There’s No Place Like Home

           This week we adventured outside of Florence to explore our surroundings. Friday night we took a city bus up to Fiesole, It’s a small medieval town in the hills just north of Florence with beautiful sweeping views– we watched the sunset and ate dinner overlooking the city like we were in the midst of the stars.

             

           On Saturday we took the train to Cinque Terre, my first time attempting to navigate the TrenItalia schedules. Cinque Terre is a clutch of five towns on the Golfo dei Poeti, the Gulf of Poets. The name is appropriately romantic: houses in shades of yellow and pink and red dot the hills in the midst of vineyards and olive groves. Each town has its charms – I especially loved the views of Corniglia and the pebble beaches of Monterosso. I met up with some family friends whose daughter had visited Cinque Terre while she was studying abroad, fell in love, and never came home. Everyone took in the sun on the beach, savoring their vacation day before the baptism of the granddaughter. Both the Italian and American sides of the family joyously jumbled Spanish, Italian, English, and hand gestures with love that transcended language.

           Sunday we took a day trip to San Gimignano, a medieval town with stark stone towers that survey the Tuscan countryside. We sampled the “best gelato in the world” and paid a visit to the Vernaccia wine museum to learn about the locally grown product. The landscape almost didn’t seem real – Matt pointed out that it looked like a backdrop, like someone had painted the perfect rolling country hills.

           Tuesday we went to Siena to watch the Palio with our Italian Cultural History class. We met up with the CET Siena students and took a rambling tour of the city’s narrow streets as our guide told us about the centuries-old tradition. Twice a year, Siena holds a horse race in the central piazza, with ten of the seventeen contrada represented.  A contrada is like a neighborhood, but the English translation is inadequate: a contrada is a way of life. You have to be baptized into the contrada to be a true member – it takes outsiders years to be fully accepted. In Siena, the people live and die by their contrade, harboring ancient rivalries against their enemies. The atmosphere before the race goes off is electric –the horses dance in agitation, the contrade members crackle with fervor.  As our teacher phrased it, Palio is incomprehensible to anyone not born in Siena. The race lasts about 90 seconds, but the build-up spans hours of parades, and the victors celebrate for the rest of the summer. Palio is the life force of Siena, the embodiment of their ferocious devotion to their town.

             The heavy dose of nationalism made me a little homesick for America, so to celebrate the Fourth of July my roommates and I baked an apple crisp in our apartment. Although we didn’t have any measuring cups and we topped it with gelato di vaniglia, it was just the taste of home I needed. 

Katy Cesarotti

Vanderbilt University