Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Festivo di San' Constanzo



Today is a giorno di festivo (holiday) in Perugia in honor of one of its three patron saints, San' Constanzo.  You can read about the Saint, if so inclined, here:  http://www.medioevoinumbria.it/home/chiesa-di-san-costanzo-perugia/

They advertise the festa (and other happenings) on big posters they glue to the walls over other big posters from bygone events.





Legend has it that those who want to get married should go to the Chiesa di San Constanzo on his feast day and pray for a spouse.  If the statute winks at you, you will be married within the year.  If it doesn't, you get to eat the consolation prize, il torcolo, a pastry made only in Perugia.  They give away free torcolo and vino del Santo on Piazza Maggiore but it was all gone by the time we arrived (apparently they started serving at 12:15 and it was gone at 12:20). Il torcolo is a sweet bread, made in a circle with a hole in the middle so it resembles a halo. It has pine nuts and raisins in it.

church tower behind market

church courtyard


There was also a market in the streets near the church, but the church was closed when we got there!  No spouses for us!  We know that most things are closed from 12-3 or 4, but we thought the church would be open for the festa. We ran into a large group of our classmates who were all disappointed in their failure to have a chance to ask the saint for spouses.  They were off to drown their sorrows in the local wine, Grecheto.  We bought 3 bottles of Grechetto for 10 euros from one of the banchieri (they let you taste in first and actually  pour a pretty healthy sample) and some pecorino from another stand--aged 2 years and incredibly delicious.  What with walking up and down all the hills and stairs, it is time for a pisolino (nap)--but first I must study pronomi combinati (combined pronouns).  I kind of ignored them when taking classes in Seattle, figuring I could cheat and always use nouns but that really sounds pretty stupid, so here I go.  Following are a few pictures from the day.  Buona giornata!

Porta Romana, one of the 5 ancient gates and the beginning of the market


many cheese and salami stands, "prodotti tipici"

giant balls of fresh mozzarella--yummy!

obligatory war memorial

you can see Tom lingering by the camera store--still trying to choose the perfect camera for his birthday present

On a clear day like today you can see the mountains--reminds me of Seattle, because they are often not visible


Saturday, January 25, 2014

Museo D'Arte di Umbria (and cookies and haircuts)

Another week of Italian classes under our belts,and with it came the introduction of a tense I had not previously studied and frankly hoped never to need to learn, the passato remoto.  It is used to express actions that occurred in the past and have no continuing effect.  This is exactly what the passato prossimo expresses as far as I can tell, so I don't really know the point of the passato remoto, but it is used in books, papers, and magzines all the time so I guess we need to  understand it.  Unfortunately, most of the common words (eat, drink, talk, go, do, have, know, etc.) are irregular and have to be memorized.    We talked about a lot of different topics in our classes this week, as I realized when I went through my notes and made a list of new vocabulary words. The subjects ranged from everything to do with a wedding (one of our classmates is getting married February 1) to the biography of Casanova (a vehicle for using passato remoto) to Italian politics.  WW II is ancient history to our 20 year old classmates as is the Vietnam war which  many of them have never heard of.  (It came up when Tom was explaining that he was in the Navy during the Vietnam war).  It was interesting to hear the Italian version of the American's involvement in WW II and how they seem to be trying to distance themselves from Mussolini--the party line according to the book we were using and our teacher was that Mussolini was a dictator who forced fascism on the people who never wanted it and rose up in revolt against it. Maybe a little revisionist history there.

After sleeping in late today we headed to the nearby Museo D'Arte Di Umbria which has Umbrian artifacts and art works from the 9th through the 19th centuries.  The museum is housed in an old palazzo which is itself very interesting, with high arched ceilings, frescoes, marble stairways and beautiful arched windows.  It has an extensive collection of the work of Perugino which was very interesting and beautiful , but we definitely had our fill  of the Mary-Jesus pictures after a couple of hours.

View of Piazza Maggiore from inside the museum

A famous triptych by Perugino, originally part of an altar

View of the Umbrian hills from the museum

Interactive exhibit--match the body parts

Backside of the clock in the campanile (inside museum)

"art shot" of the city through the museum window


Tom posing in the one room with contemporary art
When we emerged from the museum after a few hours, we found the weather had gotten significantly colder (snow was in the forecast but we didn't believe it) so we decided to head back to the apartment.  On the way I found a paruchiere (hair salon) and they said I could get a haircut in a few minutes so I waited there while Tom went on a short walk to a viewpoint.


Pictures from the viewpoint


When Tom returned from his walk, expecting me to be ready, I was still waiting. When will I learn that "a few minutes" in Italian time is anywhere from 30-90 minutes?  It was amusing to see a client with wet hair put a towel on her head and go outside to smoke with one of the stylists while I was waiting.  Smoking is way more common here.  Also, they will send to the nearby bar for an espresso for you while you wait if you like (or an apertivo).  Tom went to the bank and the enoteca for some Saturday night wine and I was still waiting when he returned.  I was just about to leave when they called me back for a shampoo.  The shampoo lady didn't know I understood Italian (kind of anyway) and made several rude comments about my dirty gray hair! My hair is definitely gray but not dirty--I had washed it only 6 hours before.  She at least had the grace to blush when the stylist came in and I talked with him in Italian.  The stylist was a very nice guy named Danieli who told me I should visit his hometown Narni because it is the "piu bello di Italia."  All Italians think their hometown is the "piu bello" but Narni actually is supposed to be very pretty.  Danieli gave me a great haircut and a brief italian lesson so it was worth the wait.  We stopped at the nearby bakery and got three different types of biscotti (all of what we call cookies are called biscotti here, not just what we think of as biscotti).  This was purely in the interest of educational research of course.  Thus endeth the lesson for the week.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Saturday afternoon in Perugia

We survived our first full week of classes at the Universita di Stranieri and celebrated with dinner out at a nearby restaurant that Tom had noticed on his walks around the neighborhood.  It is primarily a pizza and pasta joint, so I went with a pizza francescana which was only 6 euro and was really delicious--maybe the best pizza I've ever had.  Tom had scallopine con tartuffo which he said was also very good. Of course we washed it all down with a nice bottle  of Grechetto, the local wine which is usually the vino di tavola in Perugia. We celebrated last Friday at a more upscale restaurant which we also enjoyed.  They greeted us with a little plate of fresh veggies and a glass each of prosecco.  Then we had a fantastic appetizer--polenta with ragu--doesn't sound that good but it was squisito!  At the end of the meal they gave us complimentary glasses of a chocolate liqueur which is popular here (Perugia is known for its chocolate).

Tom peruses the menu at La Taverna

crostini di polenta con ragu

as usual we were the early bird diners at 8:00 pm.  The restaurant was in a very old building with arched brick ceilings
like those in our apartment

complimentary chocolate liqueur
Happily it was not raining or foggy today.  We took a nice walk past the duomo and fountain, along via vanucci (the main shopping street) to via Oberdan, where we found a small street market near the Church of San Ercolano where the vendors were selling home made ("fatto in casa) "biologica" (organic, no chemicals) products, from honey, to salami to cheese to wine.  They offered free tastes which was very effective marketing at least for us--we bought a nice salami, some almond cookies, and three bottles of wine, 2 Greccheto and 1 Sangiovese.  They were 3 bottles for 10 euros which is a good deal for some very drinkable wine.  We made it to the National Museum of Archeology, aka Paradiso di Tom, and spent a couple of hours there--the only patrons as far as we could tell.  We only saw about a third of the exhibits and Tom is looking forward to several more afternoons among Etruscan and Roman artifacts.

Nancy at the Court of Appeals in Perugia

flower vendor in front of Sant'Ercolano

Arco di San Ercolano 


Tres Archi (three arches)

Little street market we passed on the way to the museum

Tom with an old mercer islander at the archaeological museum


campanile and courtyard at the museum

creepy baby amulets on display at the museum- -a whole roomful of amulets and objects to
ward off 'malocchio' (the evil  eye)
On the way back to the apartment to skype with Kelly we ran into four of our classmates at Piazza Maggiore.  They were complaining there is nothing to do in Perugia and did not seem to think our suggestion of going to the museum was very helpful!  I think they headed off to do some shopping instead.  There are lots of sales right now and we saw a lot of beautiful shoes and boots on display.  If I was a high-heel wearing person I would definitely buy some.  As I am not, I guess I will stick with my zocoletti (clogs).

Time to study the trapassato imperfetto (in English, the pluperperfect--one time where the English translation doesn't do much for me).

Ciao a tutti.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Porta Eburnea walk

The Commune di Perugia has a tourist guide with 5 different itineraries or walks that we plan to do while we are here.  Today we did number 4 (mostly), heading uphill to the Cattedrale and  Piazza IV Novembre, with the large fountain (where we saw one of our classmates sunning on the steps before the fog took over completely), then along Via Vannucci ,location of many ritzy shops and some very old buildings including the Collegio di Cambio (money exchange), Teatro del Pavone (theater for the nobility) and the  Sala di Notaio (notaries are a big deal here).  Also saw many churches, Italian families on walks, and arches, etruscan and roman, and what would have been great views but for the fog.

Tom at the  Fontana Maggiore in Piazza IV Novembre, near apartment.  The fountain marks the spot where an aqueduct was completed in the 12th century

It wouldn't be Sunday with a visit to a Cathedral

Replica of a griffin (symbol of Perugia) and a lion from the 12the century.  The originals are inside protected from the elements

Still Christmas in Perugia--at least at Piazza della Repubblica





The streets are narrow and winding, many with stairs


Porta Eburnea or Arco della mandorla (almond gate)
Mostlly the original Etruscan Gate


Porta San Giacomo

Sciri Tower  in the fog, one of the few towers still standing from the many that once existed in the 12-13th centuries


We finished the walk with a steep uphill climb back to the piazza, then down a block to our apartment.  Shortly after we got back, the fog was too thick to see anything out the window.  Good time to study for our Lingua italiana class--tomorrow at 8 am.

Americans in Perugia: Football and steaks and a week's worth of vocabulary review

Last night Tom made steaks and baked potatoes for dinner and we stayed up late to watch the Seahawks on the internet (it is great to have wi fi in our apartment!)  The game started at 10:35 pm our time but it was well worth staying up until 2 am to see the victory.  Definitely our most american night since we arrived, although perhaps snacking on grissini (thin dry breadsticks) was less than an authentic game day experience.  I read in the Times this morning that the wind knocked out power for thousands of people in the Seattle area who then could not watch the game--funny to think we were able to watch it in Perugia and they couldn't see it in Seattle!

I did a little studying before the game, reviewing the long list of new or forgotten vocabulary from the first three days of class.  I noticed a bit of a trend in the vocabulary and wonder what it is they are teaching us:

la cronaca nera   newspaper crime story
refurtiva  loot
furto  furtive
la malivente  delinquent, crook
tossicodipendente  drug addict
imbroglio (a swindle); imbrogliare (to swindle)
stramaledire  to curse
stramaladetto  god damn!


Our teachers at Dante Alighieri didn't seem to think we would need these words--at least they weren't in our vocab lists.  Of course there are about 300 other words on the list from the week, including two new favorites, brontolone (whiner, complainer) and poltrone (poltrona is armchair but poltrone is a 'lazybones' or, as we would say, a couch potato).   The suffix -one means a big or large whatever it is, but apparently can also be used to create perjoratives.   I also like "mammo" which is house husband, obviously from the word mamma.

11:00 a.m., time to wake my poltrone and head out to Porta Sant Angelo.  I am sure he will be a brontolone about it.

Friday, January 10, 2014

The end of the first (half) week of classes and a tour of the Universita di Stranieri

Ah, la fine settimana after three whole days of class! We have classes 5 days a week but on Monday and Friday we are in class for only 2 hours instead of 5 or 6.  The classes are challenging for us and we have to concentrate so much that we are exhausted at the end of the day when all of our 20 and 21 year old classmates are out partying (actually, as far as I can tell, the Chinese girls go home and sleep or clean their rooms--at least that is what they said in class).  We have three different teachers, all women, and all very entertaining.  Our only Friday class is a 2 hour conversation class.  Today the teacher took on us on a trip around the university, starting at the roof where there are some great views.





Our teacher, Sabrina (left) points out some landmarks for the class





Tom busily taking notes on the rooftop.  In the foreground is a classmate from France.

You can see the etruscan wall in the background--our Chinese classmates were underwhelmed by this wall

Sabrina, always gesturing!



just two of the many churches whose bells we hear hourly

 After admiring the panoramic view from the roof, we toured the rooms on the top floor.  The main building of the university, where our classes are held,  is Palazzo Galenga, formerly owned by a wealthy family.  Many of the rooms, especially on the upper floors, are splendidly painted, with frescoed ceilings and  chandaliers of murano glass.

Tom, still taking notes as he admires one of the rooms with some of our classmates


As we went through four of the rooms, each representing a different season, Sabrina related the history of the room and building and discussed the elements of the frescoes, so we had an Italian lesson in painting and history.

Just one of many staircases to climb each day--this one from the first to second floor (2d to 3d US)

After the other students went on 'la pausa' (break) Sabrina showed us the Goldena room which is a theater

UW classrooms were never like this

Murano glass chandalier

She also showed us the old library.  They don't have a library now "because everyone uses internet."
The school was founded by  Astorre Pattelli  and his bust and a plaque about him are in the library (below).

Sabrina points out the statute on our 'private' tour All of the Italians
wear their coats in the building because it is fairly cold, although we
hardy Americans just wear sweaters  (Sabrina has two sweaters,
a scarf, and a down jacket)






I leave you with this picture of the symbol of Perugia, a griffin.  Buona fine di settimana a tutti.