a blog about cultural differences

Caffetteria Spisani in summer

I know this is a late entry, but now I can give you my perspective about what it’s been like to live back in the United States for almost a month. Actually, my dad asked if I was ever going to finish my blog, because my sister caught me reminiscing earlier by reading my old entries, and she said two things: “He’d rather you type out everything in a blog entry so he can just read it on his computer instead of actually talking to you,” and “It’s also called ‘My Semester in Ferrara,’ not ‘I’m back in the United States–FML.’” The extra two months I spent in Ferrara were certainly worth it language-wise (I spoke a lot more Italian without my American friends around), but dealing with the intense ninety degree heat (and no air conditioning) was not ideal. The last month, I joined a water aerobics class with Luciana, and that was the most amazing thing ever, and of course so far I haven’t found anything even remotely similar to it in the States–it was like some kind of high intensity cross between dancing in the water and kickboxing.

My last weekend in Ferrara was certainly memorable. That Friday, our awkward almost-like-a-double-date-but-not quatro went out to eat at Michelangelo Da Vinci Airplane’s (yes, that’s how it’s spelled… I won’t berate the Italians’ misuse of apostrophes because it is not their original language). Saturday, during the day at least, was more of a chill day. There were tentative plans to go down to Rimini (along the coast) for Notte Rosa (a huge festival with music, dancing, etc. also referred to as the New Years of Summer). In the end, there were storms in Rimini, so all of us ended up going to a place only 45 minutes away on the same coast, “Little Venice” or Comacchio. We were on the beach for about an hour before it started to rain there as well, but once the rain stopped we made our way to a bar in Comacchio and stood and talked for awhile. The storms were still coming in off the coast, so it was windy and there was a lot of lightening–but still no rain. I went inside to go to the bathroom with Luciana, and as soon as we were inside, the lights flickered. Not gonna lie, I panicked. The power went off and on for the next five minutes, and then it started to pour buckets outside. The lights were off at this point, but everyone who had been standing outside came running in and packed themselves into this tiny bar, so we got separated from the boys. My fear of being crammed into tight spaces decided to become more present at this point, and I was just pissed off in general because there was no cell phone service, we were still separated, it was pouring, the bar was flooding (so my feet were wet) and random Italian men were pressing up against me. In wet shirts. Gross. After what seemed like forever, Giuseppe found us and our cell phones started working again. Andreas and Vassilis had taken shelter in Giuseppe’s car about 3 blocks away, and when we arrived we found them both stripped down to their boxers, trying to dry their clothes on the car heaters (that is honestly a sight I will never forget). We barely made it out of there alive, I’m not kidding, the streets had accumulated about a foot (or two, even) of water, and the traffic was insane. We drove to a lido not far away, where they had an arcade of sorts (just someplace that we could go to dry off and maybe have some fun). We left after about an hour at 4:30am and began the drive home. By this time, I was exhausted–I just wanted to sleep. I tried to close my eyes in the car, but that didn’t work very well. We arrived in Ferrara around 5:30am, and Vassilis and I planned to take a 6am train to Lido di Classe (the station that we would catch a bus from to the amusement park) and I guess have breakfast there before going into the park.

This plan would have been successful if a) Vassilis’ sisters not accidentally locked him out of his apartment so he could get dry clothes and b) we had not missed the 6am train by about a minute. We took two bikes from his garage and raced to the station, only to have the ticket machine be touchy when we tried to put in cash. We heard the train approaching from inside the station, and if it had not pulled away before we got to the binary, I think we were actually going to get on without a ticket (bad news bears). Thankfully, the cafe at the station opened at 6, and we grabbed some pastries and coffee while I tried to not fall asleep at the table. We went to the binary where they had this enclosed area with seating and slept on and off for the next hour and a half (the next train arrived at 8). I slept more on the train ride, which was another hour and a half. After arriving, we had breakfast again before spending the rest of the day exploring the park. The park itself was not too much to brag about, it had a few large roller-coasters that we stood in line for (I even convinced him on the last one of the day to stand in line longer to ride in the front car–it was totally worth it) but other than that there wasn’t much else besides your typical water coaster ride, a slow moving observation ferris wheel, and one of those tower things where they raise you slowly into the air and then drop you back down at a terrifying speed. We left the park later in the afternoon because we were both exhausted and he had to go back to Ferrara to help a friend out with something or other. Although things didn’t go exactly as I thought they would, it was a great way to spend my last weekend in Italy.