Merry Christmas #1

Since all of my roommates are leaving for their hometowns in the next few days, we decided to celebrate Christmas early.

Can you guess whether this is a photo of:
a) very large presents, or
b) an itty bitty Christmas tree?

I suppose the fact that it's sitting on the kitchen counter is probably a pretty big hint, or the fact that the Santa Claus tree-topper is almost as big as the tree itself...

Gift summaries:

Andrea, our household musician, got an oh-so-stylish music note hat and a music note espresso cup. Pier, our household chef, got an ethnic foods cookbook so he can expand his current repertoire of "all italian, all the time."

Added bonus: a photo of the guys looking goofy. :)

Marta and I went in together on Giada's gift - a three piece "tea mug" as I have chosen to call it, which is a large mug with a lid and uh, steeper? Is that even a word? Giada gave scarves to both me and Marta and somehow managed to find the perfect scarf for each of us. I suppose it must be in her blood, she has such a fine-tuned sense of fashion that she can instantly judge other people's fashion tastes as well... I gave Marta a tutu skirt because she's cool enough to pull off a tutu, and Marta gave me a copy of "O Principezinho."

There are two amazing things about this photo:

1. My little prince is now tri-lingual.
2. My new scarf also doubles as a beautiful backdrop. Brilliant. :)

Our mini-Christmas wasn't exactly traditional, but it was wonderful. I'll be sure to let you all know how things go on the 24th, but it has quite a lot to live up to!

As Meninas Estão Comendo uma Maçã

My lovely roommate Marta wrote a blog (here) that explains it all in three languages, bless her polyglottal soul... but I'm not quite that impressive so I'll just explain it in one.

I'm going to visit Marta in Portugal! Bought my tickets yesterday and on January 5th, Ryan and I will be flying with the appropriately-named Ryanair to Porto, Portugal where we'll fare un giro with Marta for a few days, making our way down to Lisbon!


This is wonderful. It's also very convenient because I recently acquired (don't ask how - I'll plead the 5th) a copy of Rosetta Stone. That's right, I'm learning Portuguese, as you can see by the fancy Portuguese title of this blog: The girls are eating an apple. Why did I choose this phrase instead of something more relevant to the situation? For two important reasons:

1. It gets stuck in Marta's head when she overhears me repeating it 200 times a day.
2. It's the longest sentence I know in Portuguese.
(and one of the very few complete sentences...)

So, I'm off to visit my beautiful roomie and who knows, maybe I'll get the chance to practice my new language... let's just hope that there are lots of girls eating an apple in Portugal!

Bologna by Night

I've had a lot of free time lately. I only have one class which meets 6 hours a week. I babysit for another 6 hours a week, which leaves about 156 hours for doing whatever I feel like doing. Of course, since the weather's been pretty dreary lately, what I feel like doing usually consists of sitting in my bed sipping hot tea while reading or watching a movie. As great as this sounds, I've been feeling really lazy and unproductive. Tonight, after dinner, I was overcome by the need to get out. I didn't leave the house all day so I decided that a little fresh air would be good for me. I bundled up in more layers than would ever be necessary in California, and went for a long walk around Bologna.

There was hardly anyone out tonight, probably because it was 11pm and freezing, but I appreciated the quiet (very, very rare in this city). It gave me a chance to think, take a few pictures and just enjoy being alone for a little while.

I figured I'd use this as an opportunity to show everyone around a little... so, here's a very brief photo tour of Bologna at 11pm on a Sunday night. Enjoy :)

This is Piazza Santo Stefano. It's usually filled with students, but not tonight. During the day it's a great place to meet up with friends and have lunch, and at night it's often filled with people drinking/smoking/dancing/singing.

* * * * *

This is the piazza and fountain of Neptune, which is one of my favorite places to people-watch. It's right at the edge of Piazza Maggiore, so there's almost always something interesting going on. It was a great spot to rest during the summer because there was always a cool mist from the fountain. Now, as you can see, there's a huge Christmas tree in the piazza!

* * * * *

Via Rizzoli is one of the major streets in the city center - at the end you can see Torre Asinelli, one of the two main towers of Bologna. Torre Garisenda is the other, which can't be seen in the photo. Asinelli is open to the public, and I'm sure the view is amazing - but legend has it that climbing the tower before graduating brings extremely bad luck. Italians are very superstitious and I think it's rubbed off because I certainly won't be going up there...

* * * * *

Some of Bologna's Christmas decorations! Just about the entire city is decorated with Christmas lights right now. It's really beautiful but I can't help but wonder how much energy that take... or how much it costs! They do shut all the lights off at 1 or 2am though, so that's something.

The last photo is of my street! I actually took it while standing on the doorstep of my apartment building. Home sweet home. :)

Krampus

This weekend was weird. Strange. Bizarre. Odd. Freaky.

There really just aren't any words that adequately sum up what happened this weekend, so I guess I'll just start from the beginning and let everyone decide for themselves.

A few months ago, Giada told me about an annual Christmas festival which takes place in her hometown on the first weekend of December, and invited me and Marta to come with her. So on Thursday, we all packed up our bags and headed to Giada's city, Tolmezzo. It's a beautiful and tiny town surrounded by mountains, so far north that it's practically in Austria. It felt like an entirely different world, even though it was only 4 hours from Bologna by train!
Giada's boyfriend Massi picked us up at the train station and we all went to dinner at a local place called "Bef'ed." This restaurant was completely crazy, not like anything I've ever seen in Italy or in the United States. First of all, they don't believe in silverware - see, it's part of the fun! We were served shelled peanuts as an appetizer, and by "served" I mean that there was a giant pile of them on the table. The floor of the restaurant was completely covered in peanut shells, because this too is part of the fun. I'm not sure what it was about this place, but it felt awfully.... American. Anyway, Massi and Giada ordered for Marta and I, because apparently there's only one "right" choice when eating at Bef'ed: the polletto - practically an entire chicken.
Call me crazy, but I've never really considered an entire roasted chicken "finger food". I've also been a vegetarian for a pretty decent-sized chunk of my life, so this was a little bit... intense. To the incredible delight/disbelief of my carnivorous friends, I proclaimed "grazie pollo, per avermi dato la tua vita!" (thank you chicken, for giving me your life - yeah okay, a little weird but give me a break, I was about to eat an entire bird), and then I overcame my vegetarian doubts and devoured that thing like a good little carnivore. As proof, here's a picture of me that I doubt any of you ever expected to see:

Yes, I believe I am using my teeth and hands to rip a small animal's wing away from its torso. Definitely a new experience for me... and a tasty one!

As if this restaurant weren't strange enough, on the way out I saw what I thought was a gumball machine. I quickly realized, though, that these were no gumballs. No no, my friends, these were sexy panties.
That's right. Located above Winnie the Pooh and directly to the left of Hello Kitty, a beautiful (and tasteful) selection of thongs! I mean I guess it's not that much different than a gumball machine. Multi-colored, probably edible....

As you can see, my first impression of Tolmezzo was an interesting one. Trust me though, when I went to bed that night I had no idea what was still to come.

The next morning, I woke up to Marta's excited announcement: SNOW! I haven't seen that much snow since I lived in Michigan. The trees and houses were covered, cars were buried, everything was sparkling white and beautiful and cold. Luckily, Giada made sure I was equipped with heavy-duty, rainbow-colored mittens.

Armed with our mittens, we went to Giada's grandparents' house where they served us a huge lunch. I realize that most of my blogs so far have had to do with food, so I'll skip the details and just say that I was, once again, amazed at how much food my relatively small body can consume. When we had all recovered from the food coma, we set out for the festival. This is where things got really, really weird.

The Krampus festival is a traditional Austrian celebration in which the men of the town dress up as horrible demons and chase small children through the streets, beating them with whips.

No, no I'm not kidding.
It started with a "parade", although I hate to call it that because I like parades. They're usually pretty fun, you know - floats, beauty queens in convertibles, high school marching bands. This, on the other hand, was terrifying. The demons entered the town, waving torches and rattling their chains (yeah, some of the scary demons were chained to a giant wagon which was being driven by another scary demon). They were all screaming, growling and making all kinds of other demonic noises as they marched past, whipping anyone (me) who happened to be standing too close. This was not a joke or a friendly tap, people. I still have a bruise from the demon's whip, which is a sentence I hoped I'd never have to say.

When the demons reached the center of the town, they gathered in what was essentially a satanic ritual in which they were "set free" by San Nicolo. Yeah, Santa. Santa Claus unleashed hordes of demons on this town, giving them permission to run free and whip innocent young children and Americans. It was unbelievable. At one point, I watched a large hairy demon chase after a small girl, dive through the air, tackling the girl to the ground where he ripped off her hat and started rubbing her face in the snow. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of this, as I was too busy dealing with my own evil demon attack.

Here's a description of a Krampus festival, taken directly from wikipedia:

"Today, Schladming, a town in Styria, over 1200 "Krampus" gather from all over Austria wearing goat-hair costumes and carved masks, carrying bundles of sticks used as switches, and swinging cowbells to warn of their approach. They are typically young men in their teens and early twenties and are generally intoxicated. They roam the streets of this typically quiet town and hit people with their switches. It is not considered wise for young women to go out on this night, as they are popular targets."

Mm hmm. Interesting. I especially like that last part.

The second portion of the festival took place at the bottom of a forested hill. The demons came down through the trees, clanking their cowbells as usual, shooting off flares, hissing and screaming. The forest was illuminated with red lanterns and several small fires, and there was an eerie amount of fog which I told myself came from fog machines. There was also terrifying music playing. It was one of the scariest experiences of my life, watching the demons slowly descending towards me through the fog... When they reached the bottom of the hill they engaged in yet another satanic ritual and then (of course) they started whipping children again.
The funny thing is, people bring their children to this festival every single year! They want their children to be whipped by demons! I actually saw parents laughing hysterically as they tried to get the perfect photo of their child, being held upside-down and shaken by an evil demon. The whole town goes nuts for this festival, and people spend months preparing their masks and costumes. There were even tiny models of Krampus monsters:

(In case you're confused, the small child is kneeling in prayer as he is being surrounded by Krampus demons.)

Hopefully now you all understand why the word "weird" just doesn't cover it!

Luckily, we all escaped relatively unharmed. One of the demons actually posed for a photo with me before whipping me in the legs (never trust a demon, especially if he has Santa's permission to whip you!)...

The rest of the weekend was much less demon-infested and I had a great time with Marta and Giada, playing in the snow and hanging out with Giada's family. I'm so lucky to have such wonderful roommates... I honestly can't think of anyone I'd rather be chased by demons with.