Corsa dei Ceriby Haley Kingsland, Stanford University

 

For the past 900 years Gubbians have observed the Corsa dei Ceri, an annual festival that unites generations in celebration of patron Sant’Ubaldo’s May 16, 1160 death and whose wrinkled, leathery body is preserved in the basilica atop Monte Ingino. In early May citizens of Gubbio carry the seven meter high wooden candle that lies in the church in his memory all the way down the mountain for veneration, feasting, and of course, the May 15 Corsa dei Ceri— a marathon race through the curving, twisting streets of Gubbio that re-delivers the candle and those of two other saints, Giorgio and Antonio, to their resting places.

But the holiday really begins the night before, when drunken youth host impromptu gatherings in the medieval grey cobblestone piazzas, Italian tourists savor the charred taste of Gubbio’s famous truffles mixed with tagliatelle, and giddy schoolchildren chase each other along Corso Garibaldi long past their bedtime because they don’t have class the next day. To fare una passeggiata through Gubbio is like strolling through a place untouched by time, where a gurgling stream delivers mountain water as it has for centuries, the grey stone buildings glow light pastel purple in the moonlight, and windows with curved tops and roofs lined with neat jutting squares are so out of a children’s storybook that one almost expects a dazzling princess with perfectly pruned curls, puffed sleeves, and a richly decorated gown to pop out from around the corner. Because the whole town anticipates the excitement the morning will bring, the atmosphere is one of hopeful expectation— the kind that builds in the abdomen and slowly creeps up to the heart and pulsates there until it bursts when the doors of the grand castle in Piazza Grande are flung open the next day at half past eleven and a dozen men carrying S. Ubaldo’s candle lying horizontal on their backs come rushing down the marble steps to a crowd of cheering spectators. Townspeople are dressed in three different colored shirts— the artigianati in giallo in honor of S. Ubaldo, the commerciali in blu to commemorate S. Giorgio, and the contadini and studenti in nero for S. Antonio— crisp white pants (khakis, jeans, or linen), and red sashes and bandannas. Here the candles for S. Giorgio and S. Antonio also make their debut until all three are together like giant hourglasses lying side-by-side, their captains standing proudly atop them, and at the sound of a bell are whipped up to their upright position and spun in a circle three times through the center before directly deposited at the starting point on Via Savelli della Porta for the much-anticipated afternoon race in which the men officially display the candles to the city like pallbearers.

So much energy is enough for one morning, and so the Gubbians retire for lunch, for vino bianco e rosso, for spumante, for sleep, and for congratulations. The streets are calm and hushed as they await the strong running men and three heavy candles topped with miniature statues of each saint who will soon mercilessly tread upon them. Citizens emerge from their stone houses and begin gathering at the starting point around 5 PM, where fathers in yellow hoist their sons dressed in blue upon the candles’ carriages while beaming wives snap photographs. At precisely 5:45 the men raucously run the candles to the first pause, their friends and family clapping and screaming from the sidelines. There they will pass the candles on to the next crop of bearers— the order carefully chosen and deliberated at a conference solemnly held every year to decide— while all spectators compete for the best front row spots along the second street. And so the grand run continues in this manner until the men and their candles race back into Piazza Grande amidst a sea of well-wishers. Here they circle around again three more times, waiting for the white-haired mayor leaning out a palazzo window in a classy Italian suit to wave the white flag with the flutter of his delicate hand that signifies the true start of the Corsa dei Ceri to return the candles to S. Ubaldo’s dead body by running straight up the mountain.

Everybody— even ninety-year-old nonnas— makes the steep climb above the city to line the bent road past the Porta del Monte where the candle bearers will next appear. As they finally go by heaving with sweat, Gubbians watch the wooden candles and their figures disappear uphill behind the tall dark green cypress trees before slowly descending back down to the city center, where the night’s celebration is just beginning. That evening still in their costumes citizens of Gubbio rejoice with boisterous feasts, private parties, and flowing wine distributed outside their ancient stone houses free for the taking. And then a wild festa with professional performers ensues in a major piazza, where singing and dancing commences to forget that in 364 more days the candles will shine again in this town that lives for il quindici maggio. 

For more information and photographs from this year’s festival, visit the Corsa dei Ceri official website, http://www.ceri.it.

Interestingly, Gubbian immigrants who settled in Jessup, Pennsylvania at the turn of the twentieth century also celebrate Saint Ubaldo Day every Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Browse the official website, http://www.stubaldoday.com, for more information.

First Year Italian prepared me for False Friends. Romanzo may sound like romance, but is actually a novel. One who is annoiato is bored, not annoyed, just as something noioso is boring, not noisy. And i parenti don’t mean parents, but relatives. I knew that I would recognize some of these little word tricks during my time in , but also stumble into others along the way.

“I won’t tell Laura’s boss about her wicked nature because I was educato bene,” my Language Partner declared over his Sex on the Beach cocktail while lamenting his breakup with his ex-ragazza. I knew that for years he had been studying art history, but how had staring at Renaissance paintings educated him about love? I wondered. A page through my Italian dictionary revealed that educato bene means well-raised, or well-bred. 

A few weeks ago my host sister accompanied me to a much-needed hair appointment with the family parrucchiere (hairdresser). After a wet hour of shampooing, conditioning, cutting, styling, and blow-drying, my hair had never looked better. “Adesso i tuoi cappelli sono molti morbidi,” Greta said as we walked back, running her hands through my product-dense locks. Is she saying my hair looks morbid? I was shocked. But no, she was giving me a compliment— morbido is soft. 

This past weekend my friends and I sampled the endless free food at Florence ’s annual Artigianato festival— pasta, cheese, cannoli, limoncello, olive oil, bread, and chocolate— and I salivated over organic broccoli paste spread on crackers. “Vorresti assaggiare il sugo con i peperoni?” the vendor asked me. “No, grazie,” I replied simply, “Sono una vegetariana.” His look of such puzzled confusion made me realize that peperoni are not the circular pieces of meat sprinkled over typical American pizzas, but hot peppers. 

Yes, after nearly four months in Florence I am still making these funny mistakes. Other false cognates that have sent me to wordreference.com are sensibile (sensitive), confetti (sugar-coated almonds distributed at weddings), and finalmente (eventually)— but decoding their hidden meanings is just part of the excitement of living in a foreign place.

Some of the best surprises occur during travel. Two Julys ago a friend and I stopped in Venice on our way to a Sicilian archaeological dig. Little did we know that we had chosen the riotous weekend of La Festa del Redentore, Venice’s annual summer party second only to Carnevale. What’s more, had just won the World Cup a few days before. As we exited the Peggy Guggenheim museum at the end of our very long first day, we heard radios blasting Bob Sinclair’s Love Generation, raucous Campioni del Mondo cheers, screeching horns, and revving engines— the sound of thousands of boats parading down the Grand Canal. We quickly elbowed our way onto a crowded vaporetto going the opposite direction against the tide of puttering dinghies, wide barges, and sleek Venetian powerboats decorated in colored streamers, flowers, balloons, and even new paint. Their owners and friends celebrated aboard with fresh bottles of spumante, while onlookers applauded from the waterfront decks of Renaissance palazzos. That night we vied for a prime oceanfront spot on a bobbing dock along the Riva degli Schiavoni to view a spectacular hour-long fireworks display complete with neon signs for PACE, the green-white-and-red Italian flag, and even tulip shapes.

I was reminded of this Venetian summer surprise when I took an early train to Modena this past weekend on a mission to visit La Galleria Ferrari, forty minutes outside the city. While waiting for the midday bus I wandered up to Piazza Grande in the centro and suddenly found myself surrounded by 100 red Ferraris parked amidst great activity in the main square. Because all of their hoods were pointed in the same direction, they looked like a brilliant school of tropical fish ready to bolt at any moment. Some were convertibles, some were hatchbacks, and some had full backseats, but all of them were classic low-lying vehicles with silver rims. Fathers wearing red sweatshirts were photographing their sons in the trademark red and yellow Ferrari logo baseball caps, while others were discussing the merits of various engines and running their hands in awe along the cars’ smooth and shiny outlines. The sight of so many of these magnificent automobiles during this casual Sunday morning raduno di Ferrari was enough to keep me smiling the entire day, but to add to my happiness no more than 15 minutes after I arrived did all of the owners retreat to their respective vehicles, duck into their seats, start their ignitions, and begin a well-choreographed departure as each Ferrari drove single file through a gauntlet of hundreds of screaming spectators.

Only a stroke of exceptionally good luck brought me to Modena and Venice at these times. Travel is always exhilarating and exciting, but its unexpected events make it most rewarding.

Nothing about being a study abroad student in is easy, except perhaps, making your friends and family jealous, getting a great panoramic snapshot, and eating well. I have come to believe it is the daily challenge just to get by that gives me the love-hate relationship I have developed with Firenze . Back home I consider myself to be a pretty level person. I do not tend towards outbursts of tears or waves of adrenaline, but this is definitely not the case in Florence . In any given week I can be on top of the world (or Duomo) thanking my lucky stars and enthusiastically exploring the city, or I can be an exact replica of Dante in Santa Croce, stony and scowling, cursing the exchange rate and retreating back to my apartment. I was in the latter mood about a week ago as a result of lack of sleep, overdose of two and half hour class, and that signature of Tuscan spring, rain! I stared longingly at my cozy apartment across the piazza from where I was standing, and angrily down at my soaked flip flops (maybe the Italians are onto something with that whole boot concept), but I had a friend’s birthday just a few days away and I had promised to make a reservation at a restaurant by that afternoon. “Stopping in” to my apartment meant certain failure for this plan as I knew I would not reemerge, so I readjusted my hood and grumbled my way a block over towards the restaurant. As I walked up to the door I recalled one of the only phrases I retained from an Italian word of the day calendar my mom had bought for me the previous Christmas. “Hello” the waiter greeted me, I could barely be seen from under my rain soaked hood and he still automatically knew I was American! I had that temporary moment of “what’s the use?” that seems to strike me every time I try to rally myself to communicate in Italian, but I decided this wasn’t just about me today. How could I let my mom’s $10.99 go to waste? “Buona sera, vorrei prenotare un tavolo,” I recited in perfectly calculated Italian. He smiled and matched me with slow, well articulated, and generously one worded questions. Quando? Quanti? After two years of Italian I am proud to say that I was at least able to rattle off the weekday name, time, and number of people before exchanging “grazie”s and booking it out the door before my luck ran out.

Walking that block back home I felt elated, truly and purely. My heart was beating hard and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, but there was something else; a full body rush that one just can’t get from reserving a table back home. I had made contact. For anyone reading this who is not abroad this all must sound ridiculous or wildly exaggerated, but I promise it is not. The rollercoaster ride of studying abroad is not just based around seeing the Amalfi Coast or the David. Some of its sharpest twists and turns are set by one’s first experience grocery shopping, or trying to find the ‘@’ button on a European keyboard, or, yes, even trying to reserve a table for a friend’s birthday! Actually, now that I think about it, even those first few things I mentioned aren’t as easy as I thought. battling with the ever cutting out Skype in my apartment combined with the two hours it can take to load pictures online can make it nearly impossible to brag to friends and family, snapping that perfect sunset picture requires fighting droves of tourists and my own burning calf muscles up the steps to Piazza Michelangelo, and who can afford to eat out these days?! Yet walking home, soaking wet, with only the promise of homework and pasta with frozen vegetables ahead of me, I am reminded that it really is, somehow, all worth it.

Maybe you have had more success than I, but trying to pinpoint cultural differences continually frustrates me.  I volunteer every Wednesday in a public high school (istituto professionale) and each time I am there I keep trying to figure out exactly what it is that makes Italian istituti e licei nothing like American high schools. First, there is the obvious division between college-track licei and work-track istituti.  Italian high schools are far more targeted than American ones; within the licei there are schools for languages and schools for science, within the istituti there are schools specializing in various trades the one where I spend each Wednesday focuses on tourism. I teach two English classes and plan my lessons around hotels, tourist brochures, and advertising. The structures of the secondary school systems of the two countries are indeed diverse.

But these are the surface differences, ones you can list nicely with bullet points and can understand by reading from a book.  Walking into an Italian istituto is nothing like walking into an American high school. Why? Is what is absent louder than what is present? Are the missing pep rally banners and college posters the difference? Italian schools are minimal: the monotone hallways do not boast the student art and flyers for sports and theatre events that plaster the halls of American schools.  I’ve noticed these physical differences from the first time I walked into the istituto, but the difference between the variations of secondary education is beyond the fact that American classrooms seem always to be swimming in stuff and Italian classrooms contain only desks and a chalkboard.

I think it has something to with the role school plays in the lives of Italians versus Americans.  Italians seem to be less invested in school- both academically and socially. The teachers and students alike brush off incomplete homework assignments, tests are informal, and students seem be overall less interested in what is happening in the school. American schools love extra-curricular everything- sports, clubs, theatre, art, groups of all kinds, student help offices and more.  Italian schools have none of that. Consequently, the lives of Italian students are centered in other parts of the community rather than the school.  Where?  Maybe there isn’t one nucleus of life in Italy comparable to the social center that is the American High school.  Students ask me about the cat-fights, the prom, the football games and all the other aspects of American high school life that they see in movies.  Is it really like that?  I tell them that a lot of the time that is pretty much the status quo. They are incredulous that American students care so much about what happens between the bells.  What we see are the results of two different interpretations on the role of a school in the lives of its students, but maybe what separates the two schools of education is the interpretation itself. Coming from a very American town where high school was indeed the center of the lives of everyone who attended, it is hard to grasp this Italian form of educazione secondaria where the istituto is just a building for classes.

My first introduction to Italian culture was Soliti Ignoti. So jet-lagged that I could barely mumble “grazie” during that initial feast with my host family, the sight of one contestant on TV guessing the secret identities of ten everyday Italians instantly invigorated me. How could this man know that the tan, seventy-two-year-old woman raised speckled pigs for a living, and that the tattooed, muscular young boy had eleven brothers?

Over the next few nights I began to learn. The first Italian was always a malnourished looking woman, one who had just won the beauty contest in her region. Next was an easily identifiable profession, such as a farmer wearing cruddy black boots. But the final eight depended on sheer intuition.

My family members could have easily carried away the grand prize of 250 thousand euros. Dinner turned into a game show as my host mother, brother, and sister erupted into vocal squabbles over whether the Italians’ outfits, hairdos, accents, makeup, age, posture, and hand wrinklage exposed their true character. “She’s too old to own a sexy shop,” my mother would observe thoughtfully, while my sister would scrutinize the Italians’ pronunciation. “He’s from the north— he must work at the cheese factory.

At dinner parties I showed off my acquisition of random vocabulary words gleaned from Soliti Ignoti, like casalinga (housewife), palloncino (balloon), falegname (carpenter), and anatra (duck). “Haley watches this program every night,” my host mother would boast to her guests, patting me on the cheek.

But one night she looked at me apologetically, spooning a bit of extra pasta al pesto on my plate. “Stasera non c’è Soliti Ignoti più,” she said. The show was over for the season, and we began following a complicated new spettacolo involving an array of pastel ribboned boxes instead….I’ll let you know how it goes.