Winter Wonderland!

Woke up to snow in Bologna this morning!

Harriett Studies: The most riveting blog post of the year!

Looking back at my blog, I realized I haven't actually clued you all in into what I'm really doing here. The truth is that I'm in Italy to do more than travel and drink wine and eat gelato. I know, I know, those last three things should definitely be enough to satisfy me.

But, I'm still a junior (3rd-year, clueless, whatever you wanna call it) college student. I think this blog might make it seem like the most interesting moments I have here involve some kind of party or weekend travel. Actually, though, one of the coolest (at least I think so) sides of my life happens right here in Bologna, at the university.

Right now, I'm enrolled in 4 classes. Two are taught at the actual university, and the others are through my exchange program, BCSP. The university classes are in Italian literature and Roman history, while the BCSP classes are in advanced grammar and modern European history. It's ended up being a sweet mix of small and huge, as well as familiar and unfamiliar. The BCSP classes tend to be smaller and somewhat more discussion-based, like they would be in Chicago. They run on a similar schedule too, with regular homework assignments and exams.

UniBo classes are completely different. My literature class is probably the largest lecture I've ever been in. Foreign students have to read 3 books to be prepared for the final exam. I'm reading the Inferno (by which I mean I've read maybe 2 cantos), and I'm hoping to read Machiavelli's The Prince and something by Italo Calvino before the final.

Most university courses here culminate in a final exam given orally, with the professor or a TA. This means that you sit down with them and they ask you a bunch of questions about what you've read or heard in lecture. Then they give you a grade on the spot. That grade is your grade for the whole course. Sounds scary right? It is. The good news is that you can take the exams more than once. In fact, most professors offer the exam monthly or bi-monthly, so if you're not happy with your grade the first time, you can re-take it. Phew.

My literature and my Roman history class work roughly the same way. My Roman history lecture is also humongous, but not in reality. The professor speaks very quietly, the hall has bad acoustics, and his microphone breaks at least once per class, at which point one of us has to run and get the technician from next door to come fix it. As a result of all this, a good half to two-thirds of the students stopped coming to class. But, little nerdy Harriett went diligently to class every day, a method that seemed to reap little reward at first. However, the professor finished talking about Roman history about 3 weeks before the scheduled end of the course. Christianity invaded, the Empire crumbled, the Medieval age had begun. There was nothing left to talk about. So, on Tuesday, the professor turned the collapsing Empire into a democracy and asked us if we would like to end the course the following day. Obviously everyone raised their hands. This is the point where my attendance paid off. The professor took down the names of everyone who had been in regular attendance, and indicated that our attention through all his whispering lectures would be rewarded in the exam.

I told you, riveting.

As terribly exciting as I'm sure it's been to read all about my academic life in Bologna, I should go study for these rapidly approaching final exams. Wish me luck!

Thanks

Ciao tutti,

I hope the month of November has been treating everyone nicely.

In the US of A today is Thanksgiving. Now that I've been here for almost 3 months, I realized it's time for a few thank you's, and today is exactly the perfect day for that.

Last night, I was at a birthday party for my friend Orsolya (try pronouncing that, I dare you.) I met Orshi because she is my American friend Noelle's roommate. Orshi is Hungarian, and the one gift she asked for was a recipe from every person at the party. This turned out to be an excellent idea, because the invitees included Hungarians, Italians, Americans, and even one Japanese girl. So, Orshi's going to leave Italy with a book full of international recipes. That's pretty cool.

Anyways, on with the story. Before heading over to the party, I was trying to figure out what kind of recipe to give Orshi. I don't really cook, and the a lot of the meals I eat regularly in my apartment I learned to cook from my roommate Monica (Thank you, Monica. That's one down!) I tried for a long time to think of something American that I know how to cook. I ended up going with the fluffer-nutter sandwich. I have no idea if Orshi will ever find marshmallow fluff or peanut butter in Europe, but all of this is besides the point.

The point is that ever since coming here, being an American has slowly become more and more important to me. It never mattered that I was an American in the past. I would occasionally get a few patriotic butterflies on holidays like 4th of July but truthfully I never really considered that my nationality could be such a huge part of who I am. Now that I'm here and I regularly meet people from all over the world, my American-ness is the one thing that defines me in their eyes. Just as I think of Orshi as "my Hungarian friend," others probably think of me as their "American friend," (or possibly as "that girl whose name starts with an H so we can't pronounce it.")

I think it's crazy that it took me leaving the country to become aware of my own nationality. Especially on a day like today, where it's a major holiday there but it isn't here, I've been thinking a lot about how much I've started owning, caring about, and occasionally even defending my nationality since I've been here. I might not be proud to be an American every day, but in the end, I'm grateful, and I just thought that today, I should say that.

But let me rewind a little bit. I probably wouldn't be here, experiencing this cheesy, sentimental moment with out the support of my family. So! Mom, Dad, thank you guys so much for making this happen. And to the rest of my American friends and family, especially any of you that helped convince me that this was a really good idea, thank you! And of course, to all my friends and roommates in Bologna, who treat me like family even though we are so totally not related, thank you too.

I hope anyone that reads this has a really good day today. I know I will. Our program is hosting a supposedly traditional Thanksgiving dinner at a fancy restaurant in Bologna. Hopefully you'll see some pictures from it on this blog in the near future.

Alright, last one, I swear. Thanks for reading this if you did.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Trieste

Guess what? I'm still alive! I haven't been run over by a Vespa yet! (I consider this to be my most likely form of death while I'm here.) I know it's been a while since I've been in the blogo-sphere, but it's for good reason. I've been really busy (in a good way.)  I've taken a number of weekend trips, plus classes have really started to pick up. I'll probably write more about all that later. Right now, I'm going to talk about my recent trip to Trieste, which is what inspired me to write another post after such a long hiatus.

Geography lesson. Trieste is here:

It's not even in the boot. It's pretty much directly across the Adriatic from Venice, and I think there are actually ferries that run between the two cities. (We took the train.) Since Trieste is so close to the border of Slovenia, there's a lot of Slavic influence, and it also has a history of belonging to the Hapsburg Empire in Austria. So, it's a pretty unique place. For example, a lot of restaurants serve traditional Italian dishes as well as Hungarian goulash and German sausage.

We decided to go to Trieste (the "we" being me and 4 other American girls) because we had a long weekend, and we found a really decent-looking hostel there. However, in the days leading up to our trip, I checked the weather forecast, which of course was 90% chance of rain. So, I wore my fleece jacket and wool socks and packed a hat and two scarves. My roommates warned me of the high winds in Trieste and wished me luck. Evidently it's not a popular destination in November.

I don't know whether we got lucky or if the bad weather in Trieste was just hype, but it was super sunny and beautiful! If you don't believe me look at these pictures:

Mom look! Rowers!

In Trieste we saw two castles. The first, Castello di San Giusto, was situated on a hill overlooking the city and provided some excellent views of the city like this:

San Giusto also had a museum of war photography artificats and that Noelle (my fellow History major) and I spent a long time looking at. You can also see the ruins from the Roman city of Tergeste:

The second castle, Castello Miramare, was right on the sea. It was originally built for the Hapsburg archduke and later emperor of Mexico Maximilian and his wife, Charlotte. Awesome history aside,  these guys had some sweet digs.

Another highlight of this trip had to be the food. For lunch on Saturday I split the "Piatto di Buongusti" (Plate of good tastes) with Margaret. Somewhere this is documented, but it had a mix of Italian classics like gnocchi and polenta with Hungarian and German dishes like goulash and sauerkraut. Awesome!

One more picture of the water.

And this cat riding a motorcycle.

And this dog in a bandana. 

 
Okay. Over and out.

Urbino

On Saturday we had a program-sponsored trip to the city of Urbino. This was a similar deal to the trip that we took to Ravenna, and I enjoyed it just as much if not more. 

We started out the day on a tour bus at 7:30. The place where the bus picked us up was, of course, across town from my apartment, which meant that I had to get up at around 6:30. Normally I am a huge fan of tour buses because they have those giant windows that allow you to see everything, but instead I slept for almost the entire 2.5-hour drive to Urbino.

Immediately upon arrival I could tell I was going to enjoy myself. Urbino is built on a hill, topped by a huge palace that overlooks the entire city. It’s primarily a Renaissance city, and the giant palace (Palazzo Ducale) was built for the duke Federico III. We got to take a tour of the Palazzo, and some of the stuff this guy had in his house was incredible. I couldn’t take any pictures of the inside but here is the view he had overlooking his dukedom:

 The Palazzo Ducale from the outside.

This is Prof. Benevolo. He taught us some cool stuff.

After the visit to the Palazzo Ducale, we had lunch. Even though being in a tour group of 50 students can sometimes be annoying, our program always feeds us well. Lunch consisted of 3 different types of pasta, and then pork, veal, and then tiramisu. Oh and espresso. Always gotta have the espresso.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a BCSP outing without a little exercise and some great views. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

Nick, Taylor, Clara (our presession teacher) and Jackie

Overall the day was pretty relaxed. The sights in Urbino are easily done in a day, or even half a day, but the city itself is so astounding that it doesn’t need a lot of incredibly famous things. 

Oh, and we saw a wedding, so that was cute. We thought about crashing it until someone in the group pointed out that Catholic ceremonies are very long.   

When we got back I had some American friends over to my apartment for dinner. We made pasta with pesto and watched Mean Girls. Can’t beat that!

Buying a Bolognese Bici

             I have officially been living here for a month now! I had been toying with the idea of buying a bike since I got here 4 weeks ago, and I realized how incredibly convenient/fun/awesome it would be to bike around Italy. In Bologna one has a few options for bike purchase. One is to buy a used bike from a bike dealer, of which there are many in Bologna. These tend to run around 50-60 euro.

            The cheapest and most immediate fix is to buy a stolen bike. Bicycle theft is a serious problem in Bologna, and the city is actually sort of infamous for it. Stolen bikes run dirt-cheap, but since bicycle theft is a business here, buying a stolen bike increases greatly the chance that your bike will be stolen back from you. Also, when you go to buy a stolen bike, you can’t really tell ahead of time who you’re mixing it up with.

            Since I’m not here in Bologna permanently, and since theft is such a huge likelihood, I didn’t want to spend too much money on my bike. Despite the fact that it’s very common here, I was also a little uneasy about going with the stolen-bike option. My friend Noelle (who was also intent on owning a bike) found out from her roommate about a bike auction that occurs every year in Piazza Maggiore. The bikes are auctioned by an organization that fixes up abandoned bicycles (just like Blackstone Bikes) and sells them legally in order to combat the serious bike theft problem in Bologna.

            In this auction, though, the bike doesn’t go to the highest bidder. The bikes are sold to whoever manages to get the attention of the auctioneer. Thus, I donned my purple bath-towel as a cape and bought a pair of blue antenna-things from the one-euro store. I brought along pots and pans to make noise with, and Noelle carried a sign that said “Cerco una bici: Aiutami!” (I’m looking for a bike: help me!) Both Noelle and I were fortunate enough to be seen by the auctioneer, so we both walked away with 30-euro, legally-purchased bikes. Tomorrow after class we’re going to take the money we saved and buy some high-quality locks in the hopes that our bikes don’t become part of the theft-ring.

You can see us being crazy in this video:

Just look for the girl with the sunflowers who is jumping up and down like a mad woman. That would be Noelle.

Agriturismo, Ravenna, and other highlights

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So, it looks like I left off with the pipistrello in my last post, which was two whole weeks ago! The last two weeks have been absolutely jam-packed, so it’s going to be a struggle to get everything down in this one post, but I’ll try.

I’ll start off with Wednesday the 12^th. This was an amazing day. In the morning, we had a guided tour of some specific historical sites in Bologna. My personal favorite was the Teatro Anatomico, where UniBo medical students used to watch dissections take place. The room is made entirely of wood, which we were told was because it acts as a perfume that makes the room smell better after all the dead bodies. And you thought you were going to be reading about fine wines and pasta. Don't worry, you will!

Teatro Anatomico. (Photo credit to Alexandra Utter)

           After our tour of Bologna, we participated in a little “agriturismo” (agro-tourism) courtesy of our program. They bussed us up a big hill to a beautiful vineyard with the most amazing views of the countryside.

Le ragazze di Chicago (Photo Credits top and bottom to the IU-BCSP Facebook page)

Then we had a tour of the vineyard and learned how wine was made. After that, we learned to make fresh pasta of all different types, including tortellini. I finally figured out that tortelloni and tortellini are the same thing, it’s just that tortelloni are larger. Duh!

Friday was also pretty sweet. Instead of having our normal morning Italian class, we went and had a picnic at a park on hill overlooking Bologna. It was something of a hike but the views were so worth it.

Check these out: 

Dear Mom, I had this picture taken just for you! That's Bolognese Queen Anne's lace I'm holding.

Saturday was our trip to Ravenna! Ravenna is another medieval city (like Bologna) that is about an hour away by train. It is a city of great art-historical significance, because it has a number of well-preserved early Christian mosaics and architecture of Byzantine influence. I had first learned of Ravenna way back in junior-year of high school, so it was great to get to see the stuff in person.

Also, Dante is buried in Ravenna. That's right. Dante. 

            Another highlight that comes to mind is Wednesday of this past week. We didn’t have class in the morning, which meant that I got to hang out at Cindy’s apartment and watch Harry Potter dubbed in Italian on Tuesday night. In the afternoon, we went to a (truthfully, very boring) meeting for Americans studying in Bologna. After that, though, we went to the Sala Borsa library for a tour of the Sala Borsa Roman ruins.

            The Sala Borsa library is Bologna’s public library. I had gotten my library card about a week before this, but I had yet to actually set foot in the building.

            So, no big deal or anything, but the Sala Borsa library is built on top of Ancient Roman ruins. The floors on the ground floor are transparent, allowing visitors to see the ruins below their feet. You can also take a tour below ground to see the ruins up-close. 

P.S: Pictures are worth a thousand words! Here is a link to my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hfdavis/

The Pipistrello and other things that have happened recently.

            Last night was the first night that I slept in my new Bolognese apartment! I was super excited because I was kind of sick of living in the hotel and I was ready to have a place to call home. Finally having my own space also helped me deal with the reality that I’m actually going to be living here for a year. The hotel kind of felt like summer camp: just a group of rowdy Americans having a fantastic time away from home. This feels more real, more permanent.

            Ok. Before I get all deep and philosophical, on to the actual story. In the weeks preceding my move to Bologna, my mom and I battled a series of bats in our house in Rochester. Our neighbors had a colony living in their attic, so having a bat in the house became a pretty regular occurrence.

            Another important aspect to this story is that my mom and I both have a (kind of irrational) fear of bats. As my dad says, they’re just mice, but I still get pretty freaked every time I see one. It’s pretty serious. On one occasion, I drove the 20 minutes to my dad’s house at midnight to escape a bat. Another time, my mom and I slept in our living room because we were convinced that there was a bat flying around upstairs. So there you go, a full description of my chiroptophobia (fear of bats, I Wikipedia-ed it)

            In short, I spent my last two weeks at home in Rochester being freaked out that every night at dusk a bat would come swooping in. But, since I’ve had so much going on the last two weeks in Italy, I altogether forgot about the bat problem back in Rochester. It’s super hot in Bologna, so when we had our windows wide open in the apartment last night, I didn’t think twice about it. My roommates and I were just casually watching “The Big Bang Theory” on TV when Monica screamed and shouted “pipistrello!” I looked up and realized that there was a bat swooping around our kitchen/living area. After a few screams and shouts of “che schifo!” (how gross!) we all managed to shut ourselves into mine and Monica’s room.

            Once we were safe, I double-checked with my roommate what a bat is called in Italian. Yes, it’s true, the name for “bat” in Italian is “pipistrello.” This in and of itself made the situation much lighter and easier. It also made for an instant bonding experience for my new roommates and me.

            This evening my roommates came home with a candle to put in the open window. Hopefully this will work, since window screens aren’t really used here like they are in the US!

            So, I guess what I learned from this is that you really can’t escape your fears by moving across the planet. Huh.

On a lighter note, here are a few photos of the apartment like I promised! 

 Kitchen/living area.

 My bed! 

View from my bedroom window. Holla.

Shopped with my friend Jessica at IKEA. She was as enthusiastic as I was. (which was very.)

A lot else has happened. On Sunday, Noelle, Cindy and I went to a seaside town called Rimini that is about a 1.5 hour train ride from Bologna. It was beautiful, and I got to swim in the Mediterranean! Awesome. I don’t have a bucket list really, but if I did I probably would have just checked that item off of it.

 My beach reading material.

Cindy's beach reading material. Fifty Shades of Grey, in case you couldn't tell.

House-Hunting in Bologna: A Saga

            This is about to be a novel. Just so y’all are prepared.

            To explain: The exchange program that I’m in Bologna with requires that we live with Italian students in order to have an authentic Italian university experience. This aspect of the program is one of the reasons it stood out to me amongst all the other UChicago study abroad programs in the first place. UniBo doesn’t have dorms or a housing system like American schools do, so all the students live in apartments.

            Had I stayed in Chicago, I would have moved out of my beloved house (Breck shout-out!) and into an apartment for my 3rd year. However, it’s not exactly the same as finding an apartment would have been back in Hyde Park. At UChicago, I would have gotten together with a group of friends and we would have looked for an empty apartment all together. In Bologna, we instead had to find a group of already existing roommates already all settled in an apartment. The whole process was centered on whether or not a group of Italians wanted you to live with them. Thus, with each apartment I saw, I became less focused on the location and dishwashers and laundry and more on the roommates. My hotel roommate Jackie categorized apartment hunting with job interviews: essentially you are trying to impress your potential roommates like you would a potential employer.

            The process started last Tuesday, when we had a meeting about housing with BCSP. Before coming to Bologna, I was a little worried that being with the BCSP would be too much structure, but man was I glad I had them during the apartment search. Our resident director peoples basically supplied us with a ton of insider tips and experience that made the process a lot easier and faster than it would have been had I done it alone. After the meeting, we pretty much immediately started making phone calls. Calling strangers doesn’t make me very nervous anymore (thank you, UChicago Telefund) but I didn’t take into account how much more difficult it is to understand a different language over the phone. After about 4 or 5 incredibly confusing calls I miraculously stumbled into my first appointment, which was to occur the following afternoon with a student named Vincenzo. 

This is an example of an "annunci." I spent a lot of time pulling numbers off of these during my search. The word "Erasmus" is synonymous with a foreign or exchange student.

 

            I ended up really liking the first place, but I decided to wait and see a few more before telling Vincenzo I was interested. The next two were okay, but I still liked Vincenzo’s the best so I followed protocol and called him back. During the tour/interview I had explained in rather poor Italian that I didn’t know anyone in Bologna so I was looking for friends as well as roommates. Desperate, right? Apparently he understood me though, because he invited me to get drinks with him and his friends last Saturday. They were all super nice and we had a great time.

            You might think now that this story ends with me living in Vincenzo’s apartment. His apartment had two beds in a “doppia,” and as it turned out, he was interested in filling both at once. Noelle and I considered living there together, but in the end we decided that we didn’t want be tempted into cheating on speaking only Italian. So, I didn’t get the first place. After last weekend, I kicked it into high gear and started seeing 4, 5, sometimes 6 places in a day. It was lots more walking that I’ve ever done, and I got myself some pretty hardcore blisters in the process. There were definitely advantages to the process though. I learned how to ride the bus, which apparently all these rural Indiana University kids are afraid to do, so I felt pretty hip. Also, it’s definitely true that you learn the geography of a city really fast when you have to walk clear across it a few times per day.

            Our hotel reservation is up tomorrow (Saturday) so when I still didn’t have a place on Thursday morning I was getting pretty stressed out. One of the toughest aspects of the whole process was that it occupied my thoughts and the conversations that I had with other students from BCSP constantly. For a few days there, it felt like I couldn’t escape the stress of apartment hunting, whether it was mine or someone else’s. I had an enormous streak of bad luck, and in three days of near constant searching I only saw one place I liked, which ended up being taken first by another student.

            Finally, on Thursday evening, when I was starting to get seriously worried that I would be homeless in a foreign country in a matter of hours, I had an interview (let’s call it like it is) that went really well. There were three girls living in the apartment, and I met two of them. They were really nice and calm, and so I told them on the spot that I was interested. Later that night, I had to work on a group presentation with some other BCSP students (by the way, our classes started this week! Somehow that ended up on a back burner) so I went the grocery store with my friend Molly to get some salami (no, not bologna) and cheese to snack on while we worked. At the store, I got a text that from my future roommate, Monica, that said “noi farebbe piacere averti come conquillina” which basically means “we’d love to have you as a roommate!” Then Molly bought me a Kinder Bueno bar to celebrate.

            So, starting Monday, I’m living with three girls named Monica, Elisa, and Giorgia. The apartment is awesome. It’s in an attic so it’s tiny, but it has a cool loft space that serves as one of the bedrooms, and great views of the red roofs from the windows. It’ll be about a 20-minute walk to most of my classes, and I’m planning to buy a used bike. I’ll post pictures of the apartment sometime next week!

 A nice arial shot of my new hood.

            P.S. I apologize if the written English in this blog is of a rather low quality. It's really difficult to switch between languages, and I've noticed that sometimes I have actual trouble coming up with simple English words. I'm not making this up...the other Americans here have reported similar side effects of bilingualism! 

           

           P.P.S. The craziest thing happened this week. Noelle and I ran into (here in Bologna) another student from our UChicago Italian class named Antonio. We had no idea he was planning to be in Bologna this summer. Wednesday night we went out to a bar with BCSP peeps and there he was, sitting at the table next to us! Small world!

My first few days...

            …have been awesome! My first impressions of Bologna have been great and I think I’m definitely going to enjoy spending a year here.

            Noelle (another UChicagoan in Bologna for a year) and I arrived here on Monday afternoon, exhausted from a series of delayed flights and about 24 hours of straight travelling. We didn’t want to waste any time napping though, so we took showers and immediately went to the Wind store to buy cell phones. Our phones took a whole day to begin working, so it was important that we got them as soon as we could, because we need an Italian number to search for apartments.

            After that, we wandered around Bologna for about 2-3 hours, just exploring the area around our hotel and the University zone. We found the UniBo version of the Seminary Co-op (see picture below) and started looking for “annuci,” or postings about apartment rentals. At the risk of sounding totally ridiculous, the colors here are really cool. The buildings in the “centro storico” (city center) are orange and yellow, and many with red roofs and shutters. All the sidewalks are covered and made of stone or tile. Also, the graffiti artists here are especially talented—there is a very accurate representation of Dexter from Dexter’s Lab right outside the Hotel Holiday—maybe I’ll get around to photographing some of it soon.

            After wandering through the winding, portico-ed streets for a while, we met with some other BCSP students for dinner. Everything I’ve heard about the food being absolutely amazing is true so far. I’m not going to go into any detail because I’ll get hungry. But, I did get two great “Stupid American in Italy” stories from dinner that first night.

            1.) Hanging out at the table forever because you didn’t know that they won’t bring the check until you ask for it.

            2.) Ordering way way too much wine because a.) It’s cheaper than water and b.) No one at the table understands the metric system enough to know that a liter is quite a lot.

            We drank all the wine. Without any further explanation, I’ll just skip to the part where I got Nutella-flavored gelato and sat in the Piazza Maggiore with new friends. Overall, a great first night!

 Heart-shaped crackers served on Lufthansa to prove that they still love us, even when their planes don't work.

Cooperativa Libraria di Università di Bologna

Portico, nice colors.

With Noelle

Gli studenti BCSP a Piazza Maggiore

Pasta in the vending machine :)