The Departure Gate

LOCATION: Washington, DC; Tuesday Afternoon; SAIS

Benvenuto! Welcome to "La Vista Di Qui", a blog which will document my year-long adventure in Italy. I suppose the word "adventure" may be a bit misleading, as I will be in school and not on an African safari, but I think the uphill battle I will face in learning French and Italian at the same time is enough to allow me to call this an adventure.

Speaking of school, I suppose I should explain what I am doing in Italy, in case you are not 100% certain. For the next two years I will be working towards a masters in international affairs at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). I will tentatively be concentrating in trade and energy policy, with a concentration in developing and transition economics. Doesn't that sound like fun? Anyway, SAIS has 3 campuses--one in Washington, DC; one in Nanjing, China; and one in Bologna, Italy. I will be spending my first year in Bologna, taking classes taught in English, with about 70-90 other American students. Then I will be back in Washington, DC for my second year. The best of both worlds!

The question I have heard most often, when I tell people what I am doing and where I am going, is why Bologna? Of all the places, why there? I wondered this myself, actually. A very smart man at the think tank I worked at in DC, and whose knowledge I would not question, told me that back in the 1950's, during the height of McCarthism, American universities set-up satellite schools to help the US gov't spy on communists in Bologna. The city has many nicknames--"Bologna the learned" (for its large university, which is also the oldest in the world), "Bologna the fat" (for its designation as the culinary heart of Italy), and "Bologna the red" for its communist and socialist ties (not for its pasta sauce). Now, is it true that my future school was in part a shell for CIA operations? I don't know, but it does make an interesting theory, doesn't?