Classes and Castles

Last week classes started at the University.  I'm enrolled in "History, Society, and Family" and "History of the Italian Language."  The family course is a little boring, but the professor is accommodating to foreign students and I'm double-dipping it for my majors.  The language class is very interesting, and a number of other BCSP students are in it.  Lectures are scheduled in two-hour blocks (though they don't feel that long) which typically begin 20 minutes after schedule and end a half hour before.  I'm extremely close to the classrooms these classes are in, so I can leave when the class "starts" and get there before the professor starts talking.

I can understand the majority of what the professors are saying, or at least get the gist of what their argument is.  If and when I zone out for a little bit, zoning back in is pretty difficult.  It's intimidating when all the students laugh at a joke you didn't pick up, and makes you wonder about what else you've missed.  Luckily the big BCSP book says that these two professors are both really nice to foreign students, so when the dreaded oral exams come I can be a bit more confident.

But enough about that.  That's boring.  Yesterday, I took the train to Ferrara with some other students.  And Ferrara has a castle.

 

A castle with a moat.

Beneath that moat, there is a dungeon.  A dungeon!  Very tiny doors made this quite an experience.

And above that dungeon, there are a few towers.  ONE OF WHICH WE CLIMBED UP.

The only way the Torre dei Leoni could have been more awesome would have been if it lived up to its namesake and was actually full of lions.  Alas, no.  Still, better than any tower I've ever built.

Why we, as a collective Western civilization, ever stopped building castles I will never understand.  Here's a shot of Ferrara's cathedral:

 

Ferrara is smaller and quieter than Bologna, and most noticeably doesn't have the ubiquitous graffiti.  It was kind of a yucky, rainy day, but the whole castle thing more than made up for that.  Today is actually the first really sunny, nice day we've had in Bologna (as the American east coast gets inundated with snow--I got out of DC just in time) and I can't wait until spring.  I don't have class again until Wednesday, so I should be leaving again soon!