Paris Reflections

Ok, so here are my most recent reflections on Paris and my life here... next will come the first week of my internship followed by the fun things I did last week, followed by Rome. Out of order maybe but they are all on their way.

Paris Reflections

So I have been in Paris now for almost two months. Sometimes it seems like I just got here yesterday, and other times it feels like there is no place else on earth, that I have been here always. It is also a strange feeling because this is the first time that I have really lived on my own away from home. Sure I have lived at DePauw for the past two and a half years, but sometimes that is more like living at camp… and I can always run home for a weekend if I really want to… not so with Paris. This is also the first time that I have really lived in a city of any real considerable size. Dayton doesn’t really count, and plus I really live in Oakwood, not in Dayton so it doesn’t count (sorry Eleanor, I hope you still come visit). And of course I have visited lots of large US cities, like DC and New York and Chicago; but I don’t think a visit can really count for much. So here in this post I just want to reflect a little bit on Paris itself, and how I think it suits me… but also the inexorable frustrations that I can encounter … and I wonder if that is Paris or simply city life in general.

Mac told me one of the first times that I told him that I wanted to study in Paris for a semester, that just like every other person who had spent time in Paris, I would both love it, and struggle with it, as the city has a life and mind of its own. I have had this in mind all along as I have been here, and I find that Mac is most definitely right. I love Paris for its cafes, its outstanding and accessible public transportation system, and for the way every time you go in a restaurant they ask you « pour dîner ou pour boire » (to eat or to drink) and regardless of if you buy one coffee, one glass of wine, or an entire five course meal, you are welcome and entitled to your table until three am if you want it. I like how nowhere are you allowed on the grass… but everyone goes out on Sundays and plays soccer on the grass regardless. I love to see people walking home at all hours of the day with two warm baguettes fresh out of the oven at the nearest boulangerie, and more times than not I am making my way home with a demi-baguette myself. I like to listen to French people on the subway complain about everything from the weather to the latest scandal that Sarkozy is caught up in, and I love the merciless political cartoons in le monde. I love to listen to small children speak French, and muse about how they have better grammar and pronunciation than I ever will have… and I am envious of the ease with which they speak a language I have been trying to master for more than half of my life. I love all of it, the sights, the sounds, the smells (ok not always the smells) but for the most part I find myself taking in the sights of the city in constant awe of this place’s history, culture and breath of its own.

I also love to think about the people who have walked these streets before me, from famous people like Hemmingway, to Mac and Anne when they were in grad school and I like to imagine that in studying and being here I have put myself among some of the greatest and personalities of all time. Picasso loved this city more than Spain or anywhere else, and so did many more of the artists that I have studied and loved. They had they commune in 1871, when even though they burned a bunch of stuff down, they still had one of the first governments based on social welfare and social issues… even if it fell apart really quickly. Paris is the center of France, the beating heart of the country that simply could not function without it. I like to be at the center of that… I just like to be here.

While I love all of this, just as Mac said I can find myself to be completely put out by small things… and larger things too. When the bus is ungodly full and the purse of the woman behind you is stabbing you in the back, and the guy next to you really should invest in a new type of deodorant, and all you want to do is be home, then I find myself frustrated. Or in a cafe, when I am actually ready to leave, but the server is nowhere to be found with the check, and he isn’t working for a tip, so he doesn’t have all that much interest in your quality of service… then I am frustrated. When all I want is a big cup of coffee, and I am of course served a tiny little shot of espresso instead… then I really long for Café Roy, and Rhonda who always greats me with a smile and a story of what her boys are up to. I am sometimes overwhelmed by a type of homesickness for strangers… and how they smile and say hello, even if they are in a hurry, or you know you are never going to see them again… Is it strange to be homesick for that? I suppose not, since I think that American friendliness can be both a blessing and a curse, but I can’t help but miss it sometimes. And maybe it is not simply American friendliness, but mid west friendliness… as much as I sometimes hate being from the Midwest.

There is always something to do, something to see and another museum to visit. Even being in this city for 6 months I am sure that I will not get to see everything that I want to see, one could spend a week in the Louvre alone. Not to mention all of the other art museums I want to see, and the special exhibits, and the small art galleries that the city is full of. Jerome (my prof of cultural politics) told us that Paris is no longer the art capital of the world… that New York won that place years ago… but that aside Paris is still home to some of the most interesting, famous, and understated art in the world. I am still trying to explore it all, and I only hope there are enough hours in my life to even begin to delve into the riches this city holds. But as always, when speaking about the rich culture and art that Paris is home to, I can’t help but call into question many of the complexities of Parisian and French culture that I refuse to ignore.

Paris would not be the diverse city that it is if it weren’t for the colonial history that France itself struggles to come to terms with even to this day. People from all over the francophone world inhabit Paris, and they all come from different backgrounds. On the metro I can be sitting next to a person who is a third generation citizen whose grandparents grew up in Algeria, a sans-papier from Cameroon who is stuck in Paris with no living, but still prefers it to his country of origin. There are people who could be descended from Clovis himself, and others who are visiting from Italy or England. It is always a wonderful mélange of people and places and cultures, all united by the French language, and their historical ties. However, in the states I feel like we embrace this diversity (even if only in theory sometimes) and in France it has raised many many questions which do not have easy answers, and have manifested themselves politically. The most recent manifestation has been in the débat sur l’identité nationale- essentially a question of what it means to be French… and many of the responses have been « if you aren’t white and catholic then you aren’t French » even though that is not how the French sold themselves to their colonies, and it just seems like the colonial ideas are far from dead in this country. Even if you are that third generation French citizen who’s grandparents grew up in Algeria, and France is the only home you have ever known, someone will still ask « D’où venez-vous » (where are you from) and expect you to respond with Algeria. It is a strange place for a country to be caught in, and a lot of it comes back to colonialism and how France approached her colonies, in contrast with say how England did it. France is also home to the Declaration of Rights of Man… and somewhere in all of that they want to uphold the highest standards, and are ashamed they haven’t always done so… but in reality they still struggle with an idea of a racial hierarchy…France really struggles in my opinion to handle this part of their complicated history, and I feel like being in Paris I have been able to see some of these struggles happen first hand. This is particularly true from only the week I have spent at L’institut du monde arabe… But as always in my reflections, I digress into issues of post-colonialism and its challenges…

So perhaps to conclude this Paris Reflection and I am sure there will be a few more, I just want to say that I really love this city, regardless of how frustrating it can be. After spending 10 day in Italy and visiting four different cities, I have to say that I am still partial to Paris. Rome feels much more Mediterranean of course, but it also feels different… it doesn’t feel like Paris… and for now, while I am here in Europe, Paris feels like home.

not quite

so i didnt quite get to it today...look for one installment for the next 6 days... i promise promise promise.

Tomorrow

Ok so, life has been crazy around here... coming home from rome and starting my internship and everything... but tomorrow I am going to update everything. I promise, so look forward to entries that will be titled something along the lines of
Rome I
Rome II
Rome III
Internship Week I
France vs. Spain
Paris reflections

So yeah. ok so hopefully my titles will be a little bit more exciting and interesting than that, but I should be able to get a lot of my past two weeks down in 5-6 entries... sorry for the random updates all at once. Things should settle into more of a routine soon so that I can keep it updated better and more regularly. mmmmk. So come back tomorrow and there will be lots to read about and to see. I am also going to put up a lot of pics... and even more on fb if you want to check all of those out too at some point. ok a demain!love love love. here is a pic preview...


This is us at the Colosseum!

Bisous!

Rome Pics

So I haven't written anything about Rome yet... but today we spent the day seeing a "Roman" tour of the city, trying to see most of the things that exist still from the Roman empire. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, and we have had enough museums for a while, so we set out to see the city by foot. I will post some pics here, and write more in a couple days... whenever I am back at Alana's with internet again.















Ok, so I have to write a lot, and there are more pics to come, but now we are headed back to the hostel for bed... which is an experience to be recorded in and of itself... but not here. Tomorrow we are off to see the Vatican, maybe I'll be able to see where Robert Langdon was... ok probs not, but o well!

Florence

So once again I am writing from a train, watching the Italian country side go by. I would say fly by, but it is doing far from that, since we are saving a buck on train tickets by taking the train to Rome that makes lots of stops, and takes four hours instead of two. But that is ok. It was only 15 euros as opposed to 44 for this train, so I am fine with spending and afternoon on the train, looking at what there is to see in this lovely country. Today is sort of a transition day, a day of recovery after the whirlwind weekend of seeing three cities in three days. We slept in for a while and took our time getting ready, then had lunch and some excessively expensive gelato… you win some and lose some I guess. (actually that has been a theme of Florence as well, but I will get there in a minute) so we now have the train ride to Rome, and we will find our hostel and then find Alana at the Trevi fountain. I am so excited to see her! I have enjoyed having this time on the train the past few days to keep up with writing like this… and I will post them all tonight so everyone can know what I have been up to. But now, Florence…

Florence had a bit of a bumpy start… and several bumps throughout the day really. We did not have our hostel information with us (because someone forgot to print it…) but we didn’t think it would be a big deal since McDonalds supposedly has free WiFi and we could just use our computer to look it up. There was a McDonalds right across from the train station when we got there, so we went it, bought something and attempted to then use the internet. I should have realized there would be a catch… a big one. You had to have a phone number with an Italian area code which could receive a text with the password in it. Since our phones have French area codes, this clearly was a bust, and we had wasted money on bad McDonalds food just to hit this annoying dead end. Ugh. So we went back to the train station to find the tourist office, and the lady told us that there was an internet café in the basement of the train station… we found it, but it was closed on Sundays. So we went back to ask again, and all she said was, “well you’ll just have to find one somewhere in the city.” Great, what a helpful tourist office.

So we set out to find an internet café, knowing we weren’t far from the hostel, but without a name or address it makes it more challenging to find if you know what I mean…although we got lucky and found a cheap internet café rather quickly. We weren’t far at all from one, and we looked up hours for places we wanted to go. It turns out that Sunday is not the day that everything is closed like at home, but rather Monday, so we got lucky in that respect too. We really were like five minutes from the hostel and we put down our stuff and ran out to discover this new city. The sun was shining for the first time in three days in this rainy country and I felt like I was ready to take on the world! We went first to the Medici Chapel where there was some stuff carved by Michelangelo. This was the first place where we encountered the rather grumpy and money hungry side of Florence. We tried our little “Speak English with French accents trick” again to get reduced admission to the chapel… but no luck. The lady was very mean to us, and without European ID or passports we weren’t getting jack. So we paid 6.50 euro each. It was cool, but really that price was a bit steep.

We set back off into the sun and walked around for a while, and we saw that Florence is really very tourist hungry. Anne told us that, “Florence has sold its soul,” and I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. But know I think I understand a little bit better. Everything in Florence seems to be about selling a product- the product of Italian history and culture. This might seem like a difficult thing to market, but in fact it seems like this is what people come to see and discover: and Italy and its culture from times past—a thing that doesn’t seem to exist anymore (if it ever did) but the people who live here try to capitalize on that, as they should. But it is strange to see people searching to find an experience or something like that, that just doesn’t exist any longer… so they just see it in the form of the relics from the past, with a little spaghetti and pizza with wine mixed in. Is that what I am here to do? To try to discover something from the past that just doesn’t exist? I don’t know. I certainly couldn’t discover Florence in the day I allotted to visit it, so what are my motivations… and do they really matter? Perhaps that will take some more exploring personally. I don’t know exactly. We talked about this a lot with Dr. Foss (and Cheira) last year when we were preparing for and in Tunisia. The risk with Tunisian culture I feel is that people from the west will look at it with an Orientalist eye, making it the exotic thing they want it to be, meanwhile forcing people to sell their culture to survive… and it doesn’t seem like Italian culture runs quite the same risk… so what was it that seemed so, unnatural about the entire city? I don’t know. But I could certainly see how someone might say that Florence has sold its soul… to tourists or whoever is willing to pay the highest price.

The second place we saw was the Hospital of the Innocents, which I am pretty sure, is where people used to drop off the babies they didn’t want in the middle ages. We read about this place in Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s book with Dr. Kevin Moore this past semester. It seems like now it is a UNICEF place which actually has some real irony about it, since 90% of the babies who got dropped off there died. The building itself was also supposed to be the first building designed in the Renaissance style, which is also neat, and involves a lot fewer dead babies. Then we went to our second museum the Academia Gallerie, where we were greeted with a large: NO INTERNATIONAL STUDENT DICOUNTS and we paid another 6.50 euro to see some paintings and thing. But the real attraction here is that it houses Michelangelo’s David. It was very neat to see this amazingly famous and absolutely huge statue created by the master. I guess I can cross that off my bucket list now. Another (just as cool thing in my book) thing we found was that in the staircase leading up to the second floor, there was a small exhibit of paintings from Russia from around the 13th century, and one of them was an image of the three Magi… and one was an Ethiopian! Holy crap! I can’t wait to tell Anne about it, and show her the illegal picture I took of it. Wow, I will have to do some more research about this image and where it came from. The second floor of the Gallerie was a room full of, “gold shiny Jesuses.” Really they were iconic images from the 12th and 13th centuries, but all I can say is that if I never see another gold and shiny Jesus again, it will be too soon.

So we set out again, although the sun had disappeared, and the clouds were gathering around the city again. We went to the Il Duomo in this city, which was absolutely huge, and right next to a building that has “the doors that started the Renaissance” on the front.

They are cool and very intricately carved, since it took 20 years for one person to complete them. The cathedral was huge, but far less impressive on the inside than the St. Marc’s cathedral in Venice. By this point we needed a pick me up- which we found in the form of some gelato outside of the Uffizi Gallery, which was the third and final museum of the day that we visited. We paid another 6.50 euro to get in and we saw the lady behind the counter give an old man a really hard time about letting his wife in for free (since they were both over 65) without seeing her ID. If they are going to be mean to old people about paying the fee to get in, then I think Florence really has sold some part of its soul… It is one thing to be mean to students trying to save a buck, but an old man and his wife? Really? Good lord. In this museum we saw several works by several famous people including Michelangelo, DaVinci, Raphael, Dürer, Botticelli, Rembrandt, and some others. It was neat to see some things by these masters, but it was also very crowded. We only saw a few gold shiny Jesuses (and I almost freaked when we saw a room of them, but don’t worry we skipped that room). But as we tromped around in the museum it rained outside, and I was glad to be inside since the POS umbrella from Milan was back in the room at the hostel. By the time we left it had stopped raining, and the river in the city really looked very beautiful.
We walked down the river, and back up again to our hostel, very tired at this point from the long day of walking and exploring and handing out 6.50 euro every other minute to see works of art. We did walk back past Dante’s house and church which was neat, and we made it back for a good rest before going out to dinner at 9:30 pm. We found a cheap pizza place and enjoyed some pizza and wine (Italian culture at its finest, or tourists being appeased? It is hard to say. Or is it?)

We also ran into some other Americans who had come to see some soccer games… and they were friendly but it was weird to talk to other Americans. We told them that we were studying in France for the semester, and all they really had to say was that they don’t really like France. I was sort of floored by that statement, since in the past few days I have found myself saying on several occasions: “I miss France.” Is it because I miss the ease of navigating someplace rather familiar now after several weeks, or because I miss the language or what? I don’t know. It seems strange to miss a place that is not quite home, but I do. Clearly this is a more challenging vacation than others I have taken in the past, but still I find it strange that when I think, “I wish I could go” the place I want to be is Paris (expensive coffee and all) and not DePauw or Dayton. I don’t know, that could change, but I just find that to be a strange emotion.

So all in all, Florence was kind of up and down. We had to pay money to see a lot of things and go a lot of places, which I feel is rather indicative of a place that is completely run by the tourist industry, but I suppose that is not all bad, it just is. It is home to a lot of cool things and history, but at the same time it felt kind of cheap and tacky at times… nothing like Venice or really even Milan. All three cities felt very different and unique, which is really not that surprising since you would have the same sort of experience if you went to different cities in France, or in the United States. ( I was just very tempted to type Aux Etats-Unis, so there you go.) But this whirlwind weekend has most definitely been an adventure and a success, and I look forward to seeing what Rome holds for us in this next week! And have I mentioned that I can’t wait to see Alana?

Ciao!

Venice

From the minute I set foot in Venice, it felt different. At first, being very focused on trying to find the hostel and things like that I did not put my finger on it right away, but as we set out to find some lunch and just generally explore the city, it became very obvious that something was different. It was not like Paris where the buildings are old, but the streets are wide and you can take a bus to the metro to the center of the city. But it wasn’t different because the buildings weren’t old: for certain they are. But it didn’t feel like Milan either, the other Italian city I have visited so far, where it had much more of a Mediterranean feel with colorful buildings. Milan also felt very industrial, very much like a working city. Venice did not feel even comparable to that. At first I thought it was because of the water, because of the enormous channel that runs straight through the middle of the city, with only three main bridges going across and seemingly thousands of smaller channels that run off of the main one, throughout the city. It must be this I thought, that felt so different. In fact the first thing I said when we got off the train was that it smelled like the sea… but after an hour or so of walking around (in a lovely drizzling rain, so far rain seems to be an overriding theme of this trip to Italy) I think I realized what it is that makes Venice feel so very different.


There are no cars. There are no buses and metros and trams and really, no cars. You can walk from one end of the canal to the other in about an hour… so it is very traversable on foot, and if you want to take a taxi, well you take the water taxi on the boat down the canal. It was really amazing to realize that we were in this medieval city, and it hadn’t really changed all that much since the middle ages. That was really how it felt: medieval. The streets are all made of stone, and they wind around and there are alleys and small streets to follow, where at the end you will find hole in the wall restaurants or tabacchi stores or other things of a similar sort. It was really spectacular to see this city, to be in this city (which had its fair share of touristy glory don’t get me wrong) but to so easily imagine that hundreds of years ago people followed the twisty turning alleys of the city from one end to the other, and there were no cars or trains or anything of the sort… just as there were no cars or trains yesterday. I can imagine now it probably smells a little better (since there are sewers and such things for the gunk of life) and it is modern with modern conveniences, but somehow, it still feels original, like it hasn’t changed that much for 800 years. As Anne always says, “no one really wants to go back to the middle ages,” but this city certainly felt something like a time portal, something out of a story, or a painting.

It was really cool to see as we walked down, following the canal that all of the canals that branched off of the main one, that in front of peoples’ houses almost everyone had a little boat. It is so funny to imagine that one would get up in the morning, jump in the boat and go to the store for the morning’s groceries. Or putting all the kids in the boat to take them to school… (well they probably walk but it is funny to think about). It really was crazy to see. It is also strange to think about what it might be like to grow up in a city like this, with no cars, where no one ever says “look both ways!” all they ever say is “don’t fall in the water!” How very different! I suppose if you grew up there, and didn’t know anything different it would be perfectly normal, but it still seems very strange to me.
We ate a quick lunch of Italian style pizza (so thin and yummy!) and only 2 euros! Then we stopped across the street for a quick dessert, where I found the world’s most delicious cream puff. Ever. (See picture it is glorious!) It was so fresh and covered in powdered sugar, which later ended up all over my coat. It was nothing like one of the frozen cream puffs we used to eat from Sam’s Club when we were little… oh no. It was amazing. I wish Mirandy could have been there too, just to taste it because it was awesome. I actually wish Mirandy were here a lot of the time, she would love to do the stuff we are doing and eat the food and tromp around… I miss her a lot.

We walked down the streets, all the way down the canal to the part of town where the big cathedral is winding and turning and using the umbrella all the way. Note: the green umbrella that I bought in Milan is well, to be frank, a piece of shit. It kept turning inside out at the slightest breath of wind, and we were getting wet all the time. It actually turned out to be quite comical…our piece of shit umbrella. O goodness little green umbrella. But it is still alive, and on its way to Florence now, as am I.

But back to the cathedral. It is in Saint Marc’s square, which is also where the palace of the former dukes of Venice used to live, and it is very close to the seaside, where you can see lots of small islands out in the bay with old churches on them.
It was cold and unpleasant, but still quite a sight to be seen. So we decided to go in the church, which was decorated almost as ornately on the outside as was the one in Milan, but with different types of marble. Parts of the square outside the church were actually flooded because of the rain, so we stepped up on to the risers that led into the church. We entered from the side of the church, not thinking it would make any difference. Now I would like to preface this by saying that I have seen my fair share of cathedrals, old big churches in all of their old and catholic glory. I thought this when I was going in, but I was not prepared for what was inside. The entire church (which is actually really really big) was covered in mosaics. Every inch of the ceiling was covered in biblical scenes and scenes of saints and pictures of Christ. But everywhere where there wasn’t a picture, where there was empty spaced, the ceiling was covered in golden shiny tiles. It was outstanding, and really unbelievable. The pictures here do not do it justice I am sure of it. It was really breathtaking, the amount of work and man hours that must have gone into making that church what it is, as impressive as it is. I don’t know if it has been restored (I’ll have to look it up) but even if it has been, it is crazy to think of it in its original form. Many of the mosaics looked as detailed as paintings, it was absolutely astounding. The time and money that must have gone into creating the church is beyond imagination. But what is interesting to think about today (at least in my opinion) is what these churches represented back in the day. The mosaics were ways of communicating to illiterate people for sure, but the enormous and absolutely astounding churches that exist all over the country and really all over Europe, were enormous testaments to the absolute power of the church. Only the powers that controlled the world at that time could have had the resources to accomplish something like that, and everyone would have know that the church itself reigned supreme, with more power and money than even the dukes themselves who would have built the palace. The church was the power that commissioned all the art of the period that paid for everything since they were the power to be reckoned with for many many centuries. This church, this amazing cathedral would have never failed to communicate that point to anyone who stepped foot inside our outside of the church. We went out the front of the church, only to realize that the front was also covered in outstanding mosaics that have probably been restored, but are outstanding just the same.


After our adventure into the church we needed a little break from the cold and the rain, so we stopped and had some coffee, and then of course gelato! It may have been cold, and my hands almost froze off, but it was worth it. The gelato was amazing! We then made our way through the twisting and turning alleys and streets over to the museum of Venetian art. We decided that doing something inside might be a good choice, so why not go look at some art from the medieval times and the renaissance, since I know absolutely nothing about that kind of art. We bought tickets to go in… and spoke English to the man in the window, but with perfectly perfected French accents to convince the man that we needed student pricing for people who live in Europe (we live in France, duh) and it worked, we got half price tickets! So it was a good way to spend an hour and a half for 3 euro. We looked at a lot of ornate paintings for a while, and looked (and laughed at some) and realized once again how much the church dominated everything that was created artistically during this period. We saw an entire series of paintings by the same guy, and every single one was a different representation of the virgin and child… but all had different things going on in the landscape behind them. I can only imagine that this guy wanted to practice his landscapes, but he had to paint the virgin and child in the front to appease the church (who was paying him…) very interesting to think about.

After the museum we set out rather aimlessly again, and decided to stop and have a glass of wine. At one café we were looking at the menu, and there was a couple standing close by, who must have heard us, because they were Americans too. They told us to go around the corner, to this little hole in the wall wine bar, and it turned out to be an awesome little stop. The wine was good, and there were lots of people there who were great to watch. It was really a good half-hour spent, and it was good wine for only 2 euros a glass, which was also awesome! Thanks to that couple, wherever they are, for sending us down that one side street where we found that little gem of a place.

We then made the longish trek back up the canal towards the hostel, with lots of exploring, and alley finding along the way. We made it back, and had a bit of a rest before we set back out to find dinner, at around 9pm, which is when everyone goes out to eat. We found an excellent place, and enjoyed some Italian pasta and cheese, which was really great. But as we made our way back to the hostel, our eyelids were drooping and my legs were very tired from the day of walking. But even so, it was very strange to imagine the city as it might have been before electricity, when one might have made his way home, in the pitch dark, finding his way simply because he knows the infinite twists and turns of the city by heart… and how much creepier it would have been. Anne told us that Venice was kind of eerie… creepy even, and she was right. Magnificent and very adventurous, but strange and very medieval at the same time.

So now, on the train to Florence, in a true miracle, the sun is out (but I don’t want to jinx it) and we will be there in about 50 minutes. I am not sure what will be open on a Sunday, but our first destination currently when we get there is McDonalds… which sounds strange, but they have free WiFi and we have to find out where our hostel is… so even that will be an adventure. Until tomorrow when we will be on our way to Rome (and with Alana!)
Ciao!

Milan

Ok, so I am going to start with Milan and work my way through the weekend. I wrote each post as I went, and now I have time and internet to post them... and I uploaded pics too. I hope you enjoy it.

Milan

So as I write this, I am zooming (or rather crawling actually) across the Italian country side heading to Venice by train. Even though the Trentialia website has been less than friendly and does not accept American credit cards, once I made it to Milan, it was rather easy to buy a ticket from the Fasticket booth… but now I am getting rather ahead of myself…

Thursday night, after a stressful experience navigating the metro because of train problems, we made it to the airport. We took the metro to the airport which is really rather easy, however when we arrived at the airport it became apparent that we needed to have bought tickets for the train (RER) before we got on the train so that we could get out of the train and enter the airport… not having done this we were forced to sneak through the turnstile things (they are more like doors that open) on other peoples’ tickets… very delinquent. However I will publicly thank here the woman who I snuck through with… thanks for saving me the 8.50 euros it should have cost me to go to the airport… o well, live and learn!

The plane was very quick, even though I was only supposed to bring one bag, and was forced to stuff my backpack into my other bag… let’s just say the woman at check in was not impressed by my stuffing abilities… I was saved the 11 euros it would have cost to check a bag. Basically I broke every rule and airport stipulation before we had even gotten on the plane… but I am still 19.50 euros richer than I might have been, (and with a proud uncle on the other side of the world) and I made it to Italy just fine (with only one really dirty look!) It was about 11pm when we got to Milan, and we took a bus to the main train station where we should have been able to take a bus to our hostel… but it turned out to be raining rather heavily, and realizing that the bus was not going to be very easy to find, we took a cab to the hostel which really wasn’t far at all. The hostel was on the fourth floor of some random building, and the beds were hard as boards… but that didn’t stop us from falling into them and sleeping soundly.

Friday morning started right around 9am, which was just fine. If there were two words I could use to describe Milan they would be these: RAINY and ADVENTURE-FILLED. It was our first real day in Italy, and it was pouring. The rain was very steady and of course in true Moberg style I did not have an umbrella (since it is our prerogative that only wimps use umbrellas).
I have never been to Italy before, and I was excited to see the country and the city, regardless of the rain. It wasn’t too cold so a little rain never hurt anyone right? We took the bus (much easier to find in the light) back to the train station to buy tickets for today to get to Venice, and then our day began. However, at this point, as the rain continued to come down steadily, with no sign of stopping, I decided to break down and buy an umbrella from a very nice man in the train station. Ok so there were like twenty billion people trying to sell us umbrellas, but I did find a nice guy with a green umbrella (probably from China—the umbrella not the man). As the day progressed, it became very apparent that this was one of the best three euro investments I have made in a long time… since the rain did not let up until about 6:00pm.

And so we set off to find Il Duomo- the major cathedral in Milan that is at the center of the city. We got back on the same bus… but it all was very challenging. First the buses are not marked with routes in them like in Paris, so we sort of just rode the bus rather haphazardly (and again for free since we couldn’t figure out how to pay, but no one else seemed to be paying either so…) but we did make it to the last stop which should have been really close to the church.

I would now like to take a moment to say how much I admire Alana for coming to Italy for her study abroad… a place where she is not very familiar with the language. Not knowing a word of Italian came to be rather frustrating yesterday. So many times when we were looking at a map, or a menu or anything, I thought… ugh I just wish I knew what that word meant. I chose to study abroad in France for several reasons. There was a program I wanted, and I have been trying to learn French forever, and it will be good for my language skills etc. However I didn’t realize how easy I have had it in Paris until I came to Italy. I have been studying French in some capacity since I was about 7 years old… thus while I am not perfectly fluent, navigating Paris has been a breeze. I have not come across a word that I really needed to know that I couldn’t figure out. It has been so easy! Coming here, I realized how not knowing the language makes everything infinitely more difficult, challenging, and really time consuming. I know Alana had one semester of Italian, but still, it really takes guts to show up someplace where you really don’t even know how to say, “May I please have?” or “Where can I find…” and set up camp to live. So Alana, I really admire your brave soul that came to live in a country for 5months without mastery of the language… you are outstanding.

But back to Il Duomo. We got off the bus, promptly went the wrong way, and wandered around for a while in the rain, looking at things and adventuring… until we finally asked the police guy on the street how to find it, and turned back the right way that we should have gone in the first place. An excellent display of the lack of Moberg sense of direction… thanks mom for that little inheritance. But adventure is what this trip is about… and taking the scenic route to the cathedral in the rain was definitely that. When we found the cathedral, it was as impressive as one would expect an Italian cathedral to be… intricately carved on the outside, and the entire façade was made of marble. It was really impressive, and the picture here does not really do it justice. The inside was just as beautiful… but also very wet and cold.


When we finished exploring the church we were most definitely hungry and getting a little cold from having been in the rain for a while… even though the handy green umbrella was actually very helpful. We had lunch in a little café that was rather cheap (relatively speaking) and set back out, into the rain to find the church where Leonardo’s famous painting of the Last Supper resides. We took the metro, which like the bus, was more confusing than it should have been because of the language barrier. I also was kind of an idiot and mistook the credit card slot for the money slot in the ticket machine and got a euro stuck in the credit card slot and proceeded to spend 10 minutes trying to get it back out…( it is a good thing I am cute because I am not too bright). But we made it to the stop and found the church (or former monastery rather) where the painting is… only to be greeted by signs that said “SOLD OUT” apparently, only 15 people can see the painting every 20 minutes so you have to buy your tickets in advance. Well the lady at the desk told us to “try coming back next week” which won’t be happening… So the picture you see here is the monastery where we almost saw DaVinci’s Last Supper. So there.


Then we set out on more adventures at the behest of our guide book, where we went and saw a fourth century basilica, the basilica of Sant’ Ambrogio. It was built there originally on the site of a roman pagan temple, and it has certainly changed a lot over the last sixteen centuries, but it was really very cool, and it was not in the rain. The inside was also magnificent, and much less touristy than the last church. I found my own version of the last supper on one of the altars and decided that it was just as cool as the one painted by DaVinci… since his is kept behind lock and key (can you tell I was a little annoyed?) We also went down some stairs behind the altar where we discovered a tomb of some martyrs and of the guy who originally founded the Basilica and their bones were really there, and we saw them. It was weird. Simon Foss would have thought that that was awesome, and totally creepy. I actually wished that Dr. Foss could have been there with us because he could have told us a lot about some of the things we saw, like the stones in the walls and things like that. One thing about exploring on your own is that you see some cool things, but you don’t always get a lot of depth in your knowledge of those things. It is nice to have a guide, or someone there who can enrich your knowledge of what you are actually seeing.


But at this point it was time for another “get out of the rain” break, and we stopped at a little café on the road where I was once again promptly confronted by the language barrier. The man at the counter started speaking to me in a very friendly way in Italian… and all I could do was stare. But he quickly figured out that I didn’t understand… and I said coffee and held up two fingers… and he figured it out. This little stop in this café made me love Paris a little less, because the coffee only cost 80centimes… and in Paris, coffee is never less than 2 euros. It is a very expensive city, and Milan’s cheap coffee brought this very sharply into focus. We warmed up a little (if not dried off, since staying dry at this point seemed hopeless even with our handy green umbrella close at hand.)

We then went and found the Castello Sforzesco which was a fortress from the 15th century. Simon Foss also would have thought that this was cool since it had secret passage ways and things to explore, and we explored the gardens/ park behind the castle too… even though we were the only ones crazy enough to be there on a really rainy day in February. I can imagine in the spring and summer Italy is very beautiful, and full of warm Mediterranean wonderfulness. From the castle we went to one last church where we found S. Lorenzo Maggiore, which is a large church that has a line of 9th century columns in front of it. The columns were very cool, and the church was also very beautiful, and very silent. I feel like all of our professors would be very proud of us for going and finding all of these random, but cool and historical sites in Milan… we went just because they were old and neat, and obviously worth seeing. By this point the rain had let up a little, but our shoes and pants were still soaked, so we made our way back to the hostel. We took the cool tram that runs all over the city (where people are more likely to pay for it than they are on the bus, but it is till clearly not obligatory… (Which seems to me to be a very good example of the tragedy of the commons… that is a shout out to you Dr. O’bannon if you ever see this.) But we took the tram just to do it, which was neat, and then the metro again and finally the bus back to our hostel. Peeling off wet clothes and finding dry ones felt amazing, and we rested until about 8pm, when we went out on an adventure again to find some Italian pizza for dinner. We succeeded excellently, and found this place that had huge pizzas (see the picture!) and they were amazing. We spent about two and half hours having dinner, in true Italian style, and made it back to the hostel around 11, with just enough time to pack up and fall into bed before we set off for Venice this morning. We had to stuff our shoes with news paper and leave them by the heater because they were soaking wet from the day’s adventures. We used a free fashion paper we found on the street… so I guess I just want to say sorry Milan… that is what I think of your fashion magazines… good for drying out wet shoes.

Now we are about an hour from Venice, where I am sure another days worth of adventures await us… hopefully with a little less rain, but o well! So over all Milan was a success, and we shall see what Venice holds… Ciao!