Now that I have finally caught up on sleep and the 40,000 emails I could not answer for an entire week, and done some reflection, I am ready to blog.
On Friday October 16, bright early per usual, we departed from the centro, this time however carrying massive suitcases and backpacks that we would be living out of for the next 9 days. I have put in a map of Sicily below just so you can see the extent of the excursion. We traveled south of Naples on Day 1, worked our way back to Naples by the end of day 2 to take an overnight ferry to Palermo, and then on arriving in Sicily made a circle of the entire island heading east first.
Day 1 (Friday) – Velia (An Archaeological Site south of the Amalfi Coast)
Day 2 – Paestum (Also south of the Amalfi Coast), overnight ferry from Naples
Day 3 – Cefalu, Taoromina
Day 4 – Syracuse
Day 5 – Piazza Armerina and Morgantina (violent food poisoning)
Day 6 – Agrigento and Selinunte
Day 7 – Motia, Segestum
Day 8 – Monreale, Palermo, overnight ferry from Naples
Day 9 (Saturday) - home
So now you are probably thinking what the heck were we doing in Sicily, and you probably haven’t heard of a single one of the places I just listed besides Palermo the home of il Padrino. Let me give you an abridged version – basically, Sicily and Southern Italy (aka Magna Graeca) were hotspots for Greek and Phoenician colonization in the 7th/6th BC because of their strategic location from an economic point of view. Each colony on Sicily is in a well thought out location, often near a good freshwater source and with visible natural defenses). Often times Sicilian Colonies (poleis) were third generation of their mother country (people from a colony would start their own colony). The Phoenicians were the near eastern people from modern day Syria, the colony you probably know them best for is Carthage. The colonies had their own disputes and wars, for example Selinus VS Segestum. Often times the disputes weren’t based on whether they were Carthaginian or Greek, they related back to the intricate alliance system of the Greek city-states themselves. By the time the Romans stepped onto the scene, there was a show down of Rome VS Phoenicia (via Carthage). This struggle was an atrocity – 3 wars, each lasting for over 10 years (The Punic Wars). Sicily, especially in the first Punic War, was the main theatre of operations and stage for the battles of both sides. Eventually all of Sicily’s city-states came under Roman power and the island became the first technical Roman province by the mid second century BC (not entirely provincial – some of the city-states retained independence so long as they stayed faithful to Rome during the War). After the Romans, the Visigoths arrived, then the Byzantines, then the Arabs, and then the Normands. Each conqueror built its own style buildings and, so basically to the modern day viewer, visually Sicily is a cultural cluster-f__k (pardon my crude language, that term just is so perfect).
We spent our week in Sicily hanging out at the ancient acropoli (the political/social/religious centers of the ancient colonies that have similar features) and temples, which are incredibly well preserved. The sites were peaceful for exploring due to the lack of tourism and it being off-season (opposite of the Vatican on any given day in the month of July).
The sites we visited thus had features of Greek and Carthaginian (the material culture still mixed due to trade between one another) city-states, and Roman elements like those we have been studying all semester. The fact that I could easily recognize the Romanization within each archaeological site and spit out very specific architectural jargon makes me realize just how much I am learning at ICCS. For example at first glance I could say something like “that temple is a hexistyle peripteral doric temple sine postico with two columns in antis, a tri-part cella, an adyteron and an optholomos.” Don’t even try to understand any of this, I am just trying to impress you.
I could go on and on about the individual histories of each town/site that we visited, but instead I have chosen a few highlights of the overall trip both academic and not, and organized them in a 10 part list.
Number 1: Roommate control and my special eggplant cestini
Basically the second day of the trip was Cait-y’s 21 bday, so we celebrated the night before our departure from Rome. She was sick on the bus the next morning, so I assumed it had to do with her celebration. Scott had specifically warned us that he has a sixth sense for hangovers, so we hid Cait-y under cars at the first rest stop so she could get it out of her system. It wasn’t until the afternoon that we realized she had motion sickness and not a hangover.
Hail my favorite chef at the centro, Maria! I took so much eggplant to my face at dinner the night before our departure from Rome that Maria added eggplant leftovers to my bagged lunch. She finally figured me out… I never respond to her cries “ancora pasta???!!!!” (more pasta) when she comes into the dining room after our primo piatto with an extra dish. For this girl its ancora verdura (vegetables)!! It was phenomenal!
Number 2: Our first Franco surprise.
So the director of the program Franco joined us on the trip as master of ceremonies via the microphone on the Fabio Bus. Brief digression, “Fabio Bus” is what Franco called the bus. Fabio was also our bus driver, and by the way, is quite the versatile driver. He handled the winding narrow roads of the mountains by Tauromina and Piazza Armerina and the busy and fast paced city roads in Palermo. Fabio just hates vomit (to his great displeasure there were several incidents of motion sickness on the bus) and is a clean freak (this was actually good because the bus was impeccable all week). Anyways Franco would greet us every morning on the microphone and each time we arrived at a destination with, a, “Ciao ragazzi, put on your good walk shoes, later today we have a Franco surprise, eeeesomething very special.” This first surprise came at the end of day one after we autopsied the site of Velia all afternoon in the beating sun. Thankfully, our hotel was on the beach and we were treated to a Mediterranean swim! The beach was lovely – nice, calm waves – and it was sunset so the skyline was a combo of warm colors and pinks. Not to mention the house wine at dinner that night was only 5 euro a bottle and sweet, just the way I like it.
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| Nerva is alittle too excited for the Franco suprise. Walking to the Beach! |
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| Rosanna and I in front of one of the temples at Paestum! |
My mom always told me tales of her overnight ferry rides from Newfoundland when she went to boarding school and college in Nova Scotia – the boat rides were miserable, smelly and teaming with nasty truckers. Those three words basically sum up my experience on the Tirrhenia, except the truckers spoke Italian instead of newfie. Unfortunately, Franco didn’t advise us to plan ahead and buy food for the journey, so we ate in the dining buffet area with the Italian truckers. Liz, Alex and I sat down at a table in a relatively open area and within 15 minutes we were surrounded on all sides by tables of them. They were making cat calls and being audibly obnoxious. I lost my appetite and just wanted to get out of there. Alex – I swear to god she is the next carry bradshaw – couldn’t have put this feeling of disgust into better words, “the Sicilian men undress you with your eyes and then proceed to make you feel as if you just optically contracted an STD.” YUK! Add to that, the food was horrible. I am sure that I consumed the toxic bacteria that took over my bowel for the rest of the trip on the ferry (no further comment … I did handle it very well though I must say, there was only one emergency incident when during a museum lecture I had to sprint to the bathroom). On the ferry, and I shared a small room with bunk beds and a bathroom that stunk like a porta potty, and it was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the room. The ferry arrived at 6:15 AM in the morning, so that was not so pleasant, and our day began about two hours after we reached our first stop, Cefalu (its name comes from the Greek word for head – Cefalos – for the land sticks out). Cefalu was cool – we visited its Normand/Byzantine Cathedral, which contains the largest figural mosaic of Christ (it is located on the altar piece of the church’s central apse) that dates to the mid-twelfth century.
Number 5: Theater Ecstasy
Standing in the pouring rain and waking up at 6:15 in the morning is not my idea of a good time, so the first day in Sicily was a challenge. By the time we reached the last site of the day in Taoromina (between Cefalu and Syracuse), it was taking every fiber of my being to hold it together to enjoy the tour. This was compounded by my lifeline to the rest of the world, and key to enduring long bus rides -- my iphone -- having died, and the prospect of a three-hour bus ride from Taoromina to the hotel in Syracuse looming ahead after the site visit. Despite all of these obstacles, I enjoyed my time at this location. My close friend on the program Emma presented her site report on the theater, and talked a lot about how the Romans changed and expanded the Greek originals (Emma gets her own space on this list later). Basically the Greeks would construct their theaters into nature, and the Romans would build upon them and reduce the orchestra (area between the audience and the actors for the chorus) and build up the background. Theaters were seen as a place cut off from the rest of the world where the unthinkable could occur, and the audience could undergo a sort of ecstasy by watching the performers. I believe this is more of a Roman conception, for the Greeks would create theaters within nature and use manipulative architecture so viewers could look out and be wowed by nature while also enjoying a show. We encountered theaters at nearly every single location we visited, each unique and flat out marvelous in its placement and manipulation of the surroundings. Taoromina was the largest. It is too bad it was raining and yucky weather because Taoromina is stunning. It overlooks the Mediterranean sea, from a town that is Amalfi-like in how it sits on a high cliff. The theaters at Syracuse, Morgantina and Selinunte were standard, nothing too exciting, but our final ancient site visit of the Sicily trip culminated with the theater at Segestum. This mountainside theater is amazing. The Cavea (seating arrangement) looks out upon two perfectly framed mountains behind the stage, and deep lush valleys. It is much smaller then the theater at Taoromina and more intimate, and the white limestone masonry is extremely symmetric. Professor Serfass organized a surprise for us – he had three centristi (my two favorites Blount and Andres) prepare and sing a number for us so we could hear what the acoustics were like. It was a lucky day for the 300 German seniors who happened to be the only others on the site this day.
Number 6: The Lord of the Flies.
Sicilian flies were all over my legs (even if I wore leggings they would find my ankles) every single moment of every single day. It sucked and I spazzed out really badly a few times.
Number 7: Temple F – The Franco Temple.
On Wednesday after a grueling afternoon at the Acropolis in Selinus and a miscommunication fiasco between Franco and Scott the head prof (we were on site until 6:30 PM), it was time for another Franco surprise. In Selinus none of the temples had official names – apparently there isn’t enough proof of who they were dedicated to, so they are just labeled A-G. Temple G was awesome, probably the second most colossal in Sicily. Today it looks like a giant earthquake occurred under the temple and all the columns came crashing down into one another. It was nice though, we had time to walk through the ruins and climb up on some of them (look at my pic below). We saw the largest temple in Sicily on the Acropolis in Agrigento (the Temple of Zeus) and some of its remains in the Archaeological Museum there. This one has a name because there is written evidence (thank you Polybius) that describes it as one of the wonders of the world. It was not simple and Doric, like pretty much every other temple in Sicily… it in fact had giant statues of men called telamoms who replaced the columns as the supports for the roofs. It’s a pretty sweet looking temple (I’m only going by my observation of the hypothetical reconstructions I saw at the museum), kind of like a case that holds a mummy. On Tuesday after Temple G we loaded onto the bus and Franco announced it was time for Temple F – the Franco temple. We loaded off the bus at a family run vinoteca and had a liquor/wine tasting. We tried a red along side a piece of crunchy bruscetta with sundried tomato paste (bought a container for you, mom) and spicy olives, a marsala, an almond liquor, and a desert wine with a biscotti to dip in. I officially like olives!
Franco managed to get sausages on our menu (he would pick out the food for every meal and it would come in mass to us) at least once a day, every single day. The first time they were decent, the fifth time was not so fun, especially because there weren’t any other options. Dessert after dinner was one of my favorite daily events… the sugar rush of dark chocolate gelato, the soft crunch of a sweet and flaky canolli, a tiramisu soaking in some sort of liquor, or a lemoncake with a tang.
Number 8: Tophets
The second to last day we went to an island called Motia (pronounced moe-sha) off the coast of Western Sicily. This is a third generation Carthaginian Colony from the one on the mainland beside it (we boated out there). It is cool because you can see elements of Carthaginian religious ritual that parallel those in North African Colonies. The Carthaginians would ritually sacrifice their oldest born male children to prove their loyalty to the gods in times of angst – basically they would give up the thing that meant the most of them. It was the highest honor to be the selected family – thus it was mostly boys from aristocratic families. We walked to the far west shore of Motia and were surrounded by small graves in a Tophet – or child burial ground. The creepy only gets creepier. Plutarch wrote about the ritual: he records that the procession would start out at the house of the victim with noisemakers, and would process to the shrine of Baal Hammon (Phoenician Zeus) where they would put the baby in a boiling cauldron. Interestingly, archaeologists found terracotta masks with smiling faces in the area – the parents would wear these so that they would have the appearance of being happy during the ritual. The ancients were just as vulnerable to emotion as us in the modern day.
The second to last day we went to an island called Motia (pronounced moe-sha) off the coast of Western Sicily. This is a third generation Carthaginian Colony from the one on the mainland beside it (we boated out there). It is cool because you can see elements of Carthaginian religious ritual that parallel those in North African Colonies. The Carthaginians would ritually sacrifice their oldest born male children to prove their loyalty to the gods in times of angst – basically they would give up the thing that meant the most of them. It was the highest honor to be the selected family – thus it was mostly boys from aristocratic families. We walked to the far west shore of Motia and were surrounded by small graves in a Tophet – or child burial ground. The creepy only gets creepier. Plutarch wrote about the ritual: he records that the procession would start out at the house of the victim with noisemakers, and would process to the shrine of Baal Hammon (Phoenician Zeus) where they would put the baby in a boiling cauldron. Interestingly, archaeologists found terracotta masks with smiling faces in the area – the parents would wear these so that they would have the appearance of being happy during the ritual. The ancients were just as vulnerable to emotion as us in the modern day.
Number 9: Cherry Tomatoes
On the morning of the last day we went to a small town located just outside Palermo called Monreale. I loved the town. It contained a huge Cathedral with a beautiful and intricately decorated knave (the entire genesis) and altarpiece with extensive gilding. We chilled in cafes in the central piazza, which was nice also. By the parking lot there was a huge market/fruitstand. I purchased a freshly squeezed frozen lemonade (the lady was making them onsite in a machine and fresh pitchers were sitting on a table) and a massive bag of cherry tomatoes (which she so kindly washed for me) that were only one euro and tasted like candy. It was a rather pleasant morning.
Number 10: Lesbian theater
Time for the dreaded ferry ride back. At least we were more prepared this time – well kind of. Alex and I made an epic fail at finding something good to carry on board for dinner to avoid the ferry cafeteria (neither of us wanted paninis, but were stupidly stubborn) and ended up with a box of ritz crackers, another of wafers, and peanut m&ms. Of course Ro found the place that makes personalized paninis and the entire centro followed suit and was chowing down on them in front of us. I guess the break from real food was kind of nice. Over dinner with the girls we were joined by another centristi named Emma who is one of my favorite people at the program because she is so chill and not weird in any sense/gets life (sorry guys I had to say it – the new thing at the centro is this game called ninja that involves standing in a circle and hitting people and freezing in awkward positions. It makes me cringe when a game gets fired up and we are in a public place because the Europeans think it’s the weirdest thing ever. I want to run and hide and pretend I am not in the program – ok that’s an exaggeration but it is pretty bad). Emma is openly lesbian, the first gay woman I have ever been close with. For the duration from dinner until I attempted to sleep that night Emma put on for Ro, Liz, Alex and me what she likes to call “Lesbian Theater” – basically her life story and responses to our questions about lesbians. For me this was great because I realized that up until that point I was incredibly naïve and influenced by prejudices and stereotypes. This discussion certainly cleared a lot of mysteries up. It also was awesome to sit down and listen to someone recount her life-story with so much animation and excitement.
Well there it is. I beat Sicily. It was not an easy battle and I am still recovering. I am posted up in a comfy hotel in London for the first half of my fall break (we get a week off). I hung out at the U of Birmingham with my sorority sister Ms. Erica G. last evening and enjoyed a taste of the life of an English University student/ what she’s up to this semester abroad. Alex is here as well as her best friend from home is studying in London. We hit the British Museum and the National Gallery, and I am planning on touring the Winston Church Hill World War II stuff tomorrow. Then Erica, Alex and Alex’s friend Sierra and I are heading to Amsterdam for the weekend.
I love you all –sorry about the delay of this entry, I just really needed a few days to relax and do some reflecting. I am halfway there.
Isabella
pictures and map of Sicily coming tomorrow problems with the website again!
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