Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siena
Remember that Burnt Sienna crayon in the Crayola box? The one that faked you out each time, thinking it was the brown one? It's named for this region; they added an extra "n" for some reason.
The trip to Rome went through Dulles and Montreal -- two otherwise ordinary trips that made me wonder if modern airplane designers ever sit or ride in their own planes -- or if the designers themselves are under the impression that modern travelers consist of legless torsos loaded into the seats by airline staff at the beginning and end of each trip? I took everything out of the seat pocket in front of me, including the airline magazine and the emergency card, and the guy in front of me was still right up against my kneecaps for the duration of the entire trip. He was also one of those Mr. Entitlement guys from the get-go, arranging his Super-Pudge horseshoe-shaped pillow from the outset, and making shoving-moving-shifting motions for the whole trip, shouting "What's the problem here???" when he couldn't get his seat to go back in a fully sprawled hammock position that he wanted -- the guy was in constant motion and extremely pissed off. Every time he sat up even slightly, his seat shrieked and sighed from the reprieve of his constant bullying. I didn't get a good look at his face, but I can tell you that he had an impressive amount of grey hair -- I could count every last follicle since his head was practically in my lap. Keighley and I came up with plenty of bad-karma outcomes for him -- red lipstick messages we could write on his head if he'd ever sit still ("you suuuuckkkkk"), or perhaps a nice little design mowed into the tufts with a safety razor.....
Two sets of headphones later, I realized that I'd gotten the seat with the broken sound system, but that was OK too, because:
The apartment in Siena is huge -- all tile floors with different tiles, although any bed that isn't your own bed feels sort of like sleeping on a bicycle rack, and there's always something a little puzzling about a bidet. Something about it lining up next to the other toilet like two thrones for the king and queen, and even though I know how it's supposed to work, it looks like something is sort of wrong with it. I know it's my own American weirdness, but I can never quite get over it. I also think it's another one of those things where it's meant for someone whose legs are shorter than mine but it's not the kind of thing where you get an actual demonstration that clears the whole thing up so I'm just going to leave it to the Europeans.
Downtown Siena is beautiful and and made up of old stones, with hilly parts (you could definitely use rubber soled shoes, or even a good set of crampons in some parts). The city square, Il Campo, is a large, sloping scallop shell where they hold the Palio, a highly competitive horse race, each year on July 2 and August 16. It was first laid out in the 1100s on the site of the Roman forum in a herringbone brick dividied by white marble lines into nine sections representing the city's medieval ruling body, the Council of Nine. The Campo's tilt, fan shape, and structure are all a calibrated part of the city's ancient water system and underground canal network. Now, it's the center of town where everyone gathers, meets, has a pizza, sets out their wares, sells souvenirs. The public restrooms will cost you fifty centimes (half a euro) and inside the stall, they still haven't gotten over the last World Cup, and the insults rage on over Zidane vs. Matterazi (Vive la France...! Bouh! Au Chiof Matterazi! Viva Francia!) Check out Keighley re-enacting the scene from Roman Holiday with a miniature of La Bocca della Verità...chomp!!!
I saw a guy sitting in the square (okay, okay, it's more like a circle) with a laptop surfing the internet, jacking into somebody's wifi (actually, it was Julie who picked up on it -- hey! look! internet!) so it looks like it may be possible to troll around and pick up free signal....
You can go up to the top of that tower if you want to...it's part of Palazzo Pubblico, the only surviving medieval building and the town hall. Inside, its a brick palace decorated with early 14th century art. We went in to see two famous artworks, Simone Martini's Maestà and Ambroglio Lorenzetti's Allegory of Good and Bad Government, but it was unbelievably difficult to identify them with no placards or directions anywhere. Lots of things looked like they *could* have been allegories of good and bad government...and the personnel working there were just allegories of good and bad art museum personnel. "In there!" (flap flap with the arms). "In there" being a corridor leading to ten or twelve rooms.... We eventually found it. It's the room with the windows wide open and the curtains flapping like mad so the pigeons outside are free to fly in if they want to (maybe that's what they meant with all that flapping motion). Most of the artwork is completely destroyed actually, bleached and stripped away. The room is kept so dark you can hardly make it out anyway. Is that the secret to good government or bad government?
Really cool shoes at this one shop that was decorated in 1950s vintage with a life-sized Elvis, a juke box, and a brushed metal Coke counter with twirly red stools.
We ate at a restaurant the first night set right on the edge of a hill -- the benches had blocks in them to keep them from rolling. While we were eating, the people at the next table said, "Isn't that the table that fell over last night?" (You could kind of imagine it happening, actually.) Fabulous pasta :) I had the best lasagne ever (if a little pricey) in Il Campo the next day.
Not a bad walk across town, but the town is all cobblestones and if you were wearing an ordinary pair of smooth-soled sandals, you could easily start sliding and not stop until you'd tumbled all the way down to Il Campo. The students in our group are in Italian classes in the mornings. My mornings are spent running around town trying to organize the trips and excursions around town and out of town -- nothing is what we anticipated before we got here, nothing is the same as what is stated on the official web sites, and nobody answers a telephone. In spite of all of our "Hi my name is" obsequiousness in the good old U.S. of A., we do actually have a great customer service ethic (which also goes with our employment laws and the fact that it is possible to file complaints and fire people).
We all went out to dinner as a group one evening when they had Jazz Night downtown, and came across a marching band on its way to Il Campo. We followed them and watched them set up and go through a languid little set (there must have been five or ten minutes' pause between each number, which included standards such as "Ode To Joy"). We weren't expecting any Souza, but they did play "The Washington Post" march after all (no "Stars and Stripes" though).
I love this sign about self-absorbed shampoo. Dandruff? Fly-away hair? Frizzies? But enough about you....
Take a look at the backsplash in the kitchen. Notice anything unusual? Such as a complete lack of electrical plugs? You couldn't plug in a blender or a microwave even if you find one (I haven't even seen such a thing for sale). So forget about making a margarita or zapping something after coming home from work, because it isn't going to happen. Toast? Dream on.
This is the washer and the dryer in the apartment:
Yes, that is a bucket and a clothesline out the window. I get the idea of how you wash your own unmentionables in the bucket if you're willing to hang your undies outside for all the world to see (not me, and P.S. when you wash your socks like this they come out as stiff as picnic tables), but how do you wash a towel? I asked Celeste what actual Italians do and she said they put their laundry in their car and take it to their mother's house. (Seriously.) There are laundromats in town (around 8 euros to do about a week's worth of laundry, and you have to carry it up and down the hills of Siena...not fun.) There are places that do it for you, but they charge by the kilo. There is no such thing as the laundromat-downstairs-in-the-apartment-complex.
Eventually, I decided to wash some t-shirts and socks and hang them on the clothesline in the alley (which we refer to as Olé Olé! because it was the shortcut to the grocery store and on our first trip there we passed some Spanish teenagers on the steps who greeted us with Olé Olé! -- they've since closed the Olé Olé! alleyway because they're housing the horse for the Dragon contrade there). When I went to pull everything back in, there was one sock casualty -- and they've closed the alleyway because of the horse, so sadly, the one sock has been lost forever to Olé Olé :(
This is how they handle conserving energy in the apartment...this is the chandelier in the living room:
The apartment is actually somebody's real apartment, but there is no medicine cabinet in the bathroom and somehow they survive without a single aspirin, spare razor, can of shaving cream, or band-aid, and there is no junk drawer in the kitchen and somehow they survive without a single book of matches, double-A battery, or candle (although at the rate that the lightbulbs are burning out (there are no spare lightbulbs) I wonder what happens when the lights go out, there is not a single twist tie (the garbage bags are shut without twist-ties), not a rubber band, NOTHING. It is like the real inhabitants are pod people who leave no traces or keep any supplies of any kind whatsoever. I would go out and buy lightbulbs (two have burnt out in the bathroom already leaving just one in the very front of the room and making taking a shower a very spooky experience indeed) but I don't know where people buy lightbulbs...where is the Wal-Mart?? Julie came over last evening because there is a screw rattling around in her laptop making it short out and she needed a tiny Phillips-head screwdriver but there is no Home Depot in town either.
We went back to Mario's (it's not really called "Mario's" the name of the place actually means "The Chatterbox") but this time we didn't sit outside at the 45-degree tables, we sat inside next to a woman and her daughter from Denver. This time when we ordered the spaghetti ragu Mario said no (a Soup Nazi moment), that we had to have it with the pici (pronounced "peachy" a local pasta, about the diameter of shoelaces), so we ate shoelaces with meat sauce, and chocolate pie.
This is the National Picture Gallery of Siena, and the top floor is wall-to-wall Madonnas, all of them classical huge Marys in blue robes dwarfing the apostles painted next to her, with gold leaf and ornamentation, everything looking like it had been pillaged from altarpieces and church decorations. Most of them looked like they'd been copied from each other, and almost everything had to be viewed from particular angles because of the glint of the metallic foils or the crazed effects of the paint over the years. In some cases, the faces had worn away in spots and were completely missing, as if someone had torn them completely off (or maybe they'd removed them and taken them away to start a new one).
Almost all of the Madonnas looked sad, if not depressed, and there was some kind of Dorian Gray kind of thing going on with the paintings in that most of the baby Jesuses looked older than the Marys (the actor John Lovitt looked like he was in at least one of them). Lots of the 14th century Madonnas were done by Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti (we'd seen other paintings of theirs at the Palazzo Pubblico), including a disturbing Martini depicting one of his painted dollhouses with four scenes of death and mayhem with a giant character (looking like something straight out of a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel) presiding over all (a near-saint), listening to angels and trying to prevent the mayhem.
Also, there was a whole series of Jesus-and-Mary paintings with Jesus going for Mary's boob. This created a bit of a stir in the museum, as you can imagine...and not just because obviously, Mary couldn't just whirrrrrr up some peas in a blender for Baby J back in Biblical times....in some of those paintings the Christ Child was actually nursing and looked not just pleased with himself but kind of...well...stoned.
Several of the Marys had an odd resemblance in the coy way her head is cocked, to the present day jailbird Paris Hilton (strange...but wouldn't it be hilarious if she was trying to copy the wrong famous Madonna???)
The Botanical Garden, where there are lots of special plants and "living stones" made up of two fat leaves camouflaged to resemble rocks. The garden is reputed to have a ghost named Giomo who died heroically in battle in 1207 who wanders through the valley at night.
Right across the street from our apartment there's a unique collection of manuscripts and 16th century books as well as a medieval covered lane at the back of the entrance hall. Really interesting integration of the old with the new: people surfing the internet in nooks incorporated into the medieval bricks while others consulted old handwritten manuscripts in climate-controlled rooms, plastic chairs lined up in rooms amidst the crumbly old hand-stitched books, old Doestoyevskys next to new Italian translations of Danielle Steele....
I'd been warned about Italian drivers before I'd left, and I had thought it just meant to look both ways before crossing the street. What a tame thought...! Any flat surface is fair game for a car, including what you might have thought was a walkway or a sidewalk. I used to think the French were outrageous about driving and parking on the sidewalk, but at least the French are courteous enough to use sidewalks that are temporarily unoccupied; the Italians will just scrub whatever's living out of their way like so many squawking, scattering pigeons. On the walk to the school in the mornings, you have to watch your back and listen for the roar of engines, and many times you will either have to duck into doorways or flatten yourself against buildings as vehicles roar by without even slowing down. One of the kids said that their bus hit and dragged a parked car a few feet before getting out to put a note on it and then continued on its way. At first I thought the bus driver had stopped to take responsibility and leave insurance information, but after thinking about it, I think he must have written something like: "You idiot, this is what you get for parking so close to where I wanted to drive."
There's a particular fashion trend we keep seeing on the street: Orange Tan-In-A-Can, grapefruit-boobs, and boots (a look Keighley and I refer to as bootage-and-boobage). You wear the boobs up high (gotta show off that tan) and the boots with pride, even if its 90+ degrees out. Everything looks great (even those sweaty-looking boots) except that 70s-era QT tan. Bizarre! Hip color combo in the stores: purple layered with orange.
We have determined that even though they are willing to sell them to anybody, there are only four men in the world that anybody wants to see in a Speedo swimsuit: David Beckham, Johnny Depp, Antonio Banderas, and Fabio. If you're not one of those men, please forget the whole idea.
I took an illegal picture of the wall so you could see how the frescoes crumble away with time and water damage...and also of St. Catherine's mummified head and thumb (her foot is in Venice and the rest of her is in Rome...don't ask me how they divvy all this stuff up or why...kind of creepy...also everything is smaller than present-day parts for some reason.) There was some guy on alert for the sound of the whirrrrrr of camera shutters, even from cell phones (why do they care?) I mean, it wasn't like I was carrying off somebody's *head* or anything...just ghoulish enough to take a picture of it to show *you*....
