we can shower someplace that is slightly larger than my pantry.

            I must say that Bologna is surprisingly diverse. My memories of Italy were that of a rather homogeneous population, along with a smaller number of immigrants in the larger cities. However, Bologna has a lot of people from all over the world: Albania, many many countries in Africa, India, Pakistan…the list goes on and on. I even met a man from Bangladesh who owns a grocery store just a few yards away from my dorm and really enjoys speaking his native language with me, despite the fact that I don’t understand a word of it. He got really excited when he realized I wasn’t Italian and as I paid for my bottle of milk and bag of apples, we had a brief moment of mutual, shared fascination in our displacement from our home countries. I could almost hear it in the urgency of his voice as he told me, in Bangladesh, to please visit his store again: I’m not from here either.

            I stick out, clearly. I’m five foot nine, have blonde hair, and am wearing a North Face jacket (albeit a rather stylish one). When one of my roommates and her friends were in the kitchen chatting about boys, I overheard my housemate describing a particularly tall boy. When asked how tall, exactly, my housemate shrugged and then said, “Well, he’s taller than Daniela…” The fact that I’m being used as a measuring stick against freakishly-tall Italian boys also indicates that I am not blending in as easily as I think.

             While other outsiders like my Bangladesh friend welcome the chance to hear us speak English, a lot of Bologna natives are surprisingly frustrated with imperfect Italian; if any of us seem to struggle at all with a sentence, or maybe if we use incorrect grammar, they shake their heads and set their mouths in a thin, grim line, claiming to not understand us. I love and hate this at the same time. I understand that not everyone will be accommodating, as some Italians don’t speak English and don’t have the patience to deal with your poorly-structured sentence. And although it can sometimes be somewhat jarring to be faced with such hostility when simply asking for directions, I feel like I’m getting a pretty accurate portrayal of Italy in these constant, daily rejections, as it forces me to speak and improve my Italian far more so than I would have done in a city such as Florence or Rome, where American tourism is the foundation of the economy.

            As a random side-note: I successfully cleaned our apartment this past Friday. Italians are extremely concerned with cleaning, to the point where you feel as if at any moment, there’s going to be a pollen apocalypse. Our apartment schedule has someone different cleaning on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. So I’ll clean once a week on Friday. My mother is dancing with joy right now, I’m sure. As someone who is relatively neat but not obsessed with scrubbing bidets, I’m less-than-pleased. But the good news is that I survived my first apartment cleaning! Along with Marta’s help, of course. What would I do without her? Just the other night, she made about fifty cream-puffs from scratch and offered them to Sami (another American girl) and I and promised more sweets this past Saturday, as it was her birthday. She is basically my Italian mother for the semester and I love it.

            Speaking of food (as I will be doing often these next few months), Friday we had our first cooking class! Our instructor is an extremely sweet Italian woman named Rita who runs her own café downtown and is willing to cook for about 20 loud American girls every week or so in her own apartment, which is beautiful and has the most spectacular kitchen you could ever imagine. We made polenta, which I had never had before, as our pasta dish. Essentially, you boil flour in salted water. This makes a pasty sort of…well, I’m not entirely sure what it was. Check out the photo below! It was definitely delicious. We had ragu sauce with it, which was amazing, and then we had some sort of meat and vegetables for the second course. And then tiramisu! Which I was so excited about eating that I almost didn’t take a picture of it before I devoured it.  I’m really excited to learn to cook this semester—I fully intend to return to the States an Italian chef.

Tiramisu'!

Polenta con ragu'

            On Saturday we took a historical tour of Bologna, which really was just a tour of the two famous churches of the many churches in the city: La Basilica di San Petronio and La Basilica di Santo Stefano. San Petronio is HUGE and gothic and at one point was going to be larger than the Vatican, but the pope got competitive and bought all the surrounding buildings so that the people of Bologna wouldn’t expand San Petronio any further than it was. Santo Stefano was the first Christian church in Bologna and it is in a quiet little piazza with “pre-romanico” architecture, as Ivan would say. It is actually composed of seven inter-connected churches that are much more rustic and simple than San Petronio and I liked it much more. San Petronio was an overload of senses, while Santo Stefano was quiet and old, with simple courtyards that used to be the Temple of Idris, before the Christians came and renovated. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures within San Petronio, so I only have pictures of Santo Stefano, which you can see below.

            On Saturday night, my Italian roommate Marta had her birthday party in our apartment! She was making pizza and baking cakes and all sorts of other sweets all day in preparation. About five of her friends came over, along with Viola (my roommate) and Viola’s friend who is also from Albania and also happens to be named Viola. I have been calling my roommate Viola-Uno (One) and her friend Viola-Due (Two) whenever the two of them are in the same room, just to keep them straight (I’m hoping that before the end of this semester, I’ll be able to convince my parents to send me The Cat in the Hat and Thing One and Thing Two t-shirts for them). The kitchen was packed with yelling Italians, bottles of wine, pizza, music from my computer, and camera flashes. It was really nice meeting other Italians my age and goofing around with Viola-Uno and Viola-Due, who I’ve become really close to. We ended up playing Italian Pictionary, which was kind of difficult because I had some issues understanding all of the words (and drawing them—I am artistically challenged) and the Italians were pretty drunk and yelling loudly about Berlusconi. Guido, the portiere (a combination of a super, an RA, and a doorman), actually came upstairs to yell at us because of the noise complaints but the girls charmed him with a glass of wine and a piece of cake.

Viola-Due, Marta (the birthday girl!), Viola-Uno (my roommate) and me :)

            On Sunday I went on my first trip to IKEA, which was life-changing. We ate lunch in the café there because let’s be honest: how many other times am I going to eat mashed potatoes this semester? I was so overwhelmed with the classiness of IKEA and its immense size. I mean, really. I didn’t even know that much furniture existed. I bought new sheets (because mine were about 40 years old and had stains all over them), a duvet and a duvet comforter (because the radiator in my room is basically there for decoration and serves no purpose other than to leak on the floor), a new pillow (because I’m not a fan of sleeping on something that feels like a solid rock), and slippers! This may seem extravagant, but I can assure you that after one night in my new bed (I love my duvet so much that I have named her Sally), all of it was completely necessary. I am so cozy right now, snuggled up between layers of feathers and quilts and a mug of tea beside me (they have English Breakfast tea here—who knew?). I was afraid I’d never make it back to Forni, since the line to get on the IKEA bus had enough palpable tension buzzing around that it made me feel like I was taking part in the Hunger Games, about to fight to the death for that one seat in the back of the bus. I actually started boxing people out, as if I were playing basketball. Ridiculous, I know. But Italians do not really understand the concept of a line and so I had to maintain my spot. Success! After a 25-minute busride back into town and a trek through the city back to my room in the rain, I am now the proud owner of IKEA products.

           

           

            There are a lot of plans for this upcoming semester and exciting things happening, but I feel like I’ve written enough to even make Homer yawn, so this is me signing off. I hope this epic saga of a blog post hasn’t deterred you from checking back in again soon, because more adventures are sure to come!

Ci vediamo!

Danielle

P.S.

FUN FACT OF THE DAY: My roommate informed me that my dorm used to be a psychiatric hospital. The laundry room was the morgue. I have a tentative plan to keep buying new underwear and socks for the entire semester so I never have to do laundry. Good plan, yes?

© Copyright Danielle DeSimone. 2013.

A Quick Summary, With More to Follow

            So it has officially been a week and a day since I’ve arrived in Italy, but much longer since I’ve even thought about writing something on this blog. Actually, that’s a lie. I’ve often thought of writing blog posts as I stroll beneath the porticoes of Bologna, but I’m usually too busy running off to the next adventure to take the time to sit down and record anything. For this, ti chiedo pazienza; that is, please be patient. Living in a foreign country leads to a lot of things, one of which (inevitably) is a certain decrease in your dependency on technology. This post will sound rushed because I’m tired and it’s late and there’s just too much to tell. I will post more detailed things later!

            But guess what? I MADE IT. Because I have a mother who thinks of all the possibilities (such as sudden, monstrous snowstorms that would block the airspace between Norfolk Airport and New Jersey), on January 6, my parents and I drove from Virginia Beach to the marvelous urban center of Newark, New Jersey. For those of you who are familiar with my past experience with Newark airport and its surrounding areas, you know that I was extremely apprehensive about flying out from there. For those of you not familiar with the story, just know that it involved a particularly heinous forced-stay at an Econo-Lodge right by the airport in which my roommates and I spent a majority of the night hiding in our motel room’s bathroom, clutching a Bible and a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

            But we arrived in Newark with no trouble on Sunday night and stayed there in a hotel. My flight left the next day at 6 pm, which gave us plenty of time to putter around and attempt to take just a few more things out of my two—yes, count ‘em TWO—suitcases, which will certainly be over-weight and exploding on the flight back home. Instead of mentally accepting the fact that I was saying goodbye to my parents and countless other friends and family and wonderful people in my life for the next five months, I distracted myself with little observations about the airport and my flight. For example, German tourists are crazy. They wear shorts and t-shirts, even though it’s below freezing outside. Also, there’s a sign on the conveyer belt while going through security that asks you to please refrain from sending infants and small children through the x-ray scanning machine, which can only mean that someone has indeed attempted to do this at some point in America’s history of airport security.

            I flew on a Lufthansa plane, which quite literally changed my life. You mean I don’t have to eat rubber “steak”? I can have a healthy meal of roasted chicken and sautéed vegetables with real silverware, all served to me by very well-dressed, good-looking and bilingual German men? Oh, and a hot towel before dinner? Yes, please. All of it.

            The nice thing about my flight was also the fact that I was sitting in a crowd of other ECCO students. We immediately recognized each other as fellow international explorers and then, upon doing a headcount, also realized that our ECCO program this year would in fact be an all-ladies affair. That’s right—no boys. I am overall a fan of level-headed boy logic in life, so this was somewhat of a disappointment for me, but I can assure all you curious readers at home that after a week with the girls in this program, I am more than happy with the friends I’m making!

            After a quick stop in Frankfurt, we finally made it to Bologna, where the skies were a dull grey and the rain a slow drizzle. We got our housing assignments and I was placed in a studentato called Forni, just about 5 minutes from the city center; it’s an all-girl’s dorm that is reserved for students with very high grades, so there’s a lot of quiet studying going on 24/7. There are seven of us Americans here in Forni, while the majority of the rest of our group is housed in Ghigi (a co-ed dorm), which is far away and requires an understanding of the streets to reach, so I have yet to visit it.

            On the third level of Forni, we have my apartment! It has two bedrooms, with two roommates in each, which are connected by a bathroom and a kitchen. When I first entered, I was struck by how bare it was. I had forgotten how Italian homes are very white, very clean, and not always extensively decorated. But as you can see from the pictures below, I’ve tried to make it my own (a trip to IKEA is also in the works, so expect more room renovations!).

The Kitchen

The Bathroom (surprisingly spacious, but the shower is a challenge)

My bed area! 

My side of the room

            I have one roommate and two house-mates. My roommate is Viola, and she’s from Albania and speaks Italian so fluently that when she told me where she was from, I didn’t believe her. She’s adorable and hilarious and wonderful. She’s studying to be a pharmacist and is obsessed with How I Met Your Mother.

            Then there is Marta, on the other side of the apartment. Marta is Italian; her family is from Puglia but she grew up for the most part in Torino. She’s basically the mom of the house and is incredibly sweet and is studying to be a social worker. She also bakes ALL THE TIME, which obviously adds to her welcoming personality.

            And then there’s Letizia, who is from Cameroon, and who first introduced herself to me by stating that she is studying mechanical engineering, is fluent in French, Italian, English, and a native Cameroon dialect, and these silverware right here? The red ones? Yeah, those are hers. Don’t touch them.

            Obviously, Letizia occasionally intimidates me. She’s also a little difficult to approach and get to know, but I swear, I’m really trying my best.

            Overall, I love my roommates. The ones I see the most are Marta and Viola and I feel like we’ve really started to talk like friends, not just as roommates. We of course speak only Italian…but I also tend to use crazy hand gestures and weird noises (like an intense game of charades) when I don’t know a word. We’ve now gotten to the point where we’re comfortable using sarcasm around each other, which is wonderful. I was at first nervous that Viola would hate me, since when I first found out where she was from, she asked me if I knew anything about her country. I vaguely remembered something involving the Ottoman Empire and later the Nazi regime, but very little else. She asked if that was all I knew, and because I’m a bit of an idiot, I told her that in fact I did know something: didn’t Lord Voldemort hide in Albania for thirteen years after he attempted to kill Harry Potter, until he could return to power? Viola stared at me and said very simply: “Oh. I hated those movies.”

            You are all laughing right now and I am too, but to be honest, I was excruciatingly embarrassed in the moment. Clearly, these are not the sort of things you tell your foreign roommate if you want to attempt to impress them with your international knowledge of the world. I highly recommend cutting down on Harry Potter references.

            But regardless of this fumble, Viola seems to like me, along with Marta. We’ve eaten a few meals together and planned even more, so I’m really excited for this semester with them. I’m also convinced that I will learn the Albanian language by the end of May, in addition to Italian, because Viola talks in her sleep a lot. In fact, she’s talking as I write this right now (it’s almost one in the morning and I should be asleep like her). I have no idea what she’s saying, but apparently, something is really funny.

            The grey skies have remained consistent and I’m told we won’t really get to see the sun until March. It’s been snowing the past few days here, wrapping Bologna in a thin blanket of white. I’m really glad I brought rain boots, because the marble sidewalks are incredibly dangerous when covered in sleet and snow and I'm a klutz, so I'm constantly on the verge of falling in a disgraceful heap in front of Italian women who saunter by in their high-heeled boots.

            But the city is simply spectacular. I feel like I could explore Bologna forever. There are so many twists and turns as you go down the alleyways—so many side-streets and shops and medieval towers. Most of the walls of the buildings are either a burnt red, a deep orange, or a sort of dark gold and the pictures I’ve taken so far really don’t do it justice.

La statua di Nettuno!

Look at that color <3 I'm in love.

Some of the porticoes

Random canal discovery?

Of course, tagliatelle al ragu' (more pictures of this will DEFINITELY follow)

            I have so much to write, so many stories to tell. Tomorrow I will give you a much more detailed description of my classes, plans for the semester, and what I’ve been up to, but I felt that it was high time that I post something to let the grandparents know that I’m alive. If you’re still reading this, thank you! I promise the posts to follow will be more interesting, with more pictures and more stories about my blunders through Italy…like how I’ve accidentally been using a soap dispenser on the sink that apparently belongs to the bidet, which is where I found it when someone cleaned the bathroom and put everything back where it was supposed to go. Think about that for a second and enjoy the thought of my look of horror when I realized why my ‘hand-soap’ guaranteed a “very clean wash” and was dermatologist-approved.

A dopo, ragazzi!

Danielle

© Copyright Danielle DeSimone. 2013.