Flatness

Greetings from Lleida!

As of my last post, I was leaving Italy and heading for yet another foreign adventure. As I told my mother, my first reaction when I arrived in Lleida, Spain with all of my worldly possessions and only a smattering of the Spanish I once knew was, "What the hell was I thinking?" However, a very kind professor took me in until I could find someone else to stay, and he and his wife and his very intelligent children made me feel very welcome. His seven-year-old son decided that I was the perfect target for a new gaming buddy, and he taught me how to play and then subsequently beat me roundly at a series of board, card, and memory games. Also table soccer. He would sit and very seriously and quickly explain the rules of a game to me in Catalan (the Romance language spoken in this region of Spain), and I would feel very dumb pointing and asking questions using a combination of broken Spanish and Italian and, if his 10-year-old sister was around to translate, a bit of English. I must admit that, even though I really wanted to be in my own place, it was a bit sad to leave them.

Which brings me to . . . my flat! I have four flatmates, two women and two men. They are all university students, and one is from the Czech Republic. It is very much a student flat, complete with a fold-out chair, squeaky bed, front door with a lock that only opens if you jimmy it and hold your tongue just right, and living room with mismatched couches. But it is in my price range, right near the university, and my flatmates seem nice enough. I am well-pleased. Plus, (and they bragged to me about this when I was deciding whether or not to take the room) they get BBC and German MTV on their TV. I am well pleased, all things considered. I spent last night unpacking, and opted for low-budget decorating, affixing the city maps of various places I have visited these last few months to my walls with a euro worth of sticky tac. Also, and I am sure anyone who has ever seen my college dorm room would predict this, there are scarves draped over everything that a scarf can be draped over. It's a pleasant effect.

My internship is going to be a combination of a crash course on applied linguistics and my own thesis research, which deals with cognitive poetics and Romance language poetry (it's not nearly as impressive as it sounds, which seems to be a general characteristic of senior theses).

More on this city I find myself in later. Suffice to say, it is tiny yet urban yet traditional. I attended a ceremonial reenactment of the crusades which was, interestingly enough, delightful. It was preceded by a parade of all the various groups of Muslims in Christians. Each group had its own costumes and banners and marching band, and everyone, men, women, children, babies in strollers, marched side-by-side in their costumes. Have you ever seen a baby in a fez? Because it's pretty darn adorable.

I am still a little overwhelmed, but I think this is going to be quite the adventure.

Saying Goodbye to Italy

I am writing this my last night in Italy, but I am not sure when I shall next have wireless to post it. I am currently in an adorable “bungalow” in a campground in Pisa. I was a bit nervous at first, because it looked a bit sketchy. Dormitory-style sleeping in trailers didn’t exactly sound like the sort of thing I wanted to do alone, but there were only so many places that offered dormitory space on such short notice, and this was the least expensive. As it turns out, I have a shower and a little kitchen and a British roommate, and I am well pleased. I am taking off for the airport very early tomorrow, from which I shall fly to Barcelona then catch a bus or train to Lleida for my internship. Frankly, I am terrified. I hate traveling alone, and I have to find an apartment and a phone and feed myself every night and all sorts of things that are much easier as a student. I even have to completely self-direct my own research on my thesis. It’s exhilarating, but nervewracking, so I am taking everything one step at a time. I managed two trans and a taxi with all my wordly possessions to arrive here.

It has been a charmingly Italian day. Everything that is typical about this temporary home of mine has stuck out in stark contrast today. This morning, I got on the bus to the center city for a farewell lunch that lasted three hours and involved multiple types of pasta and lots of olive oil. Heading back to my apartment, I rattled off an answer to a confused Italian tourist who was trying to figure out the Sienese bus system (which was not exactly designed with the convenience of outsiders in mind), and I was very impressed with both my Italian and my knowledge of bus schedules and routes. Then, on the bus, the dialogue I overheard was incredibly Sienese. One man talked about Aqua Calda, a neighborhood right next to mine, and he pronounced his c’s like h’s. Then, getting off the bus, a woman said, “Noi, si va,” which technically translates to “We one goes” but is used to mean “Let’s go!” My host father says, “Si mangia” (one eats) nearly every night instead of “Mangiamo” (let’s eat).

The train to Pisa was also incredibly typical. It was filled with Belgian tourists and small, badly-behaved Italian children, one of whom practically ran into me with my four bags then looked up and me and said, in Italian, “You’re in the way, stupid.” Once in Pisa, I took a cab to the campground, not wanting to navigate an only partially familiar bus system with my possessions. The cab driver had, I kid you not, a tiny TV in the cab playing (what else) world news. Italians love their news. In just about every Italian house or apartment I have ever been in, the TV is constantly on, playing either a game show (the Italian ones are harder than their American counterparts), the news (always depressing), or a talk show (inane and often terrifying). On the cab ride, I passed a condom vending machine just hanging out on the side of the street that was labeled, I kid you not, “Enjoy Box.” The sketchy streetside condom machine is an Italian staple. I even saw one in a quaint little fishing village in Cinqueterre. Generally, though, they are labeled, “Control.” Arriving at the campground, I got through several interchanges in nearly perfect Italian just to have the receptionist switch to English (my Italian was better than her English, by the way).

And the single most Italian thing to happen to me today: when I first arrived in Italy, I had to apply for a Permesso di Soggiorno, basically a formal permission to stay in Siena from the police. Well, they finally sorted through all the paperwork at whatever Sienese office was responsible for it, and I received my permission to stay in Italy . . . today . . . my last day in Italy.

I will miss this country.

Another Giulio and Giuliana Story

For two weeks in a row recently, my host mother came into my room while I was at school, opened my window, and placed my gorgeous, expensive, well-loved Italian leather boots outside of the window on the second-story windowsill. The first time this happened, I was horrified, but Flannery assured me that Giuliana did that to her boots every day, as well, so I just got in the habit of taking them off the windowsill every evening when I got home, because, with Giuliana, it's frankly best to just roll with some things. She is a self-proclamed doctor with incredibly strong opinions. For example, Flannery once stayed in a hotel room that turned out to be kind of gross. There were crumbs in the sheets, but it was so late by the time she got in that she just slept on top of the covers and didn't bother making someone change her sheets. When she told Giuliana about this, you would have thought that she had walked down a dark alley along at night with a sign on her back that said, "Kidnap me." Giuliana just kept saying, "Hai fatto male! (you've done wrong!)" I got a similar reaction the time I told her that at college I shared a bathroom with *gasp* men because, apparently, sharing a bathroom is a surefire way to spread STD's. She gave me a whole talk about how I didn't know what kind of women those men consorted with. I even got a similar reaction the time she caught me walking barefoot in the house. At any rate, I digress. I decided to just take in my boots every evening and leave it at that.

However, a couple of weeks later, Giuliana called Flannery into my room when I wasn't at home and said, "I know Micaya is getting annoyed that I put her boots outside." Giuliana then asked Flannery to smell the room. She asked her if she could smell leather then went on to explain how very unhealthy it is to be around the smell of leather. Flannery, mind you, could smell nothing. It is true, my boots do have a lovely, leathery scent, but only if you stick your nose right up against them. At any rate, I started putting my boots in my closet after Flannery told me about that.

What I'm Up To/ A Little Bit of Barcelona

Coming to Barcelona is like stepping into a slightly different world. Everything is ever-so-slightly askew. Garbage trucks arrive every night at midnight, and when Alan and I, bleary-eyed and suitcased, trundled towards the train station at five in the morning, the streets were crowded with late-night revelers stumbling home and gypsies selling single cans of beer from six-packs. During the day, the main drag, La Rambla, is filled with a peculiar brand of street performers. There are the usual jugglers and human statues, but most people simply stand about in fabulous costumes. There was a man dressed as Edward Scissorhands who had taken off his scissor-hand gloves and was calmly smoking a cigarette and staring into the distance as people threw coins into his hat on the ground. Another person of indeterminate gender (Alan and I argued about it nearly every day) was dressed as a tree, twigs strapped to his or her fingers, making subtle movements and poses or rolling one of those contact juggling balls up and down his or her arm. Just down the street is the sea. You cross a dock and arrive in a mid-water upscale mall. Everything is expensive, the architecture is a startling combination of old, new, and absurd, paella comes with all shells and legs and eyes still attached and ten o'clock in the evening is a perfectly reasonable time to eat dinner. Alan and I finished eating around eleven or midnight most nights. I will be working next summer at a university just outside of Barcelona, and I am looking forward to further exploring this city. It is enormous. Alan and I, made lazy by the almost constant rain, mostly just walked up and down the streets and ate long meals, but there are museums and churches and clubs to last a person for years. Here are a few photos I took the one completely sunny day in Barcelona: