CRISIS MODE

I’VE REACHED QUITE THE PARADOX!!!

It’s time for me to leave Florence. I’ve accepted as much. There is just too much stuff I miss at home, and one too many things here that make me go “stupefy!” as I’m walking down the streets while holding out my liter of water (that I now carry with me everywhere, a habit that I hope I will keep up when I come home) pretending it is a magic wand, still hoping that the next time I say that, something real will happen instead of just in my head. Crazy gypsy lady painted in white that makes kissy noises at everyone who walks by thinking “This is surely the way for me to get you to give me your Euros”….STUPEFY! Italian woman who yells at me for trying to squeeze behind her while she is in a conversation with someone taking up the whole sidewalk with her bike….WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA! NOW you’re out of my way! And YOU! You know who you are! You sales associates who look at me like I am covered in fruta di bosco gelato and am going to proceed to touch every little thing in your store making your 900 dollar pair of shoes too sticky for your real customers to enjoy! EXPELLIARMUS! I’ve had enough!

But at the same time, I was thinking yesterday, as I was returning from my weekend trip to Milan and Bologna (really fun by the way…more on that later), the next time I see the Santa Maria Novella Train Station, I’ll be leaving Florence. And I got a little teary as I was making my way back to my apartment. I have less than a week of strolls by the riverside, church bells being the backtrack of my life as I’m on my way to class, the old woman who lives beneath us, who on the first day yelling at me something that I still don’t know what it was (fairly, she may have thought I was trying to break into her apartment), greets me with a “Ciao Bella” now as we cross in the stairwell. I love sitting on the church steps after class in the afternoon, trying to figure out which dog would talk to me, and their owner WOULDN’T glare at me. I love being able to get up early, before the tourists are out and go for a morning walk, seeing things that some only see on postcards. I think I even love the tourists. I may sigh, and get aggravated when the tour groups take up the entire sidewalk, but I know that if they asked me for help, I would realize, I was once in their position, and I would try and point them in the right direction. I love the smiles I get when shop workers know I am American, but can tell I am really trying to speak Italian. Maybe they are secretly laughing at me, but I don’t think so. I love the smell of leather as I walk through the market. I love knowing that I have walked on the same streets as some of the art world’s greatest minds! I really really, wholeheartedly and completely love Florence.
So if I am so anti-Florence that I am depending on will-induced Harry Potter powers to bring everyone down, why do I get so sad when I think about leaving? I keep telling myself there is far too much to be done here for me to never return, but it just seems so far away.

So this is my last six days in Florence ( and technically my last week in Italy because this time next week, I will be winding down for bed in Switzerland…WHAAAA???). I’m trying to fit it all in, but its hard considering I have a project presentation and two finals this week, AND I have to finish three papers for a cultural study I had to do for Meredith. I still have the David to see, the Galileo exhibit to visit, the Santa Maria Novella farmacia*, I want to go to the market one more time, I want to try Fiesole one more time (I figured it out…take the BUS not the TRAIN), I found a jewelry store that makes me salivate every time I walk by the window. Seriously, if I was a worse person, I would resort to thievery. There is another jewelry store that Cailin says has the cutest/cheapest stuff of all the stores ON the Ponte Vecchio (not a hard task to be the cheapest). The Boboli Gardens are calling my name. Its too much stuff!

*Santa Maria Novella Farmacia: It is a pharmacy (more of an apothecary) set up by the monks of the Santa Maria Novella centuries ago. All the recipes to make their products are completely secret. Not even the workers know the whole process to make a single bottle of hand cream, for example. There are about five or six people who work on each item, so each person only knows a certain part of the process, and they are sworn to secrecy, keeping anyone from being able to replicate the items.

I feel like I was here long enough for me to realize all the stuff I just couldn’t do in the time I was here. Don’t get me wrong. I did a lot. More than most, and for that I am could not be more grateful to mamma and daddy for supporting me and sending me across the ocean, no matter how much I may have cried! I guess I just have to be happy with what I did with my time, and move on to my next adventures. Who knows, maybe God will send me back here sooner rather than later. It’s kind of exciting….let’s wait and see.

Ok, so my weekend update will be short-ish since I rambled on for a loooooong time.

Milan was really cool. I’ve decided to write a Hoo-tique fashion update about Fashion in Europe in the next few days, so I’ll talk about Milan fashion there. If you are interested, go to my profile and my other blog is called “The Hoo-tique.” I haven’t updated it in awhile, but Europe has really inspired me, so I’ve got some stuff to say! But anyway- Milan. I went there for a fashion marketing field trip. During the day we had some time to walk around one of the shopping districts which was located near the duomo. So she told us if we had time, to go see the duomo. It was cool. It was really gorgeous. I’ve grown a little partial to the duomo in Florence, but it was really really pretty. We headed to another district of Milan called Brera. At first I didn’t really love Milan. VERY business-y and VERY super high fashion. Business and super High fashion does not a happy hooey make. But I really really really loved Brera. It was much more laid back, and we went to the coolest store I have ever been to in my life (not an exaggeration…the truth), called 10 Corso Como. After we visited that store we were free to go our separate ways (some went back to Florence, some went on to other destinations, I stayed in Milan). I did, however, have to go back to the train station to get my backpack, so I had to figure out the subway system. A little frustrating but I think I’ve got it now. I got checked in, and all was honky-dory. I even have this little gadget that slips into the crack of the door, and if anyone opens the door to your hotel room, a loud alarm goes off. Just out of curiosity, I tested it out, ready to turn off the alarm. IT. WAS. LOUD. I was not anticipating it to be that loud. So as I was going to bed, I kept falling asleep, then jerking back awake, fearing for some reason the alarm would go off accidentally, then everyone in the hotel would be mad at me. The next day I went to the science museum because they had a big Leonardo da vinci exhibit advertised. I didn’t realize however that you needed to be signed up for a tour group to be allowed into the exhibit. They had no groups for me to join that day. Bummer. The rest of the day was pretty mundane. I went back to brera (I REALLY liked it). Then I hopped on my train to Bologna.

Bologna was really cool. It has the oldest college in the world (not an exaggeration…the truth AGAIN), so it is a college town, but so much cooler. The food there was the best I have ever had. I even had a pasta course, and a meat course at dinner, because I had heard that Bologna was the place to get the best Italian food, and I wanted to experience as much of that as I could in the one night that I was there. I was not disappointed. The pasta was freshly made tortelloni and zucchini flowers, and the meat dish was a steak with a balsamic vinegar sauce. Now, considering this had been the first taste of red meat that I had had since the first week (when I grew violently tired of prosciutto), I might be a little biased, but it was the best steak I have ever had. Now considering I had bread, prosecco (a sparkling white wine), an antipasto platter, pasta, and the best steak of my life for 35 Euro, I think that is a good deal. The next day I played it a little more low key. I woke up and watched ten minutes of star trek dubbed in Italian (the Italian voice for William Shatner’s Captain Kirk was hysterical). I walked into town and had breakfast by Neptune’s fountain.



Next I walked around a little bit more and finished getting the atmosphere of Bologna, but I bought a picnic lunch at their market. I had lunch in the park, what a lovely way to spend a day
The other statue was of two mermaids wrestling with each other. Hmmmm…

My journey brought me back to Florence, and conversely, the mental anguish present at the beginning of this blog.


So now that I have rambled on, for what really has been forever….
Bella Busey: signing out
Or should I say long-winded-hot-frizzy-but-trying-to-make-every-last-moment-in-Florence-count-despite-people-and-their-stinky-attitudes-and-the-time-she-loses-when-she-is-chugging-water-to-keep-from-fainting-but-never-the-less-Bella Busey: Ciao!