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.