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.