Venice this go-around

Evenings are quiet, laid back. A stroll along the quieter canals, a sip of a sweet spritz in the shadow of a familiar campo. The sun sets at last on the pitched roofs of the campanile. Dinner's not a big deal, it's a plate of mixed cicchetti, a tapas-like affair of fried seafood, meatballs, tomato, something like that.

And you bump elbows with friends so easily. By chance. This town is so small, so tight that you can't help but run across the people you know, few though they may be.

Sitting on the steps of the train station before Brandolin took the train back to Treviso, two carabinieri approached. In slurred, accented Italian they asked for our documents, hands open, gesturing impatiently against their blue uniforms. My American citizenship unsettled them, and they flipped my drivers license over and over, looking for something, always hoping to find it on the other side.

Alice returns home from the mountains with shopping bags filled with wood, with paper, pens and exacto-knives for her architectural thesis. In the single-bulbed light of the kitchen she knocks down some calculations on an oversized calculator before constructing a maze of ruler-straight lines on paper.

To the drill of a construction site, to the clink of plates and tiny espresso cups, the bump and roll of carts over bridges, the people walk. They walk with purpose in sharp suits and bright silk ties and shiny shoes; they walk frailly, with a cane, or two, stopping for a rest at the uneven street corner; they walk under pressure, weighed down by a heavy camper's backpack and the need to catch an 8:00 train; they walk elegantly, with calm, hands behind their backs, swaying back and forth with a glance at each decorated storefront, an ear open for the nearest bell tower's chime. They walk carelessly, bumping their shopping bags against strangers' legs and poking themselves in the eyes with their sunglasses. Everyone walks in awe, wrinkles of disbelief on their foreheads -- it's almost too overwhelming, the volume of crenelated and tiled marble on such raw and chewed-away, soggy wooden supports.

But this Venice is normal; this go-around, the Venice that I see is normal and calm. It is normal, it is calm, and yet it is absolutely exceptional. I feel the flux of the crowds in my blood, in my lungs; I feel the range of prices and the qualities of products, the taste of fruit and fish, the silences and uproars of empty churches and crowded squares.

Culture shock.
-a

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

Ro-ma, Ro-ma-ma

"There's always something going on in Rome." I've said it before, and I'll say it again.

I elevated my language status this weekend to fluent. It's a long story. Digging through my bag on the train, I realized I left my passport in my top dresser drawer in Florence. The hostel manager said I could stay the night if I had my passport number and date of issue. Only a couple hours later, my housemate texted me those superimportant numbers.

But the receptionist that evening didn't believe me, said I was making up the numbers. I had to argue with him. "Call Giancarlo," I said, "Call him now. I'm telling the truth." One phone call and five minutes later, the receptionist asked me to write down my passport number and issue date on a piece of paper that would serve as my temporary passport that night. The guy upped the price 5 euro. I obviously had to pay.

That night found me along the Tiber River with four college friends and three bottles of local wine. We talked about phases of the moon, horoscopes, the Roman Empire and the American Empire.

I posed with Conor in front of some graffiti. It read "We are mods." Keep an eye out for it on Facebook.

Conor and Rob had been experimenting with the concept of the man-purse since the beginning of their European excursion. The verdict? Useful, even if it transgresses traditional gender boundaries. What could I say? I was proud of them. I had to be. Each night in Florence, I sleep under a leopard-print blanket. Not by choice, though, not by choice.

"This is the first time we've been in a country when we had someone with us who could speak the language," my friends said. I did what I could. I translated the name of Bernini's fountain to "the sucky boat." I was antsy to speak Italian, but more importantly, I wanted to make sure no one fleeced any of us.

My friends liked people-watching as much as I do. "What's his/her nationality" was a favorite at the Trevi Fountain. In Piazza Navona, the girl eating a gelato by herself could've been waiting to meet someone. Or she could've been sad. She had square, black glasses. "Italians know how to wear glasses," I told Conor as I adjusted my own crooked pair.

Seeing my close college friends in Rome was disorienting. It didn't seem like a reunion, the gravity of that word just didn't seem to apply. We were just meeting up; it was time shared, one of those summertime get-togethers, not at all a reprise, or an epilogue. This is what it's like, being a grad.

Later, on the four-hour train ride back to Florence, I passed through towns whose names I never heard before, only saw on the labels of wine bottles in the States.

-a

Habituation

Each time I'm on a train, or a bus, I find myself in a seat facing backwards, not forwards. I see where I've been, not where I'm going. Appropriate.

In my apartment, we don't have cups. We only have a series of very fancy glasses, like you'd find at a nice restaurant for water. It's a good life, feeling classy as you drink water, or the fake Coca-Cola I bought at the supermarket that promises a "real American taste."

My bed is leopard-themed. Leopard print spots on my blanket and all my pillows. I don't often sacrifice my masculinity, but if it's what I have to sacrifice to live in this country, I may be tempted.

Someone told me that in Italy, wine is cheaper than water. On a grand scale, that may be true. But at the store I paid 15 cents for a 1,5 liter of water, and 2,70 for a bottle of Chianti. So... maybe not.

Today, lunch cost me 2 euro. I split bread and and pack of mortadella with Filomena, the only Italian in this program and the only Mormon Italian I know. Almost as strange as a Catholic Charlottean.

I got a job as a travel blog writer. My first assignment is for the 15th, a restaurant guide to Venice. Let's see what happens.

This city fosters a different kind of writing. It's loose, but it's continental, it's full of a kind of possibility, the transfusion of western blood into this city center. Each night I scroll down the wooden shutters and close the window on the mosquitoes that somehow dig their way anyway. And I sleep with no shirt because of the heat, exposing myself to their bites and constant buzzing. Other than that, it's quiet here. I want to get a radio to rattle off some Italian while I get dressed or cook - but maybe I should just accept the silence.

Still getting my stuff together. Coins are nearly invaluable here in Europe. I don't have a change purse (nor do I really want one). But I do have a plastic baggie that I keep in my pocket. "Nice wallet," I was told.

I'm trapped in a classroom a lot of the time learning about teaching. I taught my first lesson yesterday. It was good. It wasn't as interesting as it sounds.
-a