Thursday

After school and aperitivi, I went to the Nextech festival with my friend Pete. I invited a lot more people, but since many of them were either tired from the week or preparing to go to Assisi the next morning, it ended up just being the two of us. Firstly, the journey to the festival itself, which I suppose was a mini-saga in itself. A quick geography lesson: my host mom's apartment is on the via Dei Bruni, due north of the Centro and about a 35-40 minute walk to the piazza del Duomo. The Nextech festival was at the ex-Stazione Leopolda, southwest of the city center, a good hour's walk from my house. Therefore, I took a bus to a stop vicino to the venue, but one wrong turn at the Porta al Prato meant that I walked fifteen minutes' in the wrong direction, with a bottle of Chianti in one hand and a map in the other. But after that little detour, and a correct left turn back at the Porta al Prato, I found the coolest venue, ever. I stupidly didn't bring my camera, but you'll just have to trust me that it was the best thing, ever. One thing that I actually really appreciated about the entire operation was that the promoters or designers or whatever really knew how to light the entire space in a way that was atmospheric without being garish or too over-the-top.

Stazione Leopolda used to be a train station, probably before they built Santa Maria Novella, but now it's a reclaimed space, maybe a bit like the courtyard of P.S. 1, but really not like anywhere I've ever been before. The station is set back a bit from the street, and behind these big, Deco-ish wrought-iron gates is a big open courtyard with weird modern sculptures and lots of benches set around the perimeter. Inside, the floor plan is actually kind of similar to a Roman basilica, now that I think about it. There are two enormous central rooms where they had projection screens (one) and DJs spinning (the other). The video projections included a very, very cool series on eyes and a kind of incongruous addition of the Gnarls Barkley video for 'Crazy.' The 'side aisles' of the space were probably the waiting areas of the old station, where they had smaller screens and benches for the revelers who were tired of dancing.

I hadn't heard of any of the DJs or the band that played that night, but all of them impressed me greatly. They were all from various locales in Europe; the live band, Poni Hoax, was French and I think the DJs were from Germany. Chicks on Speed were supposed to play on Friday night, but at the ticket counter on Thursday, I saw that they had already scratched. Oops. Anyways, for thirteen euro, I had a GREAT night of... a trashy, wonderful indie hipster dance party. It felt like I was home, which was a singularly wonderful feeling. And while we were sitting on the kerb before entering, finishing the bottle of wine, I have to say that the people-watching was incomparable. And by incomparable, I mean that it felt like I was in Brooklyn again?

My night was good enough for me not to get home until five, ante-meridien. This was perhaps a poor choice considering the fact that both of us had to be on the bus for Assisi at seven thirty. The walk home took a while, obviously, but it was surprising how many people were still out on the streets at that hour. Don't worry, Mom, Pete and I walked back together, and the streets of Florence are absurdly well-lit at night. We ran into two independent sets of other Syracuse kids out on the way back, too. I stumbled into bed a bit past five, knowing that I had just experienced something unique to my stay in Florence, though I hope that some other ridiculous event happens at Stazione Leopolda so I can go back. And that was Thursday.