Venezia

This post originally appeared as a journal entry ten days ago, but with the semester starting and Munich's gorgeous weather, plus my now functioning bicycle, I think I can be forgiven for the delay. Now, to relay my travel stories.

April 13th, 2009

Venice is, needless to say, astoundingly beautiful. The water that fills the canals, sloshing around bends every time a gondola or vaporetto is set into motiont, is the most perfect turquoise-blue I have ever seen. I visited a small mask shop, where the famous beak-nosed carnival masks are made personally and painstakingly by a middle-aged couple in the adjoining workshop. The cuts are so elaborate, the gold so prominent and the amount of feathers always striking, bordering on excessive. I amble through small passageways from my hostel - a gorgeous, inexpensive (for this city, at least) and 400-year-old renovated palace that has only taken guests for the past seven months and includes breakfast and dinner.

TIP: A Venice Museum (Hostel)

I then stop by a large, open air market practically empty of tourists and locals alike, where antiques, books, clothing and jewelry are being sold. I buy three very cheap but fantastically crafted glass pendants (the chains I opted to find elsewhere) and a pair of rather baroque earrings. I ponder a coffee, but feel energized already and press myself to venture into an art museum, yet the weather is too stunningly gorgeous for me not feel that I'd be making a considerable sacrifice. I do very much want to go to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the Park Biennale/La Biennale di Venezia, but that can wait. In the mean time, I happen to have wandered into a peaceful, pleasantly hidden courtyard that was connected to an antiquated building housing an art school. It is very mission-like in style, except for the somewhat Moroccan arched windows that seem to be everywhere in this city. It is unbelievably silent, aside from the other pairs or solitary travelers and locals who find their way in and spend the entire time quietly marveling at its beauty. The air is soft and utterly permeated with the honey-like aroma of the serpentine purple Hardenbergia flowers.

I feel a bit like I was in a monastery and have no desire to leave any time soon. A dog barks and the sound echoes through the courtyard, and suddenly I am brought back into the world. My stomach is full of bio whole-wheat crackers, mineral water and Lufthansa-provided dark Lindt chocolate. This morning I had Gruyere cheese on bread, which my grandmother lovingly ordered me to take home with me from Zürich yesterday. I have met some flirty young guys with seemingly good intentions, and that served as a nice reminder that I am in my twenties and condsidered cute (or perhaps just being female is enough). Reassurance is not needed and I am not advocating the valuing of male goal-specific friendliness, but a kind conversation, electrically-charged or not, is always enjoyable.

Italian Vocabulary

sí/no
per favore
prego
grazie
ciao/buingiorno/salve
ciao/arrivederci
mi scusi
buono
no ho capito = I don't understand
Parla inglese?
uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, dieci
dov'e...? = where is...?
il bagno = toilet
l'autobus = bus

Later in the day I visit two galleries, wander around and explore, talk to other travelers in the hostel, stroll about with two girls from the U.S. with whom I connected fairly well, and prattled on into the night with freshly met yet enthusiastic and kind people.

Side note while sitting at table, after dinner and wine:

Everyone looks like everyone else. All faces are terribly over-symmetrically identical in a way. The more you travel around the world, the more you see this odd phenomenon. It's as if there weren't enough physical characteristics to go around. How odd it is that we think of ourselves as so unique, imagine our outward flaws as so very large and distinct.

April 14th, 2009
Best night ever

On a midnight train to Venice... actually, it's 11:23pm. I am sitting on my own in a crisp clean blue and white cabin of a train returning from Padua to Venice. Ten minutes ago I was with six Italians and a Spaniard, laughing, drinking wine from a bottle, roaming the piazzas and communicating in a hybrid version of Italian and English. This all began at Park Biennale at 1:30pm this afternoon. I bravely sought out the Peggy Guggenheim Collection only to find that it is closed on Tuesdays, so I walked to Piazza San Marco and spent a good hour and a half at the Basilica S. Marco, in awe of the golden roof of ascension and the elaborate mosaics.

Afterwards, I made the long journey to Park Biennale along the shore in the scorching Venetian sun. It was impossible not to notice the dramatic increase in humidity in comparison with the skinny shaded alleyways. I sat in the park, on the comfortably moist grass, listening to the birds, the groups laughing and picnicking, the water being splashed around by vaporettos. I listened to a bit of Blind Pilot and Bon Iver, who seemed to fit rather well in the tranquil park atmosphere, and as I began to think of taking a nap, a college-aged girl approached me and asked if I wanted a piece of cake, gesturing to her friends, a picnic blanket and a small feast. Naturally I wouldn't pass up such a chance, even when tempted by sleep (sugar or dreams, what is your drug of choice?), and so I joined them, sharing stories, opinions, translations and food. Immediately I was handed a beer and asked about my studies, home and reason for travel. It was not as much like a questionnaire as it sounds.

Chiara, a friend, me, Alejandro, Marco.

Maria and I.

We played frisbee, took photos and made both classy and obscene jokes - a winning combination. The group, then three Italians (two sisters and their flatmate) and a guy from Madrid, had come to Venice from Padua just for a day trip, and they planned to unwind a little more, maybe enjoy a coffee or gelato, then head back home to cook dinner, drink wine and have a small party. They asked if I wanted to come along - "just 30 minutes with the train!" - and I laughed it off while considering it seriously. We cleaned up the picnic area and set off to traverse through the currently closed Biennale, a great contemporary art museum where the exhibits and themes rotate annually, and which consists of several beautifully designed buildings within the park. We ran around the boarded up site, pointing at all the different country names on the buildings - one for Egypt, one for France, etc., the German one was ominous and oppressive, the Swiss one very Bauhaus - and had a good time.

We then walked back to San Marco, an experience that was still just as hot but seemed to only take half the time as before, and onward to the train station, making a necessary gelato stop along the way. After the short ride to Padua, we went by the university and to their apartment, where we drank, talked, ate, smoked and chuckled for hours, with calm downtime in between. We mostly spoke - correction, they spoke, I attempted to decipher - Italian with English translation breaks. The language's uncanny similarity to Spanish made me very grateful. We set out again at around 10:3om, in the direction of the train station (in the previous hours, five others had arrived and two had left), and i was treated to a walking tour, of the quirkiest variety, I should say, of the city and its delights. White wine in hand, we strolled leisurely to the station, where we exchanged information and made tentative plans to meet for lunch or dinner in Venice the next day. They ALL saw me off as my train pulled out, and even did a cheesy, cinematic chase after it.

I plan to head back the hostel in time to sleep a bit before registering at 5am for my Lewis & Clark Fall courses, return to bed for a few hours, and then enjoy my last full day in Venice. The feelings of calm and happiness I am experiencing now are pure and grand, and entirely my own to keep. I feel whole as I stare out at the light-reflecting yet curiously coal-colored water. I don't mind the contradiction.

April 15th, 2009

Registration issues in the wee hours caused massive stress and dancing around with a borrowed iTouch trying to get a wireless signal. To those of you planning to register for a class at your home university while abroad: Don't. Seriously. You may think that you have it in you to wake up in the middle of the night, when it's 7pm on the West Coast, but even if you do, you have no idea what outside forces will join together to work against you. In my case, it was the wireless gods. Because the hostel computer couldn't get a signal, I missed my registration time and had to sign up late after asking around (at 5am) for the use of someone's computer. I did not get my Behavioral Neuroscience course that I was really looking forward to, and I didn't realize how much I wanted it until after I had to waitlist. It really hurt, actually.

After the chaos, however, I slept solidly for a few hours and then headed off to the Peggy Guggenheim... and L'Academia (which is only 3,25 Euro for EU citizens under 25. They gave me the discount with my Swiss ID card. Ha. Silly. People wonder why Switzerland doesn't join the EU, well it's because it is practically part of it anyway). Modern art for breakfast, classic and antique for lunch. Splendid diet, I would say. I scribbled furiously in my notebook about pieces I loved, specifically Umberto Boccioni's "Materia" (1912). I also liked the commentary the [Guggen.] museum provided for Sironi's "La Ballerina:"

The Italian futurists displayed Nietzchean attitude towards women and considered them a "menace" to men. Sensual, female and nude women were banned as subject matter temporarily. The figure in Sironi's work is a hybrid woman machine, hygenic with metallic high black boots [paraphrased].

I spent the evening walking around with two girls, one Colombian, one Chilean, whom I had met that morning. I had satisfying hostel-cooked pasta dinner and talked with a group of Berkley students all originally from California, plus a nice girl from Colorado.

April 16th, 2009
Ciao, Venezia!


I am in the airport fantastically early (due to recent lessons learned) and experienced no stress during check-in or the long security line. I had a fairly inexpensive salad (SALAD! How I have missed you in this land of pasta!) with olives, tomatoes and mozarella, some bread and a banana. Earlier I gobbled down my last two remaining carrots, and my body thanked me for the Vitamin B after three days straight of egg and toast breakfasts. My opinion of traveling alone is positive. One must be more careful in many ways, from walking at night to making sure not to miss a bus or flight.

I was astounded, though, by how many people I met! This never happens in such a dramatic fashion when I travel as a pair or in a group. People sense that you have stories and want so much a person with whom they can share their own. For this reason, travelers bond instantly and magnetically, like children at sleep-away camp. Aside from the Basilica, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Park Biennale, Academia and the canals, my favorite part of the trip was Padua. As far as meeting people goes, that was the ultimate experience and I will be telling of it for years to come.

P.S. As for the schedule issues in the coming Fall, this is something I can warn future Munich-bound students about and also anyone who studies abroad and could potentially face this problem. Let the registrar do it for you if you are abroad!!

EDIT: I got my neuroscience course!!! After emailing back and forth with the professor and making a very convincing argument for myself, she rearranged the waitlist so that I could get into the class. I am overjoyed by this, and will appreciate the class much more because of the difficulty, i.e. the suffering and squirming. I also go into a capstone course that I had not been looking at before and was actually an alternative plan: the Social Construction of Madness. I had all the prereqs but one, Abnormal Psychology, so I made a case for my experience with children with autism and Asperger's Syndrome as well as high school students who were aggressive externalizers and depressive internalizers. So now I am waiting if I can be put back into Biology (which Webadvisor unregistered me for when I made a stupid error) and if/when German will work out. I still have Psychology of Gender. So yeah... more classes than necessary.