I've been meaning to write this post for a week now, but I've been rather tied up studying. I had two finals this week. My Italian exam was yesterday, and it was painful on so many levels. First of all, it was incredibly long. The written section took almost three hours to complete and was as thick as a book. This was followed by an oral section, for which my Italian was hilariously inadequate. I sat across an enormous oak table from two native speakers, one of whom I'd never even seen before, and tried desperately to keep up with my end of the conversation. It was a struggle. I'd start a phrase, only to realize halfway through that I didn't know a key verb conjugation or vocabulary word to complete the statement. I'm not too concerned though, as the final was only meant to be a placement test for further studies in Italian. Unfortunately, I think my class schedule is already to full to consider it.
My microeconomics final was this morning, and so I am currently free, free as a bird, until the first full semester starts on Monday. Actually, that's a lie. I'm hardly free at all. This is Orientation Weekend and there are lectures and seminars crammed into practically every waking moment. At least there are no exams or problem sets looming in my immediate future.
In any case, while this weekend will be spent sitting through endless lectures, last weekend I had a bit of an adventure. A group of us decided to get the heck out of Bologna and go to Ravenna. Why Ravenna? Why not? It was kind of a random choice of weekend destination, but I heard it had some very old stuff worth seeing, so off we went.
It was an early train, so our first mission upon arrival had nothing to do with all the historic sights. It was a matter of survival. We needed coffee, and that we found along with an unexpected surprise: the nicest man in Italy! In my limited experience, most bar workers here are pretty gruff. They do not stop to exchange pleasantries, smile, or even acknowledge you exist outside of a hand offering payment. This man, by comparison, was chock full of delight. He asked where we were from, told us where to go, and all-in-all we had a lovely chat. Alas, the streets beckoned and we abandoned the cafe.
This was a decision we almost immediately regretted. The day had begun sunny and warm. I had regretted wearing long pants.The day was now cloudy and cold. I regretted wearing short sleeves. This was a recurring theme throughout the day. The weather was always hot or cold, but never comfortable. Valiant tourists, we forged ahead. I got some kitschy photos of me fake-petting a stone lion and posing in front of medieval masonry. We wandered aimlessly, hoping to find Dante's tomb. When the aimless wandering didn't work, we asked a local for directions, which we received in Italian and kind of, sort of understood. The closer one gets to the tomb, the harder it is to find. It's located adjacent to a piazza with a large church. For a moment we thought perhaps he was buried inside, so in we went. While Dante wasn't there, it was still a worthy visit. The walls were lined with funeral monuments to people who died up to 700 years ago. I really liked one with the word PETERE engraved on it. I'm thinking of copying it for my own tombstone.
Anyways, there was a staircase beneath the altar area of this church. At first I assumed it led to a crypt, but further inspection proved me wrong. The stairs didn't really lead anywhere, they just passed in front of a window in a brick wall. For fifty cents, you could turn a light on and illuminate what was behind the wall. At first glance, it looked like a perfectly ordinary room in a medieval brick structure. The ceiling was low and supported by large brick pillars. The floor was more impressive, as there were patches of ancient tile work scattered here and there. This was difficult to get a good glimpse of as it was covered by a pond. The room was really a pool with several feet of water and at least a dozen goldfish swimming about.
As neat as the fish were, they were not enough to distract us from finding Dante's tomb. Having realized he was not buried inside, we searched the perimeter and quickly found it. It's not unimpressive, but considering the grand scale of most things in Italy, I could have been more impressed.
The next item on our list was the Basilica, as recommended by the nicest man in Italy. What the nicest man in Italy failed to tell us was how expensive the entrance fee was. No thanks, we said, we have the internet. We hit the gift shop instead. The postcards are beautiful.
We whiled away the rest of the day visiting churches and World Heritage sites, sitting in the park, eating pasta and perusing shop stalls. It was such a joy to get out of Bologna for a little while and enjoy a change of scene. I was almost sad to leave, but we had to hurry back to Bologna that night. There was a jazz festival in Bologna that weekend, and I had a Ray Charles tribute concert to get to. The concert would have been fun anywhere, but it was more than a little surreal to attend in a thousand-year-old piazza.
No comments:
Post a Comment