This past week our whole program travelled around northern Italy. We stayed in Ferrara and visited a bunch of other places. The key intellectual words of the trip seemed to be "identity" and "rhetoric"... relating to space. I actually had a ton of fun disciphering the intentions of the artists and architects. When you have Dr. Hansen as a tour guide, anything can become interesting. She taught us to say, "My, that looks rather Palladian don't you think?" and to learn and think... learn how to read a space and analyze what it's focus is. The mannerist movement of art has caught my interest. The way the artists begin with classical ideas, as the Renaissance artisits do, and then turn the ideas on their heads, is just really cool. I actually laughed out loud at some of the things in Palazzo Te, which is sometimes the point. Intellectual laughing. I like it.
NEWS FLASH: The leaning tower of Pisa is
not the only leaning tower in Italy/the world. In fact, it's pretty lame compared to the ridiculous leaning of two of Bologna's towers. Although Pisa's is prettier, I'd have to say it looks more stable than the two towers in downtown Bologna which each lean over by more than 2 and 3 meters. Also, as a leaning tower expert, I would like to add that the Bologna towers get more points for a) looking like they are leaning into each other, and b) Bologna being overall a much more... cool, pretty, exciting, shady (in the sun sense), lively, happy, yummy, populated, etc... city. Pisa basically sucks.
We also visited countless churches. I don't know about all of you, but I for one have had enough frescos to last me a lifetime. By the last leg of the trip I was willing to give up all the frescos for the endless, ancient Etruscan tombs of last semester. And if you were here last semester, that's saying a lot. Overall I actually would have to say I enjoyed the ancient stuff more... maybe because it was more of a mystery to begin with. Still, we had a good time, especially eating all the local food!
A speciality of the Veneto region is eel. To my utmost dissapointment, we did not get to try this amazing delicacy which Italians let swim around in their bathtubs before eating for their typical Christmas dinner.
Ferrara and Mantova (Mantua) each serve
cappellacci different ways, so we tried both! In Ferrara it's tortellini stuffed with pumpkin with either
burro e salvia (butter and sage sauce) or
al ragu (with meat sauce). In Mantova it's raviolo stuffed with pumpkin, with either sauce. The
ragu one was awesome. But the
cappellacci burro e salvia from Mantova wins out because it was tastier topped with crunchy cinnamon bits!
cappellacci burro e salvia w/ cinnamon bits in Mantova --->
<-- A
piadina in Padova (Padua): flat bread stuffed with whatever you want (in my case w/ pomodori, parmigiano, e mozzarella)
We also had
spaghetti alla bolognese in Bologna (where else), which was spaghetti with a meat sauce. It didn't actually have tomato sauce in it, which surprised us, but it was still very yummy.
