Ginevra, Ginevra

I'm writing this blog entry with a single objective: I cannot gush over the events of Sunday, March 9, as much as I want to - if I did, it would be impossible to read this! So I'm going to do my best. Unfortunately this may not be the final entry on this topic; between all of us choir members there are about a million photos of the evening, in total, that I'm waiting to see.

On Sunday, my choir sang in a concert with an Italian folk musician, Ginevra di Marco, and her band. We performed at a church near the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, on a very gray day. In fact, we started the day at 8:30 am, singing at a church in a town called Fiesole outside Florence. This is the landscape around Fiesole, which is beautiful.



From the courtyard of the church, we could see a foggy view of Florence with its bell towers and red roofs. It's much less industrial than Bologna, and with all Tuscan green hills and trees it almost seemed like a postcard. If only it hadn't been so gray.



After Fiesole, we headed to Florence to prepare for the big event. First, some background on Ginevra. She's somewhere in her mid-thirties and is a semi-famous singer who for many years sang with left-leaning music groups from central/northern Italy. By left-leaning, I mean communist, or almost. In a good way. (Sample lyrics from one of their songs: I sing war, and I know I'm not in good company/I sing peace, which isn't a profession, or an ideology/I sing liberty, difficult and never given, must always be defended/always regained.)

Anyway, nowadays Ginevra tours Italy with her band (which includes her hubby, who's the musical director). She sings folk songs from Italy (in a gazillion dialects) as well as songs in Spanish, Greek, Romanian, and other languages. And we were invited to sing on her tour because my conductor's cousin knows someone who knows someone, etc etc. We rehearsed four of her songs with her and she sang two of our songs with us. Somehow she managed to learn our songs perfectly after a single listen. I guess it's her job, but even so.

Here's my conductor walking to the church in the rain, with his little podium. Luckily, when we got there, the technical team supplied him with the priest's pulpit (I believe that the church is no longer sacred) and he was all set.



The streets near the church were full of signs for the concert.



We proceeded to rehearse for a few hours, and were reminded once again of the fact that Ginevra is AMAZING. Her voice is out of this world, and she and her band are all super welcoming and open and willing to share the spotlight. They really enjoyed playing with us and on the spot decided that we'd sing a seventh song together. She, her husband, the drummer and the guitarist all speak in wonderfully thick Tuscan accents (which for me are the hardest to follow).

Here are some of my choir buddies. On edge and ready to go!



Here's the church 20 minutes before the concert started. It was totally packed and they had to start adding extra chairs. I know it's a cliche, but it really did feel as if the air was buzzing. We were super excited; to put things in perspective, we are a folk music choir, so this was like singing with a number one celebrity!



And of course the concert itself was just wonderful. Someone once described Ginevra as "becoming" her voice when she sings, as if her voice is so beautiful that it eclipses her as a human being. It actually happens! And we had a great time singing along (at some points, especially for a Neapolitan fighting song, we were yelling). We ended the two hour concert exhausted and happy. Not as exhausted as Ginevra's kids, though, who were sleeping in the front row as their parents danced around onstage.

Now for the best moment: my friend Michele, who knows all too well of my crazed-fan-love for Ginevra, has been promising me a photo with her for weeks. I was too nervous to go up to her by myself so he dragged me over after the concert was over. The star of the show was all too happy to take a photo with us, even though I was so star-struck that I stuck Michele between the two of us. (I REGRET IT NOW!) I am only disappointed that I take up more of the photo than she does! Ginevra, why are you hiding behind Michele and your flowers?! (In retrospect I can see that I did not manage to conceal the fact that I was utterly giddy - it's apparent on my face!)



After the photo, she gave me a hearty Italian embrace and told me to email her the photo. So, please excuse me - I have to compose my email now, or at least faint while doing so.

(Here is an interview with my conductor and the amazing Ginevra herself, along with her hubby. If you speak Italian, it's very sweet. And even if you don't speak Italian!)

(And HERE is a video of the concert itself. It's long and may not be as fascinating as I present it to be, but the singing starts around 4 and a half minutes and I swear it's beautiful. And part two is here.)

London Town

This weekend I was the lucky recipient of a four-day weekend with my parents in London. My mother's need to study milk close-up forced her to come all the way to my adopted continent! My parents have been in London for the past month and I caught them just at the end of their trip. As any tired, overworked daughter knows, time with parents is also known as face-stuffing time. This is something I definitely did.



Above is a photo of a "cream tea". This means, apparently, tea, a scone, a jar (!) of jam, and an entire teacup full of whipped (or as the English would have it, clotted) cream. I certainly didn't think I would eat it all, but I did. And it was great!



My parents had rented an apartment outside central London, near Hampstead Heath, and it was gorgeous. Plus, there was more fresh air and nature than I generally see on a daily basis in Bologna.



We also made sure to take in some tourist activities, like the London Eye. The London Eye is basically a ferris wheel made out of enclosed metal pods. But it's very big and very slow, and it's on the Thames, so you can look out over the river and all of London. Even though my own family members derided me for my cheesy touristy-ness, I'm glad we went. Thank you, Mom.



Of course, no big city trip would be complete without my most favorite cuisine. This weekend I had two Korean meals. This brings my grand London total to: FIVE. That is, I have eaten at five different Korean restaurants in London. I am very proud of this fact, not least because I have spent a grand total of 8 days there during the past 10 years. Below, my parents ponder the mysteries of Korean barbecue (their first).



And, especially exciting (Rosa), we went to a pub and had our very first English drinking experience together. One beer each - but being a family of lightweights, we still had to stumble out the door.



It was a really great trip. Thank you, parents.

Celebrations

Now it's Lent, but a few days ago it was carnevale time. This is actually not something that really affects Bologna, or me - especially now that I spent more time at my office than my home (including sleeping time, which is disturbing). But over the past couple weeks I've gotten a chance to see and experience some festivities, which has been nice.



Two weeks ago, Bologna had some kind of Saturday night party that involved an hour of fireworks in the main piazza. Something that I'm starting to realize in my old age is that I love fireworks. They have such a happy mood! And seeing them in Italy, in such a beautiful piazza, was just an added bonus. The show wasn't the obsessively choreographed American fireworks display that we see on the 4th of July, but it was terrific nonetheless - and it really went on for an hour with all kinds of sparkles and booms. The piazza filled up and people started spilling out into the surrounding streets - couples, people on bicycles (like me!), people on scooters (see the helmet, above), children, even buses had to stop because they couldn't get through. Everyone looked towards the sky. There was something really beautiful about the scene, as if the entire city had stopped to watch the show.



To continue with the happy times, I was reunited with two beloved (and much missed) coworkers last week for dinner. We went to a Sardinian restaurant where we were plied with wine and food, including pork stewed in milk, pickled thistles and ravioli cooked in red wine. It all sounds crazy, but everything was great. Letizia and Massimo, whom I hadn't seen since before Christmas, regaled us with tales of non-office life. Massimo then tried to set Letizia up with a friend of his who is currently embroiled in a messy relationship. There she is, talking to him on the phone. As far as I know they have not yet met. And below, me and Tiziano, absorbing our last glasses of wine.



However, all of this business pales in comparison to the real Carnevale, in Venice. Last weekend I made the trip with my roommate to join up with a group of more then ten Italians and Americans. This is basically the way it works: Venice becomes a party. The entire city. People are drinking and throwing confetti and running around in costumes - ALL OVER THE PLACE. (They're also peeing all over the place, because you can never find a bathroom when you need one.) The first photo of this post was taken in a piazza in Venice; they all looked like that. Everyone is crazy, and they're all happy to have their photo taken.



Here is a photo of Francesca and me, at the beginning of the night, around 7 pm. We are fresh and happy. Keep in mind that we spent the next NINE hours walking around a freezing city in February, facing wind and drizzle, sitting down for a total of maybe 15 minutes, and covering a total of 10 miles. Insanity. But, this photo was taken before all of that.



And here we are a bit later, with about half the group we were traveling with. I previously knew one of these people.



This is what everyone started to look like about halfway through the night.



And again.



WHO IS THE BOY ON THE RIGHT? No clue, but we saw him later on, repeatedly. Anyway, we departed from Venice at 4 am, exhausted and practically knock-kneed, to find that there were no more trains running. We had been told that there would be trains all night for the last saturday of Carnevale; like idiots, we believed this and never double-checked. Instead of crying in the station, we hopped on the last train leaving (for Mestre, a station about 10 minutes from the city of Venice). After disembarking, we continued to find, without a doubt, that there were no trains. But we had to get to Padova, to sleep at my friend Michela's house. So what did we do? We took a taxi from Venice to Padova! What a triumph. (And strangely enough, it was the same price as a train would've been. And as the Mastercard commercial says, the worth of NOT having to spend 3 hours in an open, freezing train station at the end of long night? PRICELESS.)



If only we'd had real costumes.

Foreign Exchange

I'm recycling a pre-Christmas photo. Bologna's very pretty with all the lights up.

Two weeks ago we received the news that my beloved roommate, Francesca, won a grant to study at Georgetown University for the next six months. We're all very happy for her, but it's sad that she has to go! Also, there's been a lot of roommate traffic in this apartment (her replacement will be the fifth new person to move into the house during the year I've been here).

So, before she goes, we need to use the time wisely. That means house parties, apparently. With nutella.



And I think that I'm stronger than I actually am.



Carnivale is starting here, but it doesn't feel like it. Instead, I'm feeling overwhelmed by work and completely exhausted. To paraphrase Good Will Hunting (a masterpiece!) . . . Management has been restructuring, and it's not very enjoyable for all of us who work under said management. But I'm trying to remember that this will result in some kind of learning experience. I will certainly be thankful for it someday in the future. I'm just not yet at that point.

In the meantime, the Italian government has fallen, and it's strange because there are no visible signs of it whatsoever. (I don't know what I imagined. SWAT teams or something.) Aside from the entertaining aspects - crying senators being carted out on stretchers - it's pretty crazy. And it's fascinating to hear the way people talk about it. Most often I hear that the country is finished, everything is going to hell, and so forth - I was told that this is the "classic" Italian response. It sounds pretty familiar to me!

Jingle Bells

So, I went home for Christmas. It was my first time back in the States since June, and I realized that I really missed being there. Italy feels like home now, but it definitely isn't home home. Like home is home. Etc. And home in this case included Florida and New York along with beloved Boston.

I love Christmas. And I love the fact that being in the US, after being gone for a while, makes me appreciate random things. Like the availability of cranberry juice, scrambled eggs, and non-diesel-infused air. My mom's cooking. Stuff like that.



And snow! It was snowing when my plane touched down, which was a perfect welcome. This was the view from my front door. If you can't see it well, that's because it was entirely white.



And of course it was really amazing to spend time with the people I love, as weird as they are.



It's bittersweet to realize that, now that my life here is full of so many new people, I really value my relationships with the people who've known me for years. In my own language, no less.



Being away makes it ever-so-clear that they're incredibly important to me. So it was hard to leave - even though it's good to be back.

Pre-homecoming Stinchi Extravaganza

It's my second December in Bologna. And it's clear that I've become significantly weaker in a year away from the East Coast. I find myself complaining constantly about the cold here, and it's not even that cold - but it's damp. So damp, actually, that my clothes keep getting moldy in my drawers. And I keep having to attack these scary mold-like growths on the walls of my bedroom. All the bleach in the world won't make that gunk go away permanently. This place is seriously damp.



The cold has resulted in a few heating wars in my house, most notably last week. There have been small heating battles for a while now, in which Francesca and I turn on the heat via the thermostat, only to hear Massimo run down the stairs to immediately turn it off. This can go on for hours. Once Francesca turned the heat on four times in one hour. So Massimo is obsessive, but we already knew this. Anyway, his brilliant idea was to bypass the thermostat completely and go directly to the furnace, knowing that we wouldn't think to look at it. Indeed, Francesca and I spent a good 20 minutes fiddling with the thermostat trying to figure out why the house was freezing even though we had turned the heat up to 75 degrees. And then we checked the furnace, which is closed up in its little compartment, and saw that it had been turned off. We attached a post-it to the furnace switch, writing, "AREN'T YOU ASHAMED OF YOURSELF?", which Massimo duly received when he ran downstairs five minutes later to see why his radiator was warming up. I won't include the yelling part, but Francesca was very articulate.

Speaking of Francesca, I'm very sad that I'll be missing her graduation next Monday. She just finished her master's thesis and it should be quite a party. I've heard that these celebrations often include scenes in which the new graduate is stripped and pelted with anchovies and flour, while friends write (and read aloud) the best anecdotes about the person's days of drunken college debauchery. In front of his or her parents. It sounds amazing! (One thing that I've always liked about Bologna is that throughout the year people celebrate graduations, and you can always tell who the new graduate is by the laurel wreath and the drunken singing.)



I'll be home in 8 days. I can't wait to eat lots of things that I can't get good versions of here. Like pickles, mustard, turkey, cranberry juice, and non-pasta items. Kimchi! The photos above and below are good reflections of my excitement.



Regarding food, I had a very memorable restaurant experience on Monday. I went out with almost all my coworkers to celebrate two separate birthdays. You can see us singing, below.



Tiziano (whom you can see in this blog alternately peeing, wearing white face paint, and chasing horses off a highway, which does in no way indicate WHY we allowed him organize this event) chose a restaurant nicknamed The Lurido (which means something like "piggy"). The ambience was clear right off the bat, as the hostess/waitress/cook (she seemed to be doing everything) greeted us as "strange people" and reprimanded us for missing one of our party (Letizia showed up late). When I went to the bathroom, a strange man who had wandered in off the street came in and turned off the lights. He then reprimanded me for peeing with the lights on, until the waitress shooed him away. A dog ran wild through the restaurant while her owner enjoyed his pizza.

Her mood didn't improve as Letizia's absence continued. She informed us that, for being late, Letizia "wouldn't fuck anyone until at least the end of 2007". I swear, those were her exact words. The best part was that she said it to Letizia's face when she arrived a few minutes later. (Leti's response: "STILL?!?!") Overall it was a very enlightening experience.

With lots of wine. Notice Massimo's stature in comparison with the bottle size. Okay, I do have a wide angle lens, but still - the bottles were enormous.


One of the food highlights was "stinco di maiale", or pig shank. I can't decide if it sounds more ridiculous in Italian or English, but in Italian the plural is "stinchi", pronounced "stinky". Those shanks (which are technically shins?) were massive. You can see Tiziano and Massimo chewing on theirs, above. Letizia was actually the only person who managed to finish her stinco.
Here she is, eating.


And smiling triumphantly.


The above photo is a good reflection of the restaurant, as you can see the waiter commenting on us as he walks by.


Sara and Luisella. Another good reflection of the restaurant setting.

Anyway, after 4 liters of wine and a large quantity of meat, it was time to stop celebrating and go home.

Start Hibernation

It's chilly here. And not much is going on here, but I will sally forth with this new blog entry, as I don't want to leave my few-but-faithful readers out in the cold. So to speak.



The past few weeks have been totalllyyyy consumed by my attempts to navigate the bureaucracy that is the Italian immigration system. It looks like I'm going to be spending some more time here, so it's the season to re-start the process, which is a nightmare. My activities have taken place in three different spots:
The Questura, which is the police headquarters (Italy has a bunch of different types of police, but these are the ones who control immigration). This place is miserable. I'd call it worse names but I'm worried that some Questura spy will find this and refuse to let me stay in Italy, so I'm just going to say that this is a decidedly not-fun place. The Questura can take someone like me - basically smothered in privilege thanks to race and nationality - and make me feel confused, overwhelmed, disrespected, and anxious. Entering the building is like getting a zoomed-in view of real desperation - I may not feel it, but it's written all over the faces of everyone else in there, most of whom are in Italy because of dire economic or political circumstances.
Then there's the Prefettura (Prefecture), which is some kind of official governing body. They should technically have the expertise to answer lots of questions about immigration, and have all sorts of labyrinth-like hallways in which you can have the privilege of a 4 or 5 hour wait before even seeing an official. You go to the Prefettura if you need to figure out what you have to do at the Questura. They used to be connected (like, in the same building) but about a month ago the Questura was moved to a godforsaken spot, basically on an isolated dirt pathway, outside the city. Luckily for us, however, the Prefettura hasn't moved an inch.
The CGIL, or Italian General Confederation of Labor. This is one of Italy's three major unions - it's the Communist one. For various reasons, they have the most detailed, efficient immigrant support system (including free Italian classes). There is an extremely chaotic office that manages work queries for immigrants, including legal stuff, and this is about to become my new home: I have been advised to visit every day until the first week in December, because work quotas will be released without warning, and it's a first-come, first-serve situation. They already know me. The cool thing about this office, which makes me a little homesick, is the fact that the staff members come from all over the world - as they should, because they need to communicate with the workers who come through the door. It's one of the rare places here that employs a diverse staff - people from North Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Middle East, Asia, South America, Eastern Europe. Yay! (I may not be cheering for them once they start despising me for my constant presence.)



Aside from all of that stuff, which is really stressful, it's nice to know that I want to be here for a little while longer. Or a long while longer? Well, who knows. But when it came to make this decision, about a month ago, it dawned on me that I've been here for a year. And despite all the tough parts, it's been worth it - I really do feel as if I've created a life here, and I'm pretty proud of that. I'm not ready to give it up yet, either! So I'll be back at CGIL tomorrow. And the day after.



If you've actually made it through all of that nonsense, here's an anecdote from my day today. It's become a regular joke at work that I should just marry one of my coworkers to end all of this immigration-related stress. Of course, the big question is WHICH ONE I'd marry. Amid all this joking, Massimo (one of my favorites - hi, Massimo!) decided to give me a lesson about love and relationships. It's called, "La Legge del Cornuto Contento" - the law of the happy betrayed person. It is as follows: Everyone betrays sooner or later, regardless of any discussion of true love or whatnot. The secret is to make sure that your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse never finds out - making him/her BETRAYED, yet HAPPY, at least in ignorance. And the final secret: deny, deny, deny, even if the evidence is in full view.
Keep in mind that this was related to me at a lunch table full of coworkers, male and female, ranging from about 25 to 60 years old - and everybody agreed. (Except the American, of course, Puritan Emma: "I don't know if it's always that way." Massimo: "It doesn't matter what you know or don't know. Your thoughts are irrelevant in this case. It's a law, and it's always true.")

Oh well. The cultural learning curve is long.

Audrey, Liza, Elizabeth, and more . . .

Another blog entry about a house party at Via Avesella . . .

The date for our much-anticipated Halloween party rolled around, and we were ready. This time around, Francesca (my new-ish roommate) and I decided that it was time to mutiny: we were going to invite whomever we wanted. (At our past party, Massimo assigned us a guest quota of 6 people.) So, we got all dressed up, invited our guests, and waited. As you can see above, Massimo bided his time by pretending to be a bat, or something.

One of the first to arrive was Elisa, the girlfriend of Stefano, who runs our favorite gelateria (now closed for the winter). She wasn't in costume, but Massimo called her Elizabeth (as in, the queen) for the entire night because of her hair. Her hair was pretty amazing - we'd never seen it before, because at work she always had it tied up and covered by a cap. Here you can see Massimo bowing to her.



I dressed up as Audrey Hepburn for the second time, which was sort of a lazy thing to do. But it was relatively easy to assemble, and Halloween is a pretty new holiday here, so I was happy to find something that I could pull off. I found out that cigarette holders are sold in regular tobacco stores all over the city. I wonder who's using them?

Here I am in full regalia.



My friend Irene usually looks taller than that, I think.

And here's my roommate Francesca, who was a prom-acid-witch of some sort, and her friend Itala, a cat. Itala is Peruvian and is currently an underwear designer in Bologna (she studied fashion in Milan). As you can imagine, this makes every man within 100 miles start drooling.



And below is my friend Natasha, who is blessed with almost the EXACT same genetic makeup as Rosa and me. She came as Liza Minelli. And my coworker Tiziano came as some kind of character from a Fellini film. I don't really know what he was.



By the time everyone had had a few glasses of wine, we all got to sing (this always seems to happen at my house). Chris, a Johns Hopkins student who owns the guitar in question, knew a full repertoire of grunge songs from the 1990s (incidentally, he came to the party dressed in a brown sweater with a leopard-print towel draped over his shoulders - we never really figured out what his costume was - but as you can see in this photo, the towel migrated around the party, spending most of its time with Massimo). When he was finished, we got started on Italian songs. We all sang all the songs, regardless of the words.



The party was a grand success until about 3 am, when Massimo finally took out a wet mop and started using it to shoo guests out of the house. He literally pushed peoples' feet with the mop. Then he got down on his knees and scraped stains off the walls with a teaspoon. (He's certifiably insane, I think.)



In other news, my choir had an amazing interactive concert last weekend, I went to a salsa club and drank an amazing mojito (with practically an entire mint plant inside it) while dancing to music that made me homesick, it snowed yesterday morning in Bologna, and my work life has become rather chaotic. Due to Italian drama and economic circumstances, it looks like the entire company is going to be restructured. Over the past three weeks I've lost my two support systems: Andrea and Letizia. (Andrea can be seen peeing below, in another blog entry. Letizia handled my visa and is a font of feminist advice.) I miss them.

I will try to ensure that my next blog entry is about something other than parties.