Happy Trails

So there's an amusement park that I have been going to every year since I was young. We spend the entire day there and, each year at the end of the night, as we are walking out of the park, Happy Trails plays on the speakers. I don't know what it is about that song that makes me so nostalgic but it never fails: another year has already come and gone and I can hardly believe it. Tonight, my last night in Florence, as we were walking downtown after watching the sunset at Piazzale Michelangelo, Happy Trails started blaring in my head. 

This past week has been the week of "lasts"...the last visit to my vendors at the Central Market, the last time I trip on an uneven cobblestone, the last time I eat gelato. I had finals and, as far as I know, got through them somewhat successfully. Besides that, my time has been spent nostalgically these past couple of days.

The Girls of San Gallo 33: Eve, Elle, Steph, and myself

The last 2 days were slam packed! I was done with finals by 9am Thursday and I still had gifts to buy so I perused the San Lorenzo Market for about 2 hours and spent money like it was going out of style. I'm happy with the gifts I bought for everyone so, while my wallet is sad, my heart is happy. The San Lorenzo Market is just outside of the Central Market and it contains stalls upon stalls of Italian leather products, souvenirs, clothes, jewelry, and ceramics. It makes me happy that bartering is allowed there (I'm pretty sure it should be made an olympic sport). 

Later on Thursday, I had my last date with my friend and conversation partner, Alessandra. LdM has a program that pairs you with a local Italian and you get together to hang out, experience Florence, and speak Italian. I loved Alessandra and she took me to this great place for lunch that she said was very typical of Florence. This tiny little bar was packed with Italians; the line was out the door! Ale and I pushed our way through and, immediately, the sweet Italian man at the bar complimented my beauty as well as my mother and father (all in Italian). It made me laugh at first but Ale explained to me that it's typical in Italy to compliment someone's parents if you find them beautiful. I'll take it! 

Because I don't eat red meat, I asked for a turkey sandwich. They didn't have any so the man yelled across the street to his father's deli to ask for some. It was the funniest thing! Of course, the Italians are all sipping wine with their panini...an Italian custom I have found so interesting. Wine with every meal? Say what?! Anyways, I loved everything about this place! Florentines are usually so closed off and cold but these guys were so funny and incredibly friendly! 

My camera never likes darkness. Shutter speed = SLOW!

Thursday evening, Elle and I had 7 girlfriends over. Everyone pre-gamed at our place (except me, of course. Drinking games had to be explained to me and, even then, my drink of choice was diet coke)and then we left at about midnight for a rager. Last one of the semester! We went to several clubs but midnight is a bit early for the clubs to be raging. After some quick visits to a toga party and a gay bar, we ended up dancing at Club 21 until 3am. I don't remember the last time I danced! I almost forgot how fun it is! It was a great way to go out of this experience.

Friday

Today, our last day in Florence, Elle, Eve, Steph, Alex, and I visited all of our favorite spots in Florence. The News Cafe for some coffee, the Duomo for some group pictures, Gusta Pizza, and Palazzo Pitti. Lunch was schiacciata at Pugi (delicious, salted bread with veggies on it. All Tuscan bread is unsalted so this stuff is amazing!) and we had out last cups of gelato at La Carraia (I don't know what I will do without gelato). 

The Jersey Shore crew showed up today and, though I've never even seen the show, we stalked them at their apartment for a while. We just wanted to see them. It got to a point where it was just too long to wait for them and most of us left. Eve stayed behind and, of course, they arrived about 20 minutes later and she got pictures of all of them. Also, I will probably be in paparazzi pictures and NBC news because both crews were everywhere. I really don't think I want to be seen on TV for stalking the Jersey Shore. Whoops. 

We walked to Piazzale Michelangelo to see the sunset one last time. It was surreal to look out over the city and think of all of the things that have happened here over the past 4 months. I tell people all the time that it feels like time has stopped and that this isn't really my life. It doesn't feel real at all and I don't think I will realize how ridiculous the whole experience has been until I return home. I know I've grown and changed but I won't know to what extent until I'm back in my old environment. It will definitely take some time to process it all. 

Elle, Eve, and I are pulling an all-nighter because Elle and I are taking a taxi to the airport at 4:45am. It's going to be a long day of traveling but, in less than 24 hours, I will be back in the States where people speak English, cars are big, and where life will be less of an adventure than it has been for the past few months. It's so sad to leave this place and these people but, unfortunately, it had to happen at some point. 

So, happy trails, Firenze. I hope to see you soon. 

~Britt

There's No Place Like Home

Over the past four months, Florence has certainly become my home away from home. When I travelled to other countries, I was always so relieved to come back to Florence because it's become such a comfortable and familiar place over the course of the semester. The words, "Oh my gosh! It's so good to hear people speaking in Italian again!" have definitely left my mouth. At the end of this week, I'll be venturing back to my "home home" and, while there are things and people that I have missed, I don't have that same sense of relief that I always have when returning to Florence. People, it's gonna be weird. Despite my apprehension in regards to going back to the States, there are definitely pros and cons to both of my "homes".

Things about Florence/Italy that I definitely will NOT miss:

• The smell. Yeah, there are good smells like garlic and nutella waffles but, for the most part, Italy smells like dirty butt.

Mmm. Nutella waffles...

• Being harassed by Italian men. If you're a woman and you live in/visit Italy, expect to hear whistling and the phrase "Ciao Bella" A LOT.
• The exchange rate. When I got here is was about $1.30/€1. Now, it's almost $1.50.
• There is no such thing as a line in Italy; there are only mobs of people trying to push their way to the front. 
• Dog poop everywhere. 
• Cobblestones. The 400 year old stone streets lose their charm after you step in a massive puddle and trip everytime you go to the grocery store.
• Italians can be downright rude at times. And being late is basically an olympic sport here. 

Things that I WILL miss:

• Gelato. Ice cream will never measure up to the fresh ingredients, creamy texture, and lower-fatness of gelato. I truly believe that you haven't really lived until you've experience Italian gelato.  

• Walking everywhere. It's nice to be able to just walk to the grocery store or to school.
• The Central Market! Having copious amounts of fresh fruits, veggies, meat, cheese, and bread within walking distance of your home is the coolest thing ever. 

• Sicilian blood oranges. Mmm...
• My chicken vendor at the market. He's adorable. 
• Delicious, cheap artisan-quality coffee on every corner.

• The bidet in our bathroom. I know that at the beginning of the year, I said that I didn't even know how to use it and didn't see a point in it. Now, I don't know what I will do without it. Ladies, shaving your legs has never been easier. 
• Amazing Chocolate!

 

• Fabulous window shopping. Italians know how to dress a manikin.

• The people. I've met some really amazing people here and I will miss them sorely.

• The antiquity of Italy: the architecture, the history, the art...all of it. 

• The adventure that is my daily life in Europe. Every weekend is a new location. Every day is a new story to tell. 

Things that I miss about the US:

• Customer service. It doesn't exist in Italy. At all. 
• Free refills and tap water! You can't get either at a restaurant here and soda is hella expensive. 
• Free public restrooms. In the US, you can pretty much use any public establishment's restroom free of charge. In Italy, it's hard to even FIND a public restroom. 
• Good, cheap sushi, Chick-fil-A and take-out Chinese. 

• Driving. Though, I will miss walking everywhere. 
• Baking. I know that Stanley, my Kitchenaid mixer, has missed me just as much as I've missed him.
• The people. Most of all, I really look forward to seeing my friends and family. 

I'm still without a Mac so studying for finals is as brutal as I'd anticipated! I can't believe that I've gone almost a full week without it. It's left a void in my heart that I am currently filling with Stride gum and Diet Coke. Hopefully, I will get it back tomorrow! 

A presto!

-Britt

Life in Tuscany...The Final Days!

SAN GIMIGNANO
Friday, my girls, Ella, Eve, and Steph, and myself decided to take a day trip to the beautiful San Gimignano. It was an extremely successful journey and the medieval town is now my favorite town in all of Tuscany.

Like all of the other medieval cities that we have visited this semester, this one was also situated on a hill and surrounded by a stone wall. The unique aspect of San Gimignano is the fact that, at one point, its walls contained within them 72 towers. Though only 15 of them remain today, it is a beautiful place to visit.

  
The Shopping
One word: brilliant. San Gimignano is full of cute shops! Honestly, besides some general site-seeing, shopping is really all we did there. I have been stressed out this entire semester regarding what gifts I should buy people (I'm that person that always wants to buy the perfect gift for the best price. lol) and I found several in the adorable stores. I only have one more person to buy for!

The Food
We had a fabulous lunch at a random osteria. I had pici (the worm pasta that I had in siena) with breadcrumbs and garlic. It was so good!

After lunch and walking around the city a bit, we found a gelateria that had "WORLD CHAMPION" with 2 years listed in which they had won some kind of gelato competition. There was a line out the door initially so we came back and it was seriously the best gelato in the world. I got cinnamon and blueberry ricotta. Ella chose rosemary raspberry and blackberry lavender (a combination that she described as "orgasmic"). Yum!

Wedding Crashers
There was a church right outside of the osteria where we ate lunch and, while we were eating, we watched as herds of fancifully-dressed Italians gathered outside. We determined that it was a wedding when a youngish man in an all-black tuxedo drove up on a white motorcycle with a white ribbon tied to it. So, we waited for the bride to show up and marriage became a common topic of conversation for the remainder of the day. It was really sweet thing to see...especially in Italy.

We returned home to Florence after a successful day of walking, chowing, and shopping and now I am wicked exhausted.

MTV TRL Awards
I don't think I mentioned this but, a few weeks ago, Florence hosted the Italian MTV TRL awards in Piazza Santa Croce...about a 20 minute walk from my apartment. You know I checked it out! Rumors were flying about a surprise appearance by Lady Gaga but the only famous musicians there were Italian so I had no idea who most of them were. The piazza was packed full of people, though, so it was a blast! Anyone else find it ironic that the event was held right in front of a historical Florentine church? (Btw, Galileo's tomb is in that church)

GTL in the FLR

As many of you probably already know, MTV's reality show, the Jersey Shore, is coming to Florence. What many of you may NOT know is that it is causing a lot of people a lot of problems. I happen to know one of these people. I don't want to say too much because some of it has already ended up on TMZ (don't ask me how they get their info but you don't screw around with TMZ) and they have erroneously represented the events. In a few words, some girls I know have been legitimately screwed over and severely disrespected by our school and our dean of students as a result of the show moving to Florence. The entire situation would have been better had it been handled differently. And that's all I have to say about that...

Update on the Mac situation: I'm still Mac-less. I should get my computer back on Tuesday but studying for finals prior to that is going to be a painful experience.  And, as far as I know, they weren't able to recover any of my data (but they probably didn't even attempt to recover it so I will find someone to help a sista out when I get home).

Ciao!
-Britt

The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Do you remember the children's book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? The basic plot of it chronicles a day in the life of young Alexander during which nothing seems to go his way. He wakes up with gum in his hair, he doesn't get a prize in his cereal, the dentist finds a cavity, his mom makes lima beans for dinner...so on and so forth. At the end of the story, he determines that he wants to live in Australia but his mother assures him that even Australians have bad days.

Well, in Italy, people have bad days, too...and today was mine.

It started out with a group presentation in Italian class. As always, I was the member of the group who decided to take control because I like things done a certain way and I just can't trust other people with my grades. When I went to bed last night, one of my group members still had not emailed her slides to me. They were in my inbox when I woke up but the files were encrypted and I couldn't open them. When I got class and explained this to her, she didn't understand (she's from Belgium) and blamed it on my Mac. Excuse me? My slides were done last week. This is what you get for sending me yours at 1am the morning of our 8am presentation!

My next class was History of Catholicism in Italy. My teacher always includes a buttload of information on the slides so I make sure to have my laptop so that I can type out the notes quick enough. Before class started, my computer was knocked off of my desk. It was closed and it didn't seem to have a hard landing so, while it scared me for a second, I thought it would be okay. It went to the desktop page when I opened it but it was making a strange clicking sound and I restarted it. It made the echo noise that Macs always make when they start up and then the clicking continued...this time the screen stayed gray. No desktop background, no dock, no finder...just gray. I left it off for a while but, every time I tried to start it back up, it would just do the same thing.

After classes, I went to a tech repair shop that my school told me about. Of course, because this is Italy and nothing is efficient here AT ALL, the technician was gone and it would take 3-4 days just to diagnose the problem. Everyone at this place looked at my Mac as if they'd never seen one before. Not a good sign.

So, I took it to a Mac store near my apartment and the guy there was much more helpful. He is about 95% sure that the hard disk is broken and said that all of my files are most likely gone. My music, my pictures, my schoolwork, EVERYTHING. Replacing the hard disk is going to cost about 120 Euro and he said that it should be ready between Friday and Monday. Still, there is a possibility that over 10,000 songs and about 8,000 pictures are gone forever. Also, I have a project and paper due tomorrow. I backed up the project on a flash drive but it looks like I will be rewriting that 7-page paper. Thanks to this situation, I dropped an F-bomb for the first time in my life today, guys (it was probably about time anyway, eh?).

Ever notice that when a few things go wrong, everything else just bugs the crap out of you? The tourists seemed particulary obnoxious today.

I'm feeling better about things now that I have talked to Dad. He was very understanding and told me that the files should be recoverable, if not by the Mac Geniuses here, than by the ones in the States. Plus, some friends and I have a falafel date tonight at a really good, cheap Egyptian restaurant here in Florence.

It's days like these that make me look forward to being home. Here's to hoping that tomorrow is fabulous!

Britt

Is This Real Life?

Wow! I can't believe there is less than 2 weeks left in this semester! Ah! I have been bombarded with schoolwork lately and, since I knew I would be, I didn't make any huge travel plans. I'm here in Tuscany for the rest of the semester! Finals are already next week but I haven't had time to think about them! I've had an audio documentary to produce and edit, 2 7 page papers to write, 2 oral presentations, an Italian composition, and an exam. I will never know why professors always insist on cramming all of the major assignments at the end of the semester.

Lucca

On Saturday, API (my program) took us on a day trip to Lucca, a small Tuscan town about an hour from Florence. It is known for its medieval wall which still exists and encircles the town. Also, one of the towers in the city has trees growing out of it!

The churches in Lucca are gorgeous. One of them contains within it the Volto Santo (Holy Face). It is actually a sculpture that was created by Nicodemus just after Christs' crucifixion. Since Nicodemus actually hung out with Jesus, this sculpture is said to be the most accurate representation of Christ in art. It definitely does not fit the typical Anglo-Saxon image of Jesus that we've grown accustomed to seeing! The story of how it came from Jerusalem to a relatively small church in Lucca is quite miraculous and was definitely an act of divine will (I don't remember the whole story so, if you're curious, do what I always do and ask Google).

Catholic churches, particularly ones in Italy, often contain the relics of the saint for which it was named. For example, St. Catherine's in Siena actually contains the thumb and skull of Santa Caterina. And they are proudly and weirdly on display. Another very interesting church in Lucca contains within it the entire corpse of its saint, Santa Zita. She died in the 1200s so I was extremely thankful for the glass case (Do you know what 800 years of decay smells like? Neither do I and, frankly, I prefer to keep it that way!).

After lunch and window shopping, we had some time to kill so we found a playground and became 6 years old again for about 30 minutes.

It was all fun and games until Eve's purse fell off the Merry-Go-Round and into a puddle. :o(

We then arrived at Fattoria il Poggio in Monte Carlo for a tour of an olive grove and an olive oil tasting. When it comes to dipping bread, I much prefer balsamic vinegar and nothing else so I was not crazy about the tasting but it was fun to learn about the process of olive harvesting!

Notte Bianca

In cities around Europe, on the same night, the White Night is celebrated. Its origins are highly debated but, as far as we were concerned, it was a HUGE party in the streets of Florence. Most stores and restaurants were open until 5am Sunday morning. There was a different live band on almost every block (including the space right in front of my apartment building!), museums were free to the public, DJs were raging in the piazzas, and random art exhibits were scattered throughout the city. I have no idea why the US doesn't adopt this idea. It's family friendly; literally everyone and their mom was out.

One of our school's professors doing a performance art piece.

"Tape Florence" - a spiderweb made of masking tape.

Normally, I'm a party pooper and don't really stay out too late. Since I was out at 1am for Notte Bianca, I was determined to visit a "secret bakery". These bakeries are only open past 1am every night and their purpose is to bake all of the pastries to distribute to the nearby cafes the next day. They are not marked; if you saw the outside of them, you'd have no idea it was a bakery. There is one less than a block away from my apartment and it is literally just a door. You can smell it from a distance, though.

I asked for "qualcosa fresca e con cioccolato"...something fresh and with chocolate. Yum! It was super cheap and the guys working there were so friendly! (a highly unusual quality in a northern Italian).

Vai Fiorentina!

Today, API took us to a professional soccer game. It was Fiorentina (Florence) vs. Udinese (Udine) and, despite Udinese's much higher rank, we won 5-2! It was such a great game! We had no idea what was going on as far as the cheers but, hey, clapping and screaming is a universal language.

Fans are so hardcore! They have to separate the Fiorentina fans from the Udinese fans with a huge wall! And even so, several fights almost broke out! Unfortunately, there were no streakers. I was pretty sure that was standard at European soccer games...guess not!

Well, mi sono molta stanca (I'm very tired) so I'm going signing off! I've got another week of schoolwork ahead of me! Bartoli out!

~Britt