Onion fingers

Did you know: The discerning Parmesan palate can tell the difference between hand-grated and machine-grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

For a city full of people who rarely make it to a nearby city, much less a neighboring country, a remarkable number of them profess to ‘♥ NY.’ Today, a cynic bore a different message on his chest. ‘NY doesn’t ♥ U.’ Well proclaimed, sir.

The weekend saw:
Going for gelato with Cristina and Jody. Definitely the best gelato I've had so far in Parma. Jody got some too. Seriously, this dog lives the good life. 
Liberation Day on the 25th with an outdoor concert and another exciting Panthers victory, this time against the Bologna Warriors. I sought the perfect pre-game busride music and, in the absence of 'Are you ready for some football?', I opted for CCR and the Black Keys. I needed some hearty American sounds. 

Dinner Monday was risotto… with strawberries. It was… pink. I don’t know how I feel about cooked strawberries, but if I avoided the chunks and seasoned it with the recommended black pepper instead of the usual Parmesan cheese, it was totally edible. After cleansing my palate with a copious amount of carrots and celery, it was apron time. A few days earlier I had gotten platanos (plantains) to make for the family (/myself if no one liked them, not that I would complain too much about that; more for me) and it was finally the moment of truth. Leti said it ‘had an effect on her’ to see me there, apron-clad, at her usual post before the stove. Washing, squeezing, peeling, slicing, and lots of frying later, it was actually the moment of truth. And… delicious. I was a little worried that no one else would like them, or perhaps worse, that they would feel obligated to pretend that they did like them, but it was pretty clear that the appreciation was sincere. Leti plans on making them in the future, perhaps as a novelty potluck item. I’m just glad to have been able to leave a bit of Guatemala in Parma, and a way for the family to keep me in mind and heart and stomach after I’m gone. Later, we added mangos to the fruity mix of the evening.
Up next is avocados and black beans.
I also got a new giant citrus, a honey pomelo, which lasted me several sittings. It was definitely more edible than the cedro.

I have now seen everyone’s bare feet except for Davide’s (but I think I would have to stay here at least another two months to see him as much as I have now seen everyone else. So statistically it would have happened by now.). No one has tried to apologize for their unseemly and unhygienic state. I am starting to wonder whether this was overhyped and I could have been blissfully barefoot all along.

I heard some serious revving today and turned around just in time to see a guy popping a wheelie. Purty cool.

A couple nights ago I had a dream of a not-unusual structure. Within some context or another, I am driving a car, and then the brakes don’t work. Sometimes, I can slow down but never fully stop, and sometimes they have no effect whatsoever. Despite red lights and other cars, I never crash, but I never stop. This time, I kid you not, I looked down at my speedometer and it said I was going 1000 miles (or perhaps kilometers!) (or whatever unit of distance) per hour. I remember thinking, wow, I didn’t think I was going that fast. Anyway, this one is easy to read. Time is going by too quickly, and I want it to slow down. Six days. Read that again. Less than a week. Until I leave Parma. Until I leave home. What?

I finally started doing what I meant to be doing all along. Tonight, I learned how to make pasta and tomato sauce, the Italian way. With some mysterious brown on the outside, purple on the inside, white on the inner inside, tear-shaped onions. It turned out well, and Leti actually let me do everything, instead of just showing me and having me watch. Everyone said they were good, and I guess I am not the most confident chef, because I wasn’t sure whether to believe them. But, Cri is a very particular eater, and she seemed earnest when she said it was good. Leti wanted more and gave me a thumbs up when she discovered that there was still some left in the pot. So, either they’re good actors; I’m gullible, or, as I choose to believe, it really was good. I mean, obviously I ate it too, but coming from people who claim to be able to taste the difference between hand-grated and machine-grated cheese, they would be more likely to take up issue with any of my cooking flaws. Paolo did say it tasted different, somehow, and I agreed and was ok with that. I have noticed that no two people can make the same dish really the same. It’s like the flavor of the person goes into the food.

Alina arrived on Monday! That afternoon we got her acclimated and oriented and had some gelato. Tuesday I was free all day so we had plenty of time to spend together. I practiced my tour guide routine, in Italian this time. We went to a panini place and I had a horse sandwich so she could close her eyes and hold her breath and have a taste.
I think at some point early on in the blog I mentioned that I had the desire to go an entire day without speaking English. Alina made my dream come true, or as close to true as I think I will get. We did use the occasional English word, but we definitely did not have any English conversations. We went to the movie theater and saw an Italian movie, but for some reason there was one random character who kept switching back and forth from Italian and English, though he was obviously not a native English speaker. Last week I watched a movie on TV solely because the blurb said it took place in Houston, and I hoped that I would be able to show my family some scenes of Houston. Instead, the ‘Texanest’ things in the movie were a cow phone that mooed, a mailbox painted like a jersey cow, a couple of Texas license plates, and maybe some Tecate. There were also lots of guns involved, but that was relevant to the plot, not Texas. They didn’t even bother to throw in a Houston skyline for good measure. Instead, I later found out, the whole thing was filmed in Los Angeles. I have no idea why they bothered to set it in ‘Houston,’ or felt that that was relevant enough to be included in the synopsis. So, imagine my surprise when, all of a sudden in the midst of this Italian movie yesterday, there appeared a pair of ‘Texan’ characters.
Today Alina did some touring on her own and came to watch my final presentation (I’m (mostly) done with classes and classwork!) and I was fortunate to have her and Leti’s smiling faces offering me silent support. We had lunch at home and took pictures on the infamous Six on the way to her departure.

Yellowblue fever

04. 17. 10

Ok, it happened. A long-awaited soccer Experience. For anyone familiar with Aggie football, the spectator dynamics will be perfectly familiar. Sunday afternoon, Matt and I went to the Parma-Genoa game. We sat in the Curva Nord, the famous crazy fan section, where you stand for the entire game. Starting to sound familiar, right? The game starts and next thing we know we are under a white plastic tarp, which becomes blue, and then yellow. We are under a giant flag that covers the entire side of the stadium. From beneath it we are singing the fight song, or some such thing. As it starts go get a little too steamy under there, we are released and the game begins. At the bottom of the stands, a portly man (gentleman is the word that usually comes to mind when one says portly, but gentleman he was not), balding and loud, lead the cheers. Like a yell-leader but without the nifty jumpsuit. Who needs scantily clad women with pompoms when you have a topless man yelling obscenities? Isn’t a potbelly as good as cleavage?

He and his cohorts lead the crowd in chanting several cheers, perhaps more accurately described as jeers, including the popular ‘pezzo di merda, pezzo di pezzo di merda.’ Not all the cheers were obscene, though. One that was fairly easy to pick up was ‘Forza, Parma,’ sung to the tune of ‘La Bamba.’ There were huge hand painted flags waving around, and I was glad we heeded the advice to not sit front and center. Also fascinating to observe were the physical reactions and gestures employed by the spectators. (Tifosi = fans, from tifo, typhoid, because of the feverishness of it all.) Of course there was clapping, but whistling was only in angry disapproval. There was lots of celebratory fist shaking. When the ref made terrible calls, or terribly missed calls (there were a lot of these that even I could see) the stands erupted in raised hands making a gesture that is hard to explain verbally, but is the Italian way of saying ‘go away’ or ‘leave me alone.’

As far as the actual sports-relevant content of this post, I can’t offer much. Near the end of the first half, Genoa scored a goal. Later, another. Parma responded. Good good. Parma tried to respond again, missed, but a Genoa kicked in the blocked ball. Works for us. Alas, though probably good for that poor Genoa player, Genoa scored again, making what would ultimately be the winning goal. In this one game, I saw more goals scored than I had seen, combined, in all the games I have watched previously while here. There was also way less overacting of anguish for each missed goal.

By the last few minutes, the fans began to dwindle, leaving trails of smoke in their wake. I don’t know what the security guard at the entrance expected to accomplish by asking me whether I had a lighter. I was surrounded by cigarette exhaust for the entire game. As I made my way home, wearing my new blue and yellow Curva Nord scarf, I kept getting stopped by strangers. Suddenly I was an ambassador for the team. Who won? What was the final score? So, next time you go to a soccer game in Italy, if you walk the streets wearing team paraphernalia, expect to meet a lot of inquisitive tifosi.

Aaand stuff:
I’d heard about it, but it has finally happened. Someone said ‘hi’ to me by way of farewell. I guess if in your language it’s the same word, it would not seem strange to think it is the same in other languages.
I finally saw a guy wearing jeans with an American dollar bill sewn onto the back pocket.
Unlike in the US, where velcro shoes are mostly relegated to toddlers, losers, and the elderly, velcro sneakers seem to be rather popular and totally socially acceptable here. In a similar vein, people of all ages and all genders tie their sweaters around their waists here. I haven’t seen it so widely done since around middle school.
There is a strange preponderance of wedge-heeled sneakers. I do not understand this. To me, it seems like the worst of both worlds. Sneakers are supposed to be comfortable and good for getting around. Heels are supposed to be classy and somewhat formal. These seem to be none of the above. Unless a lot of  people have height inferiority complexes, I just don’t get it.
I got my first facebook friend request from one of my students at Toschi.
It’s still disconcerting to see fifteen year olds with a carton of cigarettes on their desk next to their pencil box. Or to hear them tell their teachers they need to go smoke. Or to know that people regularly smoke in the bathroom – and apparently there are no smoke detectors around.
I watched one of my students clean out her nails with a box-cutter. Oh art school.

Kicking and screaming

This football game included many more graying heads and receding hairlines than they normally do. Players’ birth years ranged from 1966 to 1991. Jeering at the team’s Old Man Winter would turn several heads – if any of them understood you. This game included some slightly unusual cheers, like De-Fense, Go! and Of-Fense, Go! Only one of the teams had a cheerleading squad, whom the announcer thanked after every cheer. Some of these ladies, in their turtlenecks, could have used a couple more rehearsals before the game. With a final score of 47-44, and way way more two-point conversions than normal, it included a lot more points than many games. Conclude what you will about the quality of the defense. This field was shorter than standard, with ten yards between the two forty-yard lines. It included some really low punts and some barely-made extra points. In sum, this was the best football game ever.

On this perfectly sunny day in March – with more flowers and fewer people than football usually sees, too – the Parma Panthers triumphed over neighboring rivals, the Reggio Hogs. The game started with a low wobbly kick and if this seemed to portend the quality of the game to come, the assumption was at once accurate and erroneous. The offense charged forward, converting after almost every play. The Hogs squeezed in a field goal and in no time at all the Panthers responded with seven. Speaking of time and scores, that was up to you to keep track of. When asked where the scoreboard was, I joked that it is in your head. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Well, when each team flies across the field, Parma with its golden-handed receivers and “tiny but swift” running backs, and Reggio with its unstoppable giant of a quarterback, the numbers start to become a blur. At the third quarter, Parma was maintaining a comfortable cushion, closing at 24 to 16.

With the start of the fourth quarter, however, Reggio’s dreaded dreaded quarterback, charged the Hogs forward, dreads flying, to a score of 32-31, moving Panthers fans to start yelling to the hapless defenders, “grab him by the ponytail!” Suddenly, this game that at the start seemed like it would be one of those games where the fans get to calmly love their team was one where you couldn’t look away. If there were an electric current running through the seats, no one would have noticed; they were jumping to their feet with every play. Even worse than the impossibility of remembering the score, whose ambiguous closeness only added to the suspense, was trying to keep track of game time. How are you supposed to avoid delay of game penalties when you don’t have a play clock? How long can fans gnaw their nails when they know the fourth quarter is drawing to a close but have no idea by how much? Maybe Parma could at least invest in a sundial, provided you could convince the sun to stop at the right times. And why wouldn't the sun cooperate? This is football, after all.

A smattering of Hogs fans, seated in the midst of a larger smattering of Parma fans, would not be out-yelled. Mostly, one particular Hogs fan would not be out-yelled. Fortunately, a Panthers-loving young lady brought her drum, with which she rallied her fellow fans – or at least the ones who weren’t busy chain smoking. Other grizzled Panthers fans cheered on their balding buddies, perhaps co-workers, who gave their aged sweat to the team. All kinds of colorful expressions were flying through the air. Spectator mothers gave their benched sons thumbs up. A player ejected from the game earlier on alternated between smoking, pacing, and rattling the fence. Voices were giving out, right and left. Anxious fans were yelling at the announcer’s booth to reveal how much time was left. How much longer did we have to hold our breath? An impossibly long three minutes after five minutes was announced, there were two minutes left on the clock and Parma had the ball. Fans started high-fiving anyone in their vicinity after every successful play. The Panthers locked it down with a touchdown, which put them a point up. The man in front of me did a jig. The Panthers went for the two-point conversion and, after their success, the man in front of us grabbed my dad’s stomach and gave it a celebratory jiggle, before commencing the high-fives all around. It was over! We had won!
Oh wait, it wasn’t. There was still a still unknown but surely small amount of time left on the invisible clock. With a few spiked balls and some solid Hail Marys, the Hogs might still have a chance. The game came down to the wire, and the lackadaisical springtime feelings of the early afternoon were long forgotten. Parma’s defense remembered that they had feet and should run with them and bodies that they should tackle with, and the Hogs were held at bay. Panthers received the ball, spiked, and celebrated. It was a storybook finish, a book come to life. What year is better than one in which I get to have two football seasons?



Infinite thanks to John Grisham's Playing for Pizza for making this possible in my life. For once in my Italian life, I didn't care about being loud and invasively American. This was football!
For more game details visit the Panthers' website
Good luck understanding the botched translation.

Mixellaneous

When I got gelato with Vicky I had a rather amusing and gratifying experience. Thanks to the perpetual confusion about the proper order of things, when we tried to place our order, we were sent to the end of the line because we were supposed to have paid first (though I'm pretty sure the last time I was there I paid second). Anyway, probably because of our confusion, she assumed that we were not Italian, and so when we approached a second time, receipts in hand, she tried to inquire about our cup/cone preference in English. I responded in Italian, and her face underwent about five transformations of shock. Oh! She never explained it, but it was clear that all of a sudden she realized that this 'silly tourist' actually spoke 'perfect Italian.'
Success.

Graduations happen three times a year here, and when you graduate, you wear a crown of laurels. You spend the day at bars with your friends, who find ways to good-naturedly humiliate you all day long. For example, when my sister's friend graduated, they dressed him up in a giant diaper made of a bedsheet, put him in a grocery cart, and pushed him all around town and the main square. If you don't know about this, you may be confused by the leafy crowns and tomfoolery you seem to find everywhere. We inadvertently found ourselves in the middle of a private graduation party, but no one seemed to care. They were too busy lofting the grad onto their shoulders, blocking the exit we were subtly trying to approach, and taking pictures.

Dear Six,
Really? Really? I was writing you a love letter on my way to meeting you, to say how glad I was that we had finally figured each other out, that I might be willing to call you more than a friend, that I appreciate you. Even if you have now been truncated and don't take me exactly where I want to go anymore, I know that's not your fault. And then you had to go and mess with what we had going for us. I was early, but you were earlier, and I got stood up. You're always playing games with me and I'm tired of it. If my train hadn't been delayed, I would have missed out on a lot, all thanks to you. At this point, the only thing I can say in your favor is that, while you toy with my emotions, you haven't made any attempts on my life. I love Five, but two accidents is two too many.
Peace.

Despite the fact that 'I Gotta Feeling' is practically mandatory at every party and everyone sings along, apparently it is not mandatory to know what you are singing. I have now been asked several times what the song is about.
Lady Gaga or, more specifically, Bad Romance, is so popular everyone hates it. It seems like marketing executives show up at meetings and say, 'Hey, what's that song that is on all those other commercials?' 'Oh, Bad Romance? Yeah, that's a great song.' 'Why don't we use that in our commercial, too. It's popular, so our product will be popular.' 'Great idea! Let's go for it!' So good luck going a day without hearing the lilting strains of 'Ra ra ah ah ah. Ro ma ro ma ma...'. If ad execs aren't using this, they're using some seriously arbitrary or misguided American music, cutting it off right before it gets weird, not that many people here would notice. An ING commercial has snippets from the Gorillaz's Clint Eastwood, which may or may not have drug references in lyrics that manage to still be heard as the music and commercial fades out. An Audi commercial features the song, The Cat Came Back, which my tandem partner liked so much she put it onto a CD. I never knew how gruesome the song's lyrics really are.

If I have understood correctly, it is now illegal to use 'gay' or 'woman' as a derogatory term. Ergo, you can't say things like, 'you drive like a woman' or 'that's so gay.' Punishable by fine? Don't ask me for more specifics; I don't know them.

One of my students says his grandfather is one of the people responsible for bringing baseball to Parma (Italy?). When I asked him whether he likes any American teams, his response, of course, was the Yankees. But he also likes the Patriots, so what can I do?

There doesn't seem to be a taboo about talking about money. I have been asked how much my house cost, to share with the class how much my cellphone plan in the US costs, and the price of pretty much anything else I have bought here. Other friends of mine have been asked about their parents' incomes.

Zodiac signs are somewhat more relevant here than in the US. My host mom asked me mine on the first day here. Your horoscope is part of the morning news, right before the weather report (which usually only includes today and tomorrow, not the whole week.) People are always asking you your sign, and not in the cheesy pickup line kind of way. I can't figure out why, though, because it doesn't seem like they put particular stock in any of the expected traits associated with them.

A few posts ago I mentioned that I saw a da Vinci in Parma's museum. What I did not mention in my hurried conclusion was that it is the selfsame Portrait of a Woman that is at the center of the movie Ever After. Just thought I should put that out there, for the many of us who loved that movie back in the day.

Wee week

2. 19. 10
Quite possible the most useless day day of all time. No class, no buses, no nothing. I got up ridiculously late and had trout for lunch. I think this might be the first time I have eaten a fish that still had a face. Then nothing. I was supposed to go out with Alice and Ellie, but my phone was being insanely useless (aka refusing to send texts) and I was getting fed up. Then I hit the slump. We are all supposed to go through this elaborate acculturation process, part of which is the downward curve of life sucks and I just want to go home. That’s what happened to me Friday night. I had been toeing the line a few nights before, but it was in the dark of lonely night, so it didn’t seem that unusual. Suddenly, I was tired of everything. Tired of having to speak in grunts and gestures, tired of not understanding things that were said to me, tired of useless cellphones, tired of wearing the same shoes and jacket every day, tired of not being able to be with or even regularly communicate with people I care about… my list of grievances was growing rapidly. Then Matt invited me to meet up at a free concert. At this rate, I was never going to be able to communicate with Alice in order to make it to the club, and I was no longer in any mood to go, so I met up with Matt. I wondered whether this would manage to revive my spirits, or whether I would just bring him down into my funk. I showed up, timelyly, at intermission. It was, in fact, a great concert. It has been a long time since I had been to an orchestra concert, and it reminded me of a lot of good times. I played my usual game of finding interesting things to observe so I could occupy my wavering attention span and keep enjoying the music. I was very impressed by the fact that not a single person tried to clap between movements. My cloud turned a little less dark gray. The concert ended and we started wandering. We walked over to Garibaldi, looking for a café or some such place. We had no real destination, and consequently ended up doing a lot of walking. We ended up at the main square and went into one of the few places that seemed open. I had pistachios for the first time. An employee came upstairs to smoke, and then turned to us and said Ciao. Ciao, we replied. No, no, no, they were closing. Oh, ciao as in go away. Good night.

2. 20. 10
I met Matt around three, first stop, gelato. Next, second museum site. I tried avoiding the main streets I am walking a rut into, and while we took a lovely detour, it inevitably led to the usual paths. This part of the exhibit was a collection of fashion drawings and pieces, and for the most part I found it unremarkable. There were some drawings by Armani and other big names, and some small-scale dresses made by someone named Adelina. There was also a DIY-type video, essentially about making clothing out of squares of fabric, and one such iteration managed to make it into my dream. Other than that, not much of note, in my opinion. We took a little break and sat outside and did some people watching in the sun. Sun! It was the first time I have been outside in only one layer, and comfortably so. We headed to the third and final exhibition site. This one was all about architecture and design. Sound dry? It was probably my favorite. While the main exhibit, which I saw a few weeks ago, was presented in a thought provoking way, this was just fulfilling. There were some architectural drawings for fantastical buildings I doubt were ever realized, but I could have stood in front of them forever. I just wanted to breathe them in. They made me want to get my fingers charcoal-black again. There were these silly objects like ‘portable’ TVs and crazy ashtrays. There were design plans for things like silverware and pots and pans, things we don’t often think about thinking about making. Also, the exhibition space had a great character, interesting in a way that added to the feel of the exhibition without distracting from it. After dinner we were supposed to go to Veronica’s, a small club where my host brother DJs, but prontobus was not having any of it. I got hung up on twice and the third time they said, nothing we can do for you, good luck. So we just stayed in and hung out.

Also, today I put my own advice to good use, and tried wrapping my scarf Italian-style. Interesting. I usually go for maximum coverage, but this was also definitely quite warm.

2. 21. 10
The kind of day I had been needing. I woke up early to catch the train to Colorno, but apparently I didn’t wake up early enough. Or rather, I forgot that my time of arrival depended on the esoteric schedule of the six, which today was once every half hour. There was no way I would make it in time. Maybe I had the right music in my ears, maybe it was the sun that was warming my back, but I didn’t even worry about it. I would take the next train, whenever that might be, and catch up with the group when I could. So the six came and I got on, thinking I was headed to the train station. Instead, as we traversed Parma down streets I rarely travel, I saw some people going into a church. Could it be that mass was starting? I got off on the next stop and headed back to investigate. I briefly wondered whether I might inadvertently be going to a non-Catholic service, and then I remembered that I was in Italy. I have yet to see any place of worship other than a Catholic church. I can’t remember the exact number anymore, but there are over 50 churches in Parma. So, finally, I was in a church and it was for mass, not for tourism. Finally, I was in a church full of people who wanted to be there and understood what it meant. With the train gone and no one waiting for me, I felt no hesitation about being an extra hour late. I have sometimes tried to imagine the translations of certain prayers, but now I would finally know how they really go in Italian. I couldn’t always understand anything, but I could recognize the scriptures and I followed the sermon, and of course I know the order of mass well enough to know what was going on even if I were unfamiliar with some of the words. Mass! Sun! What a wonderful start to my day. Mass ended and off I went to the train station. I debated waiting for the illusory six, got on the one, realized that it wasn’t really going where I ultimately wanted to go but got off a few stops closer and continued on my way. At the train station, I learned that the next train wasn’t for another hour, but that it was only fifteen minutes from Parma to Colorno. Fair enough. My iPod and people watching made the time go quickly.

Incidentally, I have been sighting much ridiculous hair of late. The other night I saw a guy with a short, wide mohawk, or maybe just a fat racing stripe, shaved sides of his head, and sideburns. Another guy, a redhead, had a buzz cut and a crop of dreads shooting out from the back of his head, a good seven or eight inches long but seemingly immune to the effects of gravity. I saw a girl with bangs cut at a severe diagonal to cover one eye but allow her to see through the other. At the train station, I saw a guy with a rat-tail gone mullet; all of his hair was normally short, and only the bottom edge of his hair wound wavily down his back. I gagged while imagining a transposition of this look onto an assortment of my guy friends. I also saw several men who appeared to be on some kind of sports team, muscles straining under their clothes and heavy duffel bags in tow. I saw a ton of people whose Milanese-ness would have been unmistakable even without the impending departure of a train thence bound. Call them stylish, call them metro, call them frou frou, but they were Milanese indeed. In the midst of all of these people, I spied some familiar faces. Two girls fro Boston College and more of their cohorts were getting tickets. It turned out we were all going to Colorno for the rugby game. I had been looking forward to a train ride alone, albeit a 15 minute one, but it was nice to feel like I had a safety net.
In Colorno we met with Giulia and Matt and Isabella and Sky, who had finished a tour of the Reggio palace and a subsequent lunch. How timely. We walked across town to the ‘stadium.’ Field with bleachers would be more accurate. I got a huge meaty sandwich and feasted. Meat. I was happy. The game started and I realized I knew absolutely nothing about rugby, and considering the number of friends I have who play, this seemed like a small crime. I managed to figure several things out, but much remained that I couldn’t quite work out. Regardless, t was really fun. I might say it is my new second favorite sport, or maybe that while nothing can replace football, my life is certainly better with rugby on the horizon than with neither.

After the game, seeing as how there is in fact nothing to do in Colorno (though there is a forested park I hope to come visit one day), we went back to the train station. I overheard some students voicing a desire to at least go back via a different route and, secretly agreeing, I voiced this suggestion to Giulia. A lovely little detour. The thing was, we still had almost an hour to wait before the next train. Matt suggested a game and it was really fun, even if some of the people were cranky incompetent bad sports (to put it nicely). Either way, the time passed quickly and soon it was time for our short little jaunt home.

Ellie had been in Imola all day, so she messaged me and Matt to see whether we wanted to hang out tonight. We did, so after dinner with our respective families, I took the 4N and we all meet up at Garibaldi. Ellie’s host sister came too, and suggested Mastiff, a nearby pub. I tried a ‘red’ Belgian beer, Leffe, that came in a goblet. Interesting, worth trying, but I still haven’t found a favorite here.
All in all, a good day.

...
2. 26. 10
This is the first time I have been a week behind in my journaling. It would seem that as I settle into the routine (but never boring) life here, I feel less compelled to write every single thing down. Here are some snippets and highlights:

My accomplishments after a month in Italy:
Learning how to cut bread such that the soft bread in the middle is not mushed together and leaves a hole in my slice.
Pouring milk slowly enough that it doesn’t come out in dollops and splash everywhere. (Of course, as soon as I wrote this, I jinxed myself and have been dolloping and splashing worse than ever. But I did learn how to open a carton the right way.)
Occasionally understanding speech whose clarity is impeded by food, yawning, or other such things.

Words I learned watching millionaire:
Seppia - cuttlefish
Struzzo - ostritch

Apparently I was starting to get a little complacent in my bus travel, and needed to be reminded that it is never quite so simple. The other day, already hustling to catch a bus that would get me to class a little late, I saw a little bus coming to my stop from the opposite direction it normally does. Since there is only one bus line that comes to this stop, I thought it was weird, but didn't think much of it. I got on and waited for us to get going, debating whether I should ask the driver where he was headed. As a larger bus pulled up behind it, I wondered whether I should get on that one instead, but figured I would stick with this one. We start going and we start going away from my intended direction. Crap. What now? I push the stop request button and get off on the first possible stop, now farther away than where I started. I walk back to my stop, and as I am arriving I see the little bus returning to the stop as well. What? Too embarrassed to stand there and have him see that I got on the wrong bus, despite what now felt like glaringly obvious indicators, I continue walking until the next stop, which is around the corner, and catch the right bus in the right direction.

Sights and activities:
The unexpectedly beautiful interior of the baptistery, art history lectures in three churches, the National Art Gallery, an amazing wooden theater

I learned that Italy's best forensics team/lab is housed in the police station in the Parco Ducale, and they get called out to go all over the country to solve crimes.

If I recounted my days as the words that I learned or tried to learn, this week would be:
finocchi - fennel
liquorizio - licorice (I learned this courtesy of sampling a licorice moonshine from southern Italy)
??? (coccinella, but I cheated and looked it up) - ladybug (I saw one, and apparently they bring good luck)
snaturare - distort
barbabietola - beet
tuorlo - yolk
albumen - albumen (white part of the egg)
picchiare - fight/hit
incubo - nightmare
luce?? (lucertola, but more cheating) - lizard
anice - anise
fango - mud
lische - fish spines

Today, I saw a da Vinci at the museum, learned how to de-bone a fish, and am headed to the park in Colorno to enjoy my afternoon off.

Soccer, school, Spanish, and 'ssimilating

2. 15. 10
Matt came by after lunch to pick up his Venetian postcards, which I had stored in my purse for safekeeping. We chatted a bit outside my house, and then someone else walked outside. It was Paloschi! The soccer player who lives in our building! I recognized his barely post-pubescent facial hair and the limp he acquired thanks to Saturday’s game. I was very excited. When I told my family about it, they all wanted to know how I had recognized him, and whether I spoke to him. I recognized him because I saw his face on TV and paid attention; I did not speak to him because I had nothing to say (somehow I don’t think, ‘hey I hear you’re afraid of my dog’ would have been appropriate) and was already talking to Matt. Let me segue a little into my perceptions of soccer. I don’t quite get it yet. The sport itself is fine. I have played it; it is fun; etc. It is the attitude I can’t quite figure out. Every love tap requires crocodile tears, and I might say it goes against American stereotypes of masculinity, so often deeply couched in physical displays, but ultimately players get up and keep playing no matter how many times they get beat down. Every missed goal requires an over-exaggerated display of the agony of failure. I might say this goes against American stereotypes of masculinity proscribing emotional displays, but I think I’m just not used to seeing athletes emote anything other than anger at other players or referees or the exhilaration of success.  Seeing as how I have only seen two goals so far, I haven't seen much of the latter, though they are usually just as intense. I might say it seems over the top, but that is what America is all about. So, what, then? I’m not sure yet.

First day of class! We get walked to class by Claudio, and feel like kindergarteners, or maybe more like middle schoolers who wish their ‘parent’ would disappear. He introduces us to the professor and makes us sit in the second row. Awesome. And then it actually gets awesome. I wasn’t sure whether to fear being overwhelmed or overwhelmingly bored, but I was neither. Class is totally different from any of my experiences in the US, though. It is a huge, though flat, lecture hall. The professor uses a microphone. There is a small crucifix on the wall, easy to not notice, but definitely there. Happily, I was actually able to follow pretty much everything the professor said. Taking notes is a little trickier, though. You have to simultaneously listen, process, remember, write/reword (no way I’m wasting time with translating), while still listening and processing as he keeps speaking. Remembering long enough to write it down can be a bit of a challenge. I found it kind of hilarious when he would discuss a Russian film theorist’s views, written in German, about American cinema, all discussed in Italian.

2. 16. 10
I saw Abrazos Rotos in Spanish tonight at the movie theater. Leonardo was supposed to meet me there, but apparently his Dracula costume (today was Fat Tuesday, the last day of Carnevale) ‘was taking longer than expected’ so I went by myself. I tried to contact a few other people but I let it be. I realized it was the first time I had been to a movie by myself. I am always half-hoping to strike up conversation with random people at events and therefore get to know locals (or people who speak Spanish, in this case), but of course I don’t and no one does with me. That is not one of my gifts. Anyway, I really enjoyed the movie, and I really enjoyed seeing it by myself. I even had my own row. I could bask and baste in Spanish. I could keep it all inside myself, without having to discuss or confer or explain with someone else. This was also the first time I managed to largely ignore the subtitles, which usually suck up all of my attention. Not something you want, especially when you don’t need them or are watching a visually lavish film, both of which applied tonight. When you can understand something, you don’t have to stop and think about why. So, even when I would glance at the subtitles, I might inadvertently interpret them as being in Spanish or English instead of Italian, but it didn’t really matter because what was in my ears was enough to override the discrepancies found by my eyes. There was one scene in which the characters were watching a movie in Italian, and I didn’t notice until it was almost over that it was in a language I ‘don’t’ understand.

By the time I got home, dinner was waiting for me but everyone else had already eaten. There was the usual pasta, but also something I can only describe like a chicken meatloaf. Usually when I encounter new foods, I wait to observe how the family approaches it. There was the friendly squeeze tube of mayonnaise next to the plate, but no way was I going that route. The taste was fine; it was just a little disconcerting. I tried it with some olive oil, which in this house always seems like an acceptable approach. There was also more of what we had at lunch, which is some kind of beef cold-cut that I can’t describe. I’m not sure if it is raw-ish, but it is a dark red and definitely nothing like roast beef. Maybe more like corned beef, but also not. Anyway, with rucola and olive oil, it is delicious. An aside:
Looking over my journal entries, the word delicious comes up every time a food item is described. I feel like I should invest in diversifying my vocabulary. Instead, every time you see the word delicious, take your pick from the following word bank, or get creative for me.
scrumptious
yummy
savory
mouth-watering
papillary-pleasuring

Afterward I had to start getting ready. There was an Erasmus Carnevale party tonight, and after much arranging, since it was rather far, we agreed to go. It’s been a long time since I pulled the ‘try on all of your clothes’ but I did. Not like I hadn’t already spent all day doing that in my head. Finally ready, I went outside to wait for the bus. Somehow, probably because I kept misreading my watch and freaking out, I managed to meet my goal of being ten minutes early; I did not want to get left behind. I waited. I waited. A car pulled up to me and rolled down the window. I guy in a bright blue bob wig cooed ‘ciao ragazza’ in a falsetto voice. Should I respond? I halfheartedly mumbled ciao. I tried to get a look at the other people in the car, but couldn’t. He rolled a little further forward and asked where I was going, still in the same voice. Um. I briefly wondered whether they might be going the same place as me, and then my brain turned back on and I remembered that it doesn’t matter what country you are in, you shouldn’t take rides from randos. I think I just stared at them confusedly, wondering whether to laugh and play along, ignore them, or be serious. They drove off to whatever corner of the night awaited them. Where was my bus? It was ten minutes late, but eventually it showed up. Off we went. I was the only passenger. He pulled over and told me this was my stop, where was I going? The Positiva? Well the stop was here but I would have to walk way back there. Umm, ok. Slight problem, I didn’t know where I was going. Couldn’t you just take me? Well buses can’t go there, but ok. He drove me around three sides of a long sketchy block, and I was glad not to be making a trek to an unknown destination at night and in heels. Sometimes it’s nice to have the damsel in distress card at your disposal.

I meet up with the rest of the girls and we are literally the first people to arrive. A pharaoh asks me if I am an Arab. I’m not sure whether he means me myself or my costume, but I am not wearing a costume anyway, so either answer is no. I am collecting quite the interesting array of perceived nationalities. People present didn't seem to interested in mingling, so we didn't really get to know anyone, but it was still a fun night, and we did meet a few people from Boston College.

2. 17. 10
I felt like a bottomless pit at lunch, and ate like one. Pasta, two steaks, salad, bread and cheese, and two kiwis. Class in the evening brought us up to the present in Italian history. A couple thousand years in four classes? Not bad. I learned not to ask questions. During ‘the 68,’ the year of sociopolitical change for Italy and much of Europe, students occupied the universities. I was curious as to what their objective was, and my asking led to a fifteen minute tangent about how the educational system here is different from the American system, with details about our professor’s personal experiences. That might have been interesting if I hadn’t already heard most of it, or at least worthwhile if it had eventually ended up leading to an answer for my question. Unfortunately, it was neither. I did learn that:
Strikes must be announced ahead of time. A ‘wild’ strike has a publicized start date and time, but an unknown end date and time. Bus drivers will be striking Friday afternoon, which means that I will hopefully manage to do my homework before post-midnight Monday morning, my usual approach.
In Italy, it is considered the teacher’s job to prevent cheating. There is no such thing as the honor code. If the teacher doesn’t catch you immediately and do something about it, it is his own fault and you cannot be penalized.

I stayed home in the evening and was treated to Grappa, a very intense alcohol made from plants that grow in the mountains. I do not recommend trying to inhale while drinking it.

2. 18. 10
Language class in the morning. Our last class in the Centro Linguistico, which means it is the last time I have to get up at eight to spend about 30 to 45 minutes waiting for buses and commuting. Even better, it will significantly reduce the frequency with which I have to rely on the unreliable six. Yay! A quick lunch of horse before going to a guided tour of the art museum. I had been excited about the opportunity to know more about the exhibit, but it was not what I had hoped for. First of all, my purse was too heavy, which was not good for my disposition. The curator had another engagement, so she rushed us through the exhibit. While I kind of appreciated not being quagmired for eons in each room, it ended up being pretty uninformative. Also, we were with a huge group of Erasmus students, which made it hard to see anything. You had to choose between being close enough to hear or staying behind to be able to see what she had been talking about. Had I not already seen the exhibit, it would have been quite frustrating. I ended up entertaining myself by trying to guess which country everyone was from. I enjoyed the fact that for the most part I could understand any and every conversation taking place. We got to leave early, and I decided to take the opportunity to do a little shopping. Every Thursday, no cars are allowed to drive in the center of town (except for people who live there) to reduce smog. According to my family, it does nothing for smog but it gets Parma a stipend from the EU, which is the real reason it is done. Maybe for this reason, most of the stores seemed to be closed. I did finally get my workbook for class, though. The sales are wrapping up, and stores here literally get rid of everything. I went to a department store and everything and everyone was crammed into the first floor, with only two dressing rooms and two checkouts and about two million women. Can you say mayhem? I get home and afterwards and eat way too much. Pasta, an egg and cheese frittata, and what might be the best spinach I have ever had. It was amazing.

Alice (a-lee-che) and I had agreed to meet up tonight to go to XXL. It seems like I always misinterpret the plans she proposes. I figured we would go dancing, but we ended up just sitting and chatting (aka yelling over the noise) while drinking beer. Maicol recommended the franziskaner hefeweisse. Not sure if I would get it again, but it is always nice to try something new, especially when it comes recommended. I learned that you have to swirl a hefe first to release the yeasts, and I think it might have been the first time I poured beer into a glass. It was a fun night, either way.



How to appear Italian:

1. Shrink five inches and lose ten pounds (obviously by eating more carbs).
2. Imagine that your neck is a caterpillar, and that it intends to reemerge in the spring as a butterfly. After putting on the necessary puffy jacket, construct your cocoon by your scarf around your neck as many times as possible, preferably until it looks like you are wearing a wool tire. There are no loose scarf ends allowed. Do not bother to extricate your hair from the grips of this constrictor’s coils. For protection, keep your collar or hood between you and this unruly woolen reptile.
3. Pull on your boots: heeled, fringed, studded, suede, shiny, flat, sleek, Uggs, arnkle, knee-high, distressed, wrapped, ...
   OR a pair of Timberlands in the color of your choice.
   Ladies, you can also choose to wear running shoes no matter what else you are wearing, or of course, heels.
   Men, your alternative is to get a sweet pair of high tops.
4. Men: Learn the art of the sweater. The right man in the right sweater is twice as right. Put on your favorite pair of jeans. They of course have random seams and intense whiskering at the knee, otherwise they wouldn’t be your favorite. They might also have a bill in the denomination of your choice embroidered onto the back pocket (real but thus far unseen by my). Be sure to put on too much cologne when you go to a social event.
5. To expand on your love for cylindrical woolen encapsulation and create an aesthetically pleasing element of repetition within your composition, here’s what you do:
 Get one of those hats that everyone is wearing; a knitted tube you pull onto your head that flops down in the back. This is especially useful for letting your dreads come out instead of trying to cram them all into a hat.
6. If you are of the older persuasion, a fur coat would be at home around your shoulders, regardless of whether you are riding a bike in the rain.
7. If you are of the younger persuasion, you probably need about three more piercings in the general vicinity of your face. Don’t worry about jeopardizing any future career opportunities. With this economy, you won’t have any; that’s why you still live at home.

***When in doubt, the more purple items you put on, the better. Hat, scarf, jacket, gloves, pants, sweater, tights, shoes: it’s all good. Perhaps the only exception would be your fur coat. Purple man Uggs, however, are not an exception. If your bike is purple, too, you are the coolest cat around.

and then it was Carnevale

2. 10. 10
Pesto for lunch! Mostly an uneventful day. The only main point is that we discover that a) university classes start on the 15th, not the 22nd, as we had been told from day 1, and b) I have been put in the critical cinema class. I am annoyed both about the misinformation and that my decision has been made for me, but there doesn’t seem to be much I can do, or I am not willing to do much about it. (This has since become much more positive!)

After dinner was a big soccer game, which had been postponed from last week because of the snow, between Parma and Milan Inter. This was the first time I have watched soccer on tv for an extended amount of time. It was… interesting. For a while I was the only one watching with Paolo, and I think he was glad for the company because no one else in the family cares a stitch about soccer, so he would talk to me about the players and team politics/gossip during lulls. He said it was a terrible game that made it seem like the objective of soccer was to not score, as the ball stayed in the midfield for the majority of the game. Parma finally had an exciting goal, but Milan Inter responded a few minutes later. It is funny how, in any sport, both teams can be struggling for so long, and as soon as one team breaks through the other team is suddenly able to as well. Anyway, while I am used to hearing yelling at the tv during sports, and often do so myself during football, this was my first time seeing/hearing real outbursts that involve getting up and stomping around and such. Even funnier to me was that mom would good-naturedly argue back. Who argues with someone yelling about the injustices their team is suffering?

After the game, a 1-1 tie, they interviewed the coach, who is Portuguese. Apparently, his Italian was pretty bad (even though it sounded fine to me), and my parents thought it was quite hilarious, and had a ball correcting him throughout his interview. My only consolation (?), as this was making me rather self-conscious, was that they crowed, ‘Adelina’s Italian is better than his!’

2. 11. 10
Class was a walking tour of certain historical sites in Parma: the bridge, which is from Roman time and the only/oldest part of it left; Piazza Garbialdi; and Il Duomo, the church. Because we were finally going to get to spend time outside, it was drizzling. Because we were having a lecture outside, a car alarm felt the need to blare for several minutes and our professor felt no need to desist from speaking. I admit I did not learn very much. I do remember that I learned about Parma Yellow, the color of many buildings here, and that the statue of Parmigianino is one of a local painter. How did I not notice he was holding a palette? I was pleased to finally get to go into the Duomo, which is beautifully painted inside. A once in a blue moon experience, class got out early. We decided to take advantage of this and our central location to spend some time warming up in a café. I had been feeling under the weather all day (ha, how appropriate), so the tea was at least well appreciated. Next we went to get our tickets to Venice. Hooray!

Dinner is risotto alla Milanese, aka risotto with saffron and delicious.
The food sins of Italians: Philadelphia cream cheese and mayo.
I have nothing against cream cheese, but it is inconceivable to me to prefer it over the array of savory goodness that we have on the table every night. My family thinks that Americans put ketchup on everything, but they put mayo on fishsticks and mix it into their paella and squirt it with gusto onto slices of turkey. Would you like some more turkey for your mayo?

I discovered that my mom thought that Americans can buy their way out of jail. She mentioned bond to me, but said it is not like in the US; you actually have to go to jail. What? No get out of jail for (not)free card. It might sometimes end up working that way, but officially, that’s not the system.

Have I mentioned that every time I mention Houston, people shout ‘Houston! We have a problem!’? At least people know it exists. Italians’ sense of US geography is about as bad as my sense of Italian geography, though I am making strides towards improving it. My host dad asked what was above Texas, and after I replied Oklahoma he asked if Canada was above that. Someone asked me whether Houston was near Miami. My host dad said it was funny that in Europe the West is on the left but in America… oh wait, what? People here know San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, and New York. Other than that, it’s a crapshoot. It’s like when you meet someone from another state and reference places in your own, assuming they will know what you’re talking about. You do; why wouldn’t they?

I have been seeing HappyBuses since I got here and had been rather curious about them. I have now discovered that they are the school buses for elementary students. Like short little red airport shuttles, I see children sitting in rows of seats that look like our plastic classroom chairs. Would your outlook on school be any different if you arrived in something called a HappyBus instead of a graffiti-ed, jostling contraption with no seatbelts?

I watched an Italian movie tonight on TV. Aside from the simple but slightly bizarre plotline (37 year old man and 17 year old girl fall in love after he hits her while she’s on her vespa) my previous theory has definitely proven true. Understanding Italian Italian is way harder than understanding translated English Italian. When it is translated, there is a certain limitation on the pace, and there is little room for colloquialisms or turns of phrase that muddle the meaning for me. I could still understand what was going on, but it was much more idea-based and gisty than dialogue-detail-based.

2. 12. 10
Lunch included sliced tomato and seasoned buffalo mozzarella. Yum yum yum.

Today was the chocolate festival, and we had agreed to meet up in the afternoon to go scope it out.  For some reason I thought I wouldn’t want to use my camera, so I have no pictures. However, even if the festival was smallish, it was still more than enough chocolate. Dark chocolate, slabs of chocolate, metallic chocolate, chocolate-covered fruit, pralines, chocolate animals, white chocolate, hot chocolate, chocolate liqueurs, and on and on and on. Me being my usual me, I decided to look at everything before I decided what I wanted. Of course there were samples, but also of course it was of the basics, plain light, plain dark chocolate, nutty chocolate. I started out with a truffle, simple, classic. Then I got a mirtillo, which I at first thought was like a blackberry truffle but turned out to be filled with some kind of liqueur. Either way, delicious. I took an errand break and returned to meet Matt and Ellie, this time getting another liqueur, this time with Grappa, an Italian alcohol, and the woman recommended that I get a little brick of a certain dark chocolate. Both were quite good. We went around again and I got another mirtillo.

What to do for the rest of the night? We went to Matt’s house because his mom had already made him dinner, and Ellie and I played vulture and swooped in on tidbits of his delicious meal. Tortellini in beef broth = scrumptious. I have a secret (not so secret, anymore!) goal to get to see everyone’s house at some point or another, just because I think it is nice to know people’s home base. In Italy it is much more common to go out than to have people over, so this might prove difficult to accomplish. Still, two down, six to go. Afterward, Isabella’s family, members of an environmentalist group was hosting a candlelight aperitivo party at a nearby restaurant in honor of Low Energy (usage) Day. We decided to drop by and make an appearance. I intended to mingle and work on my Italian, but I ended up socializing with people I already knew, which was just as fun if more bilingual. Afterwards I was going to go home for dinner, but I got talked into going out with Giuliano, Liam, Leonardo, and Isabella. I was leaving for Venice early the next morning, so I didn’t want to get home too late, but I figured that since it was barely nine it would be fine. Ha. We managed to take an hour to walk up Azeglio to the center (normally maybe a 15-minute walk), where we found a pizzeria, La Duchessa. I admit I was pleasantly surprised. I have been advised against centrally-located establishments, but the food was really good and reasonably priced. Of course, after the Italian interpretation of going dutch (splitting bills mathematically instead of by what you order), I ended up having to pay way more. Over dinner, we took turns trying to explain and translate and find equivalents for our respective phrasings of things, for example the proper use of ‘oh snap.’ We eventually started heading back down Azeglio to the car. I walk too fast for most people, and I walk way too too fast for southern Italians. They were physically holding on to me to keep me from leaving them in the dusty dark. I really hate walking slowly. We finally made it to the car and then to my house at the lovely hour of 130am. How did our quick little dinner turn into a four hour adventure?

2. 13 and 14. 10: Venice and back
Wow wow wow. Venice. Venice. Four hours after falling into bed I woke up at 545 and couldn’t get back to sleep. The advantage of having missed dinner at home last night was that there was plenty of food waiting for me in the kitchen. Hard-boiled eggs, which no one would ever eat for breakfast but are perfectly acceptable at dinner, plus a slew of other things, gave me a good start to my morning. There was also a pile of homemade potato chips that were perfect for a travel snack; I knew snack breaks in Venice would be expensive and far between. I debated waiting it out for the nefarious 6, but opted to take the 5 to Corridoni and walk over to the station with Matt and Morgan. Well, by the time I arrived that walk turned into a bit of a stilted sprint, but we made it fine and got onto our first train to Bologna. I was happy to eavesdrop on a bunch of raucous Spaniards. This would become a recurring experience on this trip. About an hour later we changed trains. Clearly, Venice was the place to be this weekend. If we thought the cars were packed when we got on, it was nothing compared to how it was by the time we arrived. I managed to get a seat with three British girls, and I wondered whether they knew I understood them, since I had only spoken to them in Italian when I asked whether the seat was available. It didn’t matter too much anyway, because I fell asleep for most of the two hours of the ride. Every now and then I would feel people touching my hair as they placed their hands on my headrest while walking by. I don’t know what the maximum car capacity is, but we seemed to be quite close. People were standing in the aisles and clumping in the areas between cars. As we got close to the last stop, I watched my seatmates reapply enough makeup to open their own makeup store.

Venice. What? As soon as we got off the train, there were masks and hats and wigs and masks and masks for sale at the station. After making purchases and a restroom break on a train to avoid paying and getting our return tickets, we eventually made it outside, and it was Venice. Venice! Canals, churches, boats: Venice. More masks and face-painting available. Resourceful Matt found a hotel and a map, which would serve us well for the rest of the trip. The thing about the way Venice is laid out is that when everyone wants to get to the same place and there are only limited ways to get there, everything is one big bottleneck. The good news is that as long as you follow the crowd, you can be pretty sure that you’ll get to where you want to go. We take a lunch break for some, a photo adventure break for others. I find my photo-passion of the day in the form of laundry drying on clotheslines. I sometimes feel like take the same pictures everywhere I go, but it is how I find myself and what I love wherever I am. It is really nice to get a taste of what I might call the Real Venice, or the common Venice, what Venice really is for the people who live there. We get back ‘on the road,’ and it is nice to not be sardined into alleyways now that we have been briefly left behind by the crowds. We follow the signs to Rialto bridge (originally the only bridge over the Grand Canal) and San Marco (labeled S. Marco and henceforth referred to as Smarco). Eventually we find people again. We become one with the surge, and are bombarded by the languages of affluent countries. This is the first time during my stay that I hear almost as much English as Italian being spoken on the streets. I mentioned earlier that I had started inadvertently speaking French; today German found its way out of my mouth as well. We stop at a gelateria and I get fiordilatte, literally milk-flower but I think more accurately translated as sweet cream. It might be the best gelato I have had yet. It was exactly what I was craving. There seems to be a popular local flavor, sometimes called Doge, composed of some kind of liquor and berry, a white and purplish swirl. At some point we pass by the fish market, right before Rialto. No fish left, but other produce is out and I also see a horsemeat store. Rialto is a) huge b) crowded c) all of the above. Had I been wearing roller-skates and not been going up and down stairs, I could have just stood, and I would have arrived on the other side. Walk walk walk. We briefly wonder whether we are going the right way, and in that instant I see a sliver of a lavish façade over the heads of the crowd. We get to the end of the alleyway and it opens up onto a square over which looms a wall of Smarco. Is this big? Not compared to what we see when we get to its corner. The entire piazza, vast in the blinding sun and black under the swarms of people, is before us. Time to breathe a little bit. Where do we go? Who knows. By this time (actually long before this time but by now I can’t remember when or where exactly) I have acquired my mask. We are one with the tourists and inferior to the locals, the real partygoers, whose extravagant ensembles can’t be described as anything but Venetian. We are awed by the mosaics of Smarco; we are squeezed through the capillaries of space that exist in the crowds (and realize that if you ever find a reasonably sized opening it is probably because you are walking through someone’s photo-op); we are in Venice during Carnevale.

Everyone here speaks everything. Is this where I should have grown up? Venetians know that they rely on tourism, so it seems like anyone who wants to get business speaks Italian, English, Spanish, and French, if not also German and more. I hear one woman make the same announcement in all of these languages, and I am a little jealous. We make it to the Canal and look over the waters and see the gondoliers waiting for customers. What now? We try to go see whether we can get into the tower that towers (ha) over the square. Everyone but Matt and I decides that they want to go sit and drink. We wait a bit and move not a step. I reason that the tower will only be worth it when and if we make it to the top, whereas the church behind us will start yielding as soon as we manage to make it inside. Matt wonders whether churches are just churches, ultimately, but he accepts my logic and we shift endeavors. After more crushing and pressing and squishing we pop in through the doorway and our mouths fall open. Not a church forgettable amidst the mass of churches we will see.  Of all the churches I have ever seen, this is in the top two with St. Peter’s as far as wow-factor goes. The ceiling is entirely Byzantine and post-byzantine mosaic. The floor is as intricate, huge patterns of porphyry and marble swirling and spiraling and tessellating throughout the Basilica. The walls have slabs of stone sliced thin so that each slab bears the same veining pattern, creating a tapestry-like pattern on the walls. It is a testament to the awesomeness of nature as much as the creativity and skill with which man has been endowed. I could have sat and gaped all day. I sit and say thank you. As usual, photos are not allowed inside, though that does not stop most people from flashing away, often right next to the signs that insist otherwise. We go to the upstairs museum and terrace, so even though we didn’t make it up to the tower, we do get some nice elevated views of the square and of the people who surround us. It is all, to put it simply, breathtaking. We make our way down just as they start to close, and meet up with the rest of the group. It is decided that we will take a gondola ride. Is it a little exorbitant? Is it touristy? Is it fun? Yes. As we say, when in (insert name of relevant Italian city), … Our gondolier, whose name I unfortunately either never knew or have completely forgotten, takes us around and answers all of our questions. We go by the Doge’s palace and the prison, from which Casanova escaped. I admit that upon arriving, my first thought went to that movie. We pass Casanova’s last residence (apparently he never had a home; he always slept ‘wherever he could find lodging,’ to put it euphemistically) and Marco Polo’s family’s house , the latter of which bore an Italian inscription: the house of the family of Marco Polo, who traveled to faraway Asian lands and described them. I was sitting closest to the front, and every time we rounded a close corner I held my breath, expecting to scrape up against it. We never did, even if we were less than a centimeter away. Nameless Gondolier won my admiration. We passed by another gondola being serenaded with Venetian ballads and accordion. Our gondolier said he was not much of a fan of such music, and later broke into a spontaneous rendition of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Under the Bridge, and we all joined in. It was a rather surreal experience.

Dinner time. Where to? We wandered and wandered some more and ended up somewhere whose name I have forgotten. More surreality. We finally pick our restaurant, and as we try to enter we are preemptively met outside by the head waiter, who asks if we have reservations. No. Ok, well you can eat here, but you have to eat upstairs. Ok… You will be in a room by yourselves. Ok… So because we didn’t make a reservation we get to eat in a private room. Sounds good. Dinner for me was spaghetti alla carbonara, a creamy egg-based sauce and pancetta (the Italian version of bacon). I had had it before in the US, but it was too rich for me. Here, it was just right. I tried Lauren’s lasagna and it was incredible. Eventually other people were seated at the other tables in our private room, but it is funny to think that this dilapidated bunch of kids got a private room in a swanky restaurant, if only briefly.

After dinner, it was definitely slump time. We would all have been happy to settle into our wicker chairs for a nap, but it was all too clear that the waiters were ready for us to be on our way. Back out into the night, and Matt was happy to point out that there was still half of our ‘day’ to go before we would get on the train home. We sat on a bridge that dead-ended into the now-closed glass factory and talked. We were treated to people peeing nearby, tried to say hi to grumpy water-taxi-ists who ignored us, and were accosted by a group of drunken Italians from Siena. They asked if I was Spanish and I went with it, even though they ascertained that everyone else in the group was American. After a while we decided to try and find one of the parties we had heard about. We saw an illuminated, giant, mechanized praying mantis, spider, and ant, make their way through the crowd, spraying who knows what onto onlookers. We wandered west of the square, which seemed to be the general direction of ‘the people.’ We found ourselves in a fancy shopping center, and I saw gem-encrusted shoes for 1000+ € and some crazy Gucci pumps for 1480€. The night was still young. We found an Italian ska band performing, and a very good-natured mosh pit. After a bit we moved on. We found another piazza and another and another church and we sat for a while. We watched a rat scamper. We kept going and found a crepe stand. Nutella crepe for me! Quite good. More wandering and then sitting. I finally made it to a white domed structure behind which the sun had set; my desired destination for much of the evening. We wandered; we sat. We started heading back in the general direction of the train station. We made it to Rialto quickly and easily. After that, not so much. All the signs were for Piazzale Roma, which was west of our destination, so we tried to compensate. We ended up there anyway. The only good thing was that the scale on the map was such that things were much closer than they seemed. When all seemed lost, by which I mean when my navigating senses were numbed and we had reached not where we wanted, we took a few turns and suddenly there we were. Venice is like that. We later figured out we went over a bridge that wasn’t even on the map, a very modern and somewhat out-of-place-seeming, sleek and illuminated Calatrava.

Even though we were over an hour early, our train was there. It was a good thing we got on then, because several of the cars were already packed. I felt like I would never be warm again. We waited; we talked; we snoozed; we arrived in Veneto. Now onto the train to Parma. Home sweet home at 9 am. I thought I was doing pretty well as I waited for the bus. Then I got on the bus. I couldn’t sit without my eyes closing. Lucky I am the last stop, otherwise who knows where I would have ended up. Home, hi, good night, thought I would sleep until 1; slept until 430 and could have kept going.

Travel lesson that I should have learned by now:
Bring extra batteries, because ones that say ‘lasts as long as Duracel’ don’t.

P. S. Did you know that Venice is shaped like a fish?

After my post-Venice sleep, there wasn’t much left of the day. Pizza for dinner, which never gets old. Then Cristina and Antonio showed up with Indian takeout, and I ended up having a second dinner. Fantastic. Even if they got things they totally didn’t order, it was pretty good, and if I ever feel like I need a break from Italian food (not like that’s ever going to happen) now I know where to go. It was pretty funny to observe their reactions to the food. I guess the color of tandoori chicken can be pretty shocking if you have never seen it before. There was a soccer game tonight, and little Pietro and his dad came over to watch it with us. It was even less exciting than the previous game, with a final score of 0-0, but still fun. Also fun to hear a child’s commentary on the game. Milan Inter was playing Napoli, and I learned that when a law was passed requiring that everyone wear seatbelts while driving, people in Napoli started selling shirts with a thick black diagonal stripe. That's how they roll, there.