Halloween is not really a big thing here, although it is starting to catch on. Mostly in discoteche and shop window displays. Emilia got us a pumpkin, though, and Caitlin and I carved it this evening!
Pictures of the pumpkin, and miscellaneous Florence
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Festival di Cioccolato, UGUALE
Also (to catch you all up a bit, since I've been too busy to write):
Last weekend we went (by train) to an International Chocolate Festival in Perugia, a town on top of a hill (I might call it a mountain, but here, relatively speaking, it's a "hill"). Part of the historic center of Perugia is INSIDE the mountain (with cave/fortress-like architecture), which was very cool and involved about five or six (seven?) long escalators in a row, several of which were outside (I didn't know you could have escalators outside. I wonder what happens when it rains?). Needless to say, we ate lots of chocolate, and brought more home with us. It was good. It was also bitterly cold and windy, but there was also hot chocolate, so that was all right.
The weekend before that, there was a demonstration/march in Rome for LGBTQ rights and against violence driven by homophobia (this was the same weekend as the gay rights march in Washington D.C.). One of the LGBTQ organizations here in Florence was organizing a bus there and back, so a group of us decided to go. It was a long ride (I think next time we go to Rome we'll take the train instead!), but we met a lot of great people, and the demonstration was awesome. Good music, beautiful weather, speeches (good practice for our Italian vocabularies!), and rainbow flags galore. It was my first time in Rome, and I think I'll have to go back to do sight-seeing at some point. There was a great moment where I glanced down a side street as we passed and had to do a double-take--woah, wait a minute--was that the Colosseum? (it was).
Afterwards, we (the group from Florence) were all supposed to meet back at the bus to head home. Getting back to the bus involved taking the metro, and taking the metro meant finding a metro station--and we (the four of us from Smith--we couldn't find anyone from the Florence group nearby to tag along with) thought there ought to be a station closer to us than the station at the beginning of the march. And there may have been, but we couldn't find it, and got turned around looking for it, and the third person we asked for directions told us the closest stop was the one where the march started in Piazza della Reppublica. Meanwhile, we got a call from the organizer of the Florence group, checking in to find out where we were (it was very reassuring to know that someone was keeping track and calling anyone unaccounted for)--most of the rest of the group found each other at the end of the march, and were on a (local) bus to get to the (pullman) bus parking lot. So we power walked back to the piazza, and got to the metro station about five minutes before we were supposed to be at the bus (and there was still a 20 minute metro ride to the bus parking lot), dashed down the stairs and squeezed onto a metro train. When we got off at the other end, we RAN to the restroom (the one on the bus wasn't working or something, and it would be awhile before a rest stop) and RAN back to get to the bus in the parking lot, thinking that we'd find everyone else on board and waiting for us so they could leave.
On the contrary, when we got there, we found the bus driver and two other people (out of about 40). And felt very silly. See, we'd forgotten that 7:30 Italian time means, oh, 7:45, 8, something like that. And the rest of the group was still on the local bus and was even later than we were. A valuable lesson... :)
Last weekend we went (by train) to an International Chocolate Festival in Perugia, a town on top of a hill (I might call it a mountain, but here, relatively speaking, it's a "hill"). Part of the historic center of Perugia is INSIDE the mountain (with cave/fortress-like architecture), which was very cool and involved about five or six (seven?) long escalators in a row, several of which were outside (I didn't know you could have escalators outside. I wonder what happens when it rains?). Needless to say, we ate lots of chocolate, and brought more home with us. It was good. It was also bitterly cold and windy, but there was also hot chocolate, so that was all right.
The weekend before that, there was a demonstration/march in Rome for LGBTQ rights and against violence driven by homophobia (this was the same weekend as the gay rights march in Washington D.C.). One of the LGBTQ organizations here in Florence was organizing a bus there and back, so a group of us decided to go. It was a long ride (I think next time we go to Rome we'll take the train instead!), but we met a lot of great people, and the demonstration was awesome. Good music, beautiful weather, speeches (good practice for our Italian vocabularies!), and rainbow flags galore. It was my first time in Rome, and I think I'll have to go back to do sight-seeing at some point. There was a great moment where I glanced down a side street as we passed and had to do a double-take--woah, wait a minute--was that the Colosseum? (it was). 
Afterwards, we (the group from Florence) were all supposed to meet back at the bus to head home. Getting back to the bus involved taking the metro, and taking the metro meant finding a metro station--and we (the four of us from Smith--we couldn't find anyone from the Florence group nearby to tag along with) thought there ought to be a station closer to us than the station at the beginning of the march. And there may have been, but we couldn't find it, and got turned around looking for it, and the third person we asked for directions told us the closest stop was the one where the march started in Piazza della Reppublica. Meanwhile, we got a call from the organizer of the Florence group, checking in to find out where we were (it was very reassuring to know that someone was keeping track and calling anyone unaccounted for)--most of the rest of the group found each other at the end of the march, and were on a (local) bus to get to the (pullman) bus parking lot. So we power walked back to the piazza, and got to the metro station about five minutes before we were supposed to be at the bus (and there was still a 20 minute metro ride to the bus parking lot), dashed down the stairs and squeezed onto a metro train. When we got off at the other end, we RAN to the restroom (the one on the bus wasn't working or something, and it would be awhile before a rest stop) and RAN back to get to the bus in the parking lot, thinking that we'd find everyone else on board and waiting for us so they could leave.
On the contrary, when we got there, we found the bus driver and two other people (out of about 40). And felt very silly. See, we'd forgotten that 7:30 Italian time means, oh, 7:45, 8, something like that. And the rest of the group was still on the local bus and was even later than we were. A valuable lesson... :)
Foccacia and hot chocolate in the rain
Today is rainy and cold. For the moment I don't have any classes or obligations on Fridays, which is nice, so I got to sleep in some and hang around in my pajamas all morning. The bus drivers are on strike today (we were told that this happens periodically, but this is the first one since we got here)--which was mildly inconvenient, but not as bad as it might have been, since I didn't have anywhere I needed to go, and it's the kind of day where I'm perfectly content to stay home and read/catch up on email/etc.
We did need to get lunch at some point, though. Our house is too far from the center of Florence to walk in the rain (on a nice day I might try it), but I checked online around 11:45 am, and discovered that the buses would be running on the normal schedule between noon and 3 (there had also been a brief window of time in the morning), so Sofi and I caught a bus into town (we double checked with the bus driver about when the strike would start up again, just to be sure we wouldn't have to walk home) to get lunch from a pizza/foccacia/bread place called Pugi's in Piazza San Marco, reccommended to us by a Smithie who was here last year (for the record: it is FABULOUS), and ducked under the loggia of one of the nearby buildings to eat it and watch the traffic (pedestrian and auto) in the piazza (I think the building is the seat of the Architecture department of the University of Florence?). We then walked a few blocks to the Sede, stopped at a cafe for hot chocolate (for me) and ice cream (for Sophie), picked up some things at the Sede (all the while keeping an eye on the time), and then caught a bus back home in plenty of time. I'm not sure what happens if you're on a bus at 3--do they just stop wherever they are, or do they finish the route? Or do they just not start any route that won't be finished by 3?
So it was a nice day. Tomorrow the whole group is taking a bus for a day trip to Pienza and San Gimignano, and Sunday we're going to a soccer match, which should be excellent (and also intense. Emilia says Italian soccer fans are completely insane. Soccer matches are also one of the rare occasions where large groups of Italians get drunk en masse, and getting into the stadium is like checking in for an international flight, complete with passport, multiple security checks, and the no-water-bottle or pointy objects rules. It should be interesting...).
We did need to get lunch at some point, though. Our house is too far from the center of Florence to walk in the rain (on a nice day I might try it), but I checked online around 11:45 am, and discovered that the buses would be running on the normal schedule between noon and 3 (there had also been a brief window of time in the morning), so Sofi and I caught a bus into town (we double checked with the bus driver about when the strike would start up again, just to be sure we wouldn't have to walk home) to get lunch from a pizza/foccacia/bread place called Pugi's in Piazza San Marco, reccommended to us by a Smithie who was here last year (for the record: it is FABULOUS), and ducked under the loggia of one of the nearby buildings to eat it and watch the traffic (pedestrian and auto) in the piazza (I think the building is the seat of the Architecture department of the University of Florence?). We then walked a few blocks to the Sede, stopped at a cafe for hot chocolate (for me) and ice cream (for Sophie), picked up some things at the Sede (all the while keeping an eye on the time), and then caught a bus back home in plenty of time. I'm not sure what happens if you're on a bus at 3--do they just stop wherever they are, or do they finish the route? Or do they just not start any route that won't be finished by 3?
So it was a nice day. Tomorrow the whole group is taking a bus for a day trip to Pienza and San Gimignano, and Sunday we're going to a soccer match, which should be excellent (and also intense. Emilia says Italian soccer fans are completely insane. Soccer matches are also one of the rare occasions where large groups of Italians get drunk en masse, and getting into the stadium is like checking in for an international flight, complete with passport, multiple security checks, and the no-water-bottle or pointy objects rules. It should be interesting...).
Sunday, October 11, 2009
More pictures...
I'm still a week behind on pictures, so here are some from LAST weekend:
Il Giardino della Villa Medicea di Castello
Il Giardino della Villa Medicea di Castello
"Pieno Rosso" ("full red")
We have been reading a book called La testa degli Italiani (The Head [as in brain/psychology] of the Italians—there’s an English translation called La Bella Figura) by Beppe Severgnini. It’s very entertaining, and often very accurate (although sometimes exaggerated). One of very accurate chapters is on Italian traffic and driving, and since he describes it so well, here’s a section for you to read:
----
excerpt from
“The Street, or The Psychiatry of the Traffic Light”
(loosely translated by Emily)
This is why, in Italy, the rules aren’t respected the way they are in other countries: we feel that accepting a general rule slights our intelligence. To obey is banal; we want to think it through ourselves. We want to decide if that rule applies to us in our particular situation. Right there, in that moment.
Take a look at this red light. It seems the same as any other traffic light in the world; actually, it is an Italian invention. It isn’t an order, as the naïve believe; it isn’t even a recommendation, as the superficial might say. Instead, it is a starting point for a thought process. It’s almost never about a petty debate. Useless, maybe. Petty, no.
Many of us [Italians] look at a traffic light, and the brain doesn’t sense a prohibition (Red! Stop. You mustn’t pass). It senses, instead, a stimulus. Okay: what type of red is this? A crosswalk red? But it’s seven in the morning, at this hour there aren’t any pedestrians. That red, therefore, is a debatable red, a red-that’s-not-really-red: thus, we go through it. Or is it a red that regulates an intersection? But what kind of intersection are we talking about? Here we can see very well who comes, and no one’s coming. Therefore this red is only sort-of-red, a relative red. What do we do? We think on it a little, then we go through it. And if instead it were a red that regulated a dangerous intersection (streets that cross each other, high speeds, impossible to see who’s coming)? What a question: we stop, and wait for the green. In Florence—we will go there—exists the expression “full red” [meaning a red light at which you actually stop and wait]. “Red” is a bureaucratic term. “Full” is a personal contribution.
---
And he’s right. This means that drivers in Florence appear “crazy” to foreign tourists, who expect cars to follow some form of the “accepted” rules of the road (example: red = stop)—but it you’re paying attention (to the cars, not to the traffic light), crossing the street is not actually as dangerous as it looks (although pedestrians do yield the right of way to cars and motorcycles out of sheer self-defense, and many of the Smithies feel that braving the Florentine streets on a bicycle is akin to bungee jumping—something you admire other people for doing, but that you can’t quite work up the courage to do yourself, because, no matter how many people do it on a regular basis and live, your gut still tells you that launching yourself off a bridge is a supremely bad idea). It took me less than a week to learn that when you want to cross the street, you simply wait for a break in the traffic and go, regardless of any walk/don’t walk signal; if necessary, you run.
Also, there is very little practical distinction between street and sidewalk. Nominal “sidewalks” do exist, but cars often drive on them—which is perhaps only fair, since pedestrians frequently walk in the road. This is especially in the narrow, cobbled-stoned streets in central Florence; once you get to the wider, paved streets a little farther out, the distinction is clearer.
Another section from the same chapter on traffic helps to explain something I mentioned in one of the photo captions: EVERYONE wears a helmet when riding a motorcycle (or moped), but no one* wears a helmet on a bicycle. I was baffled by this, because while motorcycles do go faster than bicycles, both ride in the same streets with the same cars and the same fluid interpretation of the traffic laws, and a bicyclist seems even more vulnerable than a someone on a motorcycle. But then I read a section where Severgnini points out that bicyclists in Florence are essentially considered pedestrians—and it occurred to me that pedestrians are just as vulnerable as bicyclists, and no pedestrian would ever wear a helmet. Also, it’s entirely possible that it’s easier to look cool wearing a motorcycle helmet than a bike helmet.
At some point I also want to talk about the bus system in Florence. It’s excellent, and has unbelievably helpful signage. For now, though, I’ll finish by saying that orientation classes have ended (we took the exams for them on Friday), and regular semester classes at the Sede start on Monday. I’ll be taking Art History, History of Florence, History of Costume and Design, and Survey (which is essentially History of Literature, so I’m getting a lot of history, all of it Florence-centric, this semester—which is not necessarily a bad thing, and should (hopefully) mean lots of interesting field trips (and for field trips Smith pays any entrance fees when our museum card doesn’t get us in for free—that alone would justify taking the classes!).
*almost no one. I saw two bicyclists with helmets last week, and one more a few days ago, but they were probably all study abroad students.
----
excerpt from
“The Street, or The Psychiatry of the Traffic Light”
(loosely translated by Emily)
This is why, in Italy, the rules aren’t respected the way they are in other countries: we feel that accepting a general rule slights our intelligence. To obey is banal; we want to think it through ourselves. We want to decide if that rule applies to us in our particular situation. Right there, in that moment.
Take a look at this red light. It seems the same as any other traffic light in the world; actually, it is an Italian invention. It isn’t an order, as the naïve believe; it isn’t even a recommendation, as the superficial might say. Instead, it is a starting point for a thought process. It’s almost never about a petty debate. Useless, maybe. Petty, no.
Many of us [Italians] look at a traffic light, and the brain doesn’t sense a prohibition (Red! Stop. You mustn’t pass). It senses, instead, a stimulus. Okay: what type of red is this? A crosswalk red? But it’s seven in the morning, at this hour there aren’t any pedestrians. That red, therefore, is a debatable red, a red-that’s-not-really-red: thus, we go through it. Or is it a red that regulates an intersection? But what kind of intersection are we talking about? Here we can see very well who comes, and no one’s coming. Therefore this red is only sort-of-red, a relative red. What do we do? We think on it a little, then we go through it. And if instead it were a red that regulated a dangerous intersection (streets that cross each other, high speeds, impossible to see who’s coming)? What a question: we stop, and wait for the green. In Florence—we will go there—exists the expression “full red” [meaning a red light at which you actually stop and wait]. “Red” is a bureaucratic term. “Full” is a personal contribution.
---
And he’s right. This means that drivers in Florence appear “crazy” to foreign tourists, who expect cars to follow some form of the “accepted” rules of the road (example: red = stop)—but it you’re paying attention (to the cars, not to the traffic light), crossing the street is not actually as dangerous as it looks (although pedestrians do yield the right of way to cars and motorcycles out of sheer self-defense, and many of the Smithies feel that braving the Florentine streets on a bicycle is akin to bungee jumping—something you admire other people for doing, but that you can’t quite work up the courage to do yourself, because, no matter how many people do it on a regular basis and live, your gut still tells you that launching yourself off a bridge is a supremely bad idea). It took me less than a week to learn that when you want to cross the street, you simply wait for a break in the traffic and go, regardless of any walk/don’t walk signal; if necessary, you run.
Also, there is very little practical distinction between street and sidewalk. Nominal “sidewalks” do exist, but cars often drive on them—which is perhaps only fair, since pedestrians frequently walk in the road. This is especially in the narrow, cobbled-stoned streets in central Florence; once you get to the wider, paved streets a little farther out, the distinction is clearer.
Another section from the same chapter on traffic helps to explain something I mentioned in one of the photo captions: EVERYONE wears a helmet when riding a motorcycle (or moped), but no one* wears a helmet on a bicycle. I was baffled by this, because while motorcycles do go faster than bicycles, both ride in the same streets with the same cars and the same fluid interpretation of the traffic laws, and a bicyclist seems even more vulnerable than a someone on a motorcycle. But then I read a section where Severgnini points out that bicyclists in Florence are essentially considered pedestrians—and it occurred to me that pedestrians are just as vulnerable as bicyclists, and no pedestrian would ever wear a helmet. Also, it’s entirely possible that it’s easier to look cool wearing a motorcycle helmet than a bike helmet.
At some point I also want to talk about the bus system in Florence. It’s excellent, and has unbelievably helpful signage. For now, though, I’ll finish by saying that orientation classes have ended (we took the exams for them on Friday), and regular semester classes at the Sede start on Monday. I’ll be taking Art History, History of Florence, History of Costume and Design, and Survey (which is essentially History of Literature, so I’m getting a lot of history, all of it Florence-centric, this semester—which is not necessarily a bad thing, and should (hopefully) mean lots of interesting field trips (and for field trips Smith pays any entrance fees when our museum card doesn’t get us in for free—that alone would justify taking the classes!).
*almost no one. I saw two bicyclists with helmets last week, and one more a few days ago, but they were probably all study abroad students.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Pictures!
Links to the first few batches of photos:
Benvenuta a Firenze!
Boboli e San Lorenzo
San Miniato al Monte and Cooking Lessons
In giro per il nostro quartiere
Benvenuta a Firenze!
Boboli e San Lorenzo
San Miniato al Monte and Cooking Lessons
In giro per il nostro quartiere
Saturday, October 3, 2009
From Fiesole to Ponte a Mensola... or not.
Caitlin has this really awesome book. It’s called Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria, and has maps and directions for a whole bunch of day hikes, half-day hikes, multi-day hikes, along with suggestions for places to eat along the way, etc. These are not walks that take you past the famous locations and describe the pieces of art you’ll see in particular churches; these are walks up and down mountains, through olive groves, along backwoods mountain roads, and around the Tuscan country side. The instructions include statements like: when you get to the bus stop, go behind the sign and look for a large rock. Turn left, and follow the red and white blazes through a cypress forest until you get to a small road; follow this road, admire the view, and then turn right at the blue recycling bins. And so on… It also comes with a website where the authors (and other people who have followed the directions in the book) leave updates and comments about the various routes. For example: 2 hours? Maybe if you run; this route took us about 3-4. Or: There aren’t any horses near that olive grove any more—don’t try to use them as a landmark.
One of the routes in the book goes from Fiesole (a small town in the hills around Florence—it actually predates Florence, and has Etruscan ruins and that kind of thing) up to the top of Mont Ceceri, then down again through Tuscan farmland to Ponte a Mensola, which is not far from our house. We decided to pack a lunch and make a day of it—it was supposed to take about 3.5-4 hours. We took a series of buses to Fiesole (and met a very nice elderly man on the bus, who talked to us the whole way, and gave us his address, in case we want to come visit him and practice our Italian—he’s the only one left of his family, and likes having company,) walked around Fiesole (beautiful views! And some nice parks/benches to admire them from)
for about an hour, and then set off, following the instructions in the book. They took us off to a little side street and down what appeared to be someone’s driveway, where we had to squeeze around the car and onto a narrow, rocky channel with a high stone wall on either side that looked like it might not actually go anywhere.
But it was hard to make the description in the book lead anywhere else, so we followed it. And followed it. And started to think that maybe we were supposed to have taken the left fork back in Fiesole and not the right, but we decided to keep going just a little further (through the spiky vines hanging down into the path, and up and down steep rocky slopes, passed what we thought was a dead end and turned out to be just a sharp left) and then finally got to the end of the stone shoot, climbed up what was essentially a vertical slope, and found ourselves on a paved walking path at the entrance to a sort of state park with hiking trails—and found the red and white blazes we were supposed to be following!
At this point the book told us to watch the park signage carefully, because the trail to the peak took a sharp left off of the main path. We found a sharp left, but very little signage (what signage there was said nothing about a peak), but took the left turn anyway. And we did wind up where we were supposed to be—at a picnic area on a peak where Leonardo da Vinci took his first flight in one of his flying contraptions—although we think we got there by a slightly different route than the one the book described. More stunning views along the way (I can understand why da Vinci wanted to launch himself off the mountain and fly over the Tuscan countryside)—and it was very peaceful and quiet.
When you stopped walking, there was almost complete, utter silence, except for the light breeze through the trees, and church bells. Also, today is an almost unbelievably beautiful day. Clear blue sky, just enough sun to feel nice, a light breeze to keep you from getting too warm, and it smells like the leaves are just about to start turning colors.
over a bridge and into a woodsy area (always following the white and red blazes). The book noted that we were always heading towards the castle with the tower that we could see in the distance. If we got lost, we were to head for the tower. All well and good. Then we got to a road, with a gate (closed) that led to the tower. Since we had come through the woods, we were on the inside of the gate, but half the fence next to the gate was missing, so we could hop over the low wall to the road. Now, the problem was that we were supposed to take a right and head along a road or path to the castle. There were three options to the right: a path into the woods (we tried that and decided it wasn’t going to the castle), the road on the inside of the closed gate, and the road on the outside of the closed gate, and the book’s instructions got a little fuzzy about which one we were supposed to take. We took the one outside the gate, a sort of winding mountain road, figuring that a) the gate seemed to mean that the other road was closed to the public at the moment, and b) the red and white blazes led us over the wall to the outside of the gate. We now think that was where we went wrong, because we never got to the castle. We followed the red/white blazes until we got to a point where the road split (at this point we were completely off the book’s directions, since they hinged on getting to the castle. We’d started off the edge of both the maps we had with up, too, so they weren’t any help), and a sign told us that Settignano lay in one direction, and another town in the other. The blazes (very helpfully) went in BOTH directions. Now, Settignano is another hill town around Florence, and the bus route that goes right by our house winds up there, so we went that way, figuring that at least we knew how to get home from there.
At this point, we’re hiking along the edge of a mountain road in Tuscany, heading for a town that we hoped wasn’t too far away, still admiring the panoramic views out over farmland. I mean, really, if your going to wander around being lost, the Tuscan hills are not a bad place to do it.
And we weren’t really lost, because every once in a while we got to a road sign that told us Settignano was still THIS way. And we had chocolate and water and each other for company, and most importantly, we have the language. I was surprised at how confident and free knowing the language made me feel; we could read the signs, and talk to people, and most importantly, ask for directions. Also, it was still only about 2 o’clock. At one point, a guy in a truck stopped to ask us (in Italian) for directions to a particular castle—as it happened, we had passed a sign not long before, so we could help him. Except that we think we sent him to the wrong castle. There were two castles, the one we were looking for and another not too far away. (What a bizarre statement that is: we think we sent him to the wrong castle by mistake. You could NEVER say something like that anywhere in the US—oh, you know, there are so many castles in the area that it’s hard to keep them straight…).
Eventually we wound up at a fork in the road with a road sign giving the names of the two towns the fork led to—neither of which was Settignano. Uh-oh. We’d been following the signs, and had passed nothing that even remotely resembled a town (no “Welcome to Settengano, population: 500, or anything like that), so we picked a fork and cautiously followed it a little ways, and passed nothing except a bus stop for a line that went nowhere we recognized, and a sort of parking lot with steps leading down off of it. So we backtracked to the parking lot, discovered that the steps lead to a street with houses, and called down to a man getting out of his car for directions. He told us Settignano was about 2 kilometers farther down the road we were on. We thank him and kept walking, debating how many kilometers there are to a mile, or vice-versa (none of us could remember). Eventually we got to another fork in the road, this one with no signage whatsoever (but a great view) except for a poster about a lost cat, and stopped to sit on the wall and reconnoiter while eating some chocolate. We flagged down the next car that went by, and asked which fork led to Settignano. The couple in the car told us NEITHER fork, that in fact Settignano was back the way we’d come, but that it was too far to walk on foot, and that we ought to take the left fork, which led to Florence. Right. We debated a couple of things: A) How on EARTH did we manage to miss Settignano? There was NO WAY we’d walked anywhere near 2 km after stopping at the parking lot. B) Florence was almost certainly too far away to walk to, given that we started a ways outside of Florence and then taken a bus about 20 minutes farther away, and had been walking along the mountains, not down out of them. But we took the fork he said went to Florence anyway, since we at least knew it went in the right direction (down).
When we came around the curve, the view opened up, and we could see the Duomo in the distance. It’s hard to feel lost when you can see the Duomo (it helped that it was still early afternoon on a beautiful day, and my feet weren’t tired yet), because then you know where Florence is, and so long as we kept going down, we were bound to get to a town with a bus stop eventually, and once you get close enough to Florence, all the bus lines go to the central bus station eventually, and we know how to get home from there. And since you can SEE the Duomo, there’s a vague (if unrealistic, given the distances involved) sense that even if you didn’t find a bus stop, you could simply keep walking all the way into Florence, arrive at the Duomo, and take a left to our familiar bus stop and hop on the 10 and go home. It didn’t come to that, though, because as we walked down, the road became more and more inhabited, until we seemed to be approaching the center of a small town. We stopped to ask a woman if there was a bus nearby (I think she was actually American—her Italian was as accented as ours, and she seemed delighted to be asked directions in Italian, to have understood, and be able to answer in the same langugage), and there was one almost around the corner, and as we came around the corner, Sofi and Caitlin recognized the street, and where we were: Settignano.
Don’t ask me how we got there. Either the man we asked directions from was wrong, or there are two ways to Settignano or else we hit a space warp somewhere along the way. But we got there. It wasn’t where we were supposed to end up had we followed the directions in the book, and it wasn’t where we expected to end up based on the guy’s directions, but we got there. And got some gelato. And took the bus five minutes down the road to our bus stop and home.
So that was today’s adventure. I hope I haven’t rambled on too long. The rest of the pictures will be posted on Facebook if you want to see them—I’ll post a link to them here once they’re up.
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