Bible Study

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have become involved with the Society of St. Thomas More. Every Tuesday, they hold a Bible Study led by a student and have wine and cheese. When they found out I am a FOCUS Student Leader, they asked me to start leading them. I was both honored and excited to continue my mission from George Mason, here in Florence.

I could chose any topic or passage I wanted to, so I looked through my FOCUS books and decided to do a lesson on Moral Authority. This term is used to describe how both future and current leaders in the faith are called to set an example on what the church teaches. I think St. Anthony of Padua sums it up best, “Actions speak louder than words; let your words speak and your actions teach.” If we ourselves cannot keep the promises we ask others to make, how can we keep those promises? This passage brought up a lot of discussion when Christ says:

“For there is no good tree which produces bad fruit, nor does an evil tree produce good fruit. For each and every tree is known by its fruit. For they do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather the grape from the bramble bush. A good man, from the good storehouse of his heart, offers what is good. And an evil man, from the evil storehouse, offers what is evil. For out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. He is like a man building a house, who has dug deep and has laid the foundation upon the rock. Then when the floodwaters came, the river was rushing against that house, and it was not able to move it. For it was founded upon the rock. But whoever hears and does not do: he is like a man building his house upon the soil, without a foundation. The river rushed against it, and it soon fell down, and the ruin of that house was great.” (Luke 6:43-45, 48-49)

About eight people in all came, a perfect number for good discussion. We meet in the mensa (Italian for Cafeteria), which is an apartment across from the Duomo where the priests eat. At the end, everyone complemented on how great of a discussion it was and how they haven’t had one so good in a long time! It made me so much more excited to continue leading them the rest of the semester!

Contact Info

I thought it would be a good idea if I let you all know how you can get in contact with me, other than the comments section on this blog.

Sending through mail:
Send mail directly through my school and I can pick it up there. It takes about two weeks. The address is:

Jonathan Smith
c/o Centro Fiorenza
Via Santo Spirito, 14
Firenze, 50125 Italia

E-mail:
Probably the easiest, cheapest and quickest way:

jsmw@gmu.edu

Phone:
I have an Italian cell phone and all incoming calls are free for me:

(+39) 335-714-6512

Not too Hungry in Hungary

So, my first trip across the former Iron Curtain was a blast!

I arrived in Budapest Friday night after my connection in Rome and hopped on a bus and then a metro to Kalvin Ter. I knew my hotel was close to the metro station, but I wasn't sure exactly where it was. I stepped out of the stairway, turned around, and there it was!

My friend Julian, who flew in from Sweden from his study abroad, was already there and we decided to walk around the city to see it at night. Walking along the Danube River was so beautiful as all the golden buildings along either side were lit up. We ate at a restaurant off the main drag, Andrasse Avenue, and I just had to go with a local specialty, goulash. It was a lot better than what I remember from my grade school cafeteria’s goulash for sure! It was really just a vegetable soup. I had that with pork and potatoes Hungarian style. I couldn’t even finish the amount they served me!

Looking up to Castle Hill at night

The next day we went to the Pest side of the city. Budapest was originally two cities, Buda and Pest, divided by the Danube River and combined to make Budapest.  There was a funicular to take you up the hill to the base of the Grand Palace, which was destroyed during World War II and rebuilt by the Soviets as they clutched Hungary in the claws of Communism. Once at the top, we were welcomed with the most amazing view of the city. We walked through the grandiose courtyards of the Palace, which are not at all what they used to be before the war. The exterior used to be adorned with hundreds of statues, ornate carvings and moldings, and extravagant gardens filled with exotic fauna. Now, most of the Palace is filled with offices, museums, and halls that can be rented out. Remains of the old Palace are still visible throughout the estate. 

Standing by the Grand Palace overlooking the city

Next stop was St. Matthias Basilica, which is on the same hill, just a quarter mile down the road from the Palace. Secret tip: If a church requires you to pay to get in, ask where the prayer entrance is and you can get in for free! Right outside is a large balcony looking out over the city called the Fisherman’s Bastion. It’s a series of towers and walkways on the hillside displaying gorgeous views of the Danube and the numerous buildings that border it. We walked down the hill, and ate at a local restaurant. I have this obsession about eating local food and drink, such as eating a Belgian waffle in Belgium, crepes in France, goulash in Hungary and gelato in Italy. So for lunch, I got fried duck and pickled cabbage. It was actually very good!

St. Matthias Basilica

Fisherman's Bastion

Sunday morning, we went to mass at St. Stephan’s Basilica not realizing it would be in Hungarian. It was advertized as Latin, but the only thing in Latin was the Consecration. Afterwards, we went around to a room behind the sanctuary to see the Right Hand of St. King Stephen. It is the most revered relic in all of Hungary, not only because he was the country’s first King, but also because he brought Christianity to the region.

St. Stephan's Basilica

St. King Stephan's right hand

Next, we went to the Hungarian Parliament, the third largest parliament building in Europe outside of Bucharest and London. For being the equivalent of the US Capitol Building, security was pretty lax. A guard every hundred yards surrounded the building and a simple security scan was all that was needed to get into the building. Our tour started on the grand staircase that the building is most famous for. The whole room was gilded in gold from the railings to the ceiling. The dome that caps the building houses the Holy Crown that was worn by St. King Stephen. The image is portrayed all throughout the city as a crown topped with a cross bent to the side, an accident that happened centuries ago when it was packed in a box for safekeeping. During WWII, the crown along with the right hand, were sent to the United States to be safeguarded in Fort Knox and was returned decades later by President Jimmy Carter. The last part of the tour was a look into the parliament chamber. Hungary used to have a bicameral legislature like the United States, but now only has one. The other chamber is now rented out to citizens for large parties.

On our last morning, we took a long walk up to the citadel, a fortress on a hill next to the Grand Palace that the Soviets build in order to aim cannons down on the city if they needed to destroy Budapest. On the way up, we stopped at the Cave Church, which is literally what it sounds like. It’s a cave, with a church in it. The rest of the way up felt more like a pilgrimage, especially since it had started to snow as we followed the winding wooded path to the top. Along the way were several outcroppings where you can look out over the whole city. Once at the top, you are faced with the giant statue of a woman, which can be see across the city. It is a liberation statue erected by the Soviets “liberating” the Hungarians from their “oppression,” so they decided to turn them communist. Kind of ironic isn’t it!

On top of the Citadel looking over the city

This post is a whole week late! I know, I know I need to be on top of it more! I’ll post a few more in the next couple of days to catch up. This past weekend, (2/25-27) I was in Rome for a class trip, so that will probably be a two-part post. The Tuesday after Budapest, I lead a Bible Study for the SSTM, so I’ll write a little on that too. Next weekend I’ll be on Spring Break, so Internet may be an issue too, but I’ll keep writing and post when I get back.

Until next time!

Forza Viola!

What are Italians more passionate about than anything? Soccer!

On Wednesday evening, my roommates and I went to a Fiorentina soccer game, Florence’s home team. It wasn’t just any game of calcio either. This was Florence’s biggest game of the year; a game locals have been waiting for. The opponent… Inter Milan, the number three team in the country. Fiorentina, also known as The Viola because of their purple jerseys, are not so high up on the list. The fan base reminds me an awful lot of that of the Washington Redskins. The fans know they are terrible and have no chance of winning, but they remain loyal to the end.

It had rained all day on Wednesday and it showed no signs of stopping. The walk to the stadium was long and wet as I could feel the water start to seep into my shoes. The closer we got, the more fans joined in on the walk. It was so strange going to a game at a stadium and not having to park a car a mile away. The amazing thing was, there was no parking lot at all. Everybody walks to the stadium because Florence is such a compact city. What weren’t any different, were the vendors on the streets selling Viola merchandise. Purple scarves, gloves, hats, jerseys, flags and sweatshirts lined the inside of the vendors’ carts.

As soon as you step into the stadium, you can feel the excitement as the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. A sea of purple surrounds you as people flood into the stands. Chants and songs erupted from the crowd as the players took to the field. Huge plexi-glass walls topped with spikes surrounded both the field and the visitor section to dissuade rioters and rowdy tifosi from causing too much trouble. Inter scored first only five minutes into the game. The comparably small number of Inter fans went nuts! Cheers and insults went back and forth between the two sides. Fiorentina scored about ten minutes later to tie up the game! The crowd went crazy!! Now the pressure was on!

Half time came and went and in the second half, Inter scored again to take the 2-1 lead. After numerous close calls, the Viola couldn’t pull it off. We went home both wet and a little disappointed. It was definitely an amazing experience to go to a European soccer match and experience a vital part of Italian culture.

In Bruges

It seems as the weeks go by, my weekends are getting busier and busier. I just realized on the train last night that I’ve been here for a whole month now. It’s hard to imagine my trip being almost one third of the way over! Three and a half months just doesn’t cut it.

If you look back at my last post, I mentioned I wanted to go somewhere, but I didn’t know where. Well about an hour after posting it, my roommate, Chris said he really wanted to go to Bruges and Paris this weekend. So we did! We planned our weekend that night and the next day, we had our flights.

We flew Ryanair, a low cost airline that many students and Europeans use to travel around the continent and parts of North Africa. The problem with this airline is that the airports they fly in and out of are way outside of the city. So we took an hour train ride to Pisa Airport where we were packed like sardines trying to get boarded. Apparently, Ryanair overbooks flights, so if you’re in the back of the crowd, there’s a chance you won’t get on the plane. Once on the tarmac, people literally ran to the steps of the plane to have first dibs on a seat. We got seats next to each other no problem.

We flew into Brussels, Belgium, or so we thought. It was a small town outside of Brussels called Charleroi. We had to take a 45-minute bus ride to actually get to the city Ryanair advertized. We had no idea where we were when they dropped us off at a train station. We picked the tallest church-like spire we could see, and walked towards it. About a half hour later, we were finally in Brussels. On the way, there was a bright yellow van that was selling fresh Belgian waffles. At only 1.50€ a piece, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse! I was in Belgium, eating a Belgian waffle. Let me tell you, I had never eaten a Belgian waffle that tasted so good!! It was a completely plain waffle, hot out of the iron, and it tasted like it was crusted with sugar. I don’t think I can ever order another Belgian waffle from First Watch again! 

We walked around for a few more hours, tasting the local cuisine and enjoying the beautiful mixture of architecture of both old and new. For dinner, we had another local specialty, French fries, (it makes you wonder why they aren’t called Belgian Fries!) and a type of chicken that looked more like fried potato wedges, and a local beer called Hoegaarden.

After dinner, we took a train to Bruges, Belgium, known as the Venice of the north. It’s also where the name of the film In Bruges took place, hence the name of this post. We walked through the streets of Bruges for a few hours, looking for hostels to stay in. At about 10:30 when we gave up, we came across a small hotel that had a bar on the first floor. For only 65 euro, we were able to stay in a really nice room that overlooked the canals and church steeples of the city.  After dropping our stuff on the bed out of exhaustion, we went down to the bar to try another Belgian beer. We asked for the darkest beer they had and he gave us what he said was voted Best Beer in the World in 2009. He was right. It was so good, we had to get two more to take back to the room and we saved the bottles.

The next morning, we went in search of the Basilica of the Holy Blood, a church that holds a relic of the blood of Jesus. It is said to be a part of the cloth that Joseph of Aramathea cleaned Jesus with after taking his bloody body down from the cross. It was brought back during the Crusades by a soldier from Bruges after the war and has remained there since. During certain hours, we are able to venerate the Blood of Christ by actually walking up to the altar and being able to touch the glass casing protecting the vial. A priest stands behind the altar, wiping fingerprints off the glass. Walking up to it, I didn’t exactly know what to expect. Would it be hard to see? Would it be covered in dirt after 2,000 years? When it became my turn, I was very surprised to see a completely intact white piece of cloth stained with the bright red Blood of Christ. The stains were so red and fresh looking, it looks as if the piece of cloth was used the day before the clean the wounds of Christ. It was truly an amazing experience.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the small picturesque town, looking on as boat tours sailed by on the canals and horse drawn carriages took tourists on rides down the narrow cobblestone streets. We had lunch at a restaurant overlooking a canal and had the first piece of steak in over a month. It was so mouth watering juicy and came with fries, delicious vegetable soup and bread. We of course had another locally brewed beer that was as good as the one from the night before. 

Taking the train back to Brussels, we took a high-speed train to Paris, which only took about two hours. The ride was so smooth you wouldn’t even know you were moving at over 100 mph. We arrived at Gare du Nord and went straight to the Eiffel Tower via metro. This was my third time in Paris, but I didn’t want Chris to miss the beauty of the tower being lit up at night. Paris by night is a must for all visitors to the city!

The next morning we walked a few blocks from our hotel to climb the Eiffel Tower. We turned the corner expecting to see the tower, but it was gone! Well, half of it anyway. It was so cloudy and foggy that morning, you could only see up to the first observation deck. We decided that we would go up anyway in hopes it would clear up by the time we got to the top. It didn’t. It reminded me of when I was on a mountain in Switzerland seven years ago and all you could see was white clouds. An occasional gust of wind would clear away some clouds to give you a brief glimpse of the city, but that was it. 

The next stop was Notre Dame Cathedral. The magnificent bell towers rose high on the Parisian skyline, but not nearly as tall as Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame makes them seem. A quick walk though of the cathedral was all we could afford with a tight schedule.

On our way to the Louvre, we stopped at a side café to get crepes. Neither of us had eaten, so the big egg, ham and cheese crepes were at the top of the list. It was a great snack to hold us over in line at the Louvre. It went surprisingly fast and before we knew it, we were going down the escalator in the giant glass pyramid that has become an icon in Paris. As international students, we were able to get free admission, so we didn’t feel bad that we were only there for about an hour. We walked in, followed the signs for the Mona Lisa (La Giaconda in Italian), saw the Mona Lisa, took pictures of it, and left. It was almost a sinful thing to do, but we didn’t have a choice. The airport where our flight left from wasn’t actually in Paris… it was in Beauvais, a town that took us over an hour by train and a ten-minute bus ride to get to.

Overall, it has been the greatest weekend I’ve spent here. I ate a Belgian waffle and drank Belgian beer in Belgium, ate a crepe in France, touched the Blood of Jesus, went up the Eiffel Tower, passed through Notre Dame, and visited the Mona Lisa. I’d say it was a pretty successful trip.

A lot of you are telling me I need to write more, and I’d love to every other day if I could, but internet is hard to come by and I’d spend every second of my free time writing. I’ll try to get another up before my trip to Budapest!

Ciao for now!

Duomo, Pisa, Siena and more!

I’ve had a busy couple of days consisting of more than just the usual schoolwork.

Tuesday’s art class brought us to Santa Croce, a beautiful church that was virtually destroyed during the 1966 flooding of the Arno. One of the more famous works of art that was damaged and has since been restored, is Cimabue’s cross that once hung above the altar. Santa Croce also happens to be the final resting place of Michelangelo and Galileo.

After our church tour, we visited an attached leather factory and had a demonstration on gilding gold on leather. It was pretty amazing to watch as the leather worker gently placed the gold leafing on the leather and meticulously stamped it with the hot tools that were sitting inside a desktop furnace. It was strange to think that the small offices and storerooms that lined the hallway were once cells for the Franciscan monks that lived and prayed at the church.

Wednesday brought more adventures in this Renaissance city. With other students belonging to the Society of Saint Thomas More, I climbed the four hundred and some odd steps to the top of the Duomo. It was definitely worth the gasping for air and sore legs once I got to the top. I had climbed St. Peter’s dome in Rome a few years ago, but Tuscany is not Lazio. Tuscany’s rolling green hills and hilltop towns and church steeples rose up all around. I could see where I stood in Fiesole the week before, I could see my bedroom window, and snowcapped mountains in the distance. Juniper trees shot up in the sky like missal silos and red tiled roofs covered the city like a lava flow. It was a sight not to forget!

On Friday, some friends and I took a day trip to Pisa to see, what else, the leaning tower. This is my third time in Italy and not once have I seen the infamous American icon for the country. After a long walk from the train station to the Campo dei Miracoli, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was a little… small. I thought we’d be able to see it from the train station. Nope!

One thing that was really neat was eating pizza outside at a little café and being able to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa at the same time. Admit it. We all know it’s really called the Leaning Tower of Pizza.

Saturday took me on another day trip to the neatest little town called Siena. Siena is famous for many things such as the obvious, St. Catherine of Siena. It was humbling to be present with her relics and pray before the crucifix that she prayed in front of when she received the stigmata. Of course, holy cards, medals, and plaques were among souvenirs to be brought back to friends who carry her name.

Siena is also famous for the Palio, a horse race that takes place twice a year in the summer, on a track made in the Campo. The city is divided up into 17 condrade, each of which submits a horse and jockey. Horses are blessed in the morning in the condrada’s church, and if he leaves “something” behind, then it is seen as good luck. The entire city is shut down and becomes a ghost town except in the center where the Campo is. After the race, no matter who wins, a huge potluck is shared with the whole town in the winning contrada.

Next weekend’s activities are not yet planned, but the following weekend, I’m going to Budapest, Hungary with one of my friends from CCM who is studying in Sweden. The following weekend is our program’s trip to Rome! I’m looking forward to both of these trips!!!