Goodbye is a 7-letter word

It's been well over a week since I stumbled out of the Buffalo airport at 1:30 in the morning in my thigh high boots and fox fur collar, and every since then I'm I've been waiting to finish this blog, waiting for something extremely profound to strike me on the merits of cross continental travel so I can polish it up all shiny and publish it here for all to read.

But my thought panning has produced no gems so far, and the only thing I've come to realise in hindsight is this: Jet lag plus culture shock is a potent cocktail of confusion, one best sipped slowly.

I could go on for hours and hours about all the (unwelcome) differences I've found between the States and Italy so far, but I'll spare you because if you're reading this you either get to hear them all in person at some point, or you already know all of them.

I think the real root of this culture shock is the fact that I'm resolved to maintain as many of my Italian habits as possible upon my return, whereas immediately upon my arrival in Italy I gleefully and shamelessly tried to shed my American mannerisms (they weren't fooled, but it's the effort that counts).

Yet, it's not really that hard for me to keep my suedo-European ways here. I wasn't exactly conventionally American to begin with. And yes, I do realise that my going to the DMV in three inch heels is probably not something I would have done before, but it's just habit on my part now. If I had wanted to be super Italian I wouldn't have been at the DMV at all, and would've instead been biking around in snake-skin stilettos while smoking a cigarette at the same time.

Now that is quintessentially Italian.

The hardest thing about leaving Florence wasn't even leaving Florence. I know the city will still be there, it's been there for centuries. It will probably still be there for centuries after I kick the bucket. I can always go back.

The hardest thing to leave was the people. Carissa, Amanda, Nicole, Anto, Megan, Rachel, Gen, Linzy, Tess, Ayrn, and especially Kara and Arielle who really were like my family over there.

But rather than focus on the things I have had to leave, I'm trying to focus on the things I have taken back with me. The things I can't eat or wear.

Thousands of students study abroad every year, and I'm not naive enough to think that I'm the only one with any new perspectives skewing my vision. They say that when people study abroad they change. This is true, but there's no rule as to how that change will manifest itself. Maybe it's obvious, maybe it's so subtle no one notices it's there. But it's there, believe me.

Though I've written and immeasurable amount of words about being abroad, I've never been able to describe it in a manner that satisfies me. I could say what I do, but I have a hard time describing what it is. I've tried here and there, but all and all I've never felt I've done the topic justice. Perhaps that's the way it's supposed to be.

In a lot of ways, I've never been less certain about life than I am right now. And Florence is entirely to blame. Normally, this would be grounds for a panic attack. But surprisingly, I'm good. I've never been better. What it is that's come over me, I couldn't tell you. Though even if I could, I wouldn't want to. All you need to know is that I'm reached a rebirth.

A renaissance.

Getting out of Buffalo as fast as humanly possible was my greatest motivation in journeying to Florence. So for starting with that, I got a whole lot more than I had expected. And strangely enough, that motivation is even stronger in me now than before I left. Twenty years is a long time to stay in one place, and four months in another place only served to remind me how many other places are waiting to be seen. I won't be the first to see them, just as I wasn't the first to fall in love with Florence, but traveling is as much an odyssey for the soul as it is for the body, and that is never the same.

I don't know when I will be back to Florence. For now, it has done for me all it can do. But I do know with absolute certainty that I will be back. As much as I took with me, I also left part of myself behind. My last night in Florence, we ascended to Piazza Michlangelo and silently stared at our nocturnal city, our home. I don't know how long we were there, but as we walked down, we saw this on the wall.



Though we had said nothing, this seemed to say it all. And still does.

So with that, farewell for now, beautiful Florence, bella Firenze!

This is not the end.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

When my brother and I were kids, we would always force our parents to take us to the Rainforest Cafe. You know, that terrible fake jungle themed restaurant with stimulated animal stampedes and thunderstorms going off every half hour that make all the under five crowd shriek with fear and cry all through your entree? That's the one.

One of the reasons why my twelve year old self was so keen on going there was for the Volcano (oh yes the capitalization is needed), the most epic dessert imaginable. It had to be served by its own waiter staff and they would yell "VOOOLCANOOOOO!!!!" with sparklers going off on top of the thing and the whole nine yards before they placed it before my brother and I. The whole rest of the restaurant would stare. It was nearly as obnoxious as the stimulated tropical disasters. It was perfection.

I had no reason to think of a volcano as anything other than an ostentatious dessert until after a month ago, when Eyjafjallajökull decided to blow its top and screw up European air traffic from then until now. What does this mean for me and everyone else at LDM who is being promptly and unceremoniously kicked out of their apartments at 12pm this Saturday? Either: we are left homeless with 50+ pounds of luggage to illegally roam the streets of Florence since our visas expire that day, or, we will be stranded in the airports of Rome/Dublin/Munich/Amsterdam/London/Frankfurt with no means to leave until the ash cloud decides to wreak havouc somewhere else for a while. Whether we're staying in the airport a few extra hours or a few extra days is debatable.

Good volcano.

Bad volcano.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that any of this will happen. We've gotten quite savvy in Europe at avoiding the ash-idemic. But for someone who going from Florence by train to Rome, then flying to Dublin, then to JFK, then Buffalo in the span of 26 hours, even the thought of something going wrong is an immediate mood killer. After all, if anything is delayed even by a little there's a solid chance I'm marooned where ever it is I happen to be. Being stuck in Florence is okay, the Dublin airport probably has my favourite beer on tap (last time I was there they had free shots of whiskey at 8am. Gotta love the Irish), but Rome or JFK? Oh no. There is nothing good about those airports.

If I get stuck somewhere, it will be an ugly situation.

I already missed a flight in France and got stranded in Cinque Terre for the night this semester, isn't that enough punishment? For now, I'm just going to hope that I've had my share of travel disasters and continue studying for my finals (as you can see by my updating my blog, I'm making great strides in that field). And hopefully by this Sunday, my voicemail message will no longer say that I'm in Europe.

A Torrid Affair

Invariably, after people realize that I'm an international student, there's one question they'll always ask: "What are you studying in Italy anyway?"

In an effort to staunch the bewildered stares and blank looks I get when I try to explain why an English majour ventured to a non-English speaking country, I've recently began telling people that I'm studying Italian history in Italy. But this is mostly because no one takes my real answer seriously.

I came here to eat.

Brioche nutella, pear and percorino ravioli, wild boar marinated in dark chocolate and red wine, local olive oil, chianti wine, Florentine steak, fresh made pesto, brie and honey bruschetta, truffle sauce, ciocolatto fondente, mushrooms with rabbit, ten year old balsamic vinegar, every flabour of gelato imaginable, procuitto, fresh mozzerella... Oh my God, I have to stop. I'm making myself hungry even just thinking about it. I have never eatten better in my entire life. My food snobbery has reached soaring new heights, to the point where it's rubbed off on other people here.

It is bad my friends, seriously. Once the excitment of chicken wings and endless maple syrup wears off two weeks after my return, I can't think of a single place in Buffalo where I would want to eat. Except for the Pie Plate, which is in Canada anyway. Even Butterwood's creme brulee was surpassed by Italian creme brulee, which is better than actual Parisian creme brulee. I compared them.

They will have to drag me kicking and screaming from the Mercato Centrale, the local market open 9-2 every day of the week except Sunday. It has everything a cook would ever desire there, vegetables, fruit, meat, seafood, fresh pasta, bread, artisan cheese, spices. And if you don't fancy cooking, they do an amazingly good lunch for a price that makes you certain there must be a five euro cver charge on top of it. But there isn't. I feel like I hallucinated it, it's simply too good to be true.

But despite the delicous factor, I think most of the reason why I've been in foodie heaven since I got here deals more with the Italian philosophy of food. Like the fact that it perfectly dovetails mine.

To start, here's three things I hate about food in America:

1. The 'More is Better' mindset

2. Corn syrup

3. Chain Restaurants

None of this exists in Italy. Or not to the same extent. Like the bubonic plague, McDonald's has insideously flourished across Europe, but I can tell you exactly where all three Florentine McDonald's are, and none of them are in the city centre.

Also, in Italy (or Europe in general) there is a philsophy of eat whatever the hell you want, but in moderation. There's no binge and purge American mindset where we eat two double cheeseburgers with fries and wash it down with a diet coke, to save ourselves those 200 extra calories. Actually, diet coke did so poorly in Italty they had to pull it from the shelves. They seriously don't believe in diet here.

And, what might be maybe my favourite aspect of Italian cusine culture, is the idea that good food is meant to be shared. In Italy, to-go cups are almsot nonexistent. If you eat lunch by yourself, you've bound to befriend one of the waiters or other patrons. Sometimes you befriend them anyway. Kara, Arielle, and I just went to our pizza man and he bought us all a rose from the rose seller and made our pizzas in the shape of hearts. It's more than a meal- it's a connection. Taste is the medium of my memories, and in the recollecton of these moments I taste the sweetness all over again. The inextorable pull of the palate has me firmly in its grasp, and of it will be in Italy beyond all others places that I forever recall with the clinking of china and the scraping of silverware.

What's Hot and Salty and Fun?

Once upon a time, Erin and her friend Kara traveled to Berlin, Germany and they spent the entire weekend in a semi-popsicle state because Berlin is freezing. Not so surprisingly, Erin wore every piece of clothing she brought with her and bitterly whined until Kara suggested that she should go to the Amalfi Coast because the Amalfi Coast, unlike Berlin, it always warm and sunny.


So she went!

The Amalfi Coast was probably the worst/best trip I've been on this entire semester. The worst because I was fighting off a cold the entire weeekend and the Bus2Alps company we booked the trip through seem to think that things like sleep were unimportant (seriously. we left at 8pm and didn't get to our hostel until 2:30am, where no one fell asleep until 3:30 and then we had to be up at 7. Insane). It didn't help that I've had a paper due in every. single. class. this week, two presentations, and no computer of my own to actually do work on.

But it was the best because there was a beach and it was warm, and,7am wake up calls excluded, it was actually relaxing.

Now, for those of you who, like me, didn't know where the Amalfi Coast is, it's near Naples and Pompeii. It's kind of that whole Bay of Naples area, though there is is also part of the coast that's actually called Amalfi. It was a little confusing. That's mostly why we booked the trip through a student travel agency because we knew there was no way in hell we would be able to plan it and get around ourselves.


In addition to Kara (the one on the left) our friend Amanda was there too.


On the first day, we took a ferry over to the Island of Capri, what has to be one of the oldest holiday destinations in the world. The Roman emperors and nobles had villas on the island, and these days people like the owner of the Florentine football team escape there. Approaching the island from the sea, I could see why.

We decided to go into the Blue Grotto while we were there, and this is how we had to climb in and out of the rowboats.



The entrance into the grotto.

The grotto itself. It was this... would underwater cave be the right word? I don't think it is, but either why there was a hollow in the rock of the island, and because the sand is so white, the sunlight reflects from the bottom of the sea up into the cave, giving everything this eternal azure glow. It was one of the most bizarrely beautiful things I have ever seen.

Why doesn't Lake Erie ever look this good?

Emperor Augustus' Gardens, where we went after we had docked at the Piccola Marina.

One thing the Amalfi Coast is known for in general is it's lemons, and lemony delights like this limoncello. They grow them everywhere. Any place where they can plant a grove of lemon trees, they do. I wish there was a picture of them so I could show you. For a girl who comes from a place where growing apples is considered a great achievement, I couldn't really get over it.



Another thing the Amalfi Coast is well known for is hand made sandels. Being the shoe-fanatic that I am, I ordered a pair from this very gentleman. They are quirte fabulous. And they have the added bonus of making me look quite so obviously Anerican in Florence. Nothing screams "I'm an American!" quite like plastic old navy flip flops which are the only sandels I had for a long time.


Kara and I in the water. I look like I'm cold because I am. I love beaches and the sun, but water is not so much my thing. I think I was a cat in a past life. Shortly after this water excursion, I passed out face first on top of some rocks for a good hour. That's what three hours of sleep and a cold will do for you.



This is the view of the sun going down over the Meditearrean Sea from the rooftop of our hostel. Other than being located in the middle of no where, our hostel was awesome. It had an open air courtyard where we would eat breakfast every morning.


This is Positano, the twon we went to on the second day. That little beach way at the bottom of the photo is where we parked ourselves for the entire day.


At first I thought that these were lemons the size of my head, but they actually chuides (or that's how it sounds like its spelled) which taste kind of like meon flavoured styrofoam. But not in a bad way, though that is a terrible description. I can't think of a better way to describe it!


The town itself.


Shennanigans on the beach.


After an exhausting day of doing nothing (no really, we went to bed at 9), we woke up, checked out of the hostel, and made out way over to Pompeii. It was a painful ride over, mostly because we all got fried at the beach the day before. It took three days for my back to feel normal again.

Anyway, let me state upfrount that Pompeii is EXTREMELY MASSIVE. They don't kid when they tell you it's a city. It really is. Five hours was not enough time to see everything by any means, so we hit up the highlights. I was a little neverous to be near a volcano with Kara (when that volcano in Iceland blew, she was stuck in Dublin for ten days) but luckily I escaped un-petrified to blog about it.





Vensuvius in the background of the forum.



A temple.


A fresco in the Villa of Mysteries, a building on the outskirts of the city that the city records had no recording of. No one knew it existed, and to this day no one knew what it was for.


After kicking around Pompeii, we hoped back on the bus for our seven hour ride back to Firenze. I spent a lot of quality time with my ipod, wishing that I had aloe vera. And from there, I plunged right back into the end of semester chaos that seems universal to all schools (but I haven't inversed my days and nights yet, which is an improvement over the end of last semester). But I get a miraculous break from it all this last weekend so I can actually enjoy it.

Hey, I'm down to something like ten days left here, but though the end may be in sight, it's not over yet!

Oh, and just if you want to feel super Italian, here is what should be the Italian theme song, which was also the song that characterized our entire beachy holiday!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Z3YrHJ1sU