Italienische Reise

When we arrived back in Vienna after our ski adventure, we still had over a week before the orientation for our program started. So many people decided to take this opportunity to travel, since the next chance to do so might not come until our Spring Break in April. I was actually planning on going to Belgium and the Netherlands with some other students from the program, but they were traveling by train, and not only was the train ride 12 HOURS long, but also I chickened out on buying the Eurail Pass (which would allow me to travel by train throughout all of Europe for 15 days within 3 months) at the last minute. I found a pretty cheap flight to Rome(considering it was somewhat last-minute) on the airline Niki, which is pretty new and part of AirBerlin. And so I decided that Italy would be my destination. A few friends of mine are studying in Rome this semester, and another is studying in Ferrara, a small city in northern Italy, so after booking my flight to Rome, I booked a train from Rome to Ferrara, and then a train from Venice to Vienna (since Ferrara is about an hour and a half from Venice). I arrived in Rome pretty late at night on Tuesday, February 8th, and the flight couldn't have been better. Niki turned out to be a very nice airline (but I was surprised that the plane seemed to be less than half-full), and the flight only lasted about an hour and 10 minutes. I was already in Rome for a few days this summer with my dad, so I had already seen all the main tourist attractions. So for this trip, I decided that I just wanted to explore parts of Rome that I hadn't seen yet, and to see Rome from a different perspective: the study-abroad student's perspective as opposed to the tourist's perspective. My friend lives in an area of Rome called Trastevere, which was far less touristy than certain parts of Rome that I had visited this summer and also very charming and beautiful. On my first night there, I could hardly believe that my friend lived there. We walked down narrow alleys (not the kind that you would stay away from in an American city), through piazzas surrounded by churches and with beautiful fountains in the center, past old and somewhat dilapidated buildings, whose dilapidation only added to their beauty. Here is a church that I saw on the first night:

My time in Rome was pretty relaxed, not filled with planned tours and activities, but rather with aimless wandering and exploring.. which meant a TON of walking. In the morning, we got cappucini or caffe macchioti from one of the countless small espresso bars. I never had bad coffee there. It was a little difficult, because the people I was with would usually get pizza for lunch, so I would have to find something else, like salad. But we were able to find restaurants that served gluten-free spaghetti, which was great. One restaurant was right by my friend's apartment, and the gluten-free pasta dish was only 5 euro! I learned something very interesting about Italy that made me wonder why I wasn't born Italian.. according to a website that we discovered while trying to find gluten-free restaurants, everyone in Italy is now tested at a very young age for Celiac Disease. If they are found to have it, they receive a stipend to buy gluten-free food for the rest of their lives.. for 140 euro per month! Isn't that unbelievable? So people were very aware of gluten intolerance and Celiac Disease in Italy, seemingly much more than they are here in Austria. And in the United States, they still don't even label gluten as an allergen in foods! Only wheat, but obviously gluten is in many more grains than just wheat. But anyway, one day, we visited the Church of Saint Ignatius! It was very beautiful and grand, built in the Baroque style.

Outside of the "Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio."





Main altar.






Side altar.

There are obviously a huge number of churches in Rome, and this is another one that we passed and I thought was very beautiful. I don't know its name, though..

Here's a little nook that I thought was very cute:




And finally, here's some sort of advertisement that we all liked a lot:




After a 4-day stay in Rome, I left on the train for Ferrara. The trip was pretty long, lasting maybe about 5 hours, but I took a relatively slow train. The express trains go faster and are more expensive. Ferrara was quite a different world from Rome. It is much smaller, much less fast-paced and hectic, and much less touristy. One of the most striking differences for me was that, in Rome, I felt like I was seeing so many Americans, mainly American students. They were everywhere, and I heard English a lot. But it took two days in Ferrara before I heard a single person speak English, and they were two American girls from my friend's study abroad program. So on the one hand, it was very nice to be in a place that felt very authentically Italian, but at the same time, I felt like I stuck out as a foreigner much more in Ferrara, since the people there don't seem to be very used to foreigners. But it was a very beautiful little city, with a very beautiful city center/piazza. My friend told me that it was a major Italian city during the Renaissance, but now not many very people know about it. This is a view from the central piazza:

On Sunday, we visited the main church in Ferrara. The first picture was taken on Saturday, and since it was a brighter day than Sunday, and right before the sun was setting, you can see the pinkish color of the stone of the church. Up close, you can see that it's made of a combination of pinkish and white stone.

Here's a picture of the church on Sunday, a much grayer day. Apparently, Ferrara is known for its fog (an interesting thing to be known for..), and it's almost always very foggy around this time of year there. But it made walking around on Sunday very nice, because the streets were unbelievably quiet, and the gray fogginess fit very nicely with that.

View of the town from the steps of the church.

The medieval castle in Ferrara, complete with a moat and drawbridges. I'd never seen a castle with a moat in real life, only in pictures and Super Mario 64!

On Sunday, there was a market in the town center, and the vendors were selling a wide variety of goods. I bought a pair of earrings made from Murano glass, which my friend told me was very "legit." Some of the stands were pretty odd, though, as you can see in the second picture.

The market.

Stand selling a wide assortment of mini-cacti and other small plants.

As I mentioned before, I took a train (actually a bus and then a train) from Venice back to Vienna, so I was able to spend an hour in Venice before my train left. The Santa Lucia train station was located directly on the Grand Canal, so I got a great view just from the steps of the station. I think I may need to come back to Venice..