Carnevale a Venezia!

Well, on Feb 8 & 9 I had quite the whirlwind trip to Venice for its last hoorah of this year's Carnevale.  I left Florence with my friend Brad mid-morning on Friday 8th (11am), arriving in Venice around 1pm.  We promptly found a little enoteca where we could grab a bite to eat.  I had a delicious ham sandwich while Brad snacked on some Venetian specialties, mostly of the fried variety.  

After lunch it was time for some serious Carnevale costume enjoyment. So we headed to Piazza San Marco where it all goes down.  They had a large stage area set up and starting around 3pm they had a costume contest.  But well before that time all the various people in costumes hang out in the piazza to give people photo-op time.  So much money gets spent on these elaborate costumes that they want to show them off for people to enjoy them.  Luckily we had gorgeous weather all day so sitting outside for a few hours in the sun was great.  Might I add that we also decided to take in the sights whilst drinking perhaps the most expensive espresso I'll ever drink from a caffe in the piazza.

Once we had our fill we decided we needed to finally purchase our own masks.  It was really hard to choose something because there are just so many masks, and they range from cheap and tacky to expensive and gorgeous.  We also decided we needed to get in some traditional Venetian Carnevale treats.  In Italy, during the period before lent, or what is better known as carnevale, every region has its own specialty desserts or sweets which you can usually get from a pasticceria.  For example, in Rome they have Frappe e Castagnole, in Florence they have Cenci (same things as Frappe) and Frittelle (much different dough from Rome's Castagnole), in Naples they have Chiacchiere (also the same as Frappe), and in Venice they have something called a Frittella as well, but it is a little different from the Florentine dessert (they are larger in Venice and are normally filled with cream and have raisins).  The Venetian Frittelle were very good.

With all the walking around we were doing, we finally decided to grab a drink someplace where we could grab a seat before dinner.  Of course we were smart and went to place on the complete opposite side of the island from where we were and where we would be eating dinner, but what's a little more exercise.  Once we finally made it dinner, thoroughly hungry, we feasted on some much missed seafood.  It was so great and the restaurant was pretty off the beaten track from tourists so prices were reasonable as well.  (Osteria Bea Vita)

By the time we finished dinner it was probably a little after 11pm so we headed out on foot, of course, for some Carnevale evening fun.  We caught the tail end of a concert in a piazza and then headed off on a wild goose hunt for a some club that was supposed to be open and having a party.  We never found the club and after at least an hour (if not more) of looking for it, we decided to try another place.  At the new place we hung out and made a friend.  Our friend, a native Venetian named Marco, took us around the island once the club closed (at 4am) and showed us Marco Polo's house.  We enjoyed Piazza San Marco without the pigeons or throngs of tourists and he introduced us to a place near the Rialto bridge where we could get a coffee and hang out for the few remaning hours before our train would take us back to Florence, leaving around 8am and getting us home around 10.  

And that was my 23 hour trip (literally from Florence and back again) to Venice for Carnevale!

Brad in the piazza, with stage in background.

Me with San Marco in background.

Best pic of the whole trip - only had my point n' shoot.

A Day in Ferrara...

...or, more aptly titled, 5 hours in Ferrara.  This Saturday, Feb 16, the school had a "field trip" planned for us to Ferrara.  Ferrara is a pretty small city and it's on UNESCO's World Heritage site list for being the first city to be built (or enlarged) according to a specific design and build plan.  The leading family that ruled the city from about 1200ad to the 1500ad  were the D'Este's.  I know some of you will recognize that name from the fantastic villa and garden's of Villa D'Este in Tivoli, and yes, it is the same family.

Our tour was just an outside walking tour, but we got to the castle, the Palazzo dei Diamanti, the Cathedral, the Jewish Ghetto and one of the oldest streets in the city Via delle Volte.

The facade of the Cathedral was pretty cool, there was a very graphic and detailed sculpting of the Last Judgement around the doors.

We eat a traditional meal at lunchtime which consisted of an antipasto of meats with these amazing fried dough things (like sopapillas), then a duo of pasta the first being capellacci di zucca and the second was called pasticcio.  Our second course was salama al sugo and then it was all finished with a sampling of traditional desserts: tinarari, panpapato, crostata, and ravioli fritti. Oh, and I mustn't leave out the tradiitonal wine of Ferrara - Lambrusco! I of course didn't get pictures because I was too consumed with the eating part but below are some examples I stole from internet. And this is restaurant where we ate and which I HIGHLY reccomend for a fantastic lunch and a great price http://www.ristorantecadfrara.it/. 

Enjoy the pictures!

Palazzo dei Diamanti

The Cathedral - just about a full view.

Jenneth, Valentina and Brad.

Drawbridge of the castle.

Facade of the Cathedral.

Dolci ferraresi.

The Pasticcio.

Cappellacci di zucca al sugo.

Salama al sugo.

Italian University & Exams

Well folks, I've done it.  I took and passed my first class at the Università di Firenze (Unifi).  And, I might add (tooting my own horn) that I passed with flying colors.   But more than sing my own egotistical praise, I wanted to explain a bit about this bohemoth of a thing called Italian university.

One thing is for sure, for our typical American sentiments of efficiency and effectiveness, the univeristy system here is quite trying and frustrating.  To begin with, where in the US you are practically forced into choosing your course for the Fall semester already in June (for fear of space running out), in Italy, everything is done with "calma". This is because when you enroll at univeristy, you enroll for a specific course of study, so you already know all of your classes going forward for the 3 years of your Laurea Triennale.  BUT...if you're a simple student like myself that is taking courses haphazardly as you like, it can be extremely difficult to find out what courses are being offered and with whom and when they will be held.  In fact, if you remember I didn't get this information until the end of September, the week before classes actually began.

Luckily I was spared the process of actually enrolling myself, except for filling out the physical paperwork, because Middlebury did all of that.  I'm sure I've said in previous posts that my class was General Linguistics (Linguistica Generale), but in case not, that's the refreser. During my time in class the professor kept referring to an online platform that we should enroll ourselves in, but to do that, you needed to have your "libretto" (a long piece of cardstock with your photo, information, and where your grades will eventually be recorded) and your "matricola" (a type of student id number).  I had neither of these things until the course was halfway over.  But I was eventually able to access all of that material.  

Now for the exam process.  As the Italian system changes (over the last 5-10 years they have been overhauling the system quite a bit) you start to see classes that have midterms.  My class had this, and if you did well on the midterm (which was a written test), then it meant you would have a final (in the traditional oral exam form) which concentrated on less material.  With that done, I had only to think about going to class and taking good notes which I could use to help me study for the final.  As December approached we still had no idea when the exam would be held, except that the professor could choose any dates within the 3 "appelli" which start at the beginning of January.  Appelli are the time periods (3 specific date ranges in which the professor chooses 1 day from each to hold the exam) that you can choose from to take the exam.  In theory this is for people who have 3 courses, they can take one exam each appello so they can concentrate on one thing at a time or they can choose to do them all together.   It also serves as a second try for your exam in case you don't pass it the first time since Italians can refuse their grade if they are not satisfied, then study some more and retake the exam at one of the later appelli.  So, I decided to take my exam the first appello in case I would need to retake it at a later one.  Luckily that was not the issue.  But any way, once the professor announces the dates, they get inserted into the computer system and about 2 weeks before the date you can sign up to take the exam.  Now with a class of 150 students, each needing to take an oral exam with 1 professor, when you sign up is important because if you're too far down the list, your exam day will get pushed back, but you don't know until you show up that day and hear what the professor says.  

So arrived on Thursday morning, ready to tackle the exam head on, with a decent position in the list of 16th. The professor immediately asked if anyone would like to push back the exam to the next day, and as I would have been the very last person that day, requiring me to sit around all day, I decided I would volunteer, placing me amongst the first for the next day.  And luckily this also gave me time to watch, listen, and observe several of the exams before heading back home to do a final pass of my textbooks (yup, you read that right, you do the exam in fromt of all the people that showed up to take it that day), now that I had a better idea of the information the professor wanted.  All in all, I actually liked the oral exam process, the worst part is waiting for your turn and not knowing anything about timelines and schedules until the last minute.  

Now I just need to decide if I'll be taking another course at Unifi in the Spring!

Backside of my libretto where they write your grades.

Frontside of my libretto.

Christmas - Italian Style

Adesso che sono passate le feste e ora che vi descrivo un po come si festeggia in italia o meglio come si festeggia a Roma e Firenze.  Proprio all'inizio di dicembre Firenze è diventata una città piena di luci.  Su tantissime strade hanno appeso delle luci (in tanti diversi modi).  Proprio vicino a casa mia, e più o meno la mia stessa strada, non hanno soltanto messo le luci, ma hanno anche aggiunto delle casse che suonavano musica nel pomeriggio.  Era fantastica.

Tutto comincia per davvero l'8 dicembre con la festa dell'Immacolata.  Ci sono dei mercatini nelle piazze anche se i mercatini a Firenze non sono un granché, Roma ha dei mercatini fantastici, non c'è niente che batte Piazza Navona.  In Italia è molto più comune festeggiare Natale il giorno della vigilia e per questo(e anche il giorno proprio di Natale) io sono stata a Roma da i fantastici Riccioni e mi sono divertita tanto.  Per tradizione, non si mangia la carne per la vigilia (in particolare per la cena), e infatti abbiamo mangiato un sacco di pesce e verdure - tutto buonissimo.  Sono classici vari tipi di fritti: verdure fritte e pesci fritti (come i calamari negli USA).  Poi più tardi quella sera abbiamo scambiato qualche regalino, l'emfasi è molto più concentrato sul aspetto religioso che di quello di Babbo Natale e regali.  E finalmente a mezzanotte siamo andati in chiesa per la messa.  Il giorno di natale abbiamo pranzato con un buonissimo timballo, un piatto tradizionale abruzzese che spero di potervelo fare come torno a casa. 

Una cosa simile con gli stati uniti, è il andare al cinema il giorno di natale.  Ed infatti sono andata a vedere il Hobbit.  

Di sicuro mi è mancato tanto di stare a casa con tutta la mia fantastica famiglia, ma se sto lontana di casa per natale non avrei voluto passare il tempo con altre persone.

Via dei Servi, Firenze. Veduto di Pza Santissima Annunziata.

Oltrarno, Firenze. Vicino Ponte Vecchio.

Il Battistero con l'albero, Firenze.