Santorini: A Bust at the Beach

Word of advice to those looking to visit Santorini: never go in February-unless, of course, you like relaxing vacations where you do literally nothing all day (and nothing in this sense does not include lying on the beach).

After two days exploring the ancient ruins of Athens and enjoying enough feta cheese to keep me satisfied for the next few weeks, I looked forward to the four days I would be spending on the beautiful Grecian island of Santorini. Santorini is located on the southeast of the mainland in the Aegean Sea and is one of the most possible destinations for tourists visiting the Greece. Since it was my spring break, I was excited by the opportunity to be someplace warm and to be able to walk along the red and black beaches, listen to the waves crashing on the sand, and mingle with other tourists who were eager to do the same.

Spring Break Updates

I apologize for the lack of posts the last couple of days; I anticipated having a little more free time for relaxation and doing nothing while on this spring break, but it has been an intense, activity packed week.

Tomorrow is my final day of my 10-day, 3 country adventure, so I will be posting updates, if possible, from the airport tomorrow and once I get settled back in Florence. Look out for posts about my three two days in Santorini, my exhaustive, but beautiful, two days in Paris, and my final excursions in Barcelona. I hope to have all these posts up, including pictures, within the next week. Until then, I guess you will be left in suspense!

Sampling the Grecian Cuisine

In ancient Greece, it seems the people had a god for everything. A god of war; a god of love; a god of harvest; and god of music. One of the most notable figures was Dionysus. According to classical mythology, Dionysus was worshipped as the god of wine, parties, and madness. Along with the Goddess of the harvest, Demeter, Dionysus is a symbol of Greek gastronomic culture.

Knowing that I only had a few days in Greece, I looked forward to the opportunity to sample the Mediterranean diet that Dionysus celebrated. Unfortunately, my understanding of the Greek cuisine is based around baklava, feta cheese, hummus, and spinach pies. Although all four of those things are satisfying, I knew that there was more to the cuisine than my American conceptions. With its location in the Mediterranean, I expected many similarities between its food and that of Italy, but I was surprised to find that the similarities were much fewer than I anticipated.

My Big Fat (Greek) Vacation

There are some things that everyone commonly associates with the Greeks: feta cheese, Ouzu, opa!, and big, fat, obnoxious weddings. I admit that these were among the few things I knew about the Greek culture. With my limited knowledge of the country based on stereotypes and news reports about its once faltering economy, I was excited to spend part of my spring break exploring the country that brought us Plato and Socrates and some of the most epic landmarks in world.

Friday afternoon I arrived in the Greek capital of Athens to begin the first of only three days in the city. Unfortunately, the group of us on the trip ran into an immediate problem as the buses were on strike. Only there a few minutes and already I recognized a similarity between Greece workers and their Mediterranean peers in Italy. With no other options but an expensive cab ride or the metro, the five of us lugged our luggage to the train and spent nearly an hour commuting to our hotel. By the time we arrived there it was already 4:00 local time, and thus we were starving. This only meant one thing: time to eat. The perfect cure: Greek salads with local olive oil, plump tomatoes, crispy cucumbers, and, of course, feta cheese.

After our “lunch,” it was already 6:00 o’clock in the evening. We decided to spend the evening browsing around the local shops and eyeing all the beautiful silver jewelry. When the rain decided to come down, we waited out the thunder and lightning in a warm bar/cafe for an evening nightcap.

La Bella Lingua

In his essay, “In Defense of European Languages,” Carnegie Mellon professor Stephen Brockmann describes Italy and its language as “beautiful, fun and sexy.” Though as an Italian-American I am certainly biased, I believe that professor Brockmann is absolutely correct in his assessment. With such eloquence and poetics, the Italian language is one of the most romantic to speak and hear.

Having studied Italian for three years in high school and one year intensively at Georgetown, I was very anxious to come to Florence to finally practice my language skills. Yet, even with four years of study under my belt, I felt a sense of unease flying off to a country that required me to speak a different language. Considering I had never spoken the language outside of the classroom, I had no idea what to expect when I arrived in Florence.

Before my plane took off from the airport in the United States, I got a little taste of what was to come during my four months abroad. As I waited to board my flight, dozens of passengers surrounded me conversing in Italian. There were times when my ears perked up to certain words and phrases that I understood, but the majority of the time I simply sat in awe admiring how wonderful the words sounded as they rolled off the Italians’ tongues.

To me, the beauty and romanticism of the Italian language can make even the simplest words and ideas sound exciting. This, however, can cause problems with someone like me who does not speak the language fluently. In my attempts to sound sophisticated and also grammatically correct, it is very easy to mispronounce a syllable or entire word and thus change the entire meaning of what was intended.

To read more, check out the original post for Georgetown’s weekly magazine The Guide.

 

An Exhausting Week

This past week has been the ultimate whirlwind. Last weekend, the Villa program traveled to Rome, and in between 11:00 Friday morning and 6:00 Sunday evening, I saw perhaps everything there is to see in the city of Eternal Light. Although the trip allowed me to see so much, it was not exactly well planned. After such an exhausting weekend, there was little time to take a break and relax because Hell Week had arrived. Tuesday: Italian test; Wednesday: Italian composition and Art History midterm; and Thursday, Government midterm. Because of my inability to study during the weekend, this week consisted of lots of late nights and little sleep.

Considering the overwhelming number of things on my to-do list, my blogging this week has been reduced. Fortunately, this week is Spring Break, and with my free time in airports, I hope to write about my past and ongoing adventures. In the coming days, expect updates about the beauty, and challenges, of the Italian language, Catholicism and patronage of the arts, Rome in detail and in pictures, and updates about my travels during spring break.

La Città e San Valentino

I have always hated Valentine’s Day. There is just something about the constant flux of commercials advertising Hallmark cards and diamond jewelry that is not exactly enthralling when you know that you will receive neither on February 14th. Adding to …

Le Donne Italiane e Berlusconi

Although Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi may have a lot of women sharing his bed, le donne italiane are not his biggest fans.

In recent weeks, Berlusconi has garnered significant worldwide attention for his involvement with a eighteen year old dancer named Ruby. Caught in the act once again, the prime minister’s relationship with the woman is yet another misstep in his growing list of controversy.  Although his political leadership and character certainly garners attention, his arrogant and derogatory opinions about women have amassed equal, if not more, worldwide scrutiny.

In 2009, for example, Berlusconi suggested that the increasing incidents of rape in Italy were occurring ” because our women are so beautiful.” Then, in an interview earlier last year, he said that women need not worry about work so long as they choose the right partner. According to him, women should seek out men like himself because “I’m loaded.”  In his opinion, marrying rich is the key to a woman’s key to happiness. In light of such comments, it is no wonder then why more and more Italian women are turning their backs towards a prime minister that once garnered a high percentage of female support.

Fed up his slanderous behavior and demeaning attitude, this past weekend Italian women took to the streets to protest against the national prime minister. All throughout Italy, including Rome and Florence, women united in protests against Berlusconi’s inappropriate behavior and leadership. As a symbol of their disapproval about Italy’s demeaning culture against women, many of the weekend’s protestors wore white scarves.

Although I signed a contract with Georgetown saying that I would not participate in any strikes while abroad, this was definitely a cause I supported. While I did not actually participate, I demonstrated my support by wearing a white scarf throughout the weekend. My five weeks in Italy have taught me many things so far, but perhaps one of the most significant is how valuable and strong Italian women truly are in the culture. While the stereotype may portray the typical Italian woman as a housewife, many of the country’s women carry on the responsibilities of the home while also working full-time. What makes this even more striking is the fact that a recent study estimated that approximately 90% of adult males, often called mamma’s boys or mammonis, live with their parents, and many of this men are without jobs or a diploma. So while the women are off at work or cooking or cleaning, the men are off doing nothing.

Evidenced by this and Berlusconi’s own comments, the glass ceiling for Italian women certainly has a long way to go before it is shattered. Yet, perhaps this weekend’s protests will bring some much needed attention to the female voice and provoke some type of change.

Please enjoy the links to the articles included in this post. Also, click here to see some pictures from this weekend’s demonstration in Florence.

Word of the Week

This week in my Italian class, we began a new capitolo, chapter, titled Tanti sogni nel cassetto! This translates to many dreams in the drawer. As part of the chapter, I and the three other students in the class will be reviewing the future tense and learning new terminology to discuss our dreams, goals, and plans for the future. Included amongst the list of vocabulary words is this week’s word, or words:

Fare castelli in aria

Which translates to:

To build castles in the sky

I could have selected a number of other words from the chapter associated with dreams and the future, but this phrase particularly struck me. When I read it aloud, the words simply rolled off my tongue, sounding elegant and refined.  I love the imagery and poetry associated with the four words and the language in general.  As reflected in the title of my new chapter and this week’s words, the Italian is a language of poetics and vibrancy, and the more words and phrases I learn, the more I sound more like a local.

I also selected this week’s phrase because it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes: “Some people built castles in the air. She constructed hers from mashed potatoes, which kept down the demolition costs.” I like to think that this quote embodies my experience living abroad in Florence. Although I had the opportunity to live in a Florentine villa, which would be like living in Italian castle, I chose instead to stay with a local host family, my home of mashed potatoes. The house may not have the high ceilings, stacks of library books, or terraces like the Villa, but considering with its comfort and inspiration,  I have no regrets spending my four months watching Italian soap operas and learning how to cook from a Italian grandmother.

My Foray into (Genuine) Italian Cooking

As I wrote a few weeks ago, the kitchen is an Italian woman’s domain, thereby it requires a lot of courage to invade such space. Taking into account how much I love to cook, I anticipated dividing my time between studying academics at the Villa and learning the secrets of how to cook in the kitchen like a true Italian woman. In the time that I have been here, however, I have not prepared anything in the kitchen other than my breakfast bowl of cereal. So after a few weeks in Florence, Emily and I decided that it was time we took to the kitchen.

On a typical weekend all students studying in the Villa program are on their own for Saturday meals and for Sunday lunch. Wishing to avoid another restaurant bill and anxious to give Flavia a break from cooking, Emily and I concocted a plan to shop and prepare dinner for our host mother. We began our mission with a trip to Il Mercato Centrale in central Florence. With a large assortment of vendors selling nearly every Italian pantry item one might possibly need, the indoor marketplace is a gastronomic heaven. Meat vendors touting prosciutto and tripe, hand-made pastas with fresh sauces, seasonal fruits and vegetables, a wide selection of dried fruits and nuts: you name it and the market has it. I could have spent hours browsing through the stalls because nearly everything I saw (excluding the tripe and other indistinguishable meats) was something that I wanted to buy in order to prepare a grand Italian feast. Fortunately for my wallet, Emily and I had a list of ingredients in mind, which restrained me from going wild.