Giuliana Romeo, Engineering Perspectives of the Renaissance and Sustainability: Florence Summer 2023
For my program, all the students were placed in apartments throughout the city of Florence. My four roommates and I lived in the San Lorenzo neighborhood of Florence, only three blocks from the main tourist site — the Duomo. All of my roommates were other Pitt Engineers taking the same classes. We really enjoyed living in a true Italian apartment as opposed to a dorm or other university style housing.
We truly felt integrated in the community. All of our neighbors were Italians, and we were able to see how they went about their days. From our living room window, we could see how our neighbors hung their laundry to dry, which was a very new practice for us. Our apartment, like most typical Italian homes, only had a washer and no dryer. This is due to a culture of energy conservation throughout the country. We had to learn to wash our laundry in the Italian washing machine (with no English descriptions!) and hang our laundry on drying racks.
Another practice typical to Italian city living that we had to adjust to was separating our trash. The Italians have a very clear system designed for recycling and composting. We had to separate our trash into 4 different bins: plastics and metals, paper, organic waste, and residual waste. Each type of waste had its own bag and bin color distinction to make it easy to sort. This was very interesting for all of us to see, given that we were taking a sustainability focused class as part of our abroad program. There was also no curbside pickup! All trash is placed in the respective chutes located on the street and collected from there. What we loved most about our apartment was more a reflection on the city itself. Everything was so walkable from our apartment! We were only a 3-minute walk from the nearest grocery store and a 10-minute walk from class. Any restaurant we wanted to try was within walking distance as well. Most importantly, we were a 5-minute walk from the main train station of Florence. With Italy’s impressive high-speed rail system, we could be in some of the world’s most famous cities: Venice, Rome, Milan, in a couple of hours for a weekend trip. We especially loved being so close to the grocery store. Groceries became a fun outing instead of a chore. We enjoyed looking at all the different Italian products they had and cooking meals together. While we tried many restaurants and local cuisine, we also were very grateful to have a kitchen in our apartment. It was a lot of fun to cook meals together from time to time with such fresh ingredients! It was a great bonding experience as roommates.
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