color

In lecce, I saw colors on buildings, in urban settings, on people, skin colors, in nature that I'd never really seen in real life before. The color of the Mediterranean and Adriatic sea was this insane blue, i'm not really sure if I ever captured it in any of those pictures. And in bologna, naturally there's not as much ZEST colorwise as there is in the south, but now that spring is coming and there's a little bit more light on everything, my attention is being drawn to the oranges yellows and greens I see everywhere. For example, i'm in a classroom at my study abroad program office and I'm staring out the window at a sherbet orange on a building across the way. there's only 2 or 3 inches of the blatant blue sky that show above the roofline of the other building, but the contrast is strong. Sometimes, its stuff liek that about Italy that makes me feel the most like I'm in another country. Most of our apartment buildings, office buildings and markets are never any colors other than grey, white, beige or brown. I feel like we have a very limited color base for more public/urban buildings. Houses, of course, there's more variety and choice, but suburbia doesn't really exist in italy so it's not very comparable.

At any rate, the point is, that i'm excited the sun is coming out. I went on a hike not this last sunday but the one before, up to a cathedral on top of a large hill crest during this gorgeous just barely warm sunday afternoon. now those days are more frequent, and I've even gone out of the house without a coat on on several occasions. The nice weather makes me want to walk and eat well. I think one of my next blog entries is going to be pictures of the restaurants I like to go to regularly. I just had lunch at a traditionally salentina or leccese restaurant for SO cheap. it was a SUPER bomb risotto with fennel, scomorza and like cauliflower or something. SOOO good.

Yesterday I got on the bus to go home from the normal downtown stop where I pick it up. Once on the bus, I heard a roar coming from the main piazza and when the bus passed, I saw there was a huge demonstration going on there. I got off at the next stop, walked back, weasled my way into the corwd and quickly figured out that it was an anti-racism demonstration. There were different groups of immigrants of different heritages standing on a set of stairs overlooking piazza nettuno (big statue of neptune there, one of bologna's hallmarks) and a big PA system. An MC was handing the mic off to different speakers of different backgrounds and letting people speak. It was basically a huge open mic for people to voice their frustrations, experiences, and hopes around Italy. It was seriously moving, maybe just to be in such a huge crowd, maybe to hear the things they were saying, maybe because this issues that italy faces is exactly what interests me most, but I stayed for about an hour to listen. I wished I had my camera. There were so many people with video cameras, regular cameras, i duno.. The interesting thing about italy is that it's just now having to confront issues of racism and integration for the first time. As a country, Italy has a very mixed cultural background, with dialects of arabic, spanish, french, portuguese, and german influences. The 'italian' look is basicaly different by region, so just like any other country, it's difficult to say who or what is actually 'italian' but I guess since the mid 1800's there wasn't really mass immigration to italy until the last 25 years. Eastern-europeans, africans, east-asians, middle-easterners flock to Italy since it's the easiest and most convenient entry point to the EU. With the strength of the euro, low european birthrate, and strong agriculture in Italy, there's an obvious demand for migrant labor, like in all developed countries I suppose, but only in these last 25, 30 years, has it become a real social issue in Italy. Basically, i think it will be really interesting to see how italian institutions will react to this influx in the long run, because right now, in this moment, people are really starting speak out and stage walk-outs, manifestations, demonstrations. Anyway, it was interesting to see and have my mind jogged about such important human rights issues right down the street from my apartment.

here's a link about the demonstration in Milan yesterday-it was country wide, which is why it also happened in Bologna.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/world/europe/02iht-italy.html?ref=world