The Pineapple over the Arno

First, some back story:

In the mid 1500s, when the Medici became official grand dukes of Florence (as opposed to just "ordinary citizens" who happened to control everything that went on in the city, a system which worked surprisingly well for many years), Cosimo I (who was not the first Medici duke, but was the first really important one, and the first one (Medici duke, that is) named Cosimo) moved his family from the Palazzo where they were living to Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of the government.  He was trying to make a (rather heavy-handed) point about who was in charge.  It was a short-lived point, however, because the government palazzo was never designed to be a residence, and despite modifications remained inconvenient, cold, and drafty.  Either Cosimo changed his mind, or else his wife the grand duchess (Eleonora of the matrimonial sheep, for those of you who have been reading since the fall) changed it for him, because they relocated to Palazzo Pitti across the river (which Eleonora purchased with her own funds), complete with a nice yard (that would be Boboli Gardens).

However, to keep things convenient and properly grand-ducal, they also arranged to have their own personal raised passageway built, running from Palazzo Pitti, through the balcony of their preferred church, across the top of Ponte Vecchio, through the Uffizi (government offices at the time), and on into Palazzo Vecchio.  Thus they could get from home to church to work and back without needing to mingle with the common folk.  A far cry from Cosimo the Elder way back in the early 1400s, who, despite being wealthy and powerful, refused to dress in fancy clothing and rode a mule (if anything) through the streets of Florence.  (Photo is from an Uffizi website: http://www.nuoviuffizi.it/complesso/storia/)

Getting to walk across it has been on my long-term to do list since September.  Rare tours of the Corridoio Vasariano do supposedly exist, but it is notoriously difficult (and probably pricey) to get hold of one, so when Giovanna told us a friend of hers had gotten hold of some free tickets to a Caravaggio exhibit that included a walk across the Corridoio, and did anyone want to go?, I jumped at the chance.

The opening of the exhibit included a speech in the courtyard of Palazzo Pitti, during which we mingled and chatted with the Italians, who, in typical Italian fashion, mingled and chatted with each other instead of paying attention to the speech.  There was also a reception buffet, which provided a perfect Exhibit A of How Italians Do Not Believe in Lines.  Basically as soon as we all applauded for the speech (nobody had a clue what had been said, but everyone applauded anyway), the buffet table was mobbed, and you were lucky if you got so much as a grape.

Sofi managed to snag a pineapple.

This was because, after the mob dispersed, all that was left were the empty trays, a lot of crumbs, and six or seven pineapples.  The pineapples were only still there because they were whole, and therefore difficult to snack on.  Not for lack of trying, mind you: one of the guys in our group (friend of a Smithie) hacked open a pineapple (with a pocket knife?) and wound up distributing slices of it to the small group of elderly Italians who had gathered round eagerly, all smiles at the prospect of pineapple and willing to wait patiently for it.  But in the end it was more trouble than it was worth, so the other seven pineapples remained whole, and Sofi asked if she could have one.  She could, and did.

Thus it was that a pineapple accompanied us through the Caravaggio exhibit and across the Corridoio Vasariano into the Uffizi  I think it may be the first pineapple to have ever made that journey, making it not only uniquely cultured among pineapples, but also more fortunate than most human tourists. The guard at the entrance to the Corrodoio laughed when she saw it--I think we made her evening.  The guard at the Uffizi, however, found it less entertaining.  As we entered the gallery, he stopped Sofi and said: "Signorina, l'ananas va in borsa."  (Miss, the pineapple has to go in the purse).  I don't know how anyone can say that with a straight face.  Maybe he was worried it would scratch the art.

The Corridoio was very cool.  We saw the Medici's balcony in the church, and many, many self-portraits by different artists from different time periods, and views of Florence and the Arno.  Mostly it was pretty cool just to be there, walking where the Medici walked and where most people don't ever get to go.

I'm told the pineapple was also quite tasty.

More pictures of the corridor are in this album:

Maggio a Firenze

Cae Mabon: Part the Second. In which many people sing many songs and some people go walking the rain.

I realized a few days after I wrote the first Wales post that I neglected to mention WHY I was going to all this trouble to get to Wales in the first place: there was a singing workshop run by Patty and Larry of Village Harmony, a singing group that Sarah (roommate Sarah) introduced me to.  They are awesome, and sing lots of traditional kinds of music from various countries, including South Africa, Corsica, Bulgaria, and the U.S. (shape note, Appalachian folk song, 30's gospel), to name a few.  I'm on the mailing list, and got an announcement back in the fall about how there was going to be a workshop in Wales at this place called Cae Mabon involving hobbit houses and learning how to sing all these different styles of music (and even some dancing).  I jumped up and down a bit, and then emailed my friends about it, and Gwen and Maggie and I all wound up being able to go.  So I've been looking forward to this since about October.

Anyway, back to Wales...
(apologies to those of you who also get Gwen's emails--some of this will be a repeat of what she said)

First of all, the scenery.  Wales was so very Wales-ish.  What I mean by that is that I always imagined Wales to be very damp and mossy and green and mountainous, and it was all of that.  Maggie tells me that this isn't true of all of Wales, but Northern Wales at least is delightfully full of mossy damp green forests on misty mountains dotted with ruined castles and gray lakes.

And then there was the food, which was AMAZING.  Among the most to-die-for meals I have ever had, which is saying something given that I've spent the past nine months in Italy.  And it was all vegetarian.  Now, I'm not vegetarian, but I will happily eat vegetarian food, and I definitely can appreciate people who can make really good vegetarian food.  Since we were in the UK, there was lots of tea--also in part because there was a issue with the water filter, and boiled (and thus hot) water is not very interesting unless you put something in it.

And then there were the hobbit houses, which you've seen pictures of, and I think they speak for themselves, so I won't go on in detail about them.  Also the composting "loo with a view" and it's rainwater collection system for handwashing, the woodstove heated hot tub, and the dragon-shaped nook/bench/fireplace, which I somehow neglected to take a picture of.


Last, but certainly not least (on the contrary!): the people and the music.  When you get 20-odd singers with a penchant for folk music together for a weekend, they just don't stop singing.  You can't make them.  Aside from the workshop sessions themselves, we sang while clearing up after meals, while standing in line for lunch, while in the loo or in line for it, while sitting in the hot tub, etc, etc.  The polite struggles over who would do the dishes were, in this case, about more than just people being thoughtful and polite: some of the best singing went on over dish washing, and if you managed to score so much as a dry dish towel to work with, you had an excuse to get in on it.  Some of it was music we'd learned in the workshops (it is not often that absent-minded humming is likely to provoke four-part harmony from the people wandering by), but we also taught each other other songs as well, songs people had picked up from other workshops, festivals, relatives, friends, and choirs.  Various members of the group had sung with each other in different configurations before, so there was just enough overlap to be able to teach not just the melody but the parts to many of the songs.  Looking back later, I realized that a lot of the styles of music we were learning in the workshop have been passed on orally for a long, long time (one of the them is so unsuited to western-style written notation that people have come up with two or three different alternative notations in an attempt to write it down--and it's still easier to learn by ear)--and that was exactly what we were doing informally on the side.

Which is not to say that we spent every waking minute singing.  We also talked, and it was a really lovely group of people to get to know.  I wished it could have gone on all week, instead of just a weekend--at least in part because I was coming back to final exams, but also because it was just that much fun.  In the workshop sessions, I loved learning not just the notes, words, and dances to the songs, but also the feel of each kind of singing.  The style of it.  The way your body should feel, the way the music should sound.  The soul of it.  Clearly, we couldn't actually get the exact sound of, say, a South African choir or a trio from the Balkans, but we did learn to change the way we, as a group, sounded--and got some pretty darn good approximations.  Or at the very least a noticeable difference in sound that was going in the right direction.

On Saturday afternoon during the long break, Maggie, Gwen and I and two of the other singers went for a hike up and down and along the mountains around the lake to an old Welsh watch tower.  The day was gray and damp and mossy again, and we wound up seeing lots of wild goats and climbing the old stone watchtower in the rain to look out through the window at the top over the misty, damp Welsh valley below, while Maggie explained to us about watchtowers and strategic defense and Welsh history.  And then we hiked back to sing some more cool songs.  And Sunday morning it was even gloriously sunny, and we moved lunch outside (a process that involved a great deal of confusion and people wandering around with stray furniture.  We'd already moved the tables outside to make room for singing  inside, and there was some confusion as to whether we needed to move the tables back in or the chairs out or some of both, and did we need another bench and where should I put this chair, hurry-up-it's-heavy?).  And there were fudge brownies for dessert.

Oh--and on the way home, I got to spend 24 hours in Dublin with Gwen and her mathematical aunt.

Couldn't have asked for a better weekend.

Slightly sheepish, but content. And well-shod.

So, um...

I bought three pairs of boots today.

Yes, that's right, three.  But the third pair doesn't actually count, because they were a) rain boots and, b) only 10 euro (about $12).  While I was out doing boot price research this morning, I ran into a shoe store having a closing sale, and when I found this pair of elegant rain boots (I bet you thought such a thing didn't exist!  In Italy they manage to make even rain boots look elegant), and not only that, but IN MY SIZE (Another oxymoron, that.  I grew up assuming rain boots were supposed to be several sizes too big.  I thought they just came that way), and you never find decent rain boots here for less than 20 or 25 euro...  And we just had two straight weeks of rain, which convinced me that I really do like having dry feet.  Although, watch, now that I have rain boots, it won't so much as drizzle.

So really I bought two pairs of boots today.  What happened was that I finally got organized/brave enough to go seriously boot shopping, and found a pair of black boots that I liked:

 The problem was that in the process, the woman at the store had me try on this other pair--beige suede (two qualities I was decidedly NOT--I thought--looking for in a boot, since it means "shows dirt well" + "hard to clean"), but ohhhhh I liked them.  Fit my foot like a glove, really comfy, soft as anything, and looked great.  So I bought neither, and went home to think it over for 24 hours, did some checking round other shoe stores, talked to Sofi and Ellie (who both thought I should go for it and get both), and went back today to buy both of them.  They're good quality (and made of real leather) at a surprisingly good price.  And next year (when I'll hopefully have a campus job and be earning money again) I can go back to being frugal and sensible and all that.  Here's the second pair:

As long as I'm on the subject, shopping for clothing of any kind in Italy is an interesting cultural difference.  To begin with, setting up display windows is an art here.  But then there's the whole concept of how you go about shopping.  Italians, when they go shopping, know exactly what they want, and not only enjoy being helped, but expect it.  When you enter an Italian store (which is usually smaller than its U.S. equivalent, to begin with), the salesperson, who is usually the owner or else a family member, will come forward to meet you, smiling and sincerely ready to assist you.  "Mi dica," he/she will say  (the formal, polite version of "Tell me,").  You are expected to know what you want (black boots, size 35, for example), and then you sit and they bring you things to try on.  It's intimidating until you get used to it and learn how the system works.  Touristy places, out of necessity, have gotten used to this strange American practice of "browsing" (when you see a sign on an Italian store that reads "Free Entry", it's not that stores normally charge you to enter.  They just mean that you may come in and just look around and they'll let you be while you do, if you're sure that's really what you want to do and if you're sure you really won't be offended by being left alone).

The place I found my boots is at the other end of the scale--far off the touristy track, frequented by Italian mothers and their children.  The woman who owns the shop not only brought me shoes to try on, but also put them on my feet for me, and showed me how best to fold my jeans into them, and then bustled off downstairs to find others as my requests got more specific.  And when a pair didn't quite fit right, she bustled off again and returned with a little insert sole thingy to make them fit perfectly, chatting away all the while, pointing out the different features and materials and just generally being friendly.  And the whole time she used the formal "Lei" when she spoke to me, which is fairly standard between customers/shopkeepers (I was using the formal Lei with her as well), but still always makes me feel like an official Adult, because you don't use the formal with children, even children you don't know.  It was actually a lot of fun.

Later she sent me along down to the "adult" section of the store a few doors down (this was the "kids" section, but also carried some adult sizes), and when I got there, having learned how all this worked, I marched in, said politely "Buona sera," and told him right off the bat that I was looking for leather boots, black, low or no heels, size 35.  I expected him to laugh at such a detailed request, but he didn't even blink; he just took a minute to memorize the details, then smiled, nodded, and invited me to sit down and make myself comfortable while he went to see what he could do, because, I had to understand, they didn't have many boots left this time of year, but maybe he could find something, yes, we'd have to see what we could do.  I swear Italian storekeepers thrive on challenges.  The more persnickety the request, the better.

Anyway, that's how I wound up coming home with 2 (okay, 3) new pairs of boots today.  And then I played dress up for a while.  The fun thing about boots is that you can pull off (very Italian) outfits like this one:

Cae Mabon: Part the First. In which three Smithies successfully arrive at (or at least near) Mt. Snowden and eat Welsh cakes on a train.

Two weekends ago I went to Wales.

"Went" does not really properly convey the process of getting from Florence to a little place called Cae Mabon in the middle of the mountains of Northern Wales.   My travel plan looked like this:

Thursday afternoon:
Bus from my math class to the nearest train station.
Train from Florence to Pisa (just over an hour).  Check in to hostel for the night.

Friday:
- 5:05 am shuttle to the Pisa airport (where, incidentally, I ran into the wonderful couple who rented out a room to my Dad when he was here.  Turns out they were on the same flight to Dublin!)

- Flight from Pisa to Dublin.

- Hang around for several hours in Dublin airport, meet up with Gwen.

- Flight from Dublin to Birmingham

- Air rail (one of those raised tram thingies.  This one had triumphant music playing inside that made it seem much more impressive than it actually was.  Also made us feel like we ought to be in a commercial: "AIR RAIL: Fast.  Convenient.  Safe."  Also, there was a button at the platform so that, should you arrive in the wee hours of the morning, you could--that's right--call your VERY OWN personal air rail to come and pick you up within minutes.  I was impressed.) from the Birmingham Airport to the Birmingham Airport Train Station.

- Elevator down to the track.  And back up again.  And back down again.  (This was partly because we needed lunch and a bathroom, but I also enjoyed the GIANT elevator buttons and the voice-over that politely reminded you not only what floor you were getting on at, but also where you were going).

- Train from Birmingham to Shrewsbury (in which we ate surprisingly good train station food involving hummus.  Also the snack cart did in fact go by, just like in Harry Potter, only sans Chocolate Frogs.  Only it wasn't actually that exciting.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was really just an ordinary metal rolling cart like they have on airplanes, with soda and chips.  We didn't buy something off the cart after all, since we'd just eaten lunch and weren't particularly hungry).

- Meet up with Maggie at train station and hasty dash to catch second train, from Shrewsbury to Bangor (in which we talked and ate the Welsh cakes Maggie brought, only without tea because this time the cart didn't go by).

At this point we were supposed to meet up with someone named Casper so we could all share a taxi, only we had no idea what he looked like or even how old he was, so we stood awkwardly around trying to make eye contact with people without actually doing so in case they weren't him.  After a while Maggie made a sign that said CASPER, and we stood around awkwardly with that for a while.  We even asked one guy who looked kind of lost.  Then we gave up and found a taxi, and thank goodness Maggie knows how to pronounce Welsh names and knew the trick about postal codes, because otherwise we never would have been able to explain to the driver (who had a lovely Welsh accent but, it turned out, didn't actually speak any Welsh) where it was we wanted to go.

He drove us up winding mountain roads, and dropped us off at the sign for Cae Mabon, and we thanked him and went hiking merrily down the long driveway through the woods, under an arch with the Green Man on it, down another hill,  along past beehives and a bee sculpture, through a gate, and down another hill before finally emerging in the midst Cae Mabon's cluster of what can only be described as Hobbit Houses, where we were warmly welcomed, introduced to our hobbit house and hobbit housemate (who was not a hobbit but a friendly young Welsh-Irish woman named Orla, who is spending the summer going from one singing workshop to the next as preparation to starting a new choir--yes, that's right, she got to do this as part of her JOB!), and fed dinner.


And the amazing thing is that it all went off without a hitch, aside from missing Casper.  (Apparently he had asked several short blond women if they were me without success before it got too awkward and he gave up and took a taxi.  The funny thing is that we did see each other at the station, but by then he didn't want to ask anyone else, and we hadn't worked out how to go about asking people yet, so no one said anything, and then he disappeared).  And that was just the way there.  The way back involved a different set of train stations and a ferry from Holyhead to Dublin, and a double-decker bus.  I had (I kid you not) a spreadsheet printed out with all the connections and reservation numbers and times so that I could keep everything straight.

(Part the Second to follow.)  In the meantime, here are some more pictures:

aba de lo di lo de la de...