Dottore, Dottore ... A Day Trip to Padova

As lovely as Venice is, after a few days, you do feel the need to get away from all the tourists. Fortunately, the centrally located train station offers easy escape to nearby Verona, Vicenza or Padua (Padova to the Italians).

I live in a university town, and I have a fondness for the energy that comes from all that youth combined with knowledge. I chose to steal away to Padova, home to Italy's second oldest university (founded in 1222). Its faculty and alumni include Galileo, Copernicus, Casanova and Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman ever awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

The train ride is less than 30 minutes, yet Padova is a world away from Venice.

If you must still play tourist, you will want to visit the largest piazza in all of Italy as well as call on the remains of St. Ant'ny (that would be Anthony to those of you unfamiliar with New Orleans' yat parlance) which are interred in the truly gorgeous basilica that bears his name -- just don't follow the directions in Rick Steves' guide book. Those will take you to the basilica of Santa Giustina across the street.

If you're not Catholic, or if you are and missed catechism that day, this site explains what a basilica is, how it came to be called that and how it differs from a cathedral, church or shrine.

There are also the obligatory open-air markets (de rigeur for any Italian city) and some good shopping. If possible, the Italians are even more style conscious and chic than the French are!

Me, I could just spend all my time wandering under the city's famous colonnades, pausing now again to enjoy a spritz (club soda, white wine and Campari) or a cone of gelato (the best is at Grom's) while window-shopping, people watching and picking up fashion pointers.

But perhaps the most fun is getting in on the graduation hi-jinks in the square outside of the university. Students graduate on the day they defend their thesis so there is always a side-show, often several of them. The celebration is a two-parter. First, the grad dons a laurel wreath a la Julius Caesar for photos with proud family members who come dressed in Sunday best and bearing flowers for the occasion.

Then, as Rick Steves writes in his blog, "Grandma goes home," and the rite of public humiliation commences.

Dressed in an absurd costume -- Lady Gaga for example-- chosen by their so-called friends, the graduate is paraded in front of a large custom-made poster featuring a bawdy caricature of themselves and a poem about their misadventures, again written by their friends, which the honoree must read aloud to the assemblage taking a swig of alcohol every time they flub a word.

Then their friends douse them with water, shaving cream, honey or other assorted fluids/condiments, all the while serenading them with the standard graduation ditty: "Dottore, Dottore Dottore del busco de cul Vaffancul, Vaffancul!"

It sounds like a catchy little children's song -- but the lyrics are X-rated (quasi translation here. )Basically they are telling the newly minted doctor to do something anatomically impossible. It's all in good-natured fun; everyone has an excellent time.

And to think, all I had to do when I graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi was walk across a stage in a cap and gown. Somehow, now I feel cheated.