Favorites di Firenze

My favorite view of the Duomo.


My favorite building to pass in afternoon light.



My favorite graffitti I passed every day.



Napolitano style pizza at Pizzauolo and an excellent bottle of red wine. My favorite lunch.



Twilight view from my window. My favorite sunset.

Ciao-intz 1. hello! hi! 2. bye! so long!

As the two month mark of my return to America approaches I feel as if I am almost ready to write the conclusion to my Storia Italiana. I guess the reason it’s been so hard is that I don’t want to write a conclusion. I want to leave it as a dreamy, perfect, extremely difficult but momentous time of my life filled with crowded cobblestone streets, motorini, wine on church steps, and Renaissance architecture.

I left Firenze at 5:30 a.m., May 19th, on a train headed for Rome, my two giant suitcases packed to bursting, my roommate by my side, silently sipping my last caffè latte packed for me by Luciana. I had slept only a few hours that night, getting in my goodbyes to friends and my host family. Luciana pulled out tequila after dinner as a goodbye treat to me, she said it was given to her by a visiting Mexican professor she had hosted who used to drink it and say “tequila makes you happy!” She tried to make me as happy as possible before leaving. Even with the tequila warming my stomach and blurring my vision, and the inevitable tristezza that awaited me at the end of the night with that train ticket and flight information I had tucked away in my carryon bag, the only emotion I could muster was disbelief.

Tomorrow? I would leave? Not hear the bells of the duomo all morning, noon, and night? Not enjoy a mid-morning cappuccino at the local Tabacchi-Bar served to me by Lorenzo or Stefano? Not see my Italian friends the next weekend, running into them at any one of our usual hangouts? Not be served a steaming hot three course Italian meal at precisely 8 p.m. the next evening? This was my life, how could all of that just disappear?

But I learned quickly it would be me that was disappearing. I watched the tears build in the eyes of my friends as I hugged and kissed them on both cheeks goodbye. I watched Luciana turn abashedly away from me and cut off her usual incessant chatter after making me promise to write. But for me the tears didn’t come, the belief never came. It was I who was variable, who had grown dependent on the consistency of this city, these people: static in the ever more futuristic modern world. But I who would leave, my return uncertain.

The Italians have different ways of saying “goodbye,” there is the informal “ciao” or “bye,” the more formal “Arrivederci,” “goodbye,” and then there is “Addio,” “goodbye forever (farewell, perhaps?)” As I said my goodbyes I couldn’t help but wonder which would be most appropriate, my rational side leaning towards the latter, but never admitting that. “I’ll be back soon! Come visit in Seattle! Keep in touch!” "Ciao-ciao!"

Even as the train pulled out of Stazione Santa Maria Novella and I watched my city recede on the skyline my throat did not choke, my eyes did not fill with salty tears, in my mind I sent my salutations to the red rooftops as they blurred past my window: “Ciao Firenze. A dopo.”


Now, two months later and still finding myself longing for my city, my lifestyle, the stability I had found in the unfamiliar, I wonder about that return. As time passes however, and my once reality slips farther into my memory, the impossibility of returning seems to grow. If I go back it will be to stay, at least for a while, Firenze was not my tourist stop, I could never just go walk across the Ponte Vecchio and visit the David and call it a vacation. Florence was for living, for eating, drinking, filling the streets at night, dodging tourists and high prices, meeting locals with a passion for their own history and a working knowledge of The Divine Comedy, and uncovering a culture as rich and unexpected as it is classic and romantic.

Italy made me both discover and accept that I don't know what my future holds, but that what's most important is where I've been and who I've become; and forever Italia and Firenze will have been a part of that winding road that led me to where I am, no matter where that may be.

The last trip

Taormina, the surreal view from the amphitheater.

The view from the balcony of my new Sicilian friend.

The walls of Siracusa.

Blue Sky behind the grecian temple.

Greek amphitheater.

The inside of an arab-inspired Cathedral.

The streets of Palermo.

Giant swordfish at the market.

Houses in a little town above Palermo

View from the hotel in Palermo.

Beach when the sun finally decided to show.

Dal Nord al Sud

Sicily is the last trip of the year, a landmark in the end of the Smith College Junior Year Abroad program. It’s the trip that they take the group picture on, to show how much we’ve changed, grown, become italianizzata. I never put my camera down while we were in Sicilia, the trip took us from Catania to Palermo in a circuitous route around the island, stopping in major cities, beaches, and Grecian temples and ruins. By the time we returned I had an extra 600+ photos to upload onto my already full hard drive, full of my Italian memories.

To the rest of Italy Sicilia is the south which, much like the south of our country, represents a lot of the country’s problems: poverty, racism, and lack of industry, but also the birthplace of the mafia, political corruption, and never truly feeling a part of the united Italy of the nineteenth century. But just ask any Italian and they’ll tell you how much nicer the southerners are, how welcoming they are, willing to talk to foreigners, share food, give directions, or as we found out, teach us curse words in dialect.

Sicily has been controlled by everyone from the Austrians to the Arabs to the Greeks and their culture shows it. The cuisine is full not only of amazing sea food from the Mediterranean but also a mish-mash of Italian cuisine mixed with rice from the north, and yogurts and spices from the East. We visited temples and Grecian ruins that are some of the oldest still in existence, nestled among hilltops far above even modern day Sicilian civilization, that keep them safe from harm. The churches that are so common in every Italian community here are completely different. Many of the writing on the inside is done in Arabic and the architecture takes from both Grecian temples and Muslim mosques.

The people are just as diverse, from tall and blond to typical dark, short, and greasy looking Mafiosi. We went through a food market one day in Palermo that would never be found in Florence, the feet long “pisci spada” (swordfish) were displayed with heads intact inches from your face, piles of fruits and vegetables I had never seen before were being sold for cents per kilo, and one stand even had several goat carcasses hanging around waiting to be bought.

During our daytrip to the baroque art filled town of Noto, we sat on a bench to eat our granita and brioche when an older woman started to talk to us, by the end of the conversation she had invited us to show us her house, where she then invited us and anyone we knew to stay if we ever needed a place. After only about thirty minutes with this woman we knew her entire life story, where each one of her family members were and had a reason to come back to Sicily. After this confirmation of the Sicilian hospitality we decided to ask our waiter at the hotel in Palermo to teach us a few words in Sicilian dialect, and he immediately leaned in close, “what words do you want to know? The bad ones?” Our table of ten giggling college age American girls responded “Si!” he taught us a smattering, as well as how the Sicilians refer to each other as “Cusci” a form of the word for cousin “cugino.” From then on whenever we entered the dining room we greeted our new “cusci,” and he would test us on how our “parolacce” (curse words) were coming along.

The name “Sicilia” supposedly means the island of the sun, but we were unlucky enough to only have two days of sunny weather. Many of our bus rides were spent dozing and hoping that we were driving away from the rain, but strangely enough every time we ended up somewhere the rain let up enough to enjoy our visit, and even the cloudy beach days were moments we got to spend swimming in the Mediterranean. Our second to last day we finally reached another archeological park, after close to an hour of driving through torrential downpours that crushed every hope we had of having our tropical Sicilian vacation. As we made our way to that millionth Grecian temple we looked up to see blue sky contrasting its white-beige stone columns. From then on the “sole siciliano” (sicilian sun) stuck by us, following us through our lunch that day and staying with us on the beach, and again through the last day on a chic beach in Palermo where we sipped granita, ate arancino a type of ragu filled rice ball, and dipped into the cool-blue water of the Mediterranean when the Sicilian sun beat down too hard.

Leaving the Villa

I scanned the line of buses that had just arrived at the stop through my too-big designer rip off sunglasses that let me pass for Italian when I wear them. 14C pulled up, probably late although in nine months of taking it I never bothered to check the schedule, and I pushed through the tiny doors en masse. I rode the 14C once a week, every Thursday afternoon, but every time it was hard, my stomach got nervous though I tried to keep my stoic “I don’t want anyone to bother me or think I’m foreign,” bus face.

The nervousness continued as I walked up that hill from the bus stop to Villa Lorenzi, not because it was steep but because of what awaited me there. Today would be especially hard, and because it was my last visit it made me remember my first. I had only been in Italy for a month and had been assigned to a volunteering job here, an after school-type program for kids who come from troubled families. That first day I walked in, pretending to be confident, I felt so out of place, my Italian was still broken at times and I learned that understanding a professor’s lecture in perfect academic Italian and understanding a group of ten adolescent Florentine boys with thick accents were two very different things.

One boy immediately stuck by me, the smallest—Ivan, wanting to sit by me at lunch and asking me if I had a boyfriend before trying to sneak in some kisses on my cheek, he seemed crushed when I told him ten years was a little too much of an age difference for me. I couldn’t say a word out loud in front of everyone I tried hard to concentrate on the conversations spinning around me but only got frustrated at the few sporadic words I would catch. “Why weren’t the other adults helping me?” I thought, “can’t they see that I’m completely lost here?” I had to remind myself painfully that this is what I’d been wanting this whole time, to get out of the tourist center of Florence, to have people treat me like I did understand Italian, not special because I’m American. I stayed silent at lunch and every time one of the boys would venture out to ask me a question I could only smile back—I didn’t understand a thing.

Not being able to use my words, I got the respect from the rest of the boys on the soccer field, they aren’t used to seeing girls who know how to play a sport and when I was able to steal the ball from Alessio, the token show-off and ball hog, and then make a goal, they were in shock, “Che Forza Margherita!” I helped Alessio that day with his English and math during study time and was immediately struck with the drawbacks of the Italian school system, Alessio didn’t understand a word of English when I said them in my American accent, but when I spoke them like he did, thickly covered in Italian pronunciation, he knew it all.
As I left that day I could count the number of words I had spoken all afternoon on one hand, had had my grammar corrected by a thirteen year old when I did speak, and found out I was a terrible English tutor. Nontheless on the bus ride back into town I couldn’t help but feel elationi at having made it through five hours of a completely foreign experience, and the names and faces of the boys filed through my head: Alessio, Mohammed, Daniele, Michele, Peter, Marco, and Ivan. I already knew somehow that I would get attached, even if I could never understand a word they said, and every week felt like a battle I had to fight wholeheartedly just to make it back to the bus.

Today I walk into lunch and the boys say “Ciao,” though they all pretend that they don’t care to see me, except Ivan who says “Margaret! Vieni qui! Come stai?” Margaret! Come here, how have you been?, then continues to ask excitedly how my mother is, how my boyfriend is, and how school is going. I understand now the conversations at lunchtime, I have gotten used to the Florentine accent and even pick it up by accident at times, breathing in my c’s as if they are h’s. A few weeks ago I turned and smacked Mohammed when I heard him cursing and Andrea, one of my colleagues, laughed at us. “Capisci molto più adesso.” You understand a lot more now.

At playtime out at the campino, I was playing a soccer game with Mohammed and Alessio that I didn’t understand the rules to, just going where they told me to. I glanced at my watch and saw that it said six, time to catch the 14C for the last time. Andrea noticed me idle away from the game, and leave the campino only to stand watching the boys as they played. “È difficile di andare via, non?” It’s hard to leave, huh? He called Alessio over to say goodbye to me, he yelled “Ciao!” at me, barely glancing my direction before sprinting back to his game. Andrea assured me that that’s just how they say goodbye, but I already knew that, I don’t like goodbyes either. I walked down that big hill from Villa Lorenzi and hid the tears in my eyes behind my too-big fake sunglasses, on my way to catch the 14C.

Tempo Italiano

Italians run late, they just do. My entire nine months here I have been trying to figure out if this is due simply to a more relaxed nature, less living by appointments and palm pilots and rigid schedules than the American lifestyle I am used to, or in fact if their perception of time is just skewed. Lately I have been more prone to answer with the latter, although I may be on the verge of discovering a method to this seeming neglect for tempo.

Take school for example, at the University of Florence classes are run on what was explained to me as the “University quarter-hour schedule,” meaning if your class is supposed to be from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. this really means you have fifteen minutes of leeway on either end of the class. The Professor will arrive anywhere up to fifteen minutes late and will dismiss class anytime within the last fifteen minutes. This scheduled tardiness exists within the realm of school, but in other realms it is less regimented, waiters may take half an hour to bring you your check, a friend might show up twenty minutes late to an appointment without a word of excuse, and buses, trains and planes have no real use for such banal things as schedules.

It is not only quarters of hours here and there that Italians dismiss as unimportant but this lacksadaisacal nature bleeds even into months and years. Their entire University system, for example, is based on modules of semesters that make up “three years” of study. You take approximately seven classes a year, and then will have a month, sometimes even two, to “study” before you take your exams between modules. It doesn’t take too much imagination to understand what happens when a college student is given two months off of school to follow a self-regimented study plan, and the result is that hardly anyone passes their first time around, but then are able to continue taking the exam during every exam period during their time at University, which somehow seems to stretch mysteriously from three years to five, seven, and sometimes more.

The Italian vocabulary is even telling of this strange vortex of time. Bambini, or as we would say, babies, are considered anywhere from newborn children to teenagers, while ragazzi, or children, are mostly college age students or anyone under thirty. Looking at the maturation process of Italian culture these terms seem intuitive, when people live at home through their college years, don’t get married until their mid thirties, and hardly ever have children anymore, not only are they referred to by a younger sounding word, they just are younger. As an American I came to Italy as a twenty year old, almost self-sufficient, college student, I live in my own apartment, hold down a job, and am considered an adult in most arenas of life. The moment I arrived in Italy I was immediately struck by the tendency for baristas or shopkeepers to refer to me as a bambina, “Who are they kidding?” I would think, offended to not be referred to formally as an adult. But as the time has passed I have slowly began to internalize the Italian culture and clock, realizing that their perceptions of me may not be so wrong, they just reflect a different set of priorities.

Earlier in the year we had an appointment with the Police Chief to get fingerprinted and registered as foreigners living in Italy for our visas. We arrived to the appointment over a half hour late and were then told to wait another fifteen minutes for the Chief to be ready for us. On the other hand, I went to my second Fiorentina soccer game today and left my house at noon to make it to the three o’clock match hours early with the rest of the Florentine population in order to ensure our good seats. Most people don’t marry until much later in life, but the common term to use instead of boyfriend or girlfriend to refer to your significant other is fidanzato, or fiancée. Apparently too Italians love, like soccer, is serious enough to speed up time for. Certain things are worthy of their time, others aren’t. Time to them is a precious thing, not to be wasted sitting in line at the police station, but to be spent cheering your home team on to victory during their team warm-ups, or over a five hour Sunday lunch with your family and “fiancée” that you met two weeks ago.

The Italian retardation of time as it applies not only to everyday living but to the entire life process may make me a bambina for a while longer, but it also seems to draw out adulthood, and old age into something that is lasting, something to look forward to as a phase of life instead of the end of all. Just walk into any café in Florence and count the number of people over the age of seventy who aren’t locked away in nursing homes or shunned out of society, but still actively discussing politics with their waiter, taking afternoon walks around the city and enjoying an evening glass of wine and aperitif before heading home for a 9 p.m. dinner.

It may be nice to get a coffee in under five minutes and have an appointment with a teacher that actually shows up on time when I make it back to America, but for now I’ll enjoy my newfound twenty-one year old infancy, and hope the rest can last just as long.

Fotografie di Sardegna

Home Sweet Home, Bungalow #11.


Stumbling upon a beach on our way to the grocery store.


The Sardegnian sun.


Racing to the sunset.


Scaling rocks in search of a less windy spot.


Beautiful beachy evening.