Venice x3 and a Soccer Game--Italian Style

Adrienne Hamm--CIEE Language and Culture, Ferrara, Italy

Venice x3

Between Venice and Ferrara lies a two-hour train ride.  I can't believe I live only two hours away from Venice with its beautiful canals and romantic atmosphere!  Given the close proximity, however, I made my first trek there only three weeks ago.  Then, two weekends ago, I went again, and this weekend, I went yet again!  Three weekends and three trips to Venice.  It sounds crazy and maybe a little over the top, but each journey held its own story, completely different from the other two:

Venice #1

Three weekends ago, two girls from the CIEE program (Kelly and Carly), our friend Beatrice (a native Ferraran) and I took a day-trip to Venice.  Neither Carly nor I had been yet, and though I was excited about our trip, I was slightly apprehensive about Venice--I'm always wary of tourist spots and I was expecting Venice to be another overrated tourist destination.  Venice, on the contrary, completely captured my heart that day.  The city is stunningly beautiful.

We spent most of the day getting lost, wandering the streets of Venice.  In fact, I highly recommend getting lost in Venice.  The streets wind and criss-cross and basically create a maze with beautiful nooks and crannies for the adventurers to discover.

  far left: getting lost; left: one of the nooks and crannies

Venice does have its downside, though:  The pigeons.  They fill Piazza San Marco (The main square of Venice).  They're unavoidable and audacious does not even begin describe them.  One must enter the square with extreme caution.  If the birds smell food on someone, they swarm and cover the person.  Some people enjoy having pigeons land on them (see the picture below).  I, on the other hand, do not, and I spent most of my time in San Marco avoiding the birds.  The pigeons, however, are a minor detail in the grand schemes of Venice and they certainly do not detract from the city's beauty.

The pigeons and those who love them.

Venice #2

After my first weekend, I didn't think I'd return to Venice anytime soon but I was proven wrong very quickly.  Another girl in our program, Kate, has some family friends who live in Mestre, a small city just outside of Venice.  They invited us to come stay with them for the weekend so Kate, Katie, Kelly, and I headed to Mestre/Venice for an absolutely wonderful time.  The Thompsons, though American, have lived in Italy for over twenty years and they welcomed us into their home like family.  We ate meals with them, watched movies with them, went to church with them, even made doughnuts with them!  With classes in full swing and half the semester gone, each of us felt in a rut and a little homesick but spending time with the Thompsons proved to be such a blessing.  We got just enough of a taste of home to revitalize our spirits and make us ready to conquer Italy once more.  While staying with them, we also visited the island of Morano in Venice.  Celebrated for its glass, the island contains streets filled with glass shops.  Some sell jewelry; some sell home decorations; some sell everything in between, but each is unique and the glass is absolutely beautiful!  In order to get to Morano, we had to take a Vaporetto.  It's basically a floating bus that rides through the canals.  It was quite the adventure and definitely a one-of-a-kind experience!

making doughnuts

Venice #3

I didn't plan my last visit to Venice.  In fact, it came as quite the surprise.  Some of my friends in the program had plans to travel to Paris this past weekend and were flying out of an airport in Venice on Thursday.  Around 4:10 in the afternoon I got a call from one of them.  She was in Mestre waiting on their connecting train when she realized that she had left her passport in her apartment!  Not the best item to forget if one is leaving the country!  Therefore, her roommate and I quickly got ready and headed to the train station.  By the time we got outside our apartment building it was 4:18, the next train to Venice left at 4:29, and it's a 10 minute walk to the train station.  So, we ran.  We got in line to buy tickets from the electronic ticket purchasing machine at 4:25 but the lady in front of us didn't understand how to use it and we didn't understand enough Italian to help her so we missed the train.  The next train didn't leave until 5:29 so we relaxed for an hour, bought our return tickets, and even put more money on our pre-paid cell phone.  We got to the Venice-Mestre train station at 6:50 and successfully handed over the passport!  Whew!  We had 30 minutes until our return train left and since we were hungry, we ordered McDonalds.  Unfortunately, we had misread the timetable and the train left 10 minutes earlier than we thought.  Oops!  We ran to our train and waved goodbye as it pulled away.  Well, we had another 40 minutes to kill, so we leisurely ate our cheeseburger Happy Meals outside the train station.  Eventually, we made it back to Ferrara, but only after 5 hours of travelling, thanks to our luck in catching trains.  As crazy as the afternoon turned out to be, it was a fun adventure and our friends caught their plane to wonderful Paris :)

An American Perspective on Italian Soccer

You may not know this, but Italians love their soccer with a passion unseen in the States.  Thanks to CIEE and their amazing staff in Ferrara, we CIEE students got to witness first hand the Italian love for soccer, but before I get into the details of the game, let me first explain how important soccer is here.  Soccer is super popular here. Everyone lives for soccer here (ok, slight exaggeration). On Sundays (game day) all the radio and TV stations play soccer games. That's it; nothing else is on. There are horror stories of fans beating each other up. Fans are separated by nets during the game. They have different parking lots with different entrances. It's insanely intense!!! A couple of weeks ago (in fact, the same weekend as my first excursion to Venice), CIEE somehow managed to get all of us tickets to a Milan AC-Roma soccer game in Milan.  Such tickets are not easy to come by.  These two teams are two of the best in the nation.  We rode with the Milan AC fan club of Ferrara and used the season tickets of members who weren't attending this particular game.  For transportation, two meals, and the ticket, we each only had to pay forty euro--what a steal!! 

I was slightly concerned, however. Ever since my trip to Rome earlier in the semester, I've been a Roma fan. Rome has two teams, Lazio and Roma. Lazio is the team of the elites. Roma is every man's team, the team of the people. And the teams hate each other. Well, of course, I want to pull for Roma so while in Rome I chose Roma as my team (I also like Inter, Milan AC's nemesis so that gave me another reason to pull for Roma). Maybe by now you've figured out my predicament. I'm a Roma fan on a bus full of Milan fans. what do I do??? Secretly pull for Roma. I really wanted to wear my Roma jersey but that didn't happen. It's ok though, I was wearing it in spirit. 

The bus ride there was pretty sweet. They gave away door prizes (I didn't win a thing).

The game was super awesome. The stadium in Milan is famous (at least in the soccer world, haha) and we had great seats. We were surrounded by Milan fans. They get mad really easily and have no problem obscenely gesturing to the Roma fans.

Honestly, though, the Roma fans were much cooler. They had chants and were totally into the game. The section we were in was pretty quiet. They only got riled up occasionally. I was hoping to learn some cheers from the Milan fans, but apparently that wasn't their style.

The game was action-packed. Many, many attempts to score were made, and most of them were really, really close. Most of the game remained scoreless but it wasn't boring at all. and the best part (drumroll, please)...ROMA WON! 1-0. It was great :-D

The bus ride back was pretty sweet too. They gave away more door prizes. I still didn't win anything.

Overall, I loved the whole soccer game experience.  It was sooo awesome getting to experience firsthand such an important aspect of Italian culture!

far left: milan in red, roma in white; left: angry fans