When your tour guide wears ski pants…

As easy as it is to lose myself in Florence, or lounge at the Villa, I have also been busy exploring outside the city walls.

The Villa organizes several field trips as a group led by our professors. We visited Rome with our Theology Professor, Ori Soltes, who is famous for correcting an unsuspecting tour guide that a Church was built in 1232, not 1233, and for guiding us more through the Roman undergrounds than the streets. The class is called “Jews and Christians Across Italy”, and Rome is certainly the nucleus for the intermingling of these two religions. Professor Soltes has completely changed my perspective on the formation of these two religions with his linguistic analysis of the term “Judaea”. To use Professor Soltes’ favorite phrase, “to make a long story short”, the only language in the world that can differentiate between simply living in Judaea or being Jewish, is English. Therefore, all the languages of the time often confused the groups, which is why Professor Soltes coined the terms “Judaeans for Jesus” or “Judaeans not for Jesus”. This distinction certainly has interesting implications for religious literature, and has made the class rethink many of our suppositions about Judeo-Christian history. We were also able to visit Jewish and Christian catacombs to observe different symbols and pictographs. We also bumped into theoccasional swarm of cave spiders, which reminded us that we were 10 meters underground with 15 miles of empty graves literally entombing us…

Next, four friends and I decided to go to Prague with our sights set on the undamaged architecture, and not the thermometer. You know when your tour guide is wearing insulated ski pants and boots ready for Mount Everest, that you have made a very grave mistake. Those of you who know me well, may be curious as to how my notorious and poorly circulated feet fared. I still have 10 toes, but they have remained a lovely violet hue to this day. Besides the fact that we were in Prague for the coldest day of 2012, we had an amazing time. We organized the trip through Bus2alps, which I recommend for travelers on a low budget who have linguistic limitations.We stayed in the ironically named hostel “Czech-Inn”, and managed to see almost everything there is to see in Prague from St. Charles Bridge, to the Old New Synagogue, to a club that specializes in 80’s and 90’s music. The price to pay for this experience was 24 hours on a bus with some of America’s finest. Among my favorite quotes: “Where is Brussels?”

Linda Reynolds, our art history connoisseur took us to Verona and snow-covered Vicenza. Verona is the “home” of Juliet Capulet (completely fictional), and we happened to be there right before Valentine’s Day, so the romance level of Verona rocketed to the point of a radio host demanding everyone in the crowd to kiss their neighbor. In Vicenza, we visited many Baroque palladios and frescoes. We also visited the Coliseum in Vicenza, which was stunning because it is in much better condition than the Coliseum in Rome.

Last weekend, a big group of us took the train to Viareggio on the western coast of Italy to celebrate Carnivale. Highlights include seeing the ocean, chasing politically charged floats, and seeing intoxicated adults dressed up as smurfs.

After all this travel, I am very happy to be back in Florence to explore the Salvatore Ferragamo museum, and Santa Croce. In other news, I highly recommend the PBS show “Downton Abbey”, which my roommate and I have been obsessed with. Also, a post-Valentine’s Day Ballad for your loved one: “L’ultima notte al mondo” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyu4NWYwWE4&ob=av2e