Odore—smell. This is very important
for giving you a glimpse of my life outside of school. I think that all
of one’s senses are heightened when living in another country. I focus on
things I’m seeing and hearing that I wouldn’t normally if I was more comfortable
in my surroundings. Smell however is the sense I am aware of most often
outside of school. Basically, one of two smells wakes me up every
day. Good day, baking brioches and yummy pastries float up to my bedroom
from the restaurant on the ground level of my apartment. Bad day,
horse/cow/pig shit kicks me awake. Lots of fields and crops around my
town so the smell could come from any direction.
| mmm, laundry |
I leave
for school and ride through a myriad of smells. Well, first I ride through
panic, my own, in which I am not aware of any smells. I concentrate on
just not getting hit by cars passing on a one-way street. Then, I ride by
an apartment that smells like a girls' dorm laundry room. That smell of
different, sweet detergents all being piped out of a window or exhaust pipe
somewhere. Then comes the shit smell for a while until my sight
overpowers the smell and I enjoy sunrise above corn fields and behind what I
think of as the “African Tree.” It just looks like it should be on a
safari and some elephants, lions, or giraffes should be walking around it,
especially with the sun behind it.
| African Tree |
| possible skunk home... |
I pass
the African Tree and am hit with skunk. I picture a family of skunks
living in a ditch somewhere spraying the road each night, but don’t really know
why it eternally smells like skunk, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I
will never be venturing out that way at night.
After
this I try not to hit any 6-inch slugs crossing the path, so my sight takes
over again. And speaking of seeing, I have seen an unusually high
number of missing fingers. People in Italy tend to lose fingers at an
alarming rate. In one month I have seen 3 hands with multiple or partial
fingers gone! I have seen 3 people wandering around with huge casts on
their hands. Usually one finger is bandaged to the size of a small
potato and the hand is bound down to the wrist.
Back to
the ride, on my way home, the smells are reversed. The scary part starts
earlier though. There is a blind crosswalk that terrifies me every
time. In the picture, on the right, there is a shrine to Madonna. I
have no proof, but I think it must be to all the people killed at that
intersection… (There is also a similar shrine in the middle of the
cornfields I run through. Perhaps a tribute to people who were run over
by tractors or died of fertilizer inhalation.)
| blind intersection (little shrine on the right) |
Friendler--
not Italian or English but a hybrid of two English words-- friendly,
runner. My girls running club came up with it. They named us the
friendler cheetahs. These girls are adorable and it was too cute not to
share.
Bergamo-a
city in Italy that is the sister city to, yes, you guessed it, Greenville,
SC. Last Saturday Carrie and I ventured over the very beautiful,
older sister. Getting there was quite a feat however. We live in a
little town outside of Milan and in an even smaller town just south of us,
there is a train station that has a train that goes to Bergamo via Milan.
We walked the 20 minutes to the station in the humid morning heat. When
we got there however, we discovered that you cannot buy tickets at this
station. There were no open ticket windows or machines that sold
tickets. The only way to buy them is to buy them online then print them
on your own computer. In hindsight, we realize that it was a silly
assumption to think that you could actually buy tickets at the train
station. I mean, why buy a ticket when you could sneak a ride for free or
take the bus, followed by the tram, then the metro to get to another station
that sells tickets?
 |
| View from train station |
| citta alta |
But in
any case, we made it. We were at lunch
at a sidewalk café by 1:30. After a
quick panino we went to the citta alta (high city, the old part). We took the funicular up to the top. The area outside the exit looks very similar
to Montmarte in Paris. Cafes, hotels,
European touristy. We wandered around the city for a couple of hours, hiking up
and down the hills. We did happen to
stumble (hard not to do) upon the Piazza Duomo which was very airy, cafes and
old buildings around a huge square. We
decided to save the museum and lookout tower for our next visit, but we did
look at the duomo, which happened to be closed except for a chapel. The chapel was quite impressive in a Czech
sort of way (over the top?). I only say
that because I felt like I was in a chapel in Prague. It was not particularly religious. Lady Justice painted on the ceiling, king on
a horse sculpture. (Maybe I missed the
Lady Justice part in the Bible.)
| Piazza Duomo |
| Bell tower |
| part of the astrology line |
| chapel |
Window to the chapel
After
leaving the chapel, we wandered around and looked out over the city. From
the old city you can see the Alps in the distance. It was hazy but I bet
on a clear day you can see forever! There is a wall now partially covered
in grass, which makes me think that the high part used to be the main city and was
fortified. Again, I was reminded of Prague. After strolling around
for 2 hours and having delicious gelatto (raspberry and mango, yum!) in a
darling little square, we headed back down to the citta bassa (lower, newer
city).
view while eating gelatin
fortified wall
vineyard in citta alta
tour group of the wall
panoramic from the old city
In the
new city we strolled down a street and stumbled upon a jazz concert in a
courtyard. The jazz club of Bergamo was playing. They had a six-piece
band plus a singer. She was a throaty singer who sang a version of
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" which was fun and funny at the same
time. I thought about all of the Nouvelle Star episodes I watched in
France where the singers would sing American songs with a French accent making
it a bit difficult to decide if it was the singer or the botched lyrics that
made the performance bad. This woman was not bad, but it was clear she
was singing sounds since she left out important parts of words. I was
also struck that all sound guys look the same. This man was young, had a
long ponytail and wore a purple tee shirt and cut off jean shorts. Some
things never change. We left and ended up stumbling upon great little
shopping area so delayed our trip home by an hour to check out Zara Home and a
kitchen supply outlet. I am now the proud owner of some nice new red
potholders and a noodle grabber! (How could I have moved to Italy without
one?!)
We
finally got a train back to Milan. Two
hours later we were arriving at our doorstop to be greeted by a notte Bianca (nuit blanche)-- music,
markets, and performances around the town of Opera. They keep going until midnight. (White night in Europe means a sleepless
night.) Luckily, I had Season 1 of The
Wire and with my headphones in, I could only feel the bass, not hear it as
I drifted off to a contented sleep, awoken the next morning by the smell of
brioche.
