“I don’t remember what it feels like to be warm anymore…”: My First European Backpacking Adventure to Florence, Italy

Let’s start with a moment of honesty. As I prepared for my Italian Study Abroad experience, Milan was NOT my top choice. In fact, it wasn’t in my list of top choices. I had fantasized of living among the beautiful Tuscan landscape and architecture as I studied abroad in Florence, or “Firenze.” When the business department at Providence College eliminated Florence as a possibility, I was given two options in Italy and rather blindly chose Milan but was so disheartened every time I read descriptions of the city that almost always included words like, polluted, smog, expensive, and industrial.  So as we chose Florence to be our first long-weekend backpacking destination, I was secretly worried that I’d get there, love the city, and spend the rest of the semester disappointed thinking about what could have been. Although a WONDERFUL city (if you can call it that), this was not the case.

I’m going to give a general overview of the trip, but before I get started, I’d like you fine readers to bear in mind that we spent approximately 8 hours a day walking around outside without the proper dress in 35 degree weather. We thought we were going South for the weekend, but Mother Nature decided to stick it to us instead.

Thursday afternoon:

Becca, Mark and I all had our daily 3 hour Italian class, except today was exam day for the entire program. Because we’d been studying all week, we sort of forgot about the whole “planning” aspect of this trip. After our exams, we took the metro and sprinted back to Via Alberto Mario and hastily packed because 1. Our train left in an hour and 2. We really didn’t plan this weekend so we had no clue what to pack for.

We throw stuff in a bag, meet an hour later, run to the metro, hop on the red line then need to switch to the green line to get to the station as the clock ticks: t- 35 minutes and we still had no tickets. Not used to the green line. Whoops- metro was going the wrong way. Get off 2 stops later. Catch the correct metro. While waiting:

Sarah: So what time is the train?

Mark: I thought you said it was at 2:05?

Becca: What? We thought YOU checked the train times!

Mark: I thought you guys checked the train times!

Conclusion: Mark’s roommate Matt checked the train times 4 days ago. We think. And we think it was at 2:05. Maybe. Was that to Florence or was that to Rome? Uh oh. And so the adventure begins.After sprinting in leather boots with 3 heavy heavy bags and 3 heavy heavy fancy Cannon cameras, we ended up on a train that was 4 hours later and arrived to the Hostile at about 10:00 PM after getting lost and finally surrendering to exhaustion, called a cab.

Friday:

            Wandered around Florence. Spent a solid amount of time shopping at the market on Via San Lorenzo. Exercised my haggling skills. Evidently, I’m a good haggler. (I’m 100% Irish aka 100% cheap… it’s in my blood. Plus, I’m related to Mary Pat McConnell: the Queen of bargain shopping.) Bought jewelry, gifts, postcards, and a cute poncho I haggled from 25 euro to 10 euro. Got a free bracelet. Didn’t get to use my Italian once. Bummer.

            Accidently stumbled upon the Duomo. HUGE. Gorgeous. Extremely opposite from Il Duomo in Milan. (My friend Molly later reminded me that Florence’s models Roman architecture whereas Milan’s Il Duomo is Gothic.) I was kind of surprised about how much the other buildings were crowding it, though. In Milan, Il Duomo gets a whole piazza and several hundred yards separate it from other buildings to its front, whereas I still don’t know where the front of the Duomo in Florence is! I wish they had given it more room to breathe and be awe-inspiring. I was also very surprised to see that the details were all PAINTED on rather than sculpted! That must have taken one hell of a long time!

            Made our way over to Ponte Vecchio (which literally means: Old Bridge. Quite the creative title, if you ask me.) It was BEAUTIFUL – almost surreal, like a movie set. Red shingles, yellow painted stone buildings, narrow stone roads, wooden doors and shutters on the vast number of jewelry shops sitting on the bridge over the water, looking out onto the city and other bridges with the mountains in the background. THIS is why you come to Florence.

            Decided that opportunities like this only come around once, so we splurged on a fancy restaurant for lunch that sits on the water and looks out onto Ponte Vecchio. Che BELLO! We also ate the most delicious pizza! It was so good that the only thing we talked about the entire meal (which was made twice as long because we were eating so slowly, not wanting it to end) was how good the meal was. Becca and I shared – get ready to be starving – a pizza with fresh homemade tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella cheese, cherry tomatoes, whole FRESH basil leaves, and a ricotta stuffed crust. Yup. And it was even more delicious than it sounds, if that’s possible. This was obviously followed by a Tiramisu Gelato. New mathematical formula:

            Amazing Pizza + Gelato + Ponte Vecchio + Italian mountains = La Vita Bella

           

Saturday:

            Went to Accademia Gallery to see David. Now, I’m not a museum person. I was that kid on fieldtrips that just wanted to get to the gift shop already. But the statue of David. WOW. How once can CHISEL detail like that and do it that smoothly, well, Michelangelo is famous for a reason. From the curly hair and etched sideburns, to the veined hands and wrinkles on his knuckles and toes, THAT is art. It makes you feel like you’ve seen real art. It was definitely worth it.

            Met a childhood friend Molly and her boyfriend Claudio for lunch. Molly and Claudio live in Florence full-time now and it was GREAT to catch up with her. She was as beautiful and charming as ever and as happy as can be, and Claudio was such a sweetheart and a gentleman. It was wonderful yet so strange to see such a familiar face so out of context!

            More market shopping, more Ponte Vecchio, more photos. Then went to Gusta Pizza for dinner which is a local favorite, and for good reason. I got an open calzone with ricotta cheese, mozzerrella, basil, cherry tomatoes, and pancetta. It’s the kind of place that you won’t find in Zagat but only through a local or by stumbling upon it. It was truly Italian: the owner walked around giving double kisses to the regular customers, and you shared tables with strangers where ever seats were free because it was so tiny. Now THAT is a family style dinner.

 

Sunday:

            Woke up at 7:00 AM. Walked to the train station for an 8:35 AM train. Rough for three 20-year-olds on a weekend, but worth saving the 30 euro…

In sum:

Awesome thing about Florence: Beautiful architecture, beautiful landscape, manageable city, very fun markets, you can walk everywhere.

Reasons that make me glad I’m spending 5 months in Milan: Florence would be an incredible place to vacation, raise a family, or retire, but from a student’s perspective, I don’t think I’d like studying abroad there because it’s VERY small, not a very convenient jumping off point for other travels, if it’s not in walking distance then you’re kind of at a loss because there are no metros, and the entire city caters to tourism. It was FAR too American for my liking. I didn’t have to use my language once, which I like that I’m forced to do in Milan. And everywhere I turned, there were more American students traveling in packs!

All in all: Florence was a lot of fun and a good first trip, but I was ready to get back to Milan! 

Simplicity: An Unfamiliar Concept to the Average American

            Forget about the language barrier; forget about the different metric system; forget about the foreign social ques. How the HELL do I use this stuff?!

            More often than I had anticipated, when going about my day-to-day activities I find myself slowed down as I have to stop and ponder how I’m supposed to achieve a goal that used to seem so ordinary. Examples:

            The bathrooms in Italy should come with a multi-lingual instruction manual. In my apartment, there is a lever and a knob above the toilet. When I arrived to my apartment after a 9 hour plane experience, a 1 hour taxi escapade, and a 4 block walk with my bags from the incorrect address, and the 5 bottles of water I consumed within that time, I walked into my apartment and barely said hi before I ran into the bathroom. But as I ran in, I was baffled as to how to use the damn thing. Why are there two toilets in one bathroom? Why do they require 2 separate flushing mechanisms? Rather than wasting gallons of water each time you flush as we environment-hating Americans do, the bathroom in my apartment has a lever that that allows you to control how much water is released. Above the lever is what looks like a knob that you’d find in the shower, and this is used when the toilet is running and is threatening to flood the bathroom; turning this knob shuts off the water from running through the pipes.

Also horrifying: at the Universita I attend, I walked into use a bathroom and found a hole in the floor with feet grips on either side. Yup- a female urinal. That's one cultural experience I'm ok going without. 

            I just did my first batch of laundry today – a load of delicates. I did my best to de-code the washing machine instructions and put it on what I thought was the delicate setting, but in hindsight, it may have been worth my while to walk the extra 10 feet to get my Italian dictionary. In Italy, the “delicate setting” simply means that the washing machine doesn’t spin out the clothes. This would not be such an issue if the Italians used dryers, but they instead use drying racks. The drying rack in my apartment is more of an apparatus rather than a rack. Six thin bars hang from the ceiling out of reach, and to get them down, each is attached to separate pully system which requires a long stick with a hook to operate. Thanks to the lack of spin provided by the washer, I had to wring out each item of clothing because they were all SOPPING wet before raising and lowering the bars to hang my clothes on, which apparently is an art you need to get the hang of because somehow I kept knocking into the fastened hooks which sent the rope flying up, the bar flying down, and my clothes flying everywhere. Furthermore, it is now more-or-less raining in my CA’s bathroom because I could only wring out so much water. (Sorry, Monica.) Right now, it seems like a long shot to hope that I’ll have dry clothes to wear to my class in 12 hours. Whoops.

            My apartment key is about 4 inches long and looks like a decorative souvenir or an honorary key given to the mayor of the city or something, but it most certainly doesn’t look real. To use it, it must point a certain way, and be twisted 4 times and can only be taken out on an even turn, otherwise it’ll get stuck

 

            To get into the IES center, there is a large door on the sidewalk - and I mean LARGE door – cathedral sized doors. But to get through them, you open a smaller door that’s within the door like that scene when Dorothy stands at the gates of Oz. Then, you go through another set of doors to get to the stairs; at the stop of the stairs, there is another door to get into the center with the classrooms. Each door is requires a 4-digit number to be punched into the keypad. What’s the code number? Couldn’t tell ya. But I better figure it out because if you’re 5 minutes late to class, it counts as an absence, which is seriously frowned upon.

            There are only 2 outlets in my bedroom, and each outlet only has 1 European plug. That would be made extra annoying if we were allowed to use multiple appliances at once, but each apartment is only equipped with 3000 volts of electricity. This sounds like a lot, but each light bulb is about 100 and the Italians have a much higher electrical output in their appliances. This means that only 1 large appliance can be used at a time otherwise the power will go out; in practical terms, you can use the dishwasher OR the washing machine OR blow dryer, but you can’t do more than one at once. The water supply must work similarly, because only one shower can be used at a time; if you try turning on 2, one will lose water. Also, the light switches are all outside of the rooms in our apartment, and you must flip it down for the lights to come on. And the stove does not have a flame igniter. I wanted to cook today and my roommate had to hold a cigarette lighter to the stove as I opened the gas valve and watched the flame erupt far too close to her hand than I’m comfortable with.

            Looks like it’s sink or swim, folks. Learn to live Italian, or learn to live without a toilet, get rained on by clothes, get locked out of your apartment and/or school, blow a fuse, live in the dark, and burn your hand off while trying to cook. How overindulged, spoiled and bratty we must seem…

THE FIRST 3 NIGHTS IN MILAN

            My program (IES) sponsored a ton of events for the first week for the 88 students studying abroad in Milano.

            NIGHT ONE

On the first night, they took us to a dinner right in the piazza that surrounds Il Duomo. You expect to have to travel to get to spectacular sights like this, but no – we got off the metro, looked up, and HELLO DUOMO! standing tall peering down at us in all of its hundreds of feet of glory. The buildings around us were all draped in Christmas lights strung hanging down10 stories, along with an alarmingly tall Christmas tree in the piazza. Also, of course, were a Ray Ban and a McDonald’s. As a marketing major, I get it. As a tourist, I hate it.

            The dinner was meant for us to mingle and meet one another in the program, but the wine and delicious food served at the buffet was definitely a bonus. But, SURPRISE! I took one bite of what seemed to be a lemon-butter cream pie and chewed one bite only to feel an unexpected crunch. There were nuts in the pie. Luckily, they were only pine nuts so I didn’t die. Note to self: figure out how to say “nuts” in Italian. And carry and Epi-Pen. And oh yeah- don’t die. (Wouldn’t want to deny the good people in CyberSpace of the gift that is my blog writing.)

            Also a funny moment at the dinner: we all ate TONS of yummy food and at the end, they informed us that we would need our bathing suits for the next night’s activity because they reserved an extremely exclusive spa for our use. The faces of every girl in the room slipped from an excited smile to a frightened jaw drop as they internally panicked about wearing a bikini in front of people they’d just met and were trying to impress after both the inevitable holiday weight gain and the huge meal they just ate. Hilarious.

           

            NIGHT TWO

            The spa was incredible. It was this HUGE Italian style building in the middle of the city, right off the metro, surrounded by concrete walls. We walked in, got robes, flip-flops, towels, and a pack of expensive looking shower products, then went to the women’s locker room to change and I quickly learned that in Italian culture, nudity is not an issue and they go about their business without shame or apologies. This may sound odd, but I respect this about their culture: why put time and energy into being embarrassed about things like this? There are far more things that we can and should concern ourselves with; this should not be one of them.

            The spa itself was 3 levels with tons of rooms, all with various types of pools and saunas. They had hot tubs with bubbles that float up to massage you from the walls, from the chairs, from the floors, from all three; hot tubs with waterfalls that pour over you from above to massage your head and back; and my favorite: there was a room with stone beds that you lie on with a bar above it that was like a showerhead spread 5 ft. long-ways that massages your entire body like tiny, strong jets. There were also 3 large hot tubs outdoors, each with individual chairs that massage you with jets. It was very cool sitting in a hot tub outside in middle of January, making conversation in my broken Italian with the two older Italian men sitting next to me, enclosed within the spa’s confines with Italian architecture peaking in at you from over the walls. Then there was a huge room – almost like a ballroom – with a piano player, food, and champagne. (I didn’t get to eat any of the food because I didn’t know what was in any of it and was not in the mood to go to the hospital because I went into anaphylactic shock after eating nuts, but I imagine it was divine.) That night at the spa may be the fanciest thing I’ll ever do.

           

            NIGHT THREE

            Aperitivo is a part of Italian culture that should most definitely be adopted by American restaurants. I think I would describe aperitivo as being similar to Spanish “Tapas” or American “Cocktail Hour.” At most places, you pay 7 euro for a drink and endless appetizers. (Italian cocktail = 2 American cocktails; Italian appetizers = 5 star American restaurant. For 7 euro.) IES took us to a place called Noon, which is apparently a hotspot in Milano. Case in point: the striker for the AC Milan soccer team was there with the Prime Minister’s daughter. My CA (community assistant – the Italian version of an RA), Monica, came up to me and made the funniest comment, exclaiming: “They came to this bar thinking they were all cool, then found themselves surrounded by 100 random Americans!”

            After aperitivo, I went to a club called Old Fashion with my friend Kim, her Italian boyfriend Ricky, and his friends Musta (short for Mustafa), Amir (or Almir… we weren’t quite sure. He’s about 6’5 and I’m 5’2 – I couldn’t hear him very well), and Elisa. Kim also attends Providence College and studied in Milan for a full year last year and is staying in my apartment this week because, purely coincidentally, she happened to live in the same apartment with the same CA and is back visiting. Old Fashion, apparently like many clubs in the city, have “international student night” every week which offers us “random Americans” a deal: pay a 10 euro cover, then get 2 free drinks inside. Not a bad deal, especially considering most drinks are about 9 euro alone and most clubs have additional entry fees.

            The club was like something you see out of a movie. There were two huge dance floors, each with bars, each booming with different music (which was ALL American, might I add), and each with rave lights that would have sent even the slightest epileptic into a seizure. There was a VIP section (which I didn’t realize was VIP at the time and was confused when I went to explore the club and was literally pushed away from this area by two men wearing black suits) and a few lounge areas around the perimeter (which we somehow managed to acquire), as well as a very pretty and very large outdoor patio with more lounge sections. At PC, our clubs are dirty, windowless holes in the wall; in Milano, their standard is our celebrity status.

            Good thing I’m outgoing and not embarrassed easily, because trying to talk with Ricky, Musta, A(l)mir, and Elisa was a circus. I was trying to use my sparse, broken italiano and they were trying to use their heavily accented, broken inglese to string together sentences and communicate with one another. At first, it was rough. Kim the Italian major acted as our translator and later commented how awkward we all were to watch. An hour of struggling to convey the most basic of sentences and a round of drinks later, I think we all said “screw it” and ceased the failed attempts at stringing together grammatically proper sentences and adopted a form of ital-inglese that consisted mostly of vocabulary words, charade-like motions, and incorrect uses of verbs, prepositions, and pronunciation. This abandonment of inhibition was for the better because we ended up having a great time and were able to learn the basic facts about one another; for example, the boys are both from Italy but are Egyptian in heritage, live with their parents, and work together at the ATM (Italian ATM = American Metro system). Minus the whole Egyptian thing, this is the standard for young Italians: after high school, they work rather than attending Universita immediately, and they live with their parents until their mid-to-late 20’s. (Meaning that Kerry- no need to get bummed about being in Ridgefield, you just must be more cultured than we thought, living Italian-like and all. This would go under the category of “stupid things that Italians don’t waste their time worrying about while Americans flail to live according to social norms.”)

            One last note about night three: everyone that has attended college and look back and reminisce fondly about the late-night truck parked right outside the campus gates that sold greasy sandwiches to students coming back from the bar at night. Evidently, Italy has this as well, except their “greasy food” in this case was a veal sandwich with some unknown delicious sauce, fresh lettuce and tomatoes on pita-like bread. YUM. 

La Vita Bella

Study Abroad is Not for the Faint of Heart

First off, let’s not kid ourselves: L’Italia e BELLISSIMA! It’s incredible here. Whoever said the Milano is the slums should probably reevaluate the quality of their optometrist because they were obviously not seeing properly. Many streets are made of stone, the architecture is regal, and the fashion is elegantly effortless. I mean, Milano is the home of the Duomo, a church that takes over 300 years to build, for God’s sake! This city is far more than just the city you fly into.

Getting to this country was quite the hassle. Forget about the multiple trees that were cut down in order to create the thousands of pages of paperwork I had to sign; forget about the hours that were spent on the additional paperwork that was online; forget about the Visa application and the fact that it got sent back to us multiple times claiming that we did it incorrectly, despite the fact that the directions on the document itself even admitted that there was no standard rule for parts. One of the most stressful parts of getting into this country was literally planning on how I was going to get myself, my luggage, and my medications into this country.

After all the fuss I’ve heard about luggage weight and size requirements, getting doctor’s permission to bring in certain medications, and properly storing my liquids, both airports were so relaxed it was almost disturbing. They didn’t peer inside my carry-on, they didn’t inquire about liquids which I had taken the time to properly store, and although I mentioned it to the woman who lazily glanced at the documents for 4 seconds that my mother nearly tore her hair out over working on for 4 months, I don’t even think they knew I had an Epi-Pen in my carry-on. Why they wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care I have a 3-inch, sharp needle full of pure adrenaline but were concerned that my duffle bag was 3 inches too long is beyond me. I thought that surely, Italian customs would be more diligent about what goes into their country. Flase. No checks, a quick glance at my passport and a lazy, weak stamp.

I was on the same flight as my friend from Providence College who is also studying abroad in Milano. Gabby had 4 bags with her which weighed approximately 140 lbs. Needless to say, she was not about to take a metro for an hour, so we hopped into a taxi and I ended up paying 40 euro (the full price to my apartamento alone was 83 euro) to get dropped off in the incorrect place because my program gave me the wrong address. (Thanks, IES.) Luckily, the apartment I ended up at was the boys’ housing on my street and they brought me back to my apartment down the road and I had the opportunity to meet the boys that have become our best friends here.

My apartment is bello bello BELLO! Marble floors in the common rooms, hardwood floors in the bedrooms. My bedroom has about 15 ft ceilings, beautiful closets that could handle the clothing of an entire floor of dorms, a chandelier, and a 6^th story balcony. Oh ya – I’m really slummin’ it.

My roommates, community assistant and I went to the grocery store and that’s when it really hit me: holy cow- I’m in Italy. I’ve never been to a grocery store with an escalator. Going down to the lower level, if I were in a movie, a choir of angels would have sang. There was a huge variety of fresh deli meats, pastries, and more pasta than I’ve ever seen in one place. You can buy everything, from a liter of boxed wine for a euro to an actual motorcycle. I bought my first bottle of alcohol – a more expensive bottle of sparkling white wine… it was the same price as my toothpaste.

In the cafeteria at the school, with your meal comes a drink; you can choose between water, water with gas, soda, or – I kid you not – white wine, red wine, or beer. Right out of the soda fountain. On the tables, rather than salt and pepper, they have vinegar and olive oil. I had veal (vitello) for lunch along with pasta with honest to goodness fresh tomato sauce and fresh bread plus a salad… for 4.50 euro.

There is a ton ton ton more I could share, but I’ve got places to go and sights to see. Until next time!