Fare un sciopero

Today, this is my window on the world.
The view from the train as we travel to Cinque Terre.

When you are sitting in a classroom in Tallahassee, Florida learning Italian vocabulary words, there are some that you know you will use if you ever travel.  For example, una pizza, un'aranciata (an orange soda), and vorrei (a polite way of saying "I would like...").  Apart from that, you learn a few words that you don't think you will ever hear again.  I encountered one such word, a word that you hope you never have to hear, this weekend: sciopero (strike).

To start from the beginning, I spent the weekend with Michelle and Andrea in a group of five towns on the coast not too far from Florence known the Cinque Terre.  We stayed in Monterosso but any of the Cinque Terre will offer you the most beautiful beaches and views along with the laid back, fun atmosphere of a beach town.  We hiked and spent time at the beach, soaking up not only the sunshine, but also the beautiful views and incredible scenery.  Except for a couple of rude Italians and a run-in with an equally rude jellyfish (la medusa, another word you hope you never have to use), it was an amazing weekend!!

On the way to Monterosso, we had only words of praise for the TrenItalia system: it's cheaper than a lot of places in Europe, it runs efficiently, it gets us where we want to go....  Little did we know that we were about to run right into the middle of a sciopero,  a strike.  According to Rick Steves, my Comparative Politics professor and pretty much everyone else who has spent any amount of time in Italy, train workers strikes are a pretty common occurrence, hardly even worth noting.  

The thing that struck (no pun intended) us as funny was not that the strike was happening or that it was only in Tuscany, but that it only lasted for twelve hours.  There were literally signs hanging up in the station telling you that the strike would end at 9:00 PM.  It was scheduled, planned and definite.  The people at the information table told us that if none of the trains back to Florence came through before then, there would be a train after 9.  Somehow, this is such a foreign idea.  It seems to me that when I hear about strikes happening in America, we are talking about things that last indefinitely, until demands are met or conditions are changed.  Here, for the train workers, it seems to be just a way to make a statement and cause inconvenience for the travelers and the train companies, more of a light, nudging reminder, than a forceful demand....but that's just my opinion.  

In the end we got home around 10, catching a stray trais running through Pisa and another train passing through Florence on its way to another city outside of Tuscany.  It was more of a light inconvenience than a tremendous problem.  Andrea cursed Socialism for the three hours that we waited in the station at La Spezia and she's probably right to do that.  Regardless of the cause, however, this too is part of the Italian experience and I'm so glad to be here that I will take even the quirks and inefficiencies of this beautiful nation in stride.

Completely deserted train station in Pisa.

We couldn't resist savoring a small taste of efficient
and functional capitalism! 

This is the view from my window.

Since arriving in Florence, I have developed a peculiar fascination with windows.  The first thing I noticed when I arrived was the incredible view out my window.  I spent three of the first six hours I was here sticking my head out the window as far as possible and gawking in disbelief.  I look out my window the outside world, into windows at some other inside world and I've even started noticing windows that are not actually real windows.  Next time you are out and about, notice how many different types of windows there are, it's fascinating really.

This is an illusion, notice that half of the windows are painted.

Windows allow us to look out at the world.

Magritte

Windows allow us to look into someone else's world, if only for a moment.

Hopper


And finally, windows force us to contemplate the act of looking itself.

Dali

This blog is my framing of the world through my own eyes and I want you, amici, to see it as a window into my experiences here in Florence.  

So, without further ado.....

 Today, this is my window to the world:

If you think that, after all that, my window looks more like the interior of a church than an actual window, that's because it is the interior of a church.  But it's also a window, I promise.  

The interior of this church is in Ravenna, Italy, which was the capital of the Byzantine empire for some time. (We visited there last Friday)  Although the Byzantine Empire has long since been wiped off the face of the planet (and out of the memories of most of the planet’s people, I think), the amazing churches that remain in the city of Ravenna are a testament to the long-bygone glory of the largely forgotten empire.

The Baptistery of one of the churches.

The Byzantine Empire was one of the fragments of the Roman Empire left after its downfall and it was a holy empire, really holy.  The emperor was believed to have been an incarnation of Christ on Earth and much power was centered on Christianity.  As far as holiness goes, I don’t know much about 1500-year-old emperors being Christ-incarnated, but I do know the feeling that stepping into one of these churches gives you.  They are grand and, for lack of a better word, shiny, with mosaics that are so lushly colored that it feels like you are stepping into a mystical forest or garden.  They feel open and luminous, I think that this has a lot to do with the way the light reflects off of the individual tiles of the mosaics, it’s glorious, truly glorious.  

Somehow, I feel like these churches are windows for us to another realm, to something divine, heavenly and more beautiful that we can even imagine.  So beautiful, in fact, that we couldn't handle more than the sneak peak that a window provides.  Maybe this is a small taste of heaven: lush, glorious, colorful, luminous, with every individual soul glowing with infinite light and joy…

         

Honestly, I never wondered what heaven looked like until I saw the inside of this church, but now I think I have a pretty good idea.