I woke up a little early in order to get an espresso from the bar. Unlike in America, Italians use the term “bar” almost literally. Most places will have liquor behind the bar, but primarily serve coffee and sandwiches, and you stand at the bar while finishing your espresso. They can tell I’m American because I always have to specify espresso. I’m unsure if Italians have to specify; I thought caffé meant espresso.

Class today with Prof. Calboli covered intangible cultural property and geographic indicators of origin, like Champagne. Most of us have an American view critical of geographic indicators, but there are a lot of good points in their favor. Australia, for example, started investing in their own wine only after they began enforcing European geographic indicators of origin. We also explored new downsides, like how developing countries tend to have geographic indicators that require extra preparation and thus are less apparent to end consumers.

In between classes, I took the opportunity to walk around the town. I ran out of toothpaste, so I tried to find somewhere to buy a tube. As a plus, I’ve heard European toothpaste typically contains more fluoride than you find in America. I can’t tell if I found some like that, since my Italian is not very strong.

I took a roundabout way back to class. It was partly the way we were shown when we arrived last week but I made some discoveries myself. I found a beautiful piazza that I haven’t seen until now that was decked out in red and yellow ribbons. It was during the mid-afternoon when most Italian shops are closed, so there was no one around for me to ask what was happening. Some of the backways had extensive graffiti, which the people here are not too happy about but I don't particularly mind.