You know you're in Italy when...

So, this week we had to start trying out courses at the University of Florence, and pick one to audit for the rest of the semester.

It has been an Experience.

First, you have to find out what courses exist. The university is divided into Faccoltà (agriculture, medicine, literature & philosophy, biology, etc), each of which is further divided into departimenti, which either contain or are equivalent to (I still haven’t figured out which) corsi di laurea (courses of study): specific degree programs like “forest and environmental science”, “science and technology of agriculture”, or “science and stewardship/husbandry of animal and environmental resources” (can you tell I’ve been spending a lot of time digging around in the Faccoltà Agraria?). Each Faccoltà has its own schedule for when classes start, ranging from early September to late October and beyond. Italian students apply for a specific degree program, and everyone in that program takes the same set schedule of courses. Thus there is no such thing as a course catalog, online or otherwise. The university does have a website, but it is VERY disorganized, haphazard, and difficult to navigate. We finally figured out that you can almost always find a list of courses (but no descriptions) included in a particular degree program, and then by googling the course name, you can usually find the schedule it’s part of, which will tell you when and where it takes place, and who teaches it.

The next step is to locate the building and get there. The university buildings are scattered all over Florence (and beyond--one Faccoltà is 2 hours away by bus), and more often then not aren’t clearly marked. I should also tell you that the Florentine address system uses two different numbering systems--one in red for businesses, one in black for residences--that are completely independent of each other, so that on one street the numbers might go 2b, 4b, 6b, 32r, 8b, 30r, 28r, 10b and so on.

So.

Monday afternoon I had no Sede classes, and decided to go try out two university courses. They were both in the same building, one right after the other, so I figured it would be convenient.

1) Archeologio Medievale (Medieval archeology)

Walking over to the building for this class, I was absolutely terrified. I had no idea what the building or the room would look like, how many people there would be in the class, whether I would need to explain why I was there, whether I would remember any Italian whatsoever if I did need to explain, etc… I had to just make myself walk and try not to think about it.

I successfully found the street, found the building, found the room, and arrived about 10 minutes before it was supposed to start. The schedule in the entrance of the building reassuringly listed that course in that room at that time, as did the schedule on the door of the room.

There was no one there.

The door was closed and locked, and the hallway was pretty much deserted. All right, I thought, we’re on Italian time, so 5 actually means 5:15… 5:20… ish… It gets to be 5:10, there’s still no one there. Finally, one other girl arrived for the same class, and since neither of us knew what was going on, she called a friend to ask. Turns out the professor went to Germany for three weeks. Theoretically, there would be assistants to teach the class, but there was no sign of them. She went to go ask in an office somewhere, and when she didn’t reappear, I gave up and walked the 15 minutes back to the Sede (rather than hanging around in the hallway for an hour and a half), and stopped for a gelato on the way.

2) Topografia e Cartografia (Topography and Maps)

I left the Sede again (less terrified this time but still nervous) and walked the 15 minutes back to the same building--except I got overconfident (since I'd walked there and back once already), didn’t pull out the map I’d drawn, and took a right instead of a left at one of the crucial corners. Luckily I only got about three blocks before I realized I’d gone wrong, and was able to turn around and go back and still be on time. I’d scoped out the signage earlier, so I knew more or less where the room was, and found it without much trouble.

There was no one there.

And this time, the schedule on the door didn’t list the course I was looking for. At that point, it was late, I had already walked back and forth three times (four if you count walking from the bus stop in the morning), it was getting dark, and I was tired, so I left and headed home. At this point I should mention that last Sunday, they made the Piazza del Duomo pedestrian-only, which is nice, but meant they had to permanently re-route at least half the bus lines--so getting home meant figuring out where they’d moved my bus stop to. I knew which piazza it was either in or near, but there are about 4 new bus stop locations in that piazza, not to mention the two or three that already existed, and the ones nearby on side streets, and each bus only goes to a few of them, and the piazza was full of other confused commuters wandering around trying to find the right bus.

Once I got home, I checked online, and realized that what I thought was a typo was actually correct: this class doesn’t start until the second week of November.

3) Botanica Generale (general botany)

I had planned to try this course on Wednesday morning. However, it’s in a building very far away, and starts at 8:30 am. With the new bus routes, it now takes two buses to get from my house to the central station, and from there I’d have to take a third bus to get to the building--so we’re talking about an hour and a half on the bus, and leaving the house just after 7 in the morning, which might have been doable, except that I needed to be back at the Sede (two buses or else a bus and a long walk) in time for another class, and that was just not going to happen unless I got very lucky. So I opted to sleep in instead.

4) Selvicoltura (The care/growing of forests/trees--forestry?)

This one was also early and far away, but located in such a way that I could leave around 7:30 and get there with just two buses (and an easy transfer in between). Getting off at the right piazza was easy. Then I had to find the building. It was NOT where google maps said it ought to be. I asked several people, who kept directing me further and further away. I wound up in the Technical School of Agriculture rather than the University Faccoltà Argraria, was redirected to the latter, and from there was redirected BACK in the direction I’d come from, because that particular building was elsewhere. I did finally find it, but by then was about 15 minutes late (and this class, miraculously, had started on time), and the class turned out to be a small one (about 20 people), rather than a large lecture, so I couldn’t even sneak in unobtrusively. About five minutes after I sat down, the professor stopped his lecture to find out who I was and why I’d turned up nearly a month into the course. But he turned out to be very friendly, and I really like both the subject and his teaching style, which is much more interactive and than I’d expected (from what I’ve heard, this is not typical of Italian courses). A bunch of the other students came over to introduce themselves at the break; they’re all intensely curious about what I’m doing here, and where I learned Italian (my favorite question was “But--do you take notes in Italian too?” (yes, I do. It’s too difficult to listen in one language and write in another, especially when you’re in a hurry)). Throughout the lesson, the professor kept stopping every once in a while to make sure I’d understood a particular word or concept, and every time there was an example that had to do with the US, he’d make a reference to “our American student” or ask me if I’d heard of the book/movie/chestnut-tree-blight/whatever the example was. It wasn't just me--throughout the whole lecture, he asked the class as a whole for answers to questions, opinions, thoughts, etc.

Also, it turns out that the course is split into two parts--the first part is Forest Ecology, which ends in a little over a week, and then the second part is Selviculture. The Friday lesson is a long one, so we spent a chunk of time in the middle talking about woods and psychology--a rambling (planned, accompanied by power point) detour through history, literature, and art that is decidedly NOT typical for an Italian course, but made everyone very happy. The professor has also written a children’s book about ecology, and at some point we’re going to take a similar detour to read it.

And there’s a random (live, large, green) parrot in the hallway just outside the door of the classroom! And two full, lifesize (real?) cow skeletons in the classroom. And because it’s the building for the animal sciences, the building is surrounded by enclosures with various birds, deer, sheep, etc.

I think I’ll still visit the maps/topography class when it starts, if only because it’s closer and would leave Friday mornings free, but I feel like I’m already part of this class, and I like the people in it, and the space it’s in, so I may wind up sticking with this one. We’ll see.

In other news (sorry, I know this is getting long!), I GET TO WORK ON AN ITALIAN ORGANIC FARM!!! It is close enough to my house to walk, and on Thursday morning I went to work there for the first time. I got to harvest radishes, arugula (ohhh, the smell of freshly cut arugula… amazing!), broccoli raab, and (if you can believe it) the last of the tomatoes. Aside from Antonio, who runs the farm, I met Susanna, the woman (she’s actually fairly close to my age. Italian has the wonderfully useful word ragazzo/a that refers to both teenagers and young adults--you can say “ragazza”, and it doesn’t sound condescending or diminutive the way “girl” sometimes does) who keeps bees on the farm. Best of all, in exchange for working for free, I get to take home free veggies!

The farm is called La Talea, and there’s a website: www.latalea.it
Look under “Galleria Foto” to see some pictures.