Trains, Planes, and Automobiles

I am currently in Soooouuuuuth Dakota where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain and there is no real topography to speak of. Life moves at tractor speed, which is considerably slower than the Vespa-pace of Italy. During our drive from Minneapolis I heard a commercial for fertilizer quickly followed by one for tractors and knew that I was definitely somewhere close to Kansas, Toto. Now I have leisure time and internet at the Red Rooster Café is free, so if I close my eyes and pretend my cappuccino is better than it is, I can write about Italy and not feel so far away.

But before I go back to Italy (both literally and metaphorically speaking), I want to give Groningen the rest of the attention it deserves.

On our second night we were taken to the Pannekoekschip, or Pancake Ship for anyone who doesn’t speak the phlegmy Dutch language. It’s a houseboat restaurant on one of the many canals, although unfortunately it’s just on cement blocks and doesn’t actually float on the water. The syrup was more like molasses than Aunt Jemima’s and came in a huge ceramic crock that sat on the table. Danielle and Emily took turns playing with the large wooden spoon, trying to make molasses bubbles.

The placemats were boards for playing Battleship.

The pancakes themselves were crepe-like and bigger than the plates they came on. I got one with sautéed bananas and powdered sugar and bashfully asked for milk, which came in a ceramic mug with “Holland” and a doe-eyed Dutch girl printed on the side. I’m not sure if I’m more embarrassed or proud that I finished.

I felt very…European in the Netherlands. I rode on the back of Kristen’s bike while wearing Dani’s blazer and a scarf, politely declined offers from a junkie to buy a bike for just 5E (bike theft is both very common and very heavily penalized), went to a Polish Mass in a Dutch church (it is REALLY hard to say even the Our Father, a prayer I’ve said everyday since I could form sentences, when everyone else around you is saying it in a different language), an

d then ruined whatever semblance I had of blending in when I stopped to take pictures every few minutes.

After four delightfully relaxing days, Kristen dropped me off at the train station and I settled in for what I imagined would be a typically Dutch train experience, namely quiet, clean, and efficient and I’d get to the Eindhoven airport with plenty of time to read and not understand any conversations going on around me. With about an hour left till we get to Eindhoven, the train just quietly stops. There is an announcement in Dutch that I obviously don’t understand, we sit there for awhile, and then we keep moving. No one around me seems to be distressed, so I innocently imagine that everything is hunky dory. And then we stop at an unscheduled train station.

There is another, longer announcement, and this time I turn to the Dutch men next to me and ask them to translate, with a nervous glance at my watch. Apparently there is something wrong with the cable and the train will go back to the Amsterdam station. Anyone hoping to go to Eindhoven will then need to catch another train with at least one transfer. The whole process will take at least two hours.

My flight leaves in two and a half and it’s a half hour bus ride from the Eindhoven train station to the airport.

I mention this, trying to combine both concern and nonchalance in my voice while hiding the rising panic, to the gentlemen sitting next to me. They look at each other and grimace.

“You will probably have to get out here and get a taxi to the bus station. You won’t make your flight if you go back to Amsterdam.”

With a quick thanks, I grab my bag and jump off the train and start the search for someone in uniform who can tell me exactly what to do and when to do it and really, don’t worry, you’ll make your flight. There is no such person. The train conductors shrug, there is no ticket window, and then I watch the train roll away to Utrecht. It is increasingly clear that I am in the middle of nowhere. I have no cash, no map, no phone, and even if I did I wouldn’t know whom to call. I’m three hours from Groningen, farther from Italy, and I want to go home to Siena so badly I could cry.

With a private reminder to take deep breaths and hey, this’ll make a great story someday, I get directions to the train’s bus station. The Bumblefuck status of the town is even more obvious. A small crowd of people has gathered, but the bus clearly does not go anywhere close to where I need to go and even if it did, I wouldn’t know because oh right, I don’t speak Dutch. I win some sympathy from a kindly couple and a businessman with my I’m-young-and-stranded-and-oh-Lord-I-have-a-flight-to-catch card. The husband’s sister is coming to pick them up, but she won’t be there for another half an hour. The businessman is calling the taxi company, but so are the other fifteen people waiting with us.

A taxi arrives and is immediately swarmed by everyone. It’s not for us, us being myself and the businessman and a few others we’ve picked up. Ten minutes later, the process is repeated. I am caught in the very uncomfortable emotional state somewhere between resigned and hysterical. The sun is beating down. Etc.

Another businessman overhears me mentioning to the umpteenth person also trying to get a cab that I have a flight to catch in two hours and I really need to get to the airport asap and please can someone tell me what’s going on. “Those two are also trying to get to the airport; maybe you can share a cab with them?” he says, pointing in the direction of two people my age.

I go over and introduce myself. Larry from Singapore and Leanne from Malaysia are two medical students who have a flight to catch back to Dublin where they go to school. They’re shouldering the enormous backpacks of traveling twentysomethings and are waiting to hear back from the cab company. My relief at finding people my age who are just as desperate to get to this tiny Netherlands airport is practically tangible. Another girl joins our group, Carla from Amsterdam. We call the cab company again.

No problem, they’ll be here in five minutes. Here’s the license plate number of the cab.

We split up into pairs to watch the ends of the street, having witnessed several mobs now fight over cabs. The pressure somewhat off, Larry tells me about couch-surfing around Northern Europe and I tell him about my class in Siena. We joke, although still somewhat uneasily, about our current situation.

Fifteen minutes go by. No cab. We regroup with Leanne and Carla and call again. There’s definitely a cab for us, it’ll be here in three minutes. Eight minutes go by. We call again. They don’t answer. We call again. Yes yes, there’s a cab, it’ll be here in two minutes and it’s a black Mercedes and here’s the license plate never mind that it’s a different number.

After another seven minutes, Carla and Leanne flag us down. Larry and I race over to their end of the street and the four of us slam into the cab with no competition. Larry turns to the driver, a very tall and very bald and very intimidating man in a grey ribbed sweater, who looks like someone out of the Bourne movies, and says, “Have you seen the movie The Transporter? Drive like that guy.”

The second businessman, the one who pointed me in the direction of my new friends, waves to me as we pull out of the train station parking lot.

We’re in a cab, we’re going fast, we’re going to make it to the airport in plenty of time. Our anxiety is released in laughter. The four of us exchange names and emails, with promises to Facebook friend each other. There’s no need to run once we do get to the airport, but we do anyway because “It makes it more dramatic!” as Larry said.

The rest of the trip home to Siena was quiet. The last leg of the journey was a tiny two-car train, where I sat by the window and watched the sun set over Tuscany. The stations along the way were small and empty, with maybe one or two people getting out and the engineer in his shirt-sleeves stepping out onto the platform at every stop to check tickets and look at the landscape.

It was good to be back.

Hallo, Nederland

HIST213 with the esteemed Dr. C and my beloved classmates ended last week. I DO realize that there are a lot of gaps in my Italy story (they make you pay for internet here. It’s a right pain in the arse.), so this blog will continue once I get home. My anecdotes and descriptions will be a trifle more hazy due to the sheer volume of things we’ve done and the elapsing of time, but I’ll do my best. Both for your sake, dear readers, myself, and Siena.

And I’m still here! Class ended but instead of getting up at 7am to get a bus to Rome to catch a plane with the rest of my classmates I got up at 4am to get a train to Pisa to catch a plane to the Netherlands. The train ride to Pisa was rather eye-opening. Siena is this magical city without any real graffiti or squalid houses or homeless people or even metal fences. And as beautiful as the distant Tuscan hills were, it was hard not to notice all of the above. Of course this is going to sound dumb, but it was then that I realized that Italy is a real place, not just the fantasyland that Siena is.

There were pigeons in the Pisa airport.

I didn’t think anything could make me hate the American airport experience more than I already did, but European airports (at least, Pisa and Eindhoven in the Netherlands) certainly did. The ease of the whole process, the lack of distressingly long lines, the reasonably priced cappuccinos…sigh.

There are three things you notice while traveling across the Netherlands by train. One, it is flat. There are no hills whatsoever, which is a bit of a shock to the system when you (you meaning myself) have been accustomed to a city and a region where a new hill starts every ten yards. Two, there are a whole lotta cows. Three, the Dutch train system is the greatest. It’s clean, quiet, efficient, and low fuss.

There are three things you notice when you get off the train in the Netherlands. One, everyone is at least a half foot taller than you, two, they’re all riding bikes, and three, they’re all bloody gorgeous. I freely admit that after three weeks of not being sure of any Italian man’s sexual orientation, it was a relief just to get some good ogling in.

I spent four happy days with my beloved friends Danielle, Kristen, and Hans in Groningen, a university town a few hours north of Amsterdam. They fed me and clothed me and gave me a place to sleep and patiently listened to my endless stories about Italy.

It took me a few days to not automatically say “Ciao, grazie” at the end of any interactions.

Dutch food is a strange, wonderful thing. The first night, Dani made stampot which I TOTALLY didn’t spell correctly but that is at least how it sounds. It was a lot of mashed things, some of which I believe include potatoes, carrots, and some kind of meat, and it was delicious. Still not entirely sure what it was or who thought of it, but it was excellent all the same.

The cheese. Holy cow.

And stroopwafels, my Lord. They’re essentially these dense caramel-y cookies with dense caramel-y goo sandwiched between them. But my favorite of everything was spekuloos (oh dear. Another mangled word. Dani, I know you read this blog. Send me a Facebook message with all the correct spellings. Please.). Imagine spice cookies mashed up into a paste (kinda like Nutella but better. That’s right. I said BETTER THAN NUTELLA.) and then imagine that paste spread on bread. I kicked myself all weekend for bringing carry-on only luggage so I couldn’t bring a jar back.

Groningen (pronounced like you’re hacking a lugie and then followed by i-gin.) is a lovely and extremely picturesque city. It’s almost a little sickening how fairytale-like it is. I know I have been calling Siena a magical fantasyland ad nauseum, but one half expects to see Hansel and Gretel traipsing around Groningen. There are wide, green canals inhabited by houseboats, brick streets, colorful trim on the gingerbread-esque houses, billions of bikes, and did I MENTION how gorgeous the people are? Siena is a city you’d expect to see in an Under the Tuscan Sun equivalent, but Groningen is straight out of Disney World.

More stories to follow, I promise!

Giorno per Giorno

I do realize that after being here for two and half weeks it might be a leetle late for me to give a blow-by-blow of a typical day here (as if anything in Siena is typical)…but I’m going to do so anyway. I also realize that I’m a terrible, terrible blogger and I apologize.

Breakfast is always at Nannini’s, which is Italian version of Starbucks (and like most things Italian, is far superior to the American equivalent). Thank goodness for Siena’s hills, because egg sandwiches or bagels or plain breakfast foods are apparently unheard of here. The morning here starts with some sort of coffee drink (cappuccinos or café lattes for yours truly) and a pastry. I have a champion sweet tooth and even I’ve been sticking with plain brioches lately because there are only so many days where croissants filled with cream, chocolate, or marmalade do the trick.

Class, unfortunately, starts at 8:45am. We’ve taken most of the rooms in the hotel, so we all pile into the lobby where Dr. C. lectures for three hours on what we’re supposed to have been reading. After class, we all collectively heave a sigh of relief, stretch, and then burst out of the hotel for the next three and a half hours for lunch, lying on the Campo, napping, and strolling. Really, it’s a tough life.

At 3:30 we meet outside the hotel with our dorky, tourist headsets on and Dr. C. leads the way on our afternoon site visit. Usually it’s a church or two or three and usually we’re looking at artwork and usually they’re frescoes. Yes, this is the ideal class for a Catholic Art history major. The common reaction among my classmates is grumbling. Mine is barely-suppressed squealing.

Site visits conclude around 5:30pm and the hours before dinner are spent either doing homework or procrastinating. The post-dinner hour is spent much the same way. And then the rest of our evenings are almost always on the Campo. The restaurants and bars are loud, busy, happy, there are people laughing (us included), pizza, gelato, and wine are within easy access, the sky is almost always clear.

Curfew is at 1am (it’s dreadful). Anyone still awake heads from the Campo to the tiny hotel balcony to talk, people-watch, and reiterate how we should all really go to bed but we’re not that tired. And then we go to bed, where I usually stumble around in the dark and try not to wake my roommates.

I could get used to this.

Candid Camera

HEY okay SO. I have not been wholly unproductive and a total blog failure. You can see pictures! Of Italy! And stuff! Here!

Adendadumdum

[These are the sort of faces Pat was making in Ostia.]

I forgot to mention that when we got to Ostia, Pat went to use the PortaPotty. As he described it, there was a toaster (a toaster, people) in the hole, pee on the walls, and it was only after he did his business when he realized there was no toilet paper. His solution? Plaintively call, "Geneseo? Geneseooo?" until we heard him and brought him tissues. He later said that he would have made a run for another one of the PortaPotties but remembered that we all had cameras.

Roman Holiday

Our Roman weekend was, to put it mildly, insane.

We stayed in the Hotel Texas where the receptionist was the maid, the owner was, in Pat's words: "Borat plus Vincent Price but also like, a scary gangster," there was one toilet in the entire hotel, wires connected to the shower, a detachable sink, a (literal) hole in the wall behind a cupboard with a lot of random, frightening wires that we referred to as the Rape Closet, an ancient elevator whose doors could be pried partway open mid-flight (yes, we tried), and where they only took cash. A direct quote from the hotel owner, and imagine it being said by Marlon Brando and you've got something pretty close: "If I-uh do naht get ma money...I will get ma money. We hafve your passport nuhmbers."

Mad sketch.

Other gems from the weekend:
-Pat and Adam buying an unmarked bottle of wine from a gypsy cart. Pat having the worst hangover of his life the next day. Which was the day we traveled to Ostia. It was sunny. We took the subway and the train to get there. He hadn't eaten. A gypsy played violin right by his head. He threw up on the ruins.
-St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museum. Ho.Lee.Catulpa.Tree. I almost felt a little guilty that by the time we got to the Sistine Chapel I was so exhausted and overwhelmed I couldn't fully appreciate it. Fully. My socks still ended up on the other side of the room.
-Finding first century frescoes in the cavern underneath San Clemente.
-A pub crawl that took me, Dan, and Chris to the outskirts of Rome where the free shot was poured straight into our mouths from the bottle (instead of, you know, having shot glasses. Or medicine cups. Or bowls. Or spoons. Or something.), we met this guy from Vancouver who spent twenty minutes talking about how he realized how great Vancouver is when he came to Tuscany (because he was, you know, an imbecile), we took the wrong bus back and watched the right one pull away from the window (because we are, you know, imbeciles), and spoke in Borat accents for most of the evening.
-Ostia. All of it. When in Rome, go to Ostia. Fo rizzle.
-The Forum. The Coliseum. Palatine Hill. NBD.
-Coming home to Siena.

Roma

Rome for the weekend. Ciao until Sunday, kiddos.

Adventuretime!

(Note from the author: I started writing this last night immediately after the events themselves happened, but I had to wait to until this morning to finish partly because, as you will see, I really needed to lie on the Campo and have a glass of wine.)

I was going to write an informative-but-snarky-and-charmingly-witty post about the Campo today, but I just had a very exciting twenty minutes, so my tone is going to be a bit thunderstruck instead.

After a very long day in Assisi, Tom and I decided on Chinese food as the best pick-me-up. (I mean, obviously. What else would you eat in Italy?) The food itself was bizarre. Their version of sesame chicken was essentially deep friend candy with a little bit of chicken occasionally maybe sometimes. The menu was fantastic (read: hilarious), seeing as how all the Chinese dishes had Italian names with English descriptions. But this is all irrelevant. After we ordered, we sat down to wait and chatted for a bit before the woman who would become the sole conversant for the next fifteen minutes wandered in.

We had been talking for maybe forty-two seconds before she interrupted. “Excuse me, are you English?”

Tom and I looked at each other. “Oh, yeah. Well, American.” (The possible colonial jokes did not occur to me until this moment.)

“I’m-I’m sorry, iht’s juhhst thaht I was never going to speak to anyone ahver again.” Up until this point, I had thought her interesting pronunciation of the English language was due to her being foreign, but it was this that made me realize, with dread, that she was another loud, drunk, lost American. I then noticed the collection of empty ¼ liter bottles of wine littered around her seat.

Despite her decision to not speak to another soul ever again, she was surprisingly chatty. After inquiring and then forgetting where we were from, she rattled off a list of cities she had lived in, the most recent one being Boston.

Tom asked, “So, what are you doing in Italy?”

Our companion turned to her empty plastic cup, stares at it frowningly, and said, more to herself than us, “What aahm I doing here?” Tom and I exchanged quick what-the-HELL-have-we-gotten-ourselves-into-here looks and directed our attention back to her, who had started in on Florence.

“Iht’s one of the most DAYngerous cities in the WUHRLD. EspESHTHially for a woman.” Our charming friend then proceeded to tell us about how her birthday is December 25^th, did we know December 25^th?, how she and her friend went to get sushi on December 25^th, and how (this was whispered) an Eastern European man came up to her, hit her in the arm and broke it. And the Florence hospital had it cast at a certain angle but she went on MayoClinic.com, which is the best website for everything and all the doctors in the United States use it for their information, and it said to have it cast ANOTHER way so she did and now she can move her elbow.

Tom, whose father is a doctor, barely had time to explain the importance of getting one’s broken arm cast a specific way before she started discussing this book Obama’s Wars, had we read it? She wasn’t asking us any favors or telling us to do anything, but we must read that book because it’s by that same guy who wrote about Nixon’s Watergate and doesn’t ONCE mention Hillary Clinton and did we know who set Obama up?

Tom and I looked at each other. “How do you mean, ‘set up’?” Tom asked, clearly getting less amused and more irritated.

“Set up to be PRESIDENT.”

“The American voters?”

“Hillary Clinton,” she said solemnly. Apparently she “read between the lines” of this book and determined that because good ol’ Hill wasn’t mentioned, she was clearly responsible for everything.

I timidly attempted to steer the conversation back to Italy, while Tom got up to wander around the tiny restaurant and avoid talking about American politics. “So, do you live in Siena?”

She made a face (or maybe she wanted to vom. It was hard to tell.). “No, I live in (here she mumbled something unintelligible) Chianti. It’s WUHRSE.” The hills of Tuscany. I’m sure it must be perfectly dreadful.

Our food was ready. Tom and I booked it out of there after wishing her goodnight and (silently) good luck.

I stepped out of the restaurant, not paying attention, almost got hit by a Vespa going 256 miles an hour, and was yanked to safety by Iron Man Tom.

Like I said, it was a very exciting twenty minutes.

Parlez-Vous Francais?

[Breakfast at Nannini's. Holy moley. Greatest.Pastries.Ever. And cappuccinos. And cafe lattes. Starbucks, you have not been missed.]

Siena is a tourist town, probably like most places in Italy/Tuscany/Europe, and the Americans don't have a stellar reputation. They're:
1. Loud. Siena's a medieval city, with narrow streets and arches and lots of tight spaces. A little noise goes a long way. Add to that the American tendency to speak as if we're at rock concert all the time.
2. Drunk. There is just a totally different attitude towards alcohol over here. Amanda put it best at dinner the other night: "They have fun and maybe will happen to get drunk along the way. Americans get drunk to have fun."
3. Lost. The befuddled expressions and upside-down maps say it all.

[A view from one of our many strolls through the city.]

So the other evening, some of my American chums and I were having some wine on the Piazza del Campo (one of the greatest urban spaces in the world, but it deserves its own post, so more on that later) and we were about to hit the town in search of this Irish pub (yes. Not confirming #2 has been a challenge for us college chilluns). I was in need of il bagno and I didn't want to walk back to the hotel, so I decided to try one of the pizzerias on the Campo. I didn't want to seem like just another loud, drunk, lost American tourist asshat college student in need of the loo. So I asked for it in French.

[Adele, Ray, and Tom chillin' like villains on the top of the Torre del Mangia.]

"Excusez-moi, où est la salle de bains?" (Any French speakers will immediately note that I didn't even use the correct word for bathroom.)
The older lady at the counter gave me a dubz-tee-eff look. "Ehhh?"
At this point I should have just broken down and admitted that I was another buffoonish American who really just wanted a pee. But I couldn't.

So when I said, "Um, do you have a bathroom?" I said it in a French accent.

Feast Your Eyes

[The main course. What what.]

Our first night in Italy (yes, yes, I do realize I'm on Day 5 here, but we've been a tad busy), Dr. C. brought us to this hole-in-the-wall restaurant whose name escapes me since I had not slept for thirty-six hours by that point. The twenty-some-odd of us crammed into one of its two rooms and ate like gods. It is possible that delirium contributed to the deliciousness, but I doubt it.

The Menu:
-pecorino cheese (three different kinds) drizzled with honey, bread, salami, prosciutto, capcalla (TOTALLY didn't spell that correctly), and wild boar salami
-bruschetta (bread with olive oil and seasoned tomatoes) and bread with Tuscan white beans
-ravioli: spinach and sheep's milk cheese
-homemade spaghetti-like noodles that were thick and slightly al dente in a homemade meat, broth-like sauce
-radicchio in a vinegary sauce
-baked seasoned tomatoes
-rare beef with rosemary and other seasonings that I could not identify but were definitely delicious
-biscotti (almond-orange flavored), dipped in sweet wine[Kevin, whose blissful look says it all.]

If I was a truly despicable person who had no desire to maintain any of my friendships, I would tell you that it's been in the 70s and sunny every single day, but I won't because I love you all and that would just be plain old mean, especially seeing as Putnam Valley is expecting rain.

Salve, Italia

I didn’t sleep for a thirty-six hour period, so my thoughts and notes of the first day are thus non-chronological, scattered, and slightly loopy.

Alitalia’s animated in-flight safety video was nothing short of genius. (The one at the link is an older version...but you get the idea.) I was able to score a window seat, so I could watch the dismal, grey, rainy Newark skyline disappear from sight during take-off. My seatmate was an Italian law student named Andrea, who had a headache and wore moccasins and whose English was good but so quiet I kept having to lean in and risk clonking heads with him.

Some of the older Geneseoans got drunk at the airport bar in Newark beforehand, so with inhibitions lowered, Andrew pulled out his ukelele and we sang “Build Me Up Buttercup” while waiting in line during boarding.

I always think of that French Kiss scene, Kevin Kline’s defense of flying to Meg Ryan, while on the runway. Which I imagine is a rather appropriate time to remember it.

Although still borderline appalling, the flight dinner was still more impressive than the dry ham sandwich usually offered on American flights. There was a beef-with-peas-and-carrots-and-olives-in-a-weird-sauce dish, mushy gnocchi, cantaloupe chunks accompanied by two grapes, a prosciutto something or other, bread, and coffee. And wine. I spent most of dinner pestering Andrea for the Italian names of what we were eating and he spent most of it asking me not to judge Italian food by what we were eating.

Dinner was also accompanied by another delightful in-flight video of people circling their ankles and raising their arms in a demonstration of circulation movement.

Roman trees are weird. But they serve Milanos for breakfast.

While waiting for our flight to Florence, my fellow Geneseoans were torn between wanting espresso and wanting the bar. Everyone wanted bed.

Florence airport, or at least what I saw of it, was grubby and unremarkable. I do regret that my first and only thought for the first ten minutes I spent in open Italian air was: “I really really just want to brush my teeth.”

We were herded into vans to complete our route to Siena. Our driver didn’t speak any English and seemed bent on hitting every pothole (of which there were many). But the view was…beyond. It wasn’t quite what one sees in movies, but that was only because we were seeing the Tuscan countryside from a major highway with a lot of construction. It was sunny, it was hot, it was beautiful. There were vineyards and red clay roofs and more weird trees and rolling hills that just looked foreign even though they were just hills and villas and poppies growing by the side of the road.

The Patty character is Under the Tuscan Sun perfectly sums up cypress trees: “It’s like they know.” And then later: “They’re creepy Italian trees.” I didn’t understand it until I saw them, but they really do know.There’s something just a little supernatural about them.

Andrea had visited Chicago and Boston while in the States and I began to talk about how Boston had so much history when I stopped dead thinking, “Your university is 400 years older than my country.”And when I got to Siena, I started to realize just how old Italy is. Old. The streets were not made for cars or carriages. There are cobwebs in the bricks that have cobwebs. As well as old cigarette stubs and plastic wrappers.

There is sun. There are poppies and roses by the side of the road. There is moss growing on the red clay roofs.The pizza is served on paper and the crust is brittle and thin yet chewy enough to remind you it’s bread. The sauce is tomato-y sweet and the cheese is laid on in patches.

And I haven't even gotten to our first dinner.

Before We Begin

"Florence being oppressively hot and delivered over to the mosquitoes, the occasion seemed to favour that visit to Siena which I had more than once planned and missed."

-Henry James, "Siena Early and Late"
Italian Hours

Who: Myself and other classmates, along with Dr. C. And Henry James.
What: HIST213, followed by my own research on Franciscan art and literature.
When: Starting next Wednesday, for four and a half weeks.
Where: Italy. Specifically, Siena. With some other places making cameo appearances.

The Why is both practically self-explanatory and a work in progress.

The main reason for this disgustingly-early post is because I wanted to fiddle with fonts on Blogger.