Ravenna is a beautiful, relatively quiet place. It’s also the home of 8 paleochristian monuments recognized as world heritage sites by UNESCO, as well as Dante’s tomb and where he wrote Inferno.
The featured image is the mosaic on the ceiling of the Arian Bapistry, depicting (pretty obviously) the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.
Through airbnb, I stayed with Federica in the middle of town. She was an incredibly kind and helpful host, and her apartment was fantastic. It featured a really nice modern design. She does work providing education services to special needs kids, which we had a great conversation about. She’s currently working with kids who were diagnosed with ASD. I failed at concealing my background and work as a result of the conversation, which I guess is ok…
We also had a conversation about the current state of the Italian economy, what it means for her and other normal folks, and also the role of Italian identity and history in how people process and cope. A few things made an impression on me. The first was Federica’s career situation. She originally got into special education because she really cares about it. The thing is it doesn’t make much money… and it’s also easy to get burnt out, not because of the kids she’s working with, but because of the systems that she’s forced to work with and within- in particular the state benefits and education system. She’d like to change things, but there’s no opportunity to do that with the state of the economy. The second was just talking about Italian history and her family. She shared some stories about her family during WWII. The main point being, once you get to know the families and the context for things, sometimes it’s not so clear who the good guys and bad guys are. Her grandfather was a teenager when he was put in a position to join the Italian army under the Fascist government, or not. He chose not to, but without much real conviction or clarity, things were confusing. So he fled- at some point I think an uncle who was a fascist reported him and he had to flee somewhere, I can’t remember. Anyway, the point is he never judged anyone too harshly because he understood the confusion and uncertainty…
A few other notable things:
Naturalmente Burger, recommended by Federica. Roasted bone marrow burger with feta and eggplant. … yeah. real good. stupid good. I already mentioned the white truffle and porcini pasta earlier.
Listening to pipe organ practice at the Duomo di Ravenna. Pipe organ music in a cathedral is something special.
The relative calm at the sites of Ravenna, relative to Venice in particular. I was in several of these places alone for up to 20-30 minutes… no lines, no one trying to sell you shit, just solitude.
I don’t think the message that “smoking isn’t cool anymore” got to Italy and Greece. I think almost everyone smokes. And it’s not just… people who’ve given up on life or whatever, it’s all the apparently cool kids and educated/important folks too.
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