4th of Luglio

The sound of a train controller´s ticket puncher is the sound of anxiety. That is, when you realize you´d bought the wrong ticket while sweating two layers through a single shirt after hauling a 30 pound bag a good mile. Ok, pity party´s over. Everything worked out fine.

I now sit in the kitchen of my friends Frauke and Lothar in Germany. To give you a better picture, they´re about ten years younger than my parents and have three kids of their own. I´m writing this post to the soft music of their dishwasher. To ease me gently from Italian to German culture, we ate pasta for dinner on Tuesday.

My story must include the couple of days I just spent in Viareggio with Serena, her siblings Luca and Silvia, and her boyfriend Stefano. At dinner, Silvia put a pot of beans on Luca´s plate to mark his absence while we munched on a variety of meats and what is essentially fried bread. Mm, delish.

Luca never did arrive for dinner, I think. But the next day he drove me out to Pisa to show off the physics department at the university. The air conditioning felt nice inside his office, four or five desks scattered with coke cans and mathematical formulas illegible in any language. He explained to me, in simple, simple terms, his research on solar flares.

That was on the 4th of July, my first one abroad, which still involved the beach, a barbeque, and eating watermelon. The two of us arrived late to lunch at the Marradi´s campagna, a farmish slice of land complete with a small creek, a few ducks and a gay rooster.

The night before that ended with me and Stefano pushing bicycles back to Serena´s house while singing the American national anthem. Stefano fiddled around as mechanic those couple of days; he was good, but we still ended up with a stalled motorscooter and a bike with a derailed chain. Only two bikes meant me wobbling along, led down dusky streets by Stefano. Serena side-saddled the bike rack behind, dangling her legs and a cigarette off the side. When that bike gave out, we chained them together against a roundabout roadsign and continued on foot.

We wandered down the abandoned nighttime beach, still decorated with color-coded chairs and umbrellas. A disgruntled night-watchman ushered us to "not my problem" territory, where we sat down under a half moon and indiscernable constellations to stumble over the remote past tense of "to cook" in Italian. It´s a mouthful.

Sunday night, July 4th, we found a nervous little piece of red, white and blue bunting in the arena of Lucca. Don´t be fooled like me; Lucca´s arena is an ovalesque piazza surrounded by connected houses. Off the yellow walls and green shutters bounced the drawly accents of a few proud co-nationals of mine.

Ah, Lucca by night. Not two columns on the Duomo are the same; magnificently whimsical was the tower with a tree at the top. We wandered until we got lost; that was after an interesting conversation on American pride and Obamanian politics.

Con liberta` e giustizia per tutti.
-a

"Poetry is an Art!"

In this country, the aperitivo is as a custom probably as old as wine itself. After work, they go to corner bars - students with backpacks and high-tops, businessmen in suits, retirees jabbering about a car accident fifteen years ago. And there's food, all you can eat, stuff like bruschetta, olives, meatballs, vegetables, that kind of thing.

At a long table at this place called Strizzi Garden, we ate, drank wine and wasted time under a dusty-colored full moon. In company were the teachers in my program, the trainees I've gotten to know so well, and the students. I spoke with this guy Luca. "Let's make a deal," he said in well-practiced English. "You call me Luke, and I call you Andrea. It's a cultural exchange."

The next day was the feast of San Giovanni, known for closed shops and fireworks at the end of the day. I clicked open my front door to the sound of birds and vespa motors.

A loaf of bread - "crushed," they call it - goes for 90 cents at the family owned store across the street. According to Florentine tradition, it has no salt. It's soft as a pillow and reminds me every time why bread is my favorite food.

I recently took the most expensive bus ride of my life. I was caught on board without a ticket and had to pay a 45 euro fine. "You must think you're such a badass," said the expression on the ticket controller's face while I fished around for enough money. Once again, I had no identification on me. It's like I want to shed my name, my age, my country.

My teaching goes on, not without hilarity. Eliciting vocabulary from students is like a really slow, really stupid-looking game of charades.

I walked past a row of restaurants at noon. Mostly empty tables and chairs under white linen pergolas, a few couples here and there sipping a modest glass of wine. I don't hear, I listen to the sounds inside as I pass - the casual clink of plates, of forks and knives, not the usual vocal buzz, but the hum of a dishwasher.

There was a man strolling through the streets a block from the Duomo, wearing a faded shirt and rubber boots pulled up to his knees. In his hands, a notebook clenched tightly, and he cried out - to no one, to everyone - "Poetry is an art!" Poor guy, born in the wrong century.

-a

Expatria alla Fiorentina

My apartment in Florence. It's a little distant from the city center, and I like it that way. Our neighborhood is tree-lined and close enough to a grocery store.

I share this suite with Elizabeth, a 27-year old Texan. Her boyfriend is in the army, and she wanted to get outta dodge, so she's going to be here in Italy for a couple years. I'm envious. Anyway, we get along well, and our place is nice. It actually came outfitted with about 10 bottles of Tuscan wine. We wondered whose it was for about five minutes, then we opened a bottle.

Elizabeth and I somehow overran the power in our apartment, and everything shut down. Fridge, lights, everything. Ironically the electrical bill arrived on the same day.

I had just come back from the grocery store with a fridgeload of fresh meat and veggies. The lock had been changed without my knowledge, and this nice lady let me in. She and this other lady (they have to be over 80) introduced themselves to me as Maria and Francesca. We had a nice little chat about my landlady in the foyer, where i met Signore Magnini and Gnuli. They thought Elizabeth was my wife... awkward. Glad I know the neighbors though.

Random thought of the day. I haven't seen a whole lot of dogs around here. But I saw one today. It was kept tight on a leash and had one of those cone-things around its head so it wouldn't bite its tail.

We live really close to a delicious gelateria. Really, it's the best I think I've been to, ever. You don't order by the scoop, you order by the cone. The woman behind the counter acted a little cold, but whatever. Giver her job, it seemed kind of appropriate, maybe. I'm hoping she'll be a little nicer in the future.

As for this Teaching English as a Foreign Language Course. It's going well after the third day It's 9:30 to 5:30 or later each day, and we have 7 teaching assignments and 2 major projects. I though the average age would be close to 35. But it's actually closer to 25, so that's good. I'm one of three guys in a class of 14, I think. It's a really good group. There are a lot of statistics in this paragraph.

Florence at night is expatrilisticexpialidocious. Did a round or two of prosecco not far from the Duomo with some Canadians, some Americans and some Brits. It shocks me how much English I'm speaking in this town. Really does.

Ciauu,
-a