first things first (you can click em now, i'm gaining blogging skillz!)
new blog for RG
today was the day of my first out-of-florence field trip, which was actually just outside of florence. haha. anyway, i went with my European fascism class, which is my favorite (so far, let's see how i do grade-wise, haha) but i think the kids in it are pretty cool, and the professor is my favorite of the four i have here.
anyway, we met at the train station (see rg blog), and departed from there by bus (i sorta fudged that in my rg blog, haha). anyway, on the bus ride there, prof travis just told us some stuff about the city. here's what i learned:
-prof travis moved to italy in 1988. his wife is italian. ooh la la :)
-see RG blog for the big stuff about the train station. the only thing i didnt mention on there was the digital clock outside the train station was very revolutionary for the time too. although it's not technically digital. haha. i didnt take a pic of it, but ill be back there a gazillion times. i need a pic of that and the plaque
-During WWII every single florentine bridge was bomb by either germans or americans, except the ponte vecchio (the famous one with all the shops on it). there are some controversies over why not, considering it was lined with german bombs for awhile. but one theory is that the americans snipped the lines during the following story: Catherine taught me (she learned in one of her classes) that there's a second story on ponte vecchio that the rich people used to take across the river because it was covered, and the only covered bridge etc. this is liek forever ago. fast forward to wwii, the americans had gotten up to the Piti side of the arno (south side) and germans had the uffizi side of the arno (north side). americans just snuck across the second floor of the ponte vecchio, got in touch with the italian resistance on the other side and boom, took florence. simple as that, haha.
-now the second floor of the ponte vecchio is a portrait gallery. you can visit in small groups through the uffizi. it's probably expensive but i'm gonna look into it.
-It is CRAZY to think of this city being all damaged and destructed by war. let alone war 70 years ago. isn't that bizarre? this city is too pretty, too full of history. i dunno, it's weird thinking about all the bridges and buildings along the arno being bombed.
-florence has tried to build a tram line numerous times and no one wants it and it's too expensive. one tram design brought the 60 foot tram right in front of the duomo. that'd would made for some pretty pictures...not.
-we went through the Porta Romano which was the original gate to florence that people would take going to and from rome.
-they have these highways built between florence and bologna over the Apennine mountains. the roads were intended to handle 12,000 cars a day. today, more than 60,000 go across them every day. my prof says every time he goes to bologna he's thankful he got there alive. haha
-we also came across the largest monastery in the area, it was pretty cool looking
After about half an hour we got to the American Cemetery. I didn't really know what to expect, but it mostly just looks like a smaller version of the arlington national cemetery. with crosses for graves (or stars of david). Anyway, we headed to the top of the cemetery where there is this huge mural addressing the American warfare in italy during WWII, and Prof Travis just sorta went through the US's Brit's involvement in Italy, germany's involvement in italy, and then what was going on in italy during the war (and the downfall of mussolini. ugh i forget how gruesome his death was sometimes).
then after that he read to us some stuff out of Catch-22. I've never actually read the whole book, but i know all the literary ideas in it. Pretty much it's just a situation that can't be resolved, either way you lose. the idea was that you could get out of fighting in the war if you told them you were crazy, but if you told them you were crazy to get out of fighting in the war, you obviously weren't. Then we talked about Italian sentiment about losing in war all the time (they really only lasted legitimately 3 years in wwii), and how italians generally support no one and anyone.
then what we did for the forty-five minutes was something really powerful. We tried to answer the question, raised in catch-22, "Why Me?" in regards to the draft for WWII. We first compared it to Vietnam, and Prof Travis told us his experiences with the draft. he was a second-year college student and he and the boys in his hall sat on the floor of the hallway and listened as they called out birthdays (the order they picked boys to go). He said one of the guys on his hall, Sam, was #7. he went. Prof travis was like #102 so never got called. I told him about dad going to med school at just the right time.
Anyway, the reason we compared that was because there were so many reasons for people to not be for vietnam....and yet there werent very many reasons for people to be FOR WWII. we talked about the consideration of the holocaust, nazi germany, and the pacific front as a result of Pearl Harbor. But what we couldn't get down to was... why was there so much mass registration. .... for Italy???
We talked about patriotism, a time when propaganda may have worked more effectively, even in the US., the romantic idea of war and fighting for principles of Liberty, Democracy, etc.
But as a group, we never could pinpoint a reason. Why me? I think about boys in their twenties going off to war in europe, somewhere most of them had never been before. We're facing this huge cemetery full of graves and white crosses. All these men (boys) came to Italy. and died.
I guess you could think that way about any war, the idea of young boys, who wouldve completed college, built careers, got married, had kids, done so many things, coming 5,000 miles away to die so young. But it was really interesting how we could never really pinpoint what exactly got the US so mobilized for this. I guess it was a lot of things. but it's just strange how there weren't more people, specifically young boys, saying i don't wanna go over there and fight in a place ive never gone to before for people i dont know anything about. "Why Me?"
After lecture, he let us sort of just walk around the cemetery. I got pretty emotional. I think when i went to arlington national cemetery in elementary school and middle school i didn't really get it. it's just weird thinking about boys my age getting sent overseas to die. and i was standing in this field of young men that had happened to. bleh. talking about war in history class makes it seem so less...about people. it's so political, governmental, societal, economical etc. but man, there's nothing like standing in a cemetery full of American soldiers outside Florence in Italy. fortunately another girl in my class told me she teared up, too, so i didnt feel as silly.
Anyway, great field trip.
Homework and packing til we head out!
thanks for letting me just pour out my thoughts here
becca
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