Week 2- “Blood Soccer” and a Whole Lot of Meat
This past week there was very little real cooking being done, but I finally started to get into the Florence of the guidebooks: twice I visited the Uffizi (Art) Museum, twice I ate killer sandwiches from All’Antico Vinaio, twice I took day trips, twice I saw friends from Northwestern, I ate the famous Florentine steak, I watched a medieval parade and a match of “blood soccer”, and I reconnected with a dear friend whom I had not seen in over three years. Now we are cooking with gas!
Also there have been many gelatos.
A week ago Tuesday, a friend I met at Northwestern was on a day trip to Florence with his parents. It was a joy to join them for the afternoon. We met at All’Antico Vinaio for the world famous sandwiches, which were indeed worth the hype, because later that same week I returned for more (uncharacteristic of me!). What makes these schiacciate (sandwiches) special is the fresh focaccia bread, a variety of cured meats from different Italian traditions, some amazing saucy cheeses and some yummy roasted veggie or truffle mushroom options. Also, they are huge.
We braved the heat of the day and crossed the Ponte Vecchio on our way to some good gelato and then they were off to Rome. I have to say, I love meeting people’s parents. It is so interesting to see similarities and differences! And I have always gotten along well with “adults”, whether because of my status as a pastor’s kid, or my old soul? The jury’s still out.
On my walk home from the train station, I was just in time to see the holiday (Feast of John the Baptist) parade with hundreds of men dressed in historic costumes walking down the street with fanfare, weapons, a cow and followed by the florentine teams of this year's Calcio Storico (historic soccer) championship. Calcio Storico became lovingly known in our program as “blood soccer” because it is a mix of American football, wrestling and bare-knuckle boxing. Quite the show of testosterone! The parade was fascinating, and afterwards I went home and was happy to watch the festivities as they played out from the air-conditioned comfort of my apartment, on TV.
This game was hysterical. The basis of the game is to toss a ball from teammate to teammate and to end up with the ball at either end of the playing field (which is a sandpit that was temporarily filling in a famous piazza in the center of the city), all the while trying to avoid the defensive team who will take you down by any means necessary. So basically American football. Except that there are no pads. The referees do very little. There are, at any given time, about a dozen pairs of men in various states of straddle in the middle of the field (the wrestling element). And there are also little boxing matches, including lots of punching and sometimes, throwing your rival over the side of the fence. Really quite a show! In the end, the Rossi (the red team) won and I giggled a lot.
The following day, class recommenced and I volunteered to start teaching an Italian Basics class during the lunch break on class days. So far I have taught the basics of greeting and necessities for grocery stores and restaurants, as well as basic pronunciation hacks. I am pretty happy of myself. It kills me when people live in a country for an extended time and make no effort at all with the language (why I have never watched Emily in Paris), so I found a solution for our students, for whom language study is not a part of their academic program. Obviously I am not super qualified for teaching Italian, but I certainly have enough to give them basics in a 30 minute interval 2x per week.
On Thursday, my fellow Bienen School of Music doctoral student, Tanya, arrived from her summer Italian study in Trento. We had a great time together chatting and trying the best food we could. We started strong, by facing the formidable bistecca alla fiorentina, the Florentine steak. I am not a big fan of a giant hunk of red meat, or giant hunks of meat in general, but my friend Filippo really insisted that I had to try the steak and gave me a recommendation of where to try it, and also to share it. It is a huge undertaking! The steaks are usually a kilo and a quarter (over 2.5 lbs). But Tanya faced the beast with me and it really was delicious.
The next day, we went with the Northwestern group on a tour of the Santa Croce Basilica, ate sandwiches at All’Antico Vinaio (Tanya approved!) and then went to the Uffizi! The day before, I decided to purchase a year pass to the Uffizi because it included some other benefits and I knew it would be a good impetus to get my butt out the door to get my money’s worth and make the most of my time in Florence these five weeks. So we went together and, as you can see in my pictures, I was particularly delighted by the ceilings!! We just don’t do much with ceilings anymore, but what a missed opportunity. Bring back the fresco, amiright?? I did also enjoy taking pictures of some beautifully sculpted derrières. What Engle wouldn’t??
Tanya and I tried out a restaurant recommendation of my friend Gabe (the Gabe, for any of you who have been following my updates since the Vienna days) for dinner and had some fantastic pasta!! AND followed it with his addendum to the recc, gelato across the piazza which was: AHmazing.
The next morning, Tanya was off, and in the afternoon, our group boarded buses to Siena! Siena is famous walled city that was a rival to Florence many moons ago. We had a fantastic tour guide, who very wisely directed us first toward the gelato and then we had our tour. It was really beautiful, and I actually loved how small of a city it was.
Siena has a famous annual horse race, called the Palio, where each year, each of the animal-named city neighborhoods (called contrada) choose a horse and a jockey and compete against each other for glory and a year of bragging rights. Competition is steep- imagine if every NFL team was in the same city! Rivalries are high, but all based in respect. Our tour guide is part of the lupa (she wolf) contrada, and brought us through La Lupa’s headquarters, into the chapel where they bless the horse each year and into the showroom of all the Palio banners they have won over many, many years. They won the Palio last year, so that included the most recent winner banner.
After that, we were “initiated” (unofficially) into La Lupa with scarves bearing the flag of La Lupa and joining the contrada for dinner. There were a few hundred people there, dining al fresco in the middle of Siena, but away from the crowds. A big family!
On Sunday, I booked myself a ticket for the Vasari Corridor: a kilometer long corridor connecting the Medici’s Uffizi (the museum) to their Boboli gardens and Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the Arno, going over the famous Ponte Vecchio. This sounded so cool to me- walking over the heads of hoards of tourists, where the Medici could spy on the folk and listen into their conversations through the round windows on the side of the passageway.
Having booked this excursion, I was required another visit to the Uffizi and enjoyed it very much! It’s not so bad having the year pass! On this second time through, I managed to find the Botticelli paintings that are so famous that Tanya and I somehow managed to miss the first time around.
On Monday, I did something that was on one hand, very unlike me (booking a trip less than 24-hours before) and VERY like me (managed to see a dear friend whom I haven’t seen in years!), when I hit the road on my first solo day trip in Italy to splenda few hours in Milan with my dear friend, Shaked, who just finished singing a production in Cremona. It was so wonderful to reconnect- especially when things are so wild in the world.
We got some wonderful breakfast before setting out on the hottest day of the year (but a bit cooler in Milan than Florence) to see the staggering Duomo, the glimmering Galleria and to take a jaunt by the surprisingly humble facade of La Scala, maybe the world’s most famous opera company. We stopped for gelato near La Scala, and then it was time to reverse course back to the station. Shaked and I have called each other “life partner” ever since our beloved ear training teacher, Dr. Blaha, used that phrase to split us into pairs for an out of class assignment. So thus, Life Partner and I parted ways at the station, with intent to not let so much time go by before we meet again!
It was back in class today, with another exciting week ahead!
Marie in Italy
