Sono Americano yo!

So I just arrived in Florence to visit my friends Nick&Danny and I got a little bit of a nice welcome from the police. Two cops decide to stop me right after I step out of the train station. In Italian, they just started pelting me with all these questions like, what's in your bag? open it up? what do you do? where are you from? let me see your passport? Ok so I'm doing really well in Italian, but when two dudes with guns and handcuffs are suspisious of something and insist on speaking in Italian to you, your Italian kinda goes blank. Luckily my Italian was on even though I probably could have crapped in my pants.

Ok so the irony of this story was that right before I left, I was about to pack my passport but I asked my buddy Briggs if he thought I needed it. Briggs spent a year doing the same program in Rome as I'm in now. He's staying with me in Rome while he visits a bunch of his friends for his post Ph.D graduation vacation. He was like...in the whole year I was here I was never asked for my passport. So I was like...I'll leave it. So when they asked for it I showed them the copies of my visa and passport and my original (thank god) permesso (permit of stay). I think the fact that I was conversing with them in Italian helped cause after I found out I was a student in Rome they started to ask what I studied etc., but while they were still searching my bag mind you. Evevything ended up ok and they eventually left me alone and with a smile said "Buenasera". I was like....right...same to you.

One more piece of irony. While Briggs and I had dinner at the train station right before I left, the cashier spoke to me in english and in Italian to Briggs. I told Briggs it was like a kick in the balls to be automatically assumed as not part of Italy. If the Fiorentine police had just thought I was American initially, this wouldn't have happened. Oh wellz, off to Carnivale in Venice bright and early tomorrow.