A's, B's, C's, and hopefully no D's or F's.

You know…Italy isn’t all fun and games. I do have classes that I am required to attend on a regular basis. Lets be honest, I came over here for the multicultural education. I’ve spoken a lot about the extracurricular activities, but I have yet to speak about the academic component.

The school that I attend in Florence is called Academia Italiana. It’s the number one fashion school in Italy. So, you can understand why I chose this one. I’d say approximately 85% of the students here are studying some form of art. People draw a lot. This is quite the opposite at Bryant University, where approximately 100% of the students are business majors. I miss Microsoft Excel. In orientation they warned us about culture shock, I just didn’t think it would come in this form.

My teachers at the Accademia are quite the characters:


Photographing Florence – I don’t know her name. She told us it the first day of class, but it was long and confusing. I don’t feel bad about it because there are only 12 students in this class and she still doesn’t know any of our names. She’s younger, probably late 20’s and she owns three cell phones. At least one of them goes off during class. So she’ll pick up the phone and start a conversation. Most Italians are always late and she is no exception. Our class starts at 9 AM, but a few of us got there early one day and she actually told us to get there 10-15 minutes late from now on. She has yet to show us any of her photographs…until then, I’ll be skeptical about listening to her advice.

Italian – Ok, I have this class four days in a row for two and a half hours each day and it’s pretty brutal. The teacher is Simonetta. She’s in her late forty’s, rides her bicycle to school, and wears a cape. No really, she looks like one of the witches from the movie Hokus Pokus. She has raggedy dirty blonde hair, a big mole on her chin and she wear’s this overcoat thing that looks like a cape. Not to mention, she likes to eat snakes in the afternoon. She doesn’t tell us when the exams are..she asks us when we want to have them.

Italian Style – This is one of my favorite classes. We learn all about the Italian culture…food, family, media, the mafia, etc. The teacher is Paola. She is extremely funny. She’s biased towards me because I am Italian and my family is from Naples, where she is from. We get a lot of breaks during class because she smokes a lot.

History of Tuscany – Extremely boring, but Paola teaches this class, too. She keeps it interesting. Her English is far from perfect and she knows it. She makes fun of English words that she cannot pronounce. She’ll slur a bunch of sounds together to do an impression of the word and it really cracks us up. The other day we were laughing and she says, “Why are you smiling at me?” She meant to say laughing, but instead she said smiling. She’s the nicest teacher I have and by far the funniest.

Italian Cinema – We watch a lot of movies. All of them are in Italian, but there are English subtitles. The teacher is Franco. He’s in his late forty’s and has slicked back hair. He’s probably my favorite teacher here. There is one thing that separates a good teacher from an exceptional teacher. Enthusiasm. He has enough for about five teachers combined. He gets really into it. We’ll be watching a movie and he’ll act along with some scenes in the film. He has a very funny personality and does entertaining impressions on some of the characters.


So that’s my weekly grind. I can't complain. Anyways, it looks like this weekend I’m going on a school trip to Ferrar and Mantova.

Tortellini Bolognese

That’s what I ate for lunch on Saturday, March 25, 2006 because a couple friends and I took a trip to Bologna, a city nicknamed “Bologna the Fat.” Among other things, this is the home of tortellini and ragu.

Infrequently visited by tourists, it’s one of the most underrated cities in Italy. It was nice to get away from the tourist scene for a day.

The train station is quite a bit from the center of town and at the time we didn’t have a map on hand. So we took my strategy and followed the biggest group of people. The cobblestone streets were beautiful and the most interesting part was the sidewalks. Almost all of them are covered with lined arches. You can literally walk around town for hours in a rainstorm without ever feeling a drop.

My strategy proved successful and we reached the central square, Piazza Maggiore. The biggest building in the square is the Basilica di San Petronio. The interesting thing about this church is that construction began in the 14th century and work was still in progress 300 years later, but as you can see, it’s still not completed. Only part of the exterior is decorated with the intended marble face.

Here is a picture of the Neptune Fountain with water squirting out of private parts.

There was a palace nearby holding a product exhibition. Probably something like you’d find in the Jacob Javitz center. It was a pretty amazing place to have one.

Bologna is home to one of the oldest schools. The university was founded in 1088 and by the 13th century it had over 10,000 students. We walked around the campus, but most of the buildings were closed because it was a Saturday.

At this point, my tour through the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy was almost complete. After taking a Parmigiano -Reggiano tour in Reggio, eating Proscuitto Crudo in Parma, and tasting Balsamic vinegar in Modena, I wasn’t about to leave Bologna without trying some Tortellini.

We went to the place in Bologna known as “the lunch spot.” Tamburini, is a huge deli with numerous cheeses, breads, salads, hams, olive oils and fresh pasta. They are only open for lunch and offer a self-service buffet. Here is a picture of some of the different kinds of Tortellini that they sell.

Bologna worked out well and it was a fun, filling day. On Saturday night, I went to a bar to watch Fiorentina play AC Milan (big rivalry). It was packed with rowdy Fiorentina soccer fans, but we lost 3-1.

Drink Cards

Club Universale

At most of the bars and clubs they give you a punch card. Everytime you buy a drink the bartender punches a hole in your card. At the end of the night you bring it to the cash register. It's very convenient, but also dangerous. It's so easy to lose track of the amount of money you are spending when it's still in your pocket and if you happen to lose the card, you must pay 50 Euro (the equivalent of a maxed out card).

Who's hungry?

We had a big laugh in Italian class today. Usually, everyday we learn some type of new vocabulary. Today, we went over vocab for different types of food. Like, Onions = Cipelle, Apples = Mele, Carne = Meat, Sandwhich = Sangwich etc. etc... We learned how to say breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Then, my teacher says, "We also have the snakes." Everyone in class was saying, "What?" She's like, "You know, the kids from home from school and they eat the little snakes (with a dead serious face)." We were wondering what the hell she was talking about. We still aren't sure how everything works in Italy, but usually when kids come home from school in America they eat Oreo's or something.

Finally, she realized what she was saying...Obviously, she meant to say "snacks" not "snakes," but she messed up her English pronunctiation. Everyone was laughing so hard. And even after we corrected her, she kept calling them snakes for the remainder of class. It was stupid, but little things like this help us get through four days in a row of 2 hour periods of Italian class.

Dog bascuits?

Yesterday, I was walking down a desolate street when I heard a loud ringing bell coming up from behind me. I turn around and it was someone on a bicycle coming full steam ahead. He was pretty far away, but he kept ringing and ringing the bell, so I made sure to clear the pathway. As he approached, I saw it was an older gentleman. I didn't notice it at first, but when I looked twice, I saw he had a little dog with him! The dog was sitting in the front basket of the bicycle. Luckily, I had my camera out at the time and I just managed to get a picture off. It's very hard to tell from the picture, but look inside the basket and you'll see the gray puppy (There is some newspaper in the basket for comfort).

Mangia! Mangia!

Emilia-Romagna is the food capital of Italy and maybe the world for that matter. This sole region in northern Italy is the birthplace of fettuccine, tortellini, lasagna, prosciutto, the famous balsamic di Modena vinegar and parmesan cheese.

A few weeks ago, I did some research online and I found a Parmigiano-Reggiano dairy offering free guided tours. The tours are only available from Monday through Friday at 8:00AM. We woke up early on Friday for the two hour train ride to Reggio. The lady told me on the phone that we’d have to take a taxi from the train station to the dairy because it was in the country. I hate taxis.

We found one shortly and I told him the name of the dairy and the street that it was on. He gave me a puzzled look and asked me to repeat what I had said. He still didn’t understand. I called the woman who I had been communicating with about the visit and she spoke to the cab driver. Still puzzled, he got out of the cab and asked one of his cab buddies for more directions. Then, he signals for us to hop in the taxi. Ok, I did not want to get into the car with this guy, but we did. Sure enough, the guy gets us lost and we are driving around in circles for like five minutes. Meanwhile, I’m watching the meter sky rocket. In desperation, he gets on the cell phone. Thank god something must have clicked and we finally found the place. Then! He tries making us pay the full fare! After some arguing in English, none of which he could understand, he got the hint and subtracted the proper amount of money from the fare.

Parmigiano-Reggiano has very ancient origins, dating back to 1200. It was created between the Po River and the town of Reggio. Overtime, the river shifted east and extended beyond the town of Parma. This is where the name Parmigiano-Reggiano comes from (Still today, some people in Reggio call the cheese Reggiano-Parmigiano, claiming it originated here first). Today, production takes place in Parma, Reggio, Modena and Bologna.

At the dairy, we witnessed the entire production process and met the cheese makers themselves. I’ll try to explain what I learned. The milk is produced by cows on a farm close to the dairy. They are milked twice a day and the milk is taken to the cheese house within a few hours. Milk from the evening milking is put into basins and the cream separates overnight. Then, the milk is poured into copper cauldrons and is mixed with whole milk from the morning milking. Next, rennet is added to the milk. It is an enzyme that causes the milk to curdle.

The milk is heated and the particles sink to the bottom of the cauldron forming a mass. Shortly after, the cheese mass is lifted and formed into special molds. It rests for a few days and then it’s submerged into a brine of sea salt for 20 days.

The salt flavors the cheese and allows its long aging. Next, the cheese is stored in a warehouse and the 24 month aging process begins.

After 12 months, each cheese wheel is inspected and if it passes, it receives a certification mark that is added to the exterior of the cheese. At this time, some cheese wheels are shipped off and sold as Prima Parmigiano-Reggiano (Younger cheeses, only aged 12 months. You’ll find these cheaper in the stores).

There are only four people who manage the entire cheese making process. The “master cheese maker” and his four apprentices. They work seven days a week with no breaks for holidays. The master cheese maker looked like a mad scientist. He had a long curly mustache, glasses, an apron, and a clip board. The whole time he was pacing around the dairy carefully inspecting each step of the process. I was too intimidated to take a picture of him. All of the guys work extremely hard, but the best part is that they absolutely love what they do. They had pride and excitement in showing us their work.

After the tour, we got to sample as much cheese as we wanted. FYI, the brown part on the outside of the cheese is edible (the exterior is cheese, just hardened from years of aging).

The tour guide was really nice and she gave us a ride back to the train station in her car. It was only 10 AM and we had the rest of the day free. Parma is only 15 KM away so I thought why not check out Parma.

Ham is the king of meats in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and nowhere is this truer than in Parma. Parma is the world’s capital of prosciutto, the famous prosciutto crudo di Parma originates here. Prosciutto crudo means raw ham and prosciutto cotto is cooked ham. They usually sell both in delis so you have to specify which kind you want.

When we arrived in Parma, I tried setting up a visit to a Prosciutto factory, but they don’t offer many to the public. We walked around for awhile and it was fun seeing big pieces of ham and chunks of Parmeggiano-Reggiano sticking out of deli windows.

By 12:00PM, it was time for lunch and I couldn’t wait. We went to Specialita Di Parma, Parma’s oldest and most reliable salumeria. I ordered the prosciutto di parma. A hard roll with razor thin slices of prosciutto. It was excellent! Naturally, the best prosciutto I’ve ever had.

Parma is a small city so we covered it in half a day. We still had a few hours of day light so I figured why not check out Modena. Modena is home to Maserati and Ferrari, but more importantly that brown stuff called Aceto Balsamico Di Modena. Balsamic Vinegar in Modena is unrivaled anywhere in the world.

After some quick searching, we found a store specializing in wine and vinegar. We tried a few samples and learned a bit about traditional Modena vinegar. The grapes are cooked and fermented for 12 to 25 years in wooden barrels. The balsamic vinegar sold in most stores is nothing compared to the real thing. It has a very syrupy texture and the flavor is extremely intense. Most locals like to put it sparingly on meats, strawberries, or cheese.

It was a long and exhausting day, but I went out for a couple of beers later that night for St. Patrick’s Day. On Saturday, I was hoping to make it to Bologna, the birthplace of Torellini, but my legs were hurting from all the walking around and I needed a rest. We’ll see, maybe Bologna next weekend.

The Sausage Story

I just finished my last midterm and I think I did pretty well on them. I had an awesome weekend in Rome. I saw all of the major sites: The Coliseum, Roman Forum, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and much more. I went to the Vatican, toured St. Peter's Basilica, and saw the Pope make an address from his window! School is closing in a few minutes, but I have time for a quick story.


Part I

So the other night I’m grillin up a bunch of sausage and peppers. My roommate from Wisconsin walks by and stares at the pan for awhile, but he doesn’t say anything. Then, he says, “Wow, where did you get that idea from? I’ve never thought about doing that before.” I asked him what he was talking about. He says, “Taking two breakfast sausages, splitting them in half, and putting them on a sandwich.”

Part II:
* This occurred a few days after part I.

So he ended up going to the supermarket to buy some sausage because he was really interested after watching me eat mine. I was doing homework in the kitchen one night when he started preparing the sausage. He didn’t ask me for any pointers or anything. Surprisingly, he actually managed to cook the sausage correctly, but what he did next was utterly disturbing. He took the sausage and spread a thick layer of pesto onto it, while layering lettuce on top (no peppers or onions) and this is the worst part….he put it on white bread!! An Italian sausage sandwich on white bread?! That’s a sin!

* This is the same person who buys a special kind of macaroni shell, one that I’ve never seen in all my life. When I asked him why he buys that kind of macaroni, he told me it’s the softest kind that he could find. (It looked like mush, like mashed potatoes). I guess he’s never heard of al dente either.

I'm waking up at 5 AM tomorrow so that I can make it to Reggio - Emilia (The birthplace of PARMESAN REGGIANO) by 8 AM. I'm going on a free 3 hour tour of the parmesan factory!!

Update 3/10

I'm going to Rome for the weekend! It should be interesting. I have a lot to cover in just a few days. Unfortunetly, I don't think I'll be able to update the blog next week because I have three midterm exams. I'd like to graduate in May so it's vital that I do well on them. I apologize for the inconvenience.

P.S. The new season of The Sopranos starts this Sunday. If anyone wants to Tivo the episodes, burn them to discs, and send them to me, it would be much appreciated. Grazie

Guidettes and the "Ciao Bella"

Ok, a lot of people have been asking me about the guidette situation. Well, it's not as easy as it looks. I've learned a few lessons about Italian girls. A lot of them look a lot older than they actually are. For example, we were talking to a few girls who looked like they were in their mid 20's, but later we found out that they were actually 16. Most of them are horrible at speaking English, but their accents and looks make up for it. Talking to one of them is like taking an exam, so I have to study my Italian notes every night before I go out. First impressions are out the window.

They HATE the "Ciao Bella!" I tried taking an approach like Will Ferrell in A Night at the Roxbury. Ciao Bella...1...2...3...4..Ciao Bella...1...2...3...4..Ciao Bella...1...2..etc. Neeldess to say, it did not work. When you say to an Italian girl "Ciao Bella," its like saying to an American girl "Hey Baby" and we all know that American girls don't like that.

For now I guess I'll have to hit the books and keep practicing.

Maracana

On Wednesdays, we usually go to this place called Maracana. It's a Brazilian restaurant that turns into a club at night. It's essential to drink before you go out because the drinks are pretty expensive at the bars. We are thinking about buying flasks and sneaking them into the club. We finished off a few bottles of wine before we went.

Every Wednesday night at 11 pm they have costume performances and ethnic dances. At 12 pm, the dance floor opens up and the party gets started. Here are a few pictures from the night.

La Vita e Bella

This weekend I took a couple of day trips. On Saturday, I went on a school trip to Arezzo and Cortova. On Sunday, I took off on my own for Assisi and Perugia. I didn't have much time in each city so the descriptions are short and sweet.

Arezzo

If you’ve seen the movie “Life is Beautiful,” you should be familiar with Arezzo because most of the movie was filmed here.

I hate looking like a tourist when I visit these places, but you can’t escape it when you are walking in a line with 50 other googlely eyed people. We visited the most important church in Arezzo, the Basilica di San Francesco. Today, Arezzo is best known for the paintings by Piero della Francesca in the Basilica. It took 15 years to restore the paintings to match their original brilliance. Fortunately, after our visit to the church the chaperon let us break off.

Honestly, I didn’t think Arezzo had much going for it. Luckily, there were a bunch of garage sales going on.

We only had three hours in Arezzo, but it’s a small town so we covered most of it. We found a fortress and an old Roman Amphitheater.

We all managed to meet back at the bus on time except for two people. We were supposed to leave at 2:00 PM for Cortova, but this delayed us 15 minutes!

Cortova

If you’ve seen the movie “Under the Tuscan Sun,” you should be familiar with Cortova because most of the movie was filmed here.

We pulled into Cortova at 2:55 PM. I don’t know who plans these things, but we were told to meet back at the bus at 4:15 PM. That gave us about an hour and a half to explore the town. It figures, it ended up being one of the nicest towns that I’ve visited thus far.

Cortova is a gorgeous small hill town located 18 miles south of Arezzo. It’s considered one of Italy’s oldest towns. Olive trees and vineyards wrap themselves around the mountain and it’s beautiful -- Unfortunately, some guy was burning one of them?!

A bunch of us started walking on one of the main roads that led up the mountain. It was a really steep incline and I never thought it was going to end. Along the way, we lost a few people who couldn’t make it. We were exhausted when we finally made it to the top, but the view was magnificent.

Usually, every hill town has some sort of fortress at the top of it. Its purpose was to defend the city against enemies and intruders. The top of the hill gave them maximum vision and protection.

We really wanted to check out the fortress, but we couldn’t find a way to get in. We tried the old fashion way of knocking on the door, but that didn’t work. Then, we tried climbing the walls, but that didn’t work either.

So we gave up and hung out on a rock, taking in some great views.


By the time we climbed back down the mountain it was already 4:00 PM. We were really disappointed because we didn't have anytime to explore the rest of the city – the late people in
Arezzo screwed us!

Assisi

Assisi is famous for St. Francis, the patron saint of Italy. The famous 13th Century basilica was built in his honor. In 1926, the celebration of the 700th anniversary of St. Francis’s death brought more than 2 million visitors.

The train station is 2 ½ miles from town so I had to take a bus in. The first thing I found was the most important, the Basilica Di San Francesco. Actually, it’s not one church, but two. One was built on top of the other after St. Francis’s death.

The lower church is very dark and has low ceilings. I passed St. Francis’s tomb in the crypt below the main altar. The upper church is quite the opposite with high ceilings and large stained glass windows. It’s surrounded by paintings that depict the life of St. Francis.

I spent the rest of my time wandering the narrow streets and stopping into interesting places along the way. Assisi had an incredibly medieval appearance and the stone had a gorgeous pink/white tone.


I found an abandoned apartment and walked inside. I probably shouldn’t have, but I was curious. I was in there for 30 seconds before something startled me, so I ran outside real quick. Well, it ended up being noise from some guy jogging and when I ran outside I scared the hell out of him, lol, he jumped a few feet.

I left Assisi at about 2 PM and caught a train to Perugia (a 25 minute ride).

Perugia

If you’ve ever had a "Perugina chocolate," you should be familiar with Perugia because the chocolate is made here.

Perugia is also located on a hill so I had to take a bus from the train station. The streets are wide and the buildings are tall. In Italy, almost all businesses, stores, and restaurants are closed on Sundays. I made the mistake of coming to Perugia on a Sunday afternoon so practically everything was closed. There is one store that never closes in Perusia, the Perugina chocolate store! (I spent a lot of time in there)

A few of the museums were open, but the one that I wanted to check out was not - The Collegio del Cambio, which was a palace where many of the region’s famous bankers and money managers met to conduct business meetings. I spent the rest of the day walking around and taking pictures. I finished the night off with an amaretto gelato on a bench overlooking the Umbria valley.