This past weekend, we went to Oktoberfest. But it wasn't just Oktoberfest...it was Oktoberfest in Munich, on the 200th anniversary, on closing weekend. So it was pretty wild. Eurasmus, the major European foreign exchange program, offered to drive foreign students to Munich for the weekend. After having some homemade pizza at a friend's apartment, we all hopped on the bus at 10:30 on Friday night. We drove 8 hours to get to Munich. Unfortunately, I have a very hard time sleeping on buses, so I hardly slept at all. So Oktoberfest is basically this huge carnival...with a lot of beer. So we got in this epic line to get in the Hofbräu tent, where I almost lost my shoes because people were stepping on my feet. We spent part of the day in the tent and the rest of the day wandering around Munich. I bought this cute bag that said München and Oktoberfest on it. We met the bus at 10:30 that night and drove 8 hours back to Milan...again without much sleep at all. I was so exhausted when I got back that I just took a shower and went to bed until 4 in the afternoon. It was a really fun trip overall though and I am glad that I went!
On Monday, I had my first History of Italian Opera class. It was pretty interesting. We talked about Monteverdi's L'Orfeo and the teacher talked about some interesting structural concepts that I hadn't really thought about. So this class should be pretty interesting. I am excited expand my opera horizons!
On Tuesday night, we had another one of the lectures. This one was about Italian versus English phonetics. My mother would have LOVED this lecture. Haha. One of my Italian friends from Collegio came with me and he thought it was interesting because he had never thought about some of the differences between Italian and English pronunciation. After the lecture, they served us some pannetone, a traditional Milanese bread during Christmastime.
Last night, my study abroad program provided us with FREE tickets to go see
L'Elisir d'amore at LA SCALA!!!!! It was sooooo wonderful. The opera was amazing, the singers were amazing, the orchestra was amazing, and basically the entire experience was EPIC! I had so much fun and I hope I will be able to go see another opera there! It was really interesting because the singers' voices didn't seem gigantic, but they really were able to cut through the orchestra.
Today, for my Italian Culture and Cuisine class, we had our first cooking class! It was held at this really swanky cooking school. We made le trofie al pesto and la focaccia Ligure, which is basically pasta with pesto and bread. But we made the pasta by hand and everything was from scratch. And then after we made everything, we all ate it together. It was really delicious! The entire process took about 3 and a half hours! I forgot my camera, but I will be sure to bring it next time!
On Friday, October 8, there was a sponsored trip to Lago Maggiore. Unfortunately, it was not the best weather to go to a lake because it was very cloudy and cold. But we had a good time anyway. There were only 8 of us so we kind of all decided what we wanted to do together. It was an hour train ride to get to the town and we took a boat from the town to a few of the little islands on the lake. They were all very cute, very touristy little places. We visited the botanical gardens that surrounded a mansion of a very rich and powerful Italian family. It was interesting hearing about the family. One thing that I found unusual was they had several puppet theatres in their house, which I guess could be considered like having multiple TVs in one's house. After visiting the mansion and the gardens, we went to lunch on one of the other islands. After a successful day of exploring, we returned to Milan!
