Last Friday night I attended a Halloween celebration at the house of another exchange student. My good friend Giovanni picked me up in his dad's car to drive me to the party, and after we found a place to park and bought wine at a dark store that was open after 8 with a mop in the doorway, we arrived at the party. I stole the hat from a witch (Sara?) and wore it most of the night as we drank and danced, and after the carabinieri came around 1 (some things never change) we went out to a bar for a couple more drinks. Finally, Giovanni and I said goodbye to the revelers and headed home.
Saturday night there was a huge Halloween party for exchange students at the Giardini Margherita. I had studied for most of the day and was really looking forward to it, but about an hour before the party I had a startling revelation. If I wanted to see the inside of a bar with a bunch of Americans and other people who speak English, I would have stayed in the United States. I came to Italy to travel, to meet people and to experience the culture. I did not come to drink and dance every night. The thought kept me from leaving, and instead of drinking last Saturday night, I went on couchsurfing.org and planned this weekend. And let me tell you, it was so, SO, worth it.
My weekend started on Wednesday. After I finished my lessons I returned home before heading to a meeting of a group which is building a small sailing boat for a festival in the spring. The group is composed of a professor, four Italian engineering students, and me . Before leaving I asked my house mate Giulio if I could borrow his road bike, which sits in the cantina gathering dust, so that I could make it to the building in 10 minutes instead of half an hour. He said no and would not budge, and I was angry because I knew the bike would be safe and I could keep it in the same room we worked in and heck I even had a u-lock! But no. I wanted to argue with him real bad, but when I get angry it becomes really hard for me to talk in Italian, so I just picked up my back pack and took off on Red Ruby, my ex-bike.
After the long ride there, and after putting the chain back on a few times after it had fallen off, I arrived at the engineering department. I walked into the factory where we meet and did not see anyone in the gray light coming in from outside. I left a note on the front of the boat (prow?) and began the trek back to my house.
On the way back, just after I had hopped a curve onto the sidewalk to pass some cars, the front brake fell off. The brake got tangled in the wheel, the bike stopped on a dime, and I went over the handlebars and onto the pavement. Everyone in the cars that were stopped at the intersection saw me, but no one, NESSUNO, even rolled down their window to ask if I was alright. A man walking on the sidewalk came up to my bike, glanced at it and glanced at me, then actually stepped over my bike and kept on walking. I was bleeding, but what hurt worse was the lack of concern that I was feeling from all the natural born citizens of this country around me. Ouch.
Then it started raining. I looked at my map and figured out which bus to take back and boarded, but the bus took a turn I wasn't expecting and dropped me off near via Ugo Bassi. I decided to just start walking, and opened my umbrella so that I would not get wet. And this was where my day began to get better.
Last week after getting coffee with my friend Kaitlin we walked past a cheese shop (formaggeria) that had big wheels of parmagiano reggiano, pecorino, and other varieties whose delicious names I have forgotten in the window. My bus ironically dropped me off near this shop, and after my second crash on Red Ruby I thought what the heck I'll buy some cheese. Cupping my left hand, which had an ugly bloody gash that I wanted to keep away from the cheese, I went into the store and asked the very serious and official looking man behind the counter for some parmesan. He responded by asking me if I wanted parmesan that was one year, two years, or five years old. I got the last one and somehow opened my wallet and paid with one hand. On the way home I ran and caught a bus down via Masserenti so that I didn't have to walk all the way on my hurt knee.
Our kitchen table after my fifth dinner. Giovanni always
brings wine that he gets from farmers (contadini), and the
bottles don't have labels. The farmers get mad because
he constantly forgets the bottles at my house.
Wednesday night I had also planned to have my fifth dinner for my housemates and friends, Italian or foreign, and I decided to go ahead with it despite my 'wrecked' condition. I have a fear that if I skip one dinner then I will never get around to having another one. My room mate Davide's friend Mario, who was staying with us for several days while he worked at a festival, is a chef, and I asked him to cook for us that night. I had gone with him to the store earlier and bought a bunch of food, and when I got home he was whistling and moving around in our small kitchen. People began to arrive at 8 before I had even stepped out of the shower, and I strongly urged them all to try the Parmesan. My goodness, I did not think cheese could taste that good. That wheel of cheese has been sitting in a dark room attracting mold for a quarter of my life. At this dinner for the first time, I had more Italians in my house than foreign students. We drained four bottles of wine and ate pasta alla carbonera. The last person left around midnight. Che bella serata.brings wine that he gets from farmers (contadini), and the
bottles don't have labels. The farmers get mad because
he constantly forgets the bottles at my house.
Thursday morning I went running through the wet streets and walked to class around 1PM. I went there a little early and sat in the seat where one of the Americans usually sits, and as people came in the Italians I have met in the class began to sit beside me. I talked to them as our professor got ready to deliver the lecture, and I don't know where those guys sat but it wasn't in the front!
After class I rushed home, sent some quick emails, packed and ate super fast and took a bus to the train station. I bought the cheapest ticket possible for Milan and read Dante while I waited for the train. It was a long trip to Milan, but finally I arrived and witnessed the massive central statione (stazione centrale) whose ceiling hovered above me with greek gods and signs of the zodiac. I got help from two smiling girls who bought my ticket for the metro for me and hopped on a train. The train rushed underground in a city I had never been in and I was tired. That is a good feeling.
Around 8:30 PM I arrived in Cernusco sul Naviglio, which is a little town on the outskirts of Milan. I was staying with a guy named Stefano on Thursday night, and he drove to the small metro station to pick me up since I was dazed and confused. The night was dark, the roads were made of stone or cobbles, and it was sprinkling outside. We ate and talked for two hours at a restaurant. I had a calzone, which is the same kind of concept as a calzone in the United States except more like two pizzas stacked on top of each other. Stefano told me about his friend who had died of cancer the month before and a strange text message that the man's mother recieved after he died in which was written praise for the virgin and the child. Strange but true. When we headed back to Stefano's apartment, I found that he had laid out a cot with sheets in the living room for me. What great hospitality. Before going to sleep, I read Stefano my favorite passage (so far) from the Commedia: the story of Ulisse where Dante talks about the limits of human knowledge.
The morning after Stefano took me to a cafe in his town, and while there I had THE BEST cappucino and THE BEST croissant I have ever, ever eaten. It was in a small bar near the main piazza. The cappucino had nice designs traced in liquid chocolate on the milk foam floating on top, and the croissant had chocolate on top AND on the inside, just like all of the best foods in the world. Stefino rode the train in with me to Milano, and we parted at a bus stop in the rain with tons of stores around us selling Gucci, Armani, and other fashion junk. There were so many advertisements in Milan: on the streets, at the metro stops, on cars. Milan is the industrial and finanacial heart of Italy, and most of the Italians I talked to (including those in Milan) told me it was an ugly city. However, I came here to see Italy and I plan to take the bad along with the good.
Me with the most delicious croissant and the most delicious
cappucino in the entire world.
After I left Stefano I headed to the Pinacoteca di Brera, a world famous art museum. While there I saw many famous paintings by Carvaggio and other Renaissance artists. I really enjoy art, but I am getting very tired now of Christian subjects in painting. The church paid for all the paintings back in the day, and artists have to eat too, but sometimes I could really use a breath of fresh air. My favorite painting in the whole museum is called 'The Kiss' by Hayez. It shows a man that looks like Robin Hood dramatically kissing a girl before ascending some steps. I had not noticed it in the museum, but Friday night my host Valeria pointed out to me that there is the shadow of another man in the background, and that Peter Pan and the girl are kissing before he has to leave because of the other guy. This painting became the centerpiece for the reunificaiton of Italy in the 1860's when it was painted by Francesco Hayez, but I'm not really sure why.
Il Bacio, Francesco HayezI left the museum for a couple of hours at lunch and rode the metro to meet another girl Chesa from couch surfing for sushi. Since I am using this website to find places to stay, I don't have to pay for a hostel and have more money for food. I ordered this beautiful plate with several varieties of raw fish, which I ate while I talked in Italian to Chesa and her colleague from work. Afterwards I walked Chesa back towards her work, and we stopped in a Pastacceria so that I could buy some dessert. I decided to try the baba (pronounced baBA), which is some kind of small croissant dipped in rum. I did not know that before, but had a good time eating it.
After lunch I returned to the museum and finished looking at the art but began to skip all the paintings with religious subjects because I have seen MANY of them thus far. After I saw the last painting (Leornardo da Vinci, Sposata della Vergine maybe) I walked through the narrow streets with balconies looming over me back to the Metro, took it to where I was supposed to meet Valeria, and found a cafe' where I began to read the fifth canto of Inferno. In this canto, Dante meets the two fated lovers Paolo e Francesca, who were killed right after their first kiss by Francesca's husband. The story went well with the painting.
The duomo in Milan. I walked around it eating bread,
killing time before meeting with Valeria. It really is like
a big piece of sculpture, and there are a lot more edges than
the duomo in Florence.
The Galleria di Vittorio or Sala di Milan, this is a bigshopping place right next to the Duomo where there are four
amazing frescos representing the continents of Europe, Africa,
America, and Asia towering over an enormous McDonald's and
stores with expensive silver stuff.
There were two particularly amazing people at the dinner that night. The first was a guy my age from Great Britain working in Germany and applying for a job in Milan. He was VERY british, like the guys in Trainspotting, and he told hilarious stories about his pet parrot. The other couch surfer there, Luise, lives in a small town in Germany and came all the way to Milan to see the Last Supper by Michelangelo. She brought all different kinds of German chocolate with her, which I heartily ate without abandon. While she did not know English very well, her voice was the equivalent of a slow, soft waterfall on a person's ears, and it sounded like she was placing each word like a feather on my head. What a beautiful night.
Saturday I woke up early around the same time as Valeria because she had to go to work in a shoe shop (oh they love them shoes in Milan, its like a fashion capital of Italy or something), and I took Valeria and Luise for croissants and cappucinos. I wanted them to eat more croissants so that we could stay there longer and keep hanging out, but alas I was destined to leave on the train headed north.
I ran to the station and caught the train for Canzo after breakfast. Canzo is a tiny town between the tips of the wishbone that is Lake Como, and I bet it would get the best of both worlds if some geologic event were to rip that lake in half. While I really do try to study on the train, and to study in general, the scenery was often too much and I couldn't help but look out the window. My host for Saturday night, Davide, met me on his bike at the station, and we would have mounted the bike together to ride but we had to go uphill. The plan was to steal his sister's car, load up on food, and go hiking, and that is exactly what we did.
There are times when I have to catch myself and tell... myself... that I am really in this country. When walking through narrow, lovely alleyways is the norm, that is just a norm I can not get used to. We picked up the car and Davide drove like a bat out of the Inferno to the super market. I bought food since I was being hosted and we went to his place. Davide has two houses next to a cold stream that comes down off a mountain that looks like an Appalachian mountain but with many more rocks sticking out of the top and sides. The house I slept in had many, many spare rooms and beds, yet I was the only one staying there.
We made sandwhichs, devoured them, and started walking uphill right from his house to the top of the ridge right beside it. The hike took two hours to reach the top, and during this time I said something like "Berlusconi..." and we proceeded to have a great long discussion in Italian that began with "oh yeah, it is real easy to pass laws in Italy, the problem is that they are hardly ever enforced and the justice system is the the shoots." Leaves are falling off the trees this time of year, and on the way up the steep rocky path I caught a few of them for good luck. As we neared the top, the trees began to give way to the grassy peak. I reached for my camera, realized I had forgotten it (sorry 'bout that), and decided just to look at the view.
On the peak nearest to us there was an enormous cross that is lit up at night, and on the next peak was an ugly gray tower which I later found out serves to transmit RAI television broadcasts. That mountain is called Mount RAI, how appropriate. In one direction from the ridge villages were nestled in the valleys and spaces between the mountains, and in the other was the brown cloud that is Milan. We made it to the big cross, rested, and ran down the other side of the peak through the grass without stopping. I was so happy.
We hiked to Mount RAI, pondered the gray tower for a while, and decided not to take the long way back because dark was approaching and we had already been hiking for 4 hours. From that point forward, we followed a steep rocky path down hill, and the stream we followed, which was the same one that runs beside Davide's house, grew in volume and vigor. My legs began to feel funny, and we rested at a building when the path finally began to turn to cobble and we drank water coming out of a fountain in the side of the mountain. L'acqua dolce.
On the way back to Davide's, we stopped at his friend's and I got to drink tea with sugar in a dimly lit room. After I returned to the house, Davide left me to take a badly needed shower, and when I got out he was no where to be found so I threw on my sweaters and hunkered down with Dante for about an hour. When he returned, we made pasta with melted hunks of cheese and sauce his grandmother had made, and I answered more questions about the United States.
In the middle of washing dishes, I got a phone call from Martini and talked with him in a rushed voice for half an hour. He is coming tomorrow (Thursday) from the United States to visit me, and I am so excited! The Atlantic Ocean is a long body of water to cross, but I am going to make it worth while. I have planned for us to go to Venice and stay with people this weekend, and for next weekend we will go to explore the Ligurian coast!
That evening Davide had planned to go out with some of his Italian friends. I had no real idea where we were going and I honestly thought about staying sober and studying, but the fact that I would be with Italians was the real pivotal point in my decision making (I swear, no really...). We drove very fast to another town to pick up Davide's friend Francesco and then went to a party in a building in the middle of nowhere where I drank and danced with many people who I couldn't hardly understand. Halfway through the night I acquired a cap similar to the man in Hayez's painting, and I felt pretty unassailable.
The next morning I woke up 20 minutes before the train came, slurped down a cafe moka, threw some food in my back pack, and headed for the station. I was very sad to say goodbye to Davide and his town, and I honestly wouldn't have minded hiking up the mountain to have another taste of that water, but duty calls. The ride to Milan was long, the walk in the rain with an umbrealla over my head through the urban streets to the main station even longer, and the last leg to Bologna beyond description.
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