15. Settembre 2011: Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell

In the next room, my roommate is sitting and playing with the cutest little Italian child, Marco. He is the five-month-old grandson of our host-parents. He is irresistible, yes. So why am I sitting in the next room writing to you and listening to Broken Bells? Because the moment I poked my head around his stroller, he started bawling. So I figured I would instead tell you about my luck with the other side of the age spectrum!

Today I went to the train station to purchase my tickets to go to München for Oktoberfest (!!!). The line was long and monopolized by American tourists but I waited patiently because I had two hours to kill before my next class meeting. I stood alone for no more than five minutes before a very Italian old (in her 80’s or 90’s) woman got in line behind me. She was about two feet shorter than I (and remember, I stand at a towering 5’2 ½”), overly made up and clearly in fretta, in a hurry. She eased her way up the line until she was standing next me. I suppose I don’t look particularly American today, my half shaved head has a black bandana tied around it to match my black menswear vest over a floor-length pleated skirt (which, granted, is the “in” color in Italy right now: a vibrant sea-green) because she turned to me and began to speak to me in very quick Italian. I picked up that she was talking about how confusing the station was, she wasn’t sure which line to stand in but chances were, she needed to stand in the longest line as usual. I nodded and shrugged my shoulders, indicating that I had sort of understood what she was saying and had sympathy for her cause. Her eyes lit up when she thought that I had understood every word she said and she continued to rattle away in Italian for the next 20 minutes as we waited in line together. Luckily she knew everything that she wanted to get off her chest and did not require a response from me other than the occasional sympathetic head-nod and “Oh, si, si.”

From what I could understand, she was in quite a hurry and was frustrated that so many tourists where in the train station because tourists never know where they are going, they have to ask the employees so many questions! Where to go, how to get there, how long it will take…plus she had bicycled all the way over here from the other side of town and she couldn’t find a place to park it (apparently she had missed the enormous bike racks at the entrance to the station) so she had parked it in the middle of the station. When she told me this, I looked in the direction she was pointing and realized the truth in her statement: there was an old, white, cruiser bike sitting in the very center of this high-walled, old train station. I chuckled and nodded. She continued to talk about the multitude of tourists (I’m still a little confused about her frustration at this…she was, after all, in a train station) and then noticed that the group for four very overweight Americans in front of us weren’t moving the line forward quickly enough for her taste. She switched to English and said “I am in a hurry!” then turned to me and commented on the weight of the tourists. Now this, I think, I can roughly translate; she said “I mean, I am overweight for an Italian (she was not at all overweight) and clearly you are skinny. But these Americans are all so fat! Molto, molto grasso!” I looked at the fattest of the Americans who was looking straight at the nonna without a trace of understanding on her face. That was when I lost it. My laughter echoed around the tall walls of the station and this nonna was extremely pleased at my reaction. She joined in my laughter as everyone around us watched us with confusion. I felt amazing to be looked at like I belonged there, like I was an Italian. But of course, that was when she asked, “Dove sei?”…where are you from? Without a second thought, I responded, “Io sono Tedesco. A Monacho.”…I am German, from Münich. She smiled at told me that I understood Italian very well for a German! Thankfully, that was the end of our conversation because I let her go in front of me in the line for tickets. My heart was pounding. Thank goodness I had figured out how to say that from day one! I purchased my tickets completely in Italian, just in case anyone was listening, and booked it out of the station before she could catch me and ask me anything else. What an adventure! And a bit of a superficial ego-boost for this American who had been speaking Italian for less than three weeks.

Before I go, I’ll briefly note our museum visit from yesterday. We attended the Dali and Rodin exhibit on Dante by the Ponte Vecchio. It was quite something! There must have been about a hundred or more original Dali watercolors depicting every chapter of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, e Paradiso). These were both beautiful and terrifying. My favorites were (in order):

Hell- Canto 1: Departure for the Great Journey

Hell- Canto 9: The Furies

Hell- Canto 30: The Men Who Devour Each Other

Purgatory- Canto 1: The Fallen Angel

Paradisio- Canto 11: Opposition

Purgatory- Canto 33: Dante Purified

(forgive the glare of the pictures…we were there at midday and there was glare on the glass that was, at times, unavoidable)

Then of course, we saw the original mock-up of Rodin’s Gates of Hell which is surprisingly different from his full-sized final version and shows an interesting perspective on his thought process. My favorite sculpture, however, was the Eterna Primavera/Eternal Spring depicting the damning act of Paulo e Francesca, the adulterous lovers that sit in one of the deepest circles of Dante’s Inferno. This was the story that we focused on for this museum visit and it took me a little while to get over my discomfort of my nominal similarity with the female adulteress.

 I am off to Verona this weekend to visit the home of so many of Shakespeare’s characters. A dopo!