Snow!

There was a cold north wind blowing yesterday and the skys were grey. It was raining on the way to the gym, and last night, as I walked home from the Odeon after seeing the documentary "Bobby Fisher Against the World", it was snowing! Not news for Canadians, but big news here. The hills around Firenze were white this morning, and the parked cars had a light covering of white.  In the Centro, there was no accumulation on the ground but I think that will change.  Up north, Milano and Torino have lots of the fluffy white stuff and I bet the skiing is good in the Alps. Good thing I brought a warm hat. Feels a bit like home.

Drinks and Dinner

Zak & Ana

Once every two or three weeks, the school organizes a dinner out at a local trattoria. The evening is always great fun and is a nice relaxed way to meet other students who are not in your class.  Tuesday night we went to Ristorante “Il Pennello” which is famous for having been a local hangout for Renaissance artists and it’s just around the corner from Dante’s house.   The school is truly a United Nations of Students and on Tuesday there were people from: Canada, the US, Australia, Brazil, Poland, Costa Rica, Russia, England and Germany.

Afterwards, a group of us went for a drink.  NEVER go drinking with people half your age! 

Sultry Ana - she really is a lot of fun!

The Red Garter is a popular local hangout for American students in Firenze. They like to drink ‘cause its better than studying, and the legal drinking age here is 16 - so they can finally, legally, drink.  I was clearly the oldest person in the bar that night.  However, half way through the evening whilst Ana (a classmate from Poland) and I were dancing, two women in their mid-forties strolled through the bar, then left.  If I felt out of place in a straight bar filled with 18 year old Americans playing “Beer Pong,” I can only imagine what those cougars were after…hummm…now that I think about it…..

After two gin tonics, the urinals in the men’s washroom were more comical than sad, and I went home.  As my very good friend Geoffrey would say, I was not very “fresh” the following morning. Lesson learned: don’t mix red wine and gin!

John, Ana, & Mariana (from Rio)

The following evening I hosted my very first dinner party! There were six of us and the menu included a chicken and mushroom risotto, preceded by some antipasti and a simple caprese salad. The signature aperativo was Crodino and Aperol – best served in the late afternoon on a hot summer’s day, but Crodino is hard to find in Toronto and I wanted something unique.

Ana, Natalia, Michel, John, Marie

The guests were all students from the school, so naturally we gabbed a lot about our experiences in class. More interesting though, were people’s backgrounds, how they came to be in Firenze in January at Istituto Michelangelo, and what they were looking to do after their time here.

Ana, Natalia, and Michel

Ana was wondering if there was a better way to make a living than flying 5 days a week for Ryanair and having to deal with passengers who’ve paid €5 for their ticket yet think they own the airplane and all the flight attendants.  Natalia (Los Angeles) packed up all her belongings, rented her house and came to Firenze with two suitcases after a TV production job fell through.  With no fixed address at the moment (a bit like me) she was enjoying her photography class, the city, and wondering if Bali would be her next stop after Firenze. 

Michel

Michel (Barcelona) lamented the current state of Spain, with its high unemployment and grim prospects for the future. But he had a job he loved and travelled at every opportunity.  John (Sydney, AU) had a stable job as a pharmacist but he knew he’d get tired of dolling out drugs and was thinking the pharmaceutical industry might not be a better choice.  Marie (Montréal) was in the midst of a huge transition, having sold her business and divorced her husband. Her passion is helping women in developing countries and was wondering if she should set up her own non-profit (I respectfully counselled her against doing this.)  And then there is me, but I was just hosting and doing the cooking!

John, and Marie

Six “quasi” strangers, far from their real homes, connected by a school in a city in a country that was “home” for the moment, sharing a glass of wine and a piece of bread and enjoying each other’s company.  What could be better to do on a Wednesday night in January!

Culture Vulture

One of my prized possessions at the moment is my membership card for the Uffizi. For a mere 60 euros for the calendar year, I Amici Degli Uffizi get unlimited access to the gallery and a whole lot of other State museums in Firenze. Members also get to skip the lines, which is worth 60 euros!  I discovered one of the best times to visit the gallery is late in the afternoon - no lines for anything and the gallery is almost empty. On Thursday, I went for an hour or so, just to see some Caravaggio's I had spotted the previous week, but didn't have time to look at. They were wonderful and it was so nice not to feel pressured "to see everything" in one or two visits.  On Friday, I returned for an hour to look at the "Doni Tondo" by Michelangelo (thank you David B!), plus a bunch of Raphael's and other pictures from Fiorentini, as they are called. I looked at every painting in just 3 rooms and it was a delicious 60 minutes!

Friday night I took myself to a movie ("Shame" - very intense but excellent) and afterwards happened upon a lightshow in the courtyard of Palazzo Strozzi.  The artist digitally mapped the elegant interior of the palazzo and created a 5 minute show which highlighted the building's architecture, but also made the courtyard "move" in wonderful ways.  It was all carefully choreographed to music and it was mezmerizing!  This "show" was called "il sole sui tetti" which translates to "The sun on the roofs" and if you visit the website, you'll see the Strozzi courtyard. It also explains the laser light show I wrote about previously (see "light show" post.)

On the way home in Piazza della Repubblica, I happened upon a huge installation of contemporary urban murals - part of Fashion Week here in Firenze. Open at both ends, this luminescent black box housed 8 murals measuring 6 meters wide and 4 meters high. 

As with most things art-related, I liked some pieces more than others but it was engaging, visible, public, open and free.

The cultural extravaganza continued on Saturday.  A couple of students from school and I went to a late-afternoon piano recital by famed Canadian pianist (and resident of Umbria, Italy) Angela Hewitt at Teatro della Pergola. After 2 hours of Bach, his piano music starts to all sound the same, but Hewitt held the audience's complete attention all the way through two encores!

By Saturday night, my brain was hurting with all the high culture I was experiencing, so I turned on the TV, poured myself more than one glass of wine, and settled in for the evening to watch my new guilty pleasure "Ballando con le stelle" (Dancing with the Stars - the Italian version.)  It's worse than the American version but it was fun to skype with my friends Lori and Buzz who got to watch parts of it live from the comfort of their Toronto home.

Today - Sunday - there was NO culture: just European credit downgrades, sinking cruise ships, and a new verb tense to worry about for tomorrows class.

A Different Route

I read once that one of the best ways to keep life interesting was to change the route you take - to school, to work, to the gym. Changing the route makes you look at things differently and makes you look at different things. Today, I took a different route to my local COOP grocery store and stumbled across this magnificent Art Nouveau house.

It was slightly out-of-place given the fairly uniform architecture of Firenze, but it was appropriate for the era that the neighbourhood was developed. A wonderful discovery - just by changing the route.

Detail - and yes, that's a lemon tree.
The house also had a couple of orange trees out front,
full of fruit.

  

Light Show

The crisp black sky was cut tonight,
by two new beacons of laser light.
The first I saw as I approached,
the cloister tower of Santa Croce.
Northwest it went, a line so straight,
and disappeared without a trace.

The other beacon, just as bright,
emitted from a towering height.
A line so green,
it could been seen,
by anyone whose nightime gaze
was celestial bound - the sky's ablaze!

If you look closely, you'll see the laser light coming
from the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio
Hint: it's the thin blue line..

January 6th - Italian Style

One of the very first words I learned in Italian, after ciao, was “Befana.” I remember my friend Anna telling me back in 1982 that Italians celebrated a holiday on January 6^th and that children would put out stockings and the “Befana” would come and deliver presents: lumps of coal in olden days - gifts and candy now.  The Befana was not a witch per se, but an old, ugly woman, someone to be a bit afraid of. Today, she’s depicted on TV more like Samantha in the cartoon version of the old TV show “Bewitched” – still riding a broom and wearing a pointy hat but all sexed up with flowing blond hair and lots of leg showing.

A Local Befana

Being a very provincial young man back then, I had trouble wrapping my head around celebrating anything past January 1, and for me “Befana” became a term of endearment for Anna.  It’s still something I call her today. Now, 29 years later, I’m in Italy seeing first-hand what January 6^th is all about.

Today was the Epiphany, the 12^th day of Christmas, and Christmas Day if you’re Eastern Orthodox. It was also the final day of what seemed to be the 45 days of Natale.  It was a bit of a strange holiday: some stores were closed, lots were open, and we had school today although most people were not working and enjoying the start of a long weekend. It was also a warm and sunny 12º C.

Fra Angelico & Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Magi, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

So much of the iconography of medieval and renaissance art is Christian-based (read: religious) that you no doubt know what the epiphany is, and if you don’t, I’ll remind you: think Three Wise Men; think Adoration of the Magi; think Gold, Frankincense, & Myrth.

Bartolome Murillo, Adoraton of the Magi.
I like this representation better - shows a bit of colour on the wise men.

The Italian word for parade is “parata” and I love a good parata as much as gli italiani. So, no one was disappointed with today’s parata through the streets of Firenze from Palazzo Pitti to Piazza del Duomo to celebrate the Epifany.  I Fiorentini have never let go of the past, and being here I fully understand why.  The Palazzo Vecchio (old city hall) is 700 years old. The Battistero is 1,000 years old – still here and still in use. The Uffizi dates back to 1560. And I could go on.  I Fiorentini live in their history every day and at times it feels a bit surreal. But they never miss an occasion to honour their history and today was no exception.

The Parade at Piazza della Signoria

Against the sun-splashed façade of the Duomo and amid a sea of dull grey and black winter coats, the parata arrived in full colour: flags and banners with ancient coats of arms and symbols from important guilds and trades that built the city. The Magi appeared about halfway through the procession each atop a horse. 

 

 

Music was provided by several drum corps, and the period costumes looked very real.  The parata entered the Piazza del Duomo after the children’s choir finished singing Christmas carols and before everyone went into the Duomo for Mass. They were unabashedly celebrating the Epifany and the glory of the Florentine Republic of long ago.  It was a wonderful combination for a parade in a glorious city.

In front of the Duomo, January 6, 2012