Carnivale!

I've begun to do actual work with the Count on my independent research project. There are approximately 200 pages of documents that I'm supposed to be looking at; this is a picture of the first letter. It's better conserved than most of the rest. The ink has eaten through the parchment on a lot of the pages, it's blackened with age--all of those classic primary document problems. The hand writing ranges from nice and neat to completely hurried and messy (the first page is an example of the nice and neat version.)

I think my process is going to be basically transcribing the writing to the computer, and then attempting to translate from there. Unfortunately, there are a good number of abbreviations that were very common in the 1500's but which I can't make out for the life of me. There's also a tendency to use German letters every once in a while, but their use is definitely not standardized. Fun!

I'm not going to end up using this project for any class-conference, however. Last week I showed up to work with him and instead of bringing me down to his library he took me out to a wine tasting, which was incredibly fun but ever so slightly unproductive.

Last weekend I went down to Sicilia to visit a good friend of mine. She studies in Ortygia, the tiniest little island town connected to Syracuse. Her school (consisting of 30 people) represents nearly the entirety of American presence there, and it's a shock to travel from Florence, where even if you speak in Italian the Italians respond in English, to Ortygia, where if you don't know the Italian word for something, there's basically no hope of getting your point across. Of course I had no idea what was going on half of the time because they were speaking Sicilian (drastically different from Florentine) but it was great fun. They also have some of the best food I've ever tasted there, and I still miss the freshness of everything they made.

Unfortunately, I have no photos of my trip because I ran out of batteries, but just imagine the bluest water you've ever seen surrounding the quaintest little Italian town with winding streets and marble alleyways and you've basically got it. Also, imagine having no heat in your apartment at night and you'll REALLY have it. I don't know if I've ever been so cold or enjoyed myself so much.

Yesterday the school took us to celebrate Carnivale in Viareggio. There was a gorgeous beach (although I got sand in my trainers, which is never fun) and I rode a Ferris Wheel and ate cotton candy and all of that typical carnival sort of thing.

The floats for the Carnivale parade are generally political (i.e. Obama, pictured above), and whenever you see pictures in newspapers or tour books, they also look light and fun. I thought it was basically going to be an Italian Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But it turned out that a good number of the floats (see below) were completely terrifying.

There were devils and angry clowns (I've never understood coulrophobia before) and squewered, roasting people and nudes in a frying pan and I don't even know what. I've never been quite so scared or quite so entertained before. All in all, I had a wonderful time.