The Duomo is unmissable. Its giant pink, white and green marble countenance looms in the busy center of Florence, and its dome dominates every postcard skyline.
Still, sometimes I forget it's there. I'll be walking on a parallel street, turn my head at an intersection and glimpse a surprising slice of the structure at the end of the alley. Or in a taxi, I'll know I'm close to home when suddenly we're driving next to a wall of pink stone. Unlike St. Mark's in Venice or St. Peter's in Rome, both of which have grand accompanying piazzas, it is impossible to see the entire structure of this cathedral. The Duomo appears only in snatches.
From the top of its belltower, Florence stretches out like a pop-up map. We go around the thin walkway and point at landmarks in all four directions. Most of them are churches: Santa Croce, Santu Spiritu, Santa Maria Novella, Orsanmichele... the list goes on. And there's the market, the Arno, the Boboli Gardens and-is it? Yes! My apartment.
A few nights ago, a roommate, a friend and I walked back to the flat through empty late-night streets. Nobody called out from the steps of the Duomo, usually full of teens, tourists and drunks in warmer weather. The crowds have thinned since winter came a couple of weeks ago. Soon there will be even fewer people in the streets.
We came across a colonnaded patio, by day a bustling leather market but completely empty after dark. A bronze sculpture of a boar, one of many symbols of Florence, sat at the opposite end of the market. It's famous-if you rub the boar's nose, they say you'll come back to Florence. Every city has these touchstones. In Prague, you touch the place where a priest was thrown off the Charles Bridge. In Rome, you throw coins over your left shoulder into the Trevi Fountain. Here we have a boar.
But do I want to come back? This place is stuck in the Renaissance, and since that brings in money, there's little impetus for modernization. Anyone who thinks all European countries are basically the same should compare the experiences of sending packages from London and Florence. And the people haven't been the warmest. There are dozens of study abroad programs here, and thousands of gaping tourists trudge and click their way past the sights every day, but to still feel scowled at and unwelcome after three and a half months?
I don't think it's just me.
A trickle of water drooled into a basin below the boar's big ugly snout. We took turns rubbing the nose and started toward home.
Having written for The Chronicle for all of my Duke experience, I've become well aware of the unspoken animosity between staffers-who actually put in the hard work to write all the stories in the paper-and columnists, attention-seeking rock stars who take all the glory away from the kid who worked on his page-four story for three weeks.
There is little overlap between these two camps, largely because columnists are afraid to come to the newsroom and active Chronicle news staffers cannot write columns. It turns out that the only way to actually get to write a column is to write for Sports, which the sports editors won't allow me, of the "why is it called a field goal in basketball?" infamy, to do, or to write from abroad, where you are removed from the day-to-day production and news-making. Luckily, with that arrangement you already know most of the people in the newsroom, so if they say mean things about your column, they're more willing to share the criticisms. Thanks to everyone at the Chron, who would much rather have had me on editboard than on the edit pages.
Thanks also to all the friends who let me crash on their couches while humoring my vague questions and unknowingly listening to me test snippets of columns.
Lately, I've been asking friends I've had the fortune to run into how they're going to make their semester-long homes part of their lives back in the States.
Katie wants to take flamenco lessons. Jess wants to continue following political developments in the European Union. Another girl is considering taking an intense Arabic course in Lebanon to continue what she started in Egypt. Sophia wants to maintain Barcelona's laid-back attitude in Duke's high-stress environment.
Another friend, notorious for running himself to the ground with extracurricular commitments, also said he wants to preserve the more relaxed way of life he found in Spain.
The topic came up over a Belgian chocolate and banana crepe at the Kensington Creperie.
"That's easy," Lindsay said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"I'll come back."
Well, of course-after all, I did rub the boar's snout.
See you soon.
Emily Rotberg is a Trinity junior studying abroad in Italy. This is her last column.
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