Postcard from Ravenna, Part 1.

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This is Italy, so all the men are good looking and clean and well dressed. Every one of these gorgeous creatures would be considered "metrosexual" and his sexual orientation very suspect in Australia.....mmm....most of them are married, and ride bicycles with baby seats, just in case you don't get the message.There is a belief in the land of Oz that Italians are fat. Not true...not here, anyway. They walk and ride bicycles everywhere I tossed a coin and went to Italy to learn Italian, Portugal and Portuguese was too near to the awful kids and much worse monitors in this year's camp. As a teacher of English, there are a few things that are constants in a good place to learn English. The same should apply to Italian I thought. The city should be small and with as few speakers of your native language as possible. On the web, two small cities appeared, Viareggio in Tuscany and Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna. Tuscany is a fully owned subsiduary of the Home Counties, no thanks. I went to Ravenna, which was near the beach and had art, in spades, this being a personal need. The school arranged families to live with, and text books were included. These were my other criteria for a good place to learn. You cannot know what the school is like, or what the quality of the tuition is like until you actually experience it. A good guideline is the age of the other students. 'Mostly over 45, except in July and August' worked fine for me. Ravenna is old, originally Byzantine, but mostly the surviving buildings are 150 or 200 years old. Some are re-built re-creations of older buildings that were bombed in WWII. It has a sunny yellow hue, warm stone and light filled spaces, even on the dullest of days. In September it is still summer, still warm, still full of tourists, but the tourists are seniors and on intellectual pilgrimages to the holy places or the artistic places or the best restaurants, the beaches remain empty. The locals have them to themselves, they bring food, friends and sunbathe topless, regardless of age or shape. I'm green with envy at their brown tanned bodies. I add a few freckles to my redhead quota. The beaches are wide, sometimes a couple of hundred metres from landline to low tide foam, the sea is totally without surf, and not very blue, the very fine sand is all shades from white to gray, and has shells, shells you can collect, the shells change as you walk along, in some spots there are only tiny snail like shells, and in others big disks of mother of pearl. But the biggest difference is the 'bagni'. If anyone in Australia were to try to set up a bagno, they would be hung, lynched, and their bodies fed to crocodiles. A bagno is a business. A bagno is a club. A bagno is a very useful place. It is a cafe with outdoor tables on the land-most edge of the beach, it has showers, WCs, changing rooms and storage lockers. It has numbered sun loungers, called 'lettini' with umbrellas, it clean and safe and serviced. People rent a lettino for a morning or a day or a weekend or all summer long. The family I had the good fortune to stay with, rented 2 all summer long, May to October. You can store your 'stuff'. You can sit at a table playing cards all day, meet friends, and be treated like family by the licensees. The bagni are a wonderful idea, but they would never catch on in Australia, more's the pity. The School, called 'Palazzo Malvina' was in the centre of the semi pedestrinized centre, just off Via Cavour, every Italian town and city has a Via Cavour, and I am still not sure who he was, and why he got his name on everything. The streets are cobbled, and the women wear the highest of heels. Bicycles weave in and out, laden with shopping, babies and briefcases. The Cyclists answer moblies, chat to the friend riding next to them, flirt with interesting members of the opposite sex, coming in the opposite direction, glance in shop windows and turn corners without signals. Ravenna has the greatest amount of dedicated cycleway in Italy and is 3rd for the number of bicycles in the population. Some of this is cheating, as there is 7 kilometers of cycleway to the beach, and cars can enter the city centre, if they are foolish, and willing to be the victims of much bad language. There is a one way system in Ravenna that makes lab rat mazes look easy. The sensible person walks in this city. The classes were 5 or 6 people, 4 or 5 of whom were over 30. A naif Polish priest, a Madagastan nun, a Swiss railway engineer, with an impressive bass voice, a German liberian,and a retiree or two, nice people all. A young Swiss, and a young Greek joined the class later on. The teacher was very good, very experienced, and had a huge range of games. I want some of her games. I learnt a lot, hindered by a certain, better knowledge of Spanish, my lisp after 30 years in hiding re-appeared. I didn't miss a minute of class. T The school moved to a more spacious, but more noisy location, across town, but still only 10 minutes walk from where I was living. Via di Gasperi 5 on the 3rd floor. End of Part 1. Carole. [e-mail] _________________________________________________________________It's simple! Sell your car for just $30 at CarPoint.com.auhttp://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fsecure%2Dau%2Eimrworldwide%2Ecom%2Fcgi%2Dbin%2Fa%2Fci%5F450304%2Fet%5F2%2Fcg%5F801459%2Fpi%5F1004813%2Fai%5F859641&_t=762955845&_r=tig_OCT07&_m=EXT

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