Arrivederci

The last exams were yesterday. Many students turned in their last paper at 5, headed home to spend a few hours packing, and headed off on the next train. In a whirlwind day I went from the high pressures and anxiety of the middle of exam week to feeling like Stanford students had abandoned the city and were gone, gone for good. It’s amazing how fast the quarter ended. I felt it coming up quickly after Thanksgiving, but yesterday I blinked at the wrong moment and it was over.

My goodbyes are a bit slower, as I have elected to stay for a week to see my friend Miki in Modena, and of course Alii in Genova. Yesterday after the last exam I had lunch with Miki, who had come to meet with a professor at the Stanford Center, his thesis advisor, and we walked slowly back to the train station together as I exulted in my sudden lack of deadlines. We stopped for gelato at Gelateria di Neri, a famous gelateria blocks away from Santa Croce which I had in some unimaginable way never eaten at until Wednesday night.

After saying goodbye to him at the train station, I wandered over to Santa Maria Novella and explored the quiet museum by myself. Small, but pretty. There is something about empty, ancient cloisters that is heavy. Like the figures on the ruined frescoed walls are watching you in their silence. Yet at the same time it is saturated with calm, and the world outside its walls disappears. Meditation is palpable in the air around you. As I left I looked up into the sky of the courtyard to see waves and waves of birds swirling, like the ocean waters in tide pools, retreating into the midst of advances and overlapping in graceful arcs, moving like they were orchestrated high above in the sky. It was mesmerizing. I watched for twenty minutes as the thousands of birds circled around, coming together and breaking apart, one group seemingly flying into the other as the waves crisscrossed. Their spontaneous geometry was graceful and I swear it was coordinated. Then they started descending, the thousands of them all trying to land on the five or six trees in the cloister and by the train station across the street. I have no idea why they went crazy, why they were all gathered there. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Eventually, I tore myself away. I went and watched the beginning of the Phantom of the Opera with Eric while he packed up. I had to stop right at the best part because he had to leave for Rome. Definitely need to get my hands on that movie soon to see how it ends. I ate dinner with my host family, my Italian sister and her friend talking with my host mother about Italian soap operas in the absence of my host father, and my host brother just rolling his eyes.

Afterwards I called Kelly, whose jetlagged mom had already gone to sleep at their hotel, and together we went over to a café my host mom had recommended – Hemmingway’s. It was quite a walk, way over on the other side of town, but oh my god. The place is famous for its hot chocolate, and I think you can order it about fifty different ways. I had no clue what to get, so I went for simple plain hot chocolate. I still had to choose between the four plain hot chocolates they offer of varying intensities of chocolate, so I safely chose one in the middle.

Best hot chocolate of my life! Incredibly rich, but not overly so. Thick, but not heavy. It wasn’t grainy and didn’t form a skin at the top. Piping hot, but never scalding. It was honestly the best I’ve ever had, by quite a bit actually. And of course, I discover it the night before I leave Florence! Too bad it couldn’t be in California. I’m going to have to live knowing that the best hot chocolate in the world is thousands and thousands of miles away. But it was worth it. Kelly and I talked for an hour or two, reliving the quarter. These last few weeks have really been great, and turned a quarter that had its ups and downs into quite a good quarter overall. We’re both ready to go home, and have Christmas with our families, but we bid a friendly arrivederci to the city and our memories here.

A relatively unknown fact about the word “arrivederci” – literally, it doesn’t mean goodbye. It translates to a (until) ri (again, like in redo) veder (see) ci (us, each other). Until we see each other again. Which is what I bid the beautiful, cold, rainy, slightly smelly, art-saturated city of Florence. I don’t know when I’ll come back, and I don’t really ever see myself living here. Too many tourists and Americans. But I will come back. I’ve promised Dad. And I would like to see Florence in spring or early summer. See the early green on the trees or the scarlet poppies blooming on the hills. Come back and visit all my favorite places again. Remember this quarter of mine, spent studying and living in the Tuscan city of Florence.