New Year's celebrations in the city center featured lots of firecrackers and breaking of bottles. (Breaking things to commemorate the new year is a serious tradition here -- in Naples, for instance, we hear that people toss china out the windows. Best not to loiter on the sidewalks below.) We and our friends left dinner at approximately 11:57 and spent the final moments of 2008 sprinting toward the river to watch the fireworks. The aftermath in Piazza della Signoria was seriously shard-o-riffic.
Then, everyone recuperated until Epiphany (Jan. 6, the commemoration of the arrival of the Magi at their final destination), which is a big deal here. La Befana-- a variation on 'l'Epifania'-- is the friendly witch who arrives on her broomstick to fill the children's stockings with either candy or coal, onions, and garlic. (Babbo Natale, a.k.a. Santa Claus, also comes here, but stockings are not in his contract.) Although I would not have objected to aromatic vegetables, la Befana (and her lieutenants= the Pazzi, our landlords) decided we were good children and left us a stocking full of liquor-filled chocolates.
We joined the Pazzi for Epiphany dinner, which included 18 relatives, 5 courses, and many rounds of Tombola, a Bingo-style game, afterward. The zie (four elderly aunts, I'm not sure whose) kept insisting that they gamble after dinner every year just to please the children, but the children mysteriously disappeared after dessert and the zie didn't seem to mind. We played the Neapolitan version of Tombola, which has plenty of local color in the form of words and illustrations accompanying the numbers. (Examples: The legs of old women! The murdered guy! The dead guy who talks! The tits! The lieutenant's balls!) All of these are written in Neapolitan dialect, and it was great entertainment hearing all the Florentines imitating Neapolitans. I won €6.50.
This weekend we took advantage of the nice weather and headed for Verona. In Verona they have a very large Roman amphitheater:
A picturesque river (the Adige):
Nice medieval architecture:
Nice medieval architecture:
A castle:
What the heck is that bird doing?
An old scorpion-oil store:
Wait, what?
According to my very sophisticated academic sources (Google), this 'Matioli Perfetissimo' was a 16th-century scientist and doctor from Siena. His medical recipes included scorpion oil, against the plague and whatnot. Apparently it was popular in Verona...?
Another curiosity was this group of frescoes in the Basilica di San Zeno. They were apparently used as a local bulletin board/ guest book:
(The upper graffiti discuss an earthquake of 25 February 1695. This saint seems unmoved.)
I see that this post is quickly taking a turn for the historical-- time for me to go work on that dissertation.
1 commento:
translation of fresco grafitti:
"do you bite your thumb at me, sir?"
scorpion oil > snake oil
lieutenant's balls > inaugural balls
(hey, the "wait, what?" totally opened the meme door.)
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