Mission Accomplished: Pre-Session

I DID IT I SURVIVED MY PRE-SESSION WOOOOO!!!! Well….that is assuming that I didn’t absolutely bomb the final that we had yesterday. And I may have. I mean I think it went fine. We had two different tests today, one on grammar and the book we read and another on culture/history. The grammar was really easy, buuuuut the history wasn’t. It was so detailed! And I was prepared for more “conceptual” questions. Instead it was a lot of straight-up memorization that I hadn’t really done. So yeah. We’ll see. The good news is that it is totally done AND I don't start my University classes until Oct. 9th so I am on vacation for the next week. No complaints here. 

Despite having this final, I was able to have a pretty good weekend. On Friday we finished class and my roommate Raquel and I went back to the apartment ready to study hard-core veg until our plans with our friends later. Our “flatmate” (the term the people in our apartment always use because they all took British English. It’s cute.)  Francesco had other plans. We had totally forgotten that at the beginning of the week he had promised us a surprise on Friday. So it was surprise time! We detoured though. We had been talking about the “seven secrets of Bologna” so on the way to the surprise we wandered around finding most of them. Now, privileged readers, I suppose I will let you in on these secrets. I feel like you should have to say some sort of password. Or prove your worth in some way. Whatever. If you are reading this, you are worthy enough because you obviously have great taste in blogs. And also, they aren’t that mind-blowing. I had a grand time trekking around to all of them, don’t get me wrong, but no secret passages or incantations were involved. Unfortunately. Also, we only made it around to five of the seven secrets so not all will be revealed here.

1.            My favorite. There is one canal that runs under/through the city. It is very small and there are only a few places you can see it from. One of those places is on a street that has a wall with a little window in it. Now, the window blends in with the wall so if it is closed, you have to know where to look for it. National Treasure status, huh? Anyways the view through this window is called “Little Venice” because when you look through it really is pretty easy to imagine that you are in Venice. Lovely!

1.    
2.       Via Independenza is the main shopping/touristy street in the city and, like almost every street, its sidewalks are covered with porticos. At the end of the street, the design of the porticos changes a little and on the ground and above there are a few interesting inscriptions of the three “essentials of live”. It is written in Latin and translates roughly into: bread is life, cannabis is protection and wine is happiness. I have no idea when these inscriptions were made but I like to think around 1000 when the University was founded.
3.       Right off of the main piazza in the city, Piazza Maggiore, is Piazza dell’ Netunno that has a huge statue of Neptune in it. Like many of the men of his day, Neptune is rather well endowed. HOWEVER, the sculptor wanted him to be more-so… but the pope wouldn’t have it. So the sculptor found a little loophole. From a certain angle the position of his hand makes him look very….impressive. Very.
4.       Right off of the piazza is a corridor with these really high volte (a crociera. Totally nailed that on my final!) and if you stand on opposite corners as someone else, face inwards towards the wall and whisper you can hear the other person! It’s pretty cool. I may have screamed when I heard Raquel giggling from across the way.
5.       Walking down Strada Maggiore all of a sudden the portico is replaced by some wooden structure and if you know where to look, you can see an arrow sticking out of the wood. I stood there for five minutes with Francesco pointing and trying to explain where it was. At long last I proclaimed that I saw it. I am only 80% sure that I actually did.

Again, that was it last secret we saw. As for the other two, one involves going up to the top of one of the Due Torri, which Francesco won’t do because there is a superstition that if a student goes up there, they won’t graduate. Decided not to risk it. And the other one is out of the city center, and he has never gone to see it. That was that.

After the secrets, it was finally time for the surprise! All we knew going into it was that it was his “private, calming place in the city that he hasn’t told anyone about”. I was intrigued. We blindly followed this madman to the end of Via Zamboni into a building (I won’t say which one to protect the sanctity of this private place), rode the elevator to the top floor, went out a door, climbed up some fire escape stairs and ran smack into a beautiful view of the city. In such a crowded, loud city it really was absolutely wonderful to find this quiet moment on top of a building. Reminded me of my building climbing friends at Northwestern (Lindsay, this year we HAVE to make it to the top of Silverman!) and I expect to return there if I ever need a moment alone.

Francesco and Raquel. Couple o' goofs

If that wasn’t enough, he decided it was time to finally take us to his favorite gelato in the city. You would think there would be some sort of agreement on this matter, but so far I have heard four differnt places called the “best gelato”. I have only gone to two. What is wrong with me? I honestly don’t know. I’ll work on it! But this one. Oh man. So far it takes my “first place”. Upon Francesco’s selection I tried the Alice (mascarpone with “fused chocoloate”) and it was spectacular.  Creamy and rich but not overly sweet, with the little tang that mascarpone has and honestly I just can’t get over how perfectly creamy it was. So I enjoyed it. But then, mamma mia, I remembered the fused chocolate. They basically just spoon a little chocolate fudge (had a hint of hazelnut? It may have been nutella but it was a little different) in the bottom of the cone so when I got to the bottom it greeted me in all of its semi-frozen, semi-melted, fully chocolate glory. Francesco and Raquel were walking and talking. I had a moment with this gelato. It was beautiful. Slash also probably revolting to all of the people I passed as I tried to keep the chocolate and gelato from dripping whilst still trying to savor the last few bites. Ahhhh.

Then we met our friends Emily, Ashley and Jack in the huge flea market by our apartment to look for some cheap hats. They are all attending Oktoberfest this next weekend (I would say that I am very sad and wish I could join them because that is partially true. They are going to have an amazing time BUT I can’t complain too much because the reason I am not going is that I shall be visiting my dear friend Rebecca in Parigi and CAN’T WAIT) and wanted to make crazy hats to wear there. So we raced through the market as it was closing, found some 5 euro fedoras and then hit the dollar store for decorations. Oh yeah, I made one too. Just didn’t want to feel left out. We’re planning a bar crawl or something that we will wear them to in addition to Oktoberfest. Anyways the night finished out at our apartment. I whipped up some pasta and vegetables, wine was abundant and decorating went well into the night. Our kitchen will probably never be completely glitter free again. What fun!

What is not fun? Waking up on a Saturday at 6:30 am. Which we did. We had a day trip to Urbino on Saturday and our bus left at 7:30. Not amused. But Urbino was pretty nice. The tour that we went on was slightly frustrating and boring but I survived that and the actual city was charm on charm on charm. It was nestled into some hills so we were walking up and down, upside down and backwards through very narrow and uneven streets. It was the setting of a fairytale, basically. My friends and I were highly anticipating the lunch because all of the meals that we have had through the program have been amazing (still thinking about you, lasagna). My expectations were probably a little too high, but it was still really, really good. I casually gave my heart to a spinach pasta dish. Our program directors also keep proving that they have done this once or twice before by constantly leading us to the best view in whatever city we go to. Thus, after lunch we started walking up one of the many hills in Urbino and then realized that it was never going to end. Until it did. And it was beautiful. There was also an abundance of grass, trees and 8-year-old fun to be had on the playground that we found. I am forever grateful for moments that I can spend on monkey bars or a swing.

Sunday was spent studying with one break for a movie in the evening. I went with my friend Emily and flatmate Andrea to see l’Eclisse- a film from the sixties by Antonioni. I have been to one film at this Cineteca previously and I just love it. There is an adorable courtyard in front (yes, Molly, there are fairy lights) and they play old Italian films, modern films and International films (both dubbed and in their original language. I am sure I will break down at some point and feel the need to go see a movie in English. It is just bound to happen). Anyways, l’Eclisse was just as weird as Andrea promised it would be, I suppose very typical of this director. I hope to be quite the Italian cinema expert by the time  leave here. Andrea has helped with that. We celebrated finishing our final yesterday by having Emily come over and make crepes and then we watched Andrea’s favorite film, Le Consequenze dell’Amore. I enjoyed it but I understand why people take classes on this stuff, because I feel like there is a lot I am missing because I don’t know exactly what to look for. Which leads me to the fact that I am starting my real classes next week: Advanced Course in Italian Language and Society, Psychology of Communication, and Cinema of the Italian Economic Miracle. I am esssited and a little scared and will leave you with that cliffhanger!

And let it be noted that I WILL try to do this more often so I don’t write 2000 words each time (this post is precisely 1846 in case you were wondering. Now is it 1855.) Ok CIAO!!!

Bacci!