florence file

FLORENCE FILE #010: ÜBERKAMPING AT OKTOBERFEST

Florence Files

Yep. I did it. I went to Oktoberfest. The hallmark fall semester study abroad trip. And I loved every minute of it.

On Friday, October 21st, I arrived to my classes looking like a vagrant turtle, carrying a giant backpack in anticipation of my journey later that day. When class ended at 4pm, Gabby and I made our way to the train station and set our for Bologna, where we would catch our flight to Munich (for those who don’t know- when traveling in and out of Florence, many opt for the Bologna or Pisa airports instead of Florence Peretola because they are cheaper and generally well-connected to Florence by bus and train). We departed Italy on Air Dolomiti that evening (a Lufthansa partner and a lovely little airline!) and landed in Munich around 9pm. After what felt like years trying to understand the Munich U-Bahn subway system and taking a total of three separate trains over about two and a half hours, we arrived at our accommodations- a campground.

When we were searching for accommodations way back in early September, Oktoberfest seemed like a black hole of expenses, considering prices are astronomical around their busiest tourism period of the year. This is when we found Stoke Travel, a Barcelona-based company that organizes campsites for some of the biggest parties and festivals in Europe. We chose to go with their glamping package; a two-person tent with beds, sleeping bags, and an outlet, along with breakfast, dinner, and all-you-can-drink beer and sangria from 8am-10pm.

We didn’t exactly know what we were getting ourselves into, and this feeling grew tenfold when we arrived at the campsite in the dead of night. We were greeted with beers and pretzels by the very Australian Stoke employees, who then directed us to the considerable check-in line. It seemed like everyone had the same idea as us; arrive Friday night, leave Sunday night. As we waited on line, the staff continued to keep the drinks and pretzels coming to placate the masses, and after a few minutes, I felt like I was standing inside a pub rather than on a winding line to a check-in desk. We made conversation with those around us, learning about how they got here, why they were in Europe, and what brought them to Oktoberfest. The time seemed to be going by quickly, but it was pretty late by the time we got in our tent, so we promptly rested up in anticipation for the next day’s shenanigans.

Saturday was the very first day of Oktoberfest, so the beer halls in town didn’t open until noon, when the parade of kegs finished and the mayor of Munich poured the very first beer. We wanted to be in town before the festivities began to get a look around, and I’m really glad I did. One thing I definitely didn’t know going in was that Oktoberfest isn’t just beer halls and gardens, it’s also a huge carnival and fair, with an entire amusement park and tons of food booths and mini shops. Traditional Bavarian food was served alongside fair classics like french fries and ice cream. After surveying the fair grounds, we looked around for a place to settle in for the day. We didn’t have reservations at a beer hall, which would’ve had to have been made months and months in advance, so our only options were to wait on a massive line for a table or drink elsewhere. We wandered into the Hofbräu Festzelt, one of the biggest tents, where the line was already astronomical an hour before drinks began flowing, so we walked outside where there were tons of empty tables. After asking a waitress, we found out that the tables actually weren’t reserved, so we found ourselves a table in the garden and ordered waters in anticipation of the beers coming within the hour. We sat down at the perfect time, because after twenty minutes, the entire garden area was essentially full.

When noon rolled around, dozens of waitresses poured out of one door, each fisting about a dozen steins. For the next few hours, the beers just kept coming out of that door as the thousands of people kept ordering. When inside a beer tent, you cannot consume outside food, but one of the nice things about being in the beer garden outside is that you can get your beers from the tent’s waitresses but bring in whatever outside food you want, so when we started to get hungry, Gabby ran out to the booths along the street to grab us some pretzels. After a few hours, we decided to put the beers down and check out the fairgrounds some more. We headed back to the campsite for dinner and continued the party there, as everyone slowly arrived back from their day in the city. This was one of our favorite parts of the trip, since Stoke had hired a bunch of bands from Australia to come and play little sets while everyone hung out and partied in their sweats, exhausted from the day.

The next morning, we packed up our things, checked out of the campground, and headed into Munich to sightsee. This was a little difficult, since Munich adheres very strongly to the concept of using Sunday as a day of rest. Very few shops are open, and many attractions have limited hours. We lucked out though, because the first Sunday of Oktoberfest is always the costume parade, where the people of Munich dress up in their traditional dirndls and lederhosen and watch the parade of floats, horses, and marching bands in the city center. It was so cool to watch and definitely something that not a lot of people get to see, which made me really grateful to be there. After watching the parade for a bit, we traveled into the heart of the city to check out sights like the Rathaus Glockenspiel, Munich Cathedral, and the Court Garden before heading back to the Munich airport on the U-Bahn. I wish we could’ve done more museums or walking tours, but due to time and our huge backpacks it was a bit impossible.

I left Munich feeling exhausted, but really excited for the trips to come, as our first weekend voyage came to an end. I got to watch the sun set over Germany as we flew away, and was actually able to see the lights of Oktoberfest from the plane window. I probably know the least about the 25% of me that is German, so it was really special to be able to visit not only the country, but the region that a big chunk of my lineage is from and engage in a culture and tradition that is really happy and beautiful.

xx

FLORENCE FILE #008: PIT STOP IN PISA

Florence Files

Let’s make this quick.

The Monday after we hit Cinque Terre, we made the voyage to the home of one of Italy’s biggest architectural blunders turned tourist traps, Pisa. The company that we had booked through, Smart Trips, which consists of younger guides who hit all the important historical notes and then let you explore on your own, wound up booking us with another guide group due to lack of enrollment. This would’ve been fine, had we not been literally the only people under 55 in the group.

Nevertheless, we stayed with our tour group as we visited the beautiful duomo and baptistery that accompany the infamous bell tower. You may be a little confused, since Florence is the home of the duomo, but actually it’s time for the most earth-shattering fact of all time; duomo doesn’t mean dome. The term duomo actually comes from the latin word domum, meaning home, since a duomo is simply the home, or seat, of a bishop. The dome is the cupola. So with that out of the way, we went inside their duomo, which looked suspiciously Florentine. This could be attributed to the fact that the entire inside of the church was refinished by the Medici after a fire, or to the fact that many of the designs can be attributed to Francisco Pisano, a Pisan (obviously) whose renaissance works are all over Florence. We finished our tour at the one and only leaning tower of Pisa, where we rushed to get our pictures in while grabbing some pizza before heading home.

How’s that for speed? I should be able to get another rapid-fire blog post out tonight before covering Oktoberfest over the weekend. If anyone has any recommendations on how to spend a little free time in Paris, let me know in the comments!!

Xx

FLORENCE FILE #007 (KINDA): FOOD HEAVEN IN MODENA

Florence Files

This is piggybacking off of 006’s apology, but in my haste to document my perfect day in Cinque Terre, I failed to cover my awesome day trip the weekend before!

Two Saturdays ago, my school ran an extracurricular trip to Emilia Romagna for tours and tastings at a caseficio and an acetaia outside of Modena to explore the process of producing the region’s world-famous parmigiano reggiano cheese and balsamic vinegar. Between the two site visits, we stopped in the city of Modena to walk around and grab some lunch.

After about an hour and a half ride outside of Florence, we started at the 4 Madonne caseficio dell’Emilia to learn about the production of parmigiano reggiano. 4 Madonne actually produces about 2% of the world’s parmigiano reggiano with just 30 employees. The only parmigiano reggiano I’d ever had was grated and prepackaged, so to learn about the entire process start to finish was pretty special. It was so incredible to see the workers manipulating the cheese at every step in the 12-38 month process, pouring all of their care and attention into the process. At the end of the tour, we tasted 12, 24, and 36 month cheese. The age changes the cheese drastically, and while all three were delicious, I opted to buy the 18-month-old cheese- a perfect blend of the crumbliness of the 24-month cheese with the smoothness of the 12-month cheese.

For lunch, we drove a few minutes to the city of Modena, one of the most famous cities in the gastronomy giant that is Emilia Romagna. When ordering food in Modena, you really can’t go wrong, since they follow heavily in the Italian tradition of heavily regional menus- nothing will be on the menu that isn’t a specialty of wherever you are. In this case, nearly everything is a specialty, especially at Trattoria Il Fantino, where I opted for ricotta and spinach tortelloni with a butter sage sauce and a glass of gutturnio, a sparkling red wine that is a crowd favorite among Emilians. The food was incredible, as expected, although I feel like you’d be hard-pressed to find bad food in Modena.

We finished our afternoon at Acetaia Malpighi, one of the only certified producers of Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale (Traditional Balsamic Vinegar) in the entire world. I didn’t know this before the tour, but apparently the balsamic we all buy in the grocery store is sadly pretty artificial. Most balsamic vinegar is classified as Balsamic Vinegar of Modena, which may sound official, but is actually a product made with lots of sugar and additives and made in China but bottled in Modena so that they may use Modena’s name to market. The Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale made in Acetaia Malpighi uses only one ingredient; cooked grape juice. This cooked grape juice is left to reduce and ferment in wooden barrels that are passed down from generation to generation, containing flavor from the batches that came before them. As the balsamic reduces, it changes barrels, and the different wood used to make each barrel adds a new layer to the flavor. After learning about the process, we tasted the difference between several types of balsamic vinegar. The older the balsamic is, the sweeter and thicker it gets, so I chose to pick up a bottle of 25-year-old balsamic vinegar for my parents, since I knew my dad would flip out over just how good it tasted. For myself, I got a bottle of white balsamic vinegar, made from white grapes and cured for a shorter period of time. It’s the only salad dressing I use now and I have no idea what I’m going to do when I run out!!

One of the reasons I was so excited to come to Italy in the first place was to try out all the amazing homegrown food, and this was such an awesome experience. I was amazed at the amount of care and attention put into every single aspect of the process, and I think especially nowadays it’s so important to care about what you eat. I definitely am motivated to go check out more tours like this!!

I know I said to expect more blog posts this week but I’m serious this time! I have to fill you in on ziplining/paddleboarding in Lucca and Oktoberfest before I head to Paris, Galway, Belfast, and Dublin this week.

xx

FLORENCE FILE #002: Murphy’s Law

Florence Files, Uncategorized

Yes, you’re reading this, which means I’m alive, but just know that that was not a guarantee after the events of the first few days.

I left New York on Monday night, equipped with nothing but three bags worth of personal belongings, a passport, a four-year-old learner’s permit, an emergency replacement debit card, and a handful of euros. Some might say that this arsenal is less than sufficient, and I’d agree. Never would I ever leave for another country with no credit card, had it not been for the events of Saturday night. Due to a series of unfortunate events, I, who has never misplaced a single credit card or ID in her life, lost my whole wallet during a goodbye dinner with a friend. Before you ask, yes, I retraced my steps, turned my room upside down, cancelled the cards, and ordered replacements.

This left me a bit rattled, but I still boarded that Air France flight with three of my friends and a sense of excitement. As I landed in Florence and saw my first view of the city, I had completely come to terms with the hand I was dealt, and the long overnight flight and chaotic layover instantly seemed worth it. The plane flew over the green mountains and down into the valley, revealing the sight of the sun coming up, illuminating the Duomo peeking out of the thick layer of fog. A next road bump came in the form of a missing fleet of suitcases, our checked bags lost in the scuffle of our layover. Had this come at any other time, I probably wouldn’t have cared so much, but anyone who has been awake for far too long and has dealt with human beings in airports will probably understand just how poorly I took this information. Nevertheless, we left the Amerigo Vespucci airport ready to catch up on some sleep and explore our new city. Our bags arrived at the hostel in the midst of our deep nap, and we instantly freed ourselves from our black leggings and comfy tees in exchange for our featherweight sundresses, since the blazing heat was brand new for us.

The next few days consisted of orientation all day, sleep all night. Temperatures were in the high 90s every day, with frequent thunderstorms due to the ridiculous humidity. According to fitbit, we walked an average of around 15,000 steps a day, collapsing as soon as we got back to the hostel. We began apartment hunting on Thursday, coincidentally the hottest day of them all, and after a long, hard day, we found a great little three bedroom apartment, within spitting distance of the Arno River and the Palazzo Vecchio. We’ve since had the chance to get our bearings, check out our local restaurants, and partake in the Florentine nightlife, which is, funnily enough, saturated with American college students.

Photos from my first week will be in a photo diary that I’ll post in a bit, as well as my San Gimignano and Siena visit this weekend.

xx

FLORENCE FILE #001: THE WICKED WITCH GOES WEST

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Let’s chat.

I started this blog with the intention of encouraging myself to write creatively, a skill that I overuse academically, causing me to dread it recreationally. Thanks to a fabulous professor this past semester, I nurtured my blog for the sake of class assignments, exploring the different ways that fashion journalism can be presented. I grew to love blogging, but could never quite find the right subject matter. Thankfully, life has since provided me with much to talk about.

For the next two semesters, I’ll be studying abroad in Florence, Italy. Naturally, I plan to document this amazing opportunity, for the sake of sharing it with my loved ones at home and for my own posterity’s sake. In preparation for this trip, I’ve been reading up in the Library of Alexandria of travel; Pinterest. So many people have shared such great tips and tricks in the form of their own blog posts that I feel that it’s only right to pay it forward and share my knowledge and experience with you all as it occurs to me.

I intend to revamp my blog not only with travel content, but also with the beauty, fashion, and lifestyle that I originally intended to fill my blog with. If you’re just following along for the pasta pictures and museum recommendations, you can follow along here. If you’re brave enough to stick around for the rest of my ramblings, thanks!

I fly to Florence on Monday, August 20th, so if there is a Florence File #002, know that I’ve made it.

xx