Home Again

I'm back now, and have been for a few days, despite already having contrived to spend two nights at Sean's house. It feels good to be back, although at first it was crazy, especially since in Italy I had huge open spaces and 20 foot ceilings with very little stuff to occupy it, and here I have much smaller rooms, especially mine, with so much stuff in them. I already started throwing out as many things as I can bear to part with.

Yesterday I had an internship interview at Greenwood Publishing Group in Westport, CT, and I got the job as an intern for the fall semester! I'm really excited. The women I met were very friendly, not even fake friendly, actually nice, and they gave me a ton of stuff, including bobblehead dolls of Jane Austen and Chaucer which they use as marketing promos. Last night was our pot roast/sailor moon extravaganza, even if we only watched three hours of the five Sara had brought with her. It was still deliciously wonderful to be back with the girls again. Everything just seems so complete, and yet still so hysterically funny, when we're together.

But the best thing about being back, besides seeing my mom, blah de blah, is being with Sean again, and having him be REAL and not just a voice over the telephone. It's like I didn't really understand how much I missed him until I was with him again.

Almost There

Oh god, just got the latest cell phone bill and it's 170 bucks. Dear god, my mom is not going to be pleased. Although technically she's just sapping my account for the money anyway. Well, I've spent 460 dollars this semester on the phone...HOLY CRAP.

So here I am just about two days from home! All packed, ready to go. The weather has gotten even warmer, you don't need a jacket even in the shady areas anymore. The Americans have begun to hit the city full force, and the summer classes are already here, we passed several of them in groups today. Tomorrow's going to be long, so long, since I'm not planning on getting any actual sleep, though I am going to try to nap in the evening. In the morning I'm getting up early to go take photos, we have to clean the apartment and the other girls need to finish packing, and then at night we're going to eat at ZaZas one last time around 10 or so. At midnight we already have a showering schedule worked out--I got dibs on first, muahaha--and then we're going to read our favorite sections of Lamb aloud to each other until the bus picks us up circa 445 am. And, by 1230 pm on Sunday, I will be in JFK, 14 hours of travel after I leave the apartment. Crazy. BUT I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!

Italy, I love you, and Florence you will always be my favorite city-that's-barely-a-city, but it's time we went our separate ways. So this is my last post from Florence, from the four months that have been one of the experiences I will always cherish. I'll be back someday, but never to live here, so in a way this is truly goodbye to a way of life that I feel very lucky to have had a chance to live. Let me never forget it, any of it.

Ciao, arrivederci, buonasera, goodbye!

Countdown

Just six days and I'm going crazy. I can't wait to be back in America now, especially since I'm starting finals tomorrow and I don't really care about the dates of stupid Baroque artists, I just want to get on that plane and be HOME already. I've already packed the largest of my suitcases, I could leave tonight, if only...

Ironically, Europe has been really good to me. I haven't been robbed or harassed, never gotten sick or lost anything valuable. Knock on wood, of course. I've really loved it here, I have, and once I'm back in America I know I'll long for parts of Italy, like the ease and cheapness of the grocery stores, having fresh mozz with every meal, and the deliciousness of even brand name ricotta...etc etc, I could make a list a mile long. But now I'm ready for home. Bah. Or, as Italians say, boh.

Leaving Party

Tonight is our final program dinner, which I suppose should be filling me with feelings of sadness and despair, but it's not...really, I'm saddest that Sara and Heather aren't here! Heather is back in gay Paris and Sara is currently pilgrimaging her way through Spain and Portugal towards Santiago de Compostela.

Yesterday I took the bus up to Settingnano, a tiny village perched above Florence with a great view of the valley. It had been raining in the morning but by afternoon was gorgeous; still, when I got to the "punto panoramico" so kindly indicated by street signs, I could see the black clouds settling over Florence from the mountains, so I made the visit a short one and caught the next bus. Naturally, we're five minutes down the hill and the sky just lets loose with a flood of water.

Last night Anna and I were at the internet place while briefly toying with the idea of going to the 3-euro porn shop on Guelfa and picking up some entertainment for the evening, but it started to pour AGAIN, so we thought better of it. Plus we were having Teresa over for one of Carla's fabulous meals, and that's really the kind of thing you need to share with those you know and love. Surprisingly enough, dinner began at 730 and she didn't leave till almost 10--she's hilarious, I had no idea! Then we sat around bullshitting for a while and wound up in one of our serious debates, once again on abortion and the death penalty, and finally we called it a night in favor of some Milka and Ever After. This movie, ps, is awesome and I had forgotten entirely how sexy Dougray Scott is. Ironically enough he's actually scottish, too.

Now I'm going to Piazzale Michelangelo for one last visit, although I'm cheating and taking the bus up there because I don't feel like sweating the whole way. I'll walk down because the famous rose garden should be open today. It's weird that I have to make time to "say goodbye" to all my favorite things in Florence, but so it goes.

Cinque Terra

Yesterday Sara, Meredith and I embarked on our final excursion from Florence, to the famous Cinque Terra along the Mediterranean coast. Some people hike all five towns, but we decided to do the less difficult ones. We took the train to the furthest village, Monterosso, and then a smaller train down to a lower village, Corniglia. From there we hiked about an hour and a half along the most gorgeous coastline I have ever beheld until we reached Manarola, and then it was only a half hour walk along the Via dell'Amore to get to the final town. The towns themselves aren't anything special, it's the views that people come to see--sweeping panoramas of sea and sky, water so clear and green you can see the rocks at the bottom ten feet out in the water, flora and fauna quite different from the rest of the countryside (Cinque Terra is a UNESCO site and a protected maritime wildlife area because it has so many species). I enjoyed it so much, it was so beautiful and I felt rather accomplished for having hiked a bit in my time in Italy, even if it wasn't the hardest of the trails. Click on the title for my webshots page, the new one.

We ate lunch in Corniglia, grabbing amazing pizza from this place, La Gatta Flora, which turned out to be in the guidebooks as the best pizza place in town (it was actually my best pizza experience in Italy, no lie) and then chowing down sitting on this staircase overlooking a massive valley. On the way between Corniglia and Manarola, there was a staircase going down hundreds of feet to the water, and we climbed down; at the bottom was a four foot drop and a thick rope to rappel down with! I stayed on the steps since I'm rather afraid of heights, and the girls climbed down onto the rocks. It was still beautiful to be that close to the water, and we met a nice couple from Victoria Island, Canada who were traveling in Europe for a month.

The only minor snafu in the whole day was while we were waiting for the train in the last town. We wanted to catch a train that went to Florence direct instead of having to switch in Pisa, but we noticed that suddenly every train was showing half hour and hour delays, to the abject terror of many American tourists who were crowding around and had no idea how to function without the train system. Also, there were no public buses and not really any room for taxis in this place, so their concern is somewhat understandable. Anyway, we managed to circumvent disaster (I could not imagine being trapped there all night, but we didn't have our real passports, just copies, so we couldnt even have stayed in a hostel) by hopping on the first train going towards Pisa, and we managed, despite delays, to make it home just ten minutes after our original ETA. We were pleased, except for Sara, who abhors Trenitalia for the number of times it has screwed her over. My days on Trenitalia are now officially over, which is sad in a way because it's so inexpensive compared to US trains. Besides Sardegna, pretty much everywhere I've been i nItaly has been on a train.

However, when my mom asked me two nights ago if I regret leaving Italy or if I'm excited to return, I could honestly say that I'm excited. My time in Italy has been amazing and I will never forget it, but I'm ready to come back. Carla is very upset because leaving, for her, means something so different than what it means for me and Heather; we're going back to the men we've been missing, and she has to leave her boyfriend behind. She has a determination to live in Italy again, however, which I can't claim to share. I could never really move here permanently for so many reasons--I couldn't leave my family behind, Sean would never want to live here, and my friends would be so far away. Not to mention that as much as I love Florence and consider it another home, Windsor will always really be home. It saddens me to think that I'll only probably ever come back as just another tourist, but I know very well how little reason I have to complain. I'm so grateful for the time I had here. None of us have or ever had a right to any of this. I try to keep that in mind.

Cemetery

Carla and I went to Sta. Maria del Carmine this morning to see the Brancacci Chapel, which was rather impressive. I especially enjoyed the fresco of St Peter Healing with His Shadow, which is from the Golden Legend so probably not really true, but still cool. Then we hit up La Specola, which is the natural history museum with specimens of thousands of animals, which was so amazing--as Carla put it, you forget half of these animals exist until you see them in a case! All my favorites were present, including tiger, meerkat, raccoon, penguin, and assorted furry animals. The walrus was frightening, it looked bigger than most cars.

After lunch, having nothing much to do and despairing of writing my paper because it's simply too beautiful out today to be talking about Bernini's statues, I went to find the English Cemetery of Florence, which is also called the Island of the Dead due to its location, perched on what has basically become a giant traffic island with large avenues that completely surround it (click on the title of this post for the Wikipedia article). Getting across the street was an adventure in itself, let me tell you. There was a nun at the gate who asked me to sign a guest book--most of the visitors seemed to have been Americans, and there had been only a handful over the last couple of days--and advised me not to leave the paths, as the graves are dangerous to walk around.

Everything you imagine of the mystery and poignancy of the Romantic era is manifested in this cemetery, right down to the cypress trees, broken tombs and shattered columns covered in moss. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is buried there, and I had ostensibly come to see her tomb which was designed by her husband and doesn't even say her same, simply E.B.B. (although it does have lyres engraved on it, which I considered a nice touch). Her tomb didn't interest me half as much as some of the others I saw there; though she is the most famous of the island's inhabitants, there are countesses and barons buried there, as well as English generals and officers, an English ambassador to the court of Italy, and many artists, sculptors, writers etc.

Although there are many nationalities represented in the cemetery, and while every cemetery has its sad stories to tell, I felt a strange sense of connection when seeing the tombs of people who had come from Kentucky, Philadelphia, Boston, who had died thousands of miles away from the world they grew up in, surrounded perhaps by family, or perhaps by strangers. Then I wondered if these people, many of whom never even saw the outcome of the civil war and for whom black rights or women's rights would simply be a contradiction in terms, would have been able to feel any more connection to me than they might be able to feel towards, say, a Russian of their own period.

At the center of the cemetery is a huge column dedicated to one of the kings of Prussia, Frederick William. There was some morbid amusement to see carved there the same Bible verse I read for my dad's funeral, just in French: "Je suis la resurrection e la vie..." Very popular words, those.

There was another, smaller column dedicated thus:

To the Sacred Memory of Ann Murray
Spinster
Died May 6 1815

Tomorrow will be Ann Murray's anniversary, but who will there be to remember her? I'm sure it wasn't meant cruelly, but just putting "spinster" on the tombstone, not sister, not daughter, not friend...perhaps no one liked her, or perhaps she was alone here, and no one knew who she was friend or sister or daughter of. If it's true that we only die when memories of us have faded, then most of the people in this cemetery have been condemned to die another death.

Farewell, Flan

What a hectic day this has been. Heather and I dragged ourselves up early, aka 830, to have some final adventures before my class at 1130 and her departure, namely, going to the Ponte Vecchio to take photos of the padlocks we sneakily attached to the side of the bridge last night before running from the carabinieri! Some backstory: the Ponte Vecchio is home to a statue of Benvenuto Cellini, master Renaissance goldsmith. There's some legend, which I'm not clear on, which says that if you put a gold lock with you and your lover's names on it on his statue, or near it, you'll stay together forever. So naturally Heather and I picked up some padlocks yesterday and took part in this ancient ritual, which is technically illegal and they used to have this big wire fence around Cellini because he'd been covered with locks, except then the fence got covered in locks too so they took it down. Heather and I chose to put our locks on the side of the bridge where there was also one huge lock so we clipped ours onto that one.

This morning we get there and some young boys are actually poking our locks and laughing or whatever, so we wait for the junior douchebags to depart before taking stalkerish photos with our individual locks. Then we go over to the over side of the bridge for some more photo ops, and while taking a photo of Heather I look up and see this man with a blowtorch cutting our locks off the side of the bridge!! The horror!! So apparently the adjacent shop does not look kindly on youthful lovers, hence why there were so few locks there but a million on the other side. Grrr. Argh. But how amusing the timing of this event--if we'd been ten minutes later our locks would have been gone already! Naturally I'm going to get another lock before I leave and do it again. I demand permanence! Heather, since she had limited time in Florence, simply decided she didn't need a lock to ensure domestic felicity with the Codest, and that is that.

When next I saw the Flan, post class, she was bent double under the weight of a backpack that must have weighed 25 pounds and was full to bursting, as well as 10 pounds of extra baggage, and very hot and bothered. I hauled this gigantic load of crqp to the Oil Shoppe, deciding along the way that she needed to get a piece of luggage cause no way could she survive London with this monstrosity. On our way to the station we bought a 20 euro suitcase and then were frantically repacking in the foyer of my school building, being observed by this nice girl from my Romanesque class from Sweden. Heather's shady Croat liquor had broken open so her backpack was gross anyway, so we threw it out--not before finding a freshman year, 1st semester lunch pass inside from Mrs Williamson, lol. Then we go to the station and buy a ticket for a train leaving in three minutes so we ran to the train and flung her onboard and then she was gone. She said this week was the best week of her semester, and honestly, I think it was my favorite as well besides the week with Sean. I'm so glad I got to share Florence with her and Sara.

May

It's May now and my program is less than three weeks from its completion. With every day I get more excited to be home and be with Sean, so I haven't had any real moments of despair at leaving the city--yet. Heather and Sara's presence I think help to obscure the passage of time, especially when I think that Heather has actually been with us since Thursday and it's Tuesday, how did that happen? Tomorrow Sara flies to London, then Heather leaves Thursday. This weekend we're visiting the Cinque Terra on what will probably be my last excursion from Florence. That's ok with me, though, because as much as part of me wishes I had traveled all of Europe to see the great museums while I was here, another part of me is very happy that I explored Italy, that I feel like I really know it and belong to it, and not like I'm still living out of a suitcase every weekend.

I will come back someday, I know I will. We've talked about how amazing it would be for us girls to rent an house in Tuscany, which is possible through what they call agriturismo, aka, people living in farmhouses in Tuscany fix up an apartment and rent it out. I would love to be back here basking in Tuscany with friends. Sean, too, if I could manage it, but he didn't seem as keen on the idea. We're very different in our ideas of relaxation, I know: he likes a lot of actual relaxing and sitting on beaches, etc, while I like to be seeing things and doing things. Most places I go my first thoughts are about what museums there will be, not where I can park myself for the longest amount of time. When Sara and I talked about Greece the same thing came up--I would just have wanted to see the Acropolis, the museums, and go home, but she wanted to spend some time on the islands. It's not that I don't like relaxing, I do, but I get really bored really fast with just sitting around, especially if I'm in a place I've never been. I mean, I can sit on the beach in Connecticut if I want to, why would I want to do it in Europe?

Carla and I have joked that Sean and I will simply have to take separate vacations, and that every other year one of us will get stuck with the kids and one of us gets to jet off with their friends. It's an amusing thought, but in the end I think most people like to vacation with their spouse, if only for the "sex in new and strange places" thing, hahaha. I certainly look forward to taking a vacation with Sara and Heather and Rae when we're older, though!