Accademia, Tintoretto, and Padova

Pictures are of us in Padova (except Audrey, who was taking the picture), one of the domes inside Saint Anthony's, the inside of Saint Anthony's, the outside of Saint Anthony's, the Scrovegni Chapel from the outside, and one of the Tintoretto Last Suppers we saw with Gregory Dowling.

Buon giorno tutti!

That means, “good day all!” Now, I know there wasn’t so much going on last week, but this week was pretty jam-packed and awesome, so I will get to all that in just a minute. First, answers to a few questions. As this is Italy, everything is in Italian, but many signs also have English, French, German, and sometimes Spanish on them as well. The big sport in Italy, as in most of Europe, is soccer; I haven’t actually heard much about any other sport since I’ve been here, besides keeping up with the Purdue games and the Bengals (Boiler Up and Who Dey! lately). We have had a lot of homework lately, quite a bit of reading, plus weekly essays, but our professors gave us this weekend off, with no essay due next week, so that’s pretty nice. The swine flu doesn’t seem to be as big a deal here as it seems to be in the U.S., though there are places where you can get the vaccine. Someone asked if I have been sick, and actually I had a pretty bad cold last week, but I’m all good now, no big deal. Onto the events of the past week!

Monday we went as a class to the Accademia, which is a really fantastic art museum, with some world famous masterpieces that were absolutely gorgeous. The best part of the entire tour, however, was getting to see Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” which apparently is only very rarely displayed, even though it is one of the most famous and well-known works of art in the world. It was amazing to see because it is very small, not much bigger than a piece of computer paper, and is really more just a page torn from da Vinci’s notebook than a true piece of art. The picture is in the center of the page, but above and below it was writing in da Vinci’s famous “mirror writing”, where he wrote backwards across the page so that nobody could steal his notes. I almost can’t even describe what it was like to see it, though, because it was so simple, almost like da Vinci was doodling while writing his notes; there was a sense of being very close to the artist, like just taking a peak into his personal notebook and seeing what was scribbled in there. Definitely a highlight of the trip.

Tuesday we had a guest speaker come, Gregory Dowling from Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. He is actually British, but moved to Venice a number of years ago and he is an expert in paintings by Tintoretto, an artist particularly famous in Venice. Tintoretto painted at least seven different versions of the Last Supper and Professor Dowling took us around to three of them at three different churches and explained about each one. It was a great tour, especially because he would stop and point out things as we were walking across the city, little details about places and things that were really cool but that you would never know unless you lived in Venice for some time. One of my favorite things that he pointed out was a church that was used in one of the Indiana Jones films, Raiders of the Lost Ark, I think.

Wednesday was by far the best day of this week, though. We took a class trip with our professor Dino Felluga to Padova (Padua in English), a nearby town. It was an absolutely fantastic day. We went in the basilica there, Basilica di Sant’Antonio, the basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua, which was stunning. And massive. There were domes in there so high that the tops of them were completely lost in shadow. The body of Saint Anthony is actually entombed there and you can walk around and touch his tomb, which was a very powerful moment. There was also a priest in there who you can go to and get a blessing from, which Lizzie, Audrey, and I did. He was very nice and told us that he only spoke a little English, so he gave us a blessing in Italian.

After the basilica and a very nice lunch sitting outside at this great Italian restaurant, we went to see the Scrovegni Chapel, which was one of the things I was most looking forward to seeing in Italy. An artist named Giotto painted the entire inside of this chapel with scenes from the life of Mary, the life of Jesus, and a Last Judgment that covers an entire wall. Plus, on the walls underneath the scenes from the lives of Mary and Jesus, he painted virtues on one side of the chapel and vices on the other, and around these he painted what looks like carved marble, but is really just painted to look 3-D.

The best part, or my favorite part anyway, is the ceiling, which is this amazingly bright blue, with stars painted on it, as well as more paintings of Jesus, Mary, and the saints. I also love that in the scene where the Wise Men come to see baby Jesus, over the manger there is a bright fireball in the sky, which experts say is the first time Halley’s Comet was ever depicted in a painting. The chapel was so gorgeous and magnificently detailed that I felt the entire trip overseas was worth it just for an opportunity to see it and be in there, even for a limited time. Only twenty-five people are allowed in at a time, and only for fifteen minutes, as a way to get the most people through and still protect the frescoes. Also, we had to leave all of our bags at the gift shop outside of the chapel, I think so that they could be sure that we wouldn’t bring a camera inside. I did buy a book with all of the frescoes in it at the gift shop, though, so I have pictures, even if I didn’t actually take any.

After the chapel, we spent a brief bit of time in the museum there, which was really cool and had, among other things, an Egyptian sarcophagus, a very tiny mummy, we think it may have been a cat, and a coffin that had in it the bones not only of a man but of a horse as well, which was not something you see every day. Then, after the museum, it was off to the University of Padua, where we got to see the anatomy theater where they used to do dissections in front of groups of medical students. Apparently, Galileo also lectured at the university and may even have attended a lecture in that same anatomy theater. After the university there was just time to stop for pizza and then it was back on the train and back to Venice.

After Dino left us at the train station to go back to his house, the ten of us had to literally sprint from one vaporetto stop to get to our vaporetto stop to get back to San Servolo. This is a pretty regular thing around here, but this was intense: Shannon actually nearly knocked this couple down the stairs as she ran past them. However, we all made the vaporetto about one minute before it pulled away. Not having to wait another hour for the next vaporetto to the island was the icing on the cake of an honestly fantastic day.

Overall, this has been a really great week, definitely busy, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Now, I’m just looking forward to Halloween, because even though it’s not as big of a deal here as it is in the U.S., it’s still one of my favorite holidays. We have a few things planned to do for it, but more about that another day. For now, it’s getting late here, so I’ll say buona notte (which means “good night”) and until next time, keep leaving comments, they’re fantastic!

Ciao,

Maria : )

San Marco, the Marathon, and the Mall

Hi everyone,

First off, let me say Happy Birthday to my mom! Hope you are having a great day!

Next, I do apologize for not having posted anything recently, but honestly, it’s been a bit slow, we’ve mostly been in class, not doing anything especially exciting. We did go in a really beautiful church, Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, you weren’t really supposed to take pictures inside, but I did anyway, so there’s one up here. It was absolutely massive and had some really fantastic, decorated tombs along the sides, including one which looked like a pyramid.

Thursday we were supposed to take a class trip to Padua, a nearby town, but because of the weather, it had to be postponed. So instead, some of us took the afternoon off from class to go into town to a museum to work on a project for class. Getting to the museum, however, was a little difficult because there was an acqua alta, which in Italian literally means “tall water.” This meant that the lagoon was high and had flooded parts of the city, including Piazza San Marco, the main square. It was literally under eight inches or so of water, deep enough for a seagull to be floating in it. Because this happens relatively frequently, they actually have these platforms which they set up around the city so that people can walk on them and stay out of the water. The museum turned out to be very cool once we finally got around all the water and got to it, but the most interesting thing of the day was still the acqua alta.

Yesterday, Saturday, five of us, Lizzie, Shannon, Natalie, Dane, and I, caught a bus from Piazzale Roma, the last place in Venice that you can drive a car to before you have to get on a boat, to go to the mall, about a fifteen minute ride away. When we got there, it was more like a Wal-Mart or a Biggs, but with about a dozen mall-like stores in there too, including a GameStop, which had all the normal sorts of DVDs and video games you would expect, they were just in Italian. It was nice because it wasn’t set up for tourists, like some parts of Venice are, it was just a normal store where people go to shop for clothes or buy groceries.

This morning, I went with Lizzie, Dane, and Audrey to Mass at San Marco. The church itself is absolutely gorgeous, I’ve never seen anything like it. The upper walls and ceiling inside are completely covered in mosaics. The parts which are not depicting scenes are covered in gold tiles. And it’s massive, I can’t even imagine how long it must have taken them to do all the mosaics. It’s really spectacular. For as big as the church is, though, there were only about fifty people or so there for the Mass. Even though the service was in Italian, it was still pretty easy to follow along and know what was happening because Catholic Masses everywhere are virtually the same, plus they had nice little pamphlets on the chairs that had the responses and the songs written out, so you could just read along. Also, we figured out, from the little we could understand, that there was a visiting priest today, but he was actually either an archbishop or a cardinal, we’re not sure which, it sounded like the priest who introduced him said archbishop, but the man had a red hat like a cardinal’s. Either way, it was pretty neat. The archbishop/cardinal gave the sermon and it seemed like it was probably very good, he delivered it really well, I just couldn’t understand 99% of it, unfortunately. Overall, though, the Mass was really nice and it was really cool to experience church in another country.

This afternoon, the finish line of the Venice Marathon was set up not far from our boatstop. It was really awesome to see, apparently, according to the marathon’s website, there were 6,000 contestants. There was a constant stream of runners coming into the city for hours, it was really cool. According to the Venice Marathon website, www.venicemarathon.it, the marathon begins in front of an 18th century mansion in the town of Stra, continues through several other small towns, then comes to Venice. They actually built a special bridge over the Grand Canal for the runners to cross today, which was really cool. According to the website, this was the 24th year the marathon has been run.

Now, to answer a few questions. The tower in the picture on my post about Murano is not Big Ben, it’s just a random clocktower, there are a lot of them in Venice. Big Ben is the clocktower on the end of the Parliament buildings in London, England, you should look it up online, it’s a very pretty clocktower. It’s also in a couple of Disney movies, including “Peter Pan” and “The Great Mouse Detective”, if you’re interested. There is a public library in Venice, I haven’t had time to go in yet, but when I do, I will definitely take a picture and post it here. It’s supposed to have a really great staircase, though. Finally, the Italian word for “dog” is “cane” (pronounced “cah-neh”). To go along with that, the Italian word for “cat” is “gatto” (pronounced “gah-toe”). Speaking of dogs, though, there are a ton of dogs in Venice that just wander around the streets. They're not strays, they just wander around until their owners call them. They're almost like people, just strolling, minding their own business, it's pretty funny.

One more quick thing, there is a new poll up at the very bottom of the page, asking which city you would most like to visit. You can pick as many cities as you want, but you can only vote once, I tried to change that, but apparently that is just how it works. Oh, and the video is from the acqua alta, I just thought it was neat how the waves made the water come up through the boards, it looked like a really cool fountain. Also, the water has never been that high before, usually it's about two feet below that dock, so it was especially crazy.

Ciao,
Maria : )

p.s. sorry this was a long one again, there was nothing to talk about for a few days and today there was too much, I'll try to keep them shorter in the future.

Murano

Hi all,

In an attempt to do more frequent, shorter blogs, I’m doing this post about today’s trip to Murano. Murano is one of the islands around the main island of Venice and it is famous all around the world for its glass. Walking up the main street, we must have passed at least twenty different glass shops, selling everything from tiny glass penguins for one euro each to massive chandeliers that probably cost at least a thousand. We also saw an amazing blue glass sculpture set in the middle of a square (campo), near the first church we went into, San Pietro Martire, which means St. Peter the Martyr. The church itself was very simple, but pretty, but what was especially interesting was that we ran into two other Americans in there who saw that my sweatshirt said “Purdue” and told us that they were from Valparaiso, Indiana, and that their two sons go to Purdue. So that was a fun little meeting. Strangely enough, that’s not the first time that someone has said something to me about Purdue when I’ve been wearing my sweatshirt. So far, it’s been a pretty great way to meet other Americans traveling abroad.

The second church we went into was Santa Maria e San Donato, which had the most beautiful floor I think I’ve ever seen in almost any church. There were all sorts of different mosaics spread across the floor, some with the tiles just making up different patterns, some making actual pictures. Unfortunately, because it is a church still regularly used for services, we were not allowed to take pictures, otherwise I would post one of the floor. The rest of the church was also very neat, especially the ceiling, which was made entirely of wood and resembled the inside of a ship. The entire place smelled like incense, which I thought was great. Apparently, the church is also said to contain the bones of a dragon which Saint Donatus killed (again, thank you Wikipedia).

After leaving the church, we went to the Murano glass museum, where our professor, Emily, had us all split into pairs and choose one item to tell the rest of the class about. My partner was Caylen and we chose one of the chandeliers because the parts that curved out to hold up the candles were made to look like fish, which was pretty cool. Other people chose another chandelier which had glass flowers on it that looked real, a bowl with images from Roman myths on it, a dish with glass fruit on it that also looked real, and several very small bottles and bowls that were made back in the first and second century AD. It was a fascinating museum and I wish we had had more time, but we had to rush to get lunch and then get to Italian class. As we were going into the museum originally, though, there was an old man sitting outside, just sketching the canal, with a building with really beautiful mosaics behind him, I just had to get a picture.

Lunch was interesting, because instead of going back to the cafeteria at San Servolo we stopped at this small restaurant where we got paninis, which are just small sandwiches with no crust. We each got two and mine were ham and egg and then asparagus and egg. I know those combinations sound really weird but they were actually really good. Other people got spinach and egg, tuna, and mixed vegetables. Then, it was on to Italian class, then homework this evening.

Thank you again, everyone, for your comments, I really love to see those. Also, if anyone is curious, on the poll at the bottom of the page, 38% of people who took the poll would most prefer to star in a movie, so that won. I tried to put another poll up, but Blogger was having technical difficulties. Or maybe it’s just me. Either way, I will try to have another poll up within the next couple of days, just for fun.

Buona notte (that means good night!),
Maria : )

About the Pictures

Hi guys,

I apologize that the pictures aren't in their proper spots. I'm not sure exactly how Blogger goes about inserting pictures, because I thought I'd done it so that they'd appear where I wanted them to in the blog, but apparently not. However, if you click on them, you can see a bigger version of the picture. Sorry that they're kind of confusingly set up, I tried to make them nice and neat, but Blogger apparently didn't want me to do that. Also, the video at the bottom is of an exhibit at the Biennale which was pretty cool because it was all sorts of everyday objects and toys (I think you can see a Woody from Toy Story doll in the video) with these really bright lights behind them that made these awesome moving shadows on the walls. So, again, sorry the pictures aren't in there right spots, but hey, at least there are pictures, right? Hope you like them!

Maria : )

The Doge's Palace, the Biennale, and the Verona Trip

Hi everyone,

Sorry it’s taken awhile to get another post up, it’s just been really busy around here. I’m going to try to make this post a little shorter than other ones have been because I know from experience how hard it is to read long articles and things on the computer because all our readings for class are online.

So, as I said at the end of the last post, we had a guided tour as a class to the Doge’s Palace. This was the home of the Doge, who was basically the mayor of Venice before Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the city back in the 1700s. It was a really beautiful building. All of the rooms were covered in artworks and frescoes (frescoes are paintings that are painted directly onto the wall). My personal favorite room was the one where the walls were entirely covered in massive maps that depicted all of the known world at that time. There were actually maps that depicted the United States, but only the original thirteen colonies and California. Then, in the great hall area, there is one of the largest paintings in the world, Tintoretto’s “Paradise”, which covers an entire back wall of the hall. It was pretty awesome, but there was so much going on in the painting that it was hard to look at and notice everything. We also walked across the Bridge of Sighs, which leads to the dungeons area. It’s called the Bridge of Sighs because supposedly prisoners would sigh as they were lead across because it was their last breath of fresh air before they were imprisoned. The one picture is looking through the side of the bridge out at the lagoon.

Friday, we went to the Biennale. The Biennale is the modern art fair which is held every two years in Venice and which contains works of art from artists from all over the world. Countries get their own pavilions to display the artworks in. There are Biennale exhibits all over Venice, but the majority of them are contained in one place. It’s a very pretty garden setting that reminded me vaguely of the Cincinnati Zoo. Some of the artworks were pretty cool, like two countries that had set up their art in two different houses that had stories behind them, or one that looked like a scene from Alice in Wonderland, or one room that just had these black strings across it that made shapes. Others were a little strange, like one room that was completely empty except for a neon sign that said “riot kitchen.” Even after our guide talked about it, I still didn’t get that one, but that’s modern art for you.


Saturday was fantastic because we went to Verona. It was just the ten of us, no professors or tour guides. We caught the train from Venice to Verona, it was about a two hour tour ride, which is quicker than driving to Purdue, so that wasn’t bad.

When we got there, we were all starving, so we went to a pizzeria where they had really delicious pizza. Then, we split up into groups just depending on what people wanted to see and just wandered around the city. I spent most of the day with Audrey, Stephanie, Elyse, and Lizzie. We checked out a couple of shops and then went to Juliet’s house, because Verona is famous, of course, for being the city in which Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is set. Even though Romeo and Juliet were not real people, there are houses set up which are called their houses. It’s mostly a tourist thing, but it was still cool to go into Juliet’s house, because somebody had lived here and it was a really neat place. You could take a picture standing on “Juliet’s balcony” which was fun. At Juliet’s house, we also got the Verona Day Pass, which lets you get into certain museums and churches and places for a lot cheaper than paying individually at each place. It was a great deal because then we could just go down the list and go to places that were on our cards.

After Juliet’s house we decided to go to Chiesa di S. Anastasia, which is the Church of Saint Anastasia. It was incredible. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the inside is literally breathtaking. Pictures don’t do it justice. I felt that the entire trip was worth it just to be inside that church, it was that beautiful.

Unfortunately, because we only had a few hours and a lot to do, we couldn’t stay long. We ran into the rest of the group who told us we should climb the Torre dei Lamberti, which is the tallest bell-tower in Verona. So we did. What the rest of the group forgot to mention to us is that there are 368 steps to climb. There is an elevator that will take you up for one euro but we decided to save the euro and climb, knowing that it was pretty high but not realizing that it was 368 steep steps worth of high.

We managed to make it to the top, though, and the view was incredible. The entire city of Verona was spread out around the foot of the tower and after that were the hills of northern Italy, dotted here and there by little towns, farms, and churches perched on the tops of the hills.

After we made it down from the tower, we went to the Arena. This is a Roman amphitheatre which was built in 30 AD and is the third largest in Italy after the Colosseum and an arena at Capua (thank you, Wikipedia!). It was very cool, especially since it is actually still used for performances. It ruined the effect a little bit to have the modern seats in there that resembled seats at Great American Ball Park, but it was still a great place. Even though we were still worn out from climbing the stairs at the tower, we climbed the seats up to the top of the old original part and looked out over the top onto Verona again. There was also a great view of the Arena from the top looking down into it. It was probably my second favorite place that we went to, just for the history behind it and the fact that it is still used today for performances.

After the Arena, there was just time to stop for gelato before we had to meet up with the rest of the group. Then, back to the train station and on our way home to Venice. It was a truly enjoyable day though, and I’m so glad we got the chance to go.

Due to a request, I am going to start trying to do shorter, more frequent posts, as opposed to these less often longer ones. So hopefully, look for something Monday night or Tuesday morning about our class trip to Murano, one of the islands in the Venetian lagoon which is famous for its glass!

Ciao,
Maria

First Weekend

Hi guys!

After looking at your comments, I am so glad that this blog is making so many of you want to come to Venice and some of you also want to write. That’s fantastic! For anyone who is really interested in writing, there is a program called National Novel Writing Month, it involves spending the month of November writing a 50,000 word novel. It’s really fun and they actually have a Young Writer’s Program for anyone under the age of 17, where you can set your own word count goals. If anyone is interested in checking out either of these sites, I have posted the links to them in the sidebar under “Other Websites to Check Out.” I’ll be going for it, I hope some of you will try it out, too! In answer to a post, Kaitlyn, congrats on your new sister coming and I hope everything goes well with your braces. Very good question, by the way, yes, actually, the flight attendant on my flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Venice did have a very strong accent and they did all of the announcements in German and English. It was pretty cool.

Thursday afternoon was the beginning of our first weekend in Venice. We have three day weekends every weekend so that we have time to travel. Since it was only the first weekend, we didn’t go far, only across the lagoon to the Lido, which is a beach resort on the Adriatic Sea. The Lido is also one of the islands that protects the main part of Venice from the ocean. We didn’t get to the beach until about 4:30 in the afternoon, so it was a little cooler, but still warm enough to get in the water a bit. It was great to be in the ocean, even if it was only for a little bit. It was awesome too because on the other side of the Adriatic there’s Greece, then the Mediterranean Sea, then Africa. It was just so crazy, mind-boggling really, to stand in that water and think that maybe it was the same water which had once washed against the shores of Egypt or Turkey or the Greek isles.

Friday was our tour of the Venetian ghetto. Like I said before, this was not a ghetto in the way we normally think of it in America. The Venetian ghetto was where the Jews used to be forced to live, up until fairly recently. There are still some Jewish people living there, but there are other people living there, too, and Jewish people are now allowed to live anywhere they want in Venice. Originally, Jews weren’t allowed to live in Venice at all, but because Christians at the time could not lend money and Jews could, they were allowed to live on the small island of the ghetto, where they were shut in each night, with guards which they had to pay set up on the bridges to make sure that no Jews left the ghetto before dawn. Many were also taken to concentration camps, including Auschwitz, during World War II. There were two different Holocaust memorials in the ghetto that were incredibly moving. They included artworks of the Jews being taken to the concentration camps and a wall listing the names of all the Venetian Jews who did not return from the concentration camps. Of the 200 Venetian Jews who were taken to the camps, only eight made it home.

We were able to go in to see three different synagogues. They were very beautiful, especially the last one we went into, which was the biggest. It had an intricately carved altarpiece and a cabinet built for holding the Torah made of marble. This synagogue was actually used in the opening scene of the film The Merchant of Venice, originally a play by William Shakespeare. We are actually going to be able to see this movie on Monday night. I’m excited to see the synagogue on film after we were actually there. Two interesting facts about the synagogues in the ghetto: first, women are kept separated from men, because men are supposed to keep their minds only on God during the religious services; also, the synagogues are not built on the ground floors of the buildings, instead, they are built on the highest level of the building they are in, with apartments underneath. This is because, according to Jewish law, there should be nothing above the synagogue but God, and so, because they had such a small area to cram in so many people, they built the synagogues on the top floors of buildings so that apartments could be built underneath them for people to live in.

On Saturday, a few of us had originally planned to go to the mall outside of Venice. However, we had a pretty big storm that morning and it rained for several hours, so we decided to postpone the trip. I’m hoping we’ll get to go sometime this coming weekend, though. So, instead of going to the mall, I went with Audrey and Caylen from our group to the main part of Venice to take pictures of the campos, squares outside of churches, which we had each chosen for an assignment for class where we had to talk about the architectural features on the buildings there. Caylen’s campo was further away, so she went off to take pictures of hers while Audrey and I went together to find ours. It was still raining somewhat and I didn’t have an umbrella. However, when we got to my campo, a guy selling umbrellas came up and said he could sell me one for 5 euros. That was a pretty good deal, but I told him no anyway and he asked how much I would pay for it. I told him 2 euro and he said no, 4. I told him I would give him 3 and he accepted. I was pretty excited about how the bartering worked and it was also very nice to have an umbrella, especially since it was raining pretty hard.

After I took some pictures of my campo, we kept walking towards Audrey’s, but partway there we came across another campo that she decided she liked better because there were more architectural features to talk about. The church there was open, so we went in and to our surprise found a Biennale (the art fair currently being hosted in Venice) exhibit about antique instruments. It was a really great exhibit, they had violins, violas, cellos, double basses, oboes, clarinets, mandolins, and harps, plus there was classical music by Vivaldi playing in the background. Not to mention that the church itself was small but lovely. This is one of the things I love about wandering around Venice: even when you’re not looking for it, you can still stumble upon some amazing stuff.

The rain cleared off nicely and by Sunday the weather was gorgeous again, though a bit colder than it had been. I spent most of Sunday working on stuff for class. However, since it was so nice, Shannon, from class, and I took our laptops and read outside under the barbeque pavilion for awhile. It was nice because there was a view through a window in the wall of the lagoon outside. Then, after Shannon had gone back in to charge her laptop and I was just walking around the island procrastinating because I didn’t feel like reading anymore for the moment, I ran into Dane and Sara and while we were all procrastinating, we stumbled on another art installation, again for the Biennale, that was on the island. It was a very modern-art type of exhibit, but it was pretty cool. There was one picture that was all sorts of ripped up pieces of magazines that were put together like a collage that looked like a face.

So, all in all, that was my weekend. It was a pretty good one. I’m really looking forward to this week and weekend, though. Today we went to the Doge’s Palace, which was spectacular, but this post is long enough, so I’ll write about that next time, then later this week we are going to try to go to the mall, we are going to the actual Biennale, where the majority of the art exhibits are, and we are planning a trip to Verona, Italy for Saturday. Verona, which is only about a two hour train ride from Venice, is most famous for being the city in which Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is set. I’ll have posts up to say how all of this goes later in the week. Take care, everyone, thank you so much for your comments and questions, keep them coming!

Ciao,

Maria : )

Questions and Answers

Hi guys,

Because so many of you have left questions in the comments of my blog, I decided to do a post just specifically to answer those questions. So this post is especially for the fifth graders at Central Elementary School, who have left most of the questions.

First of all, congratulations on your story, Elijah. I hope I get the chance to read it all when I get back.

Now, there were several questions about the other students in my class and where we are living. The other students, as you can see in the class picture that I posted, are Shannon, Sara, Caylen, Elyse, Lizzie, Stephanie, Natalie, Audrey, and Dane. Dane is the only boy who was picked to come. So there are ten of us total. They are all also Purdue students, and most of them are from Indiana, though several people have lived or do live in different places, like New Hampshire and Canada. We are living in the dorms on San Servolo Island, which is about a ten minute vaporetto (boat) ride from the mainland of Venice. I do not actually share a room or have a roommate because there are nine girls and so one girl got her own room and that ended up being me. I would say that we are all getting to be friends, it’s hard not to be when you spend so much of your time with people. We have met a few of the other Venice International University students, some from Duke and some from Boston College in the U.S., but also a few Italians when we went out one night. Our classes require quite a bit of reading and writing essays, but they aren’t too hard. They are very interesting, there’s a lot to learn about Venice.

There were quite a few questions about food and mailing food. While you can mail food, it is not the best idea because it is kind of expensive to mail things across the Atlantic and also it can take as long as two weeks to get from Italy to America, or vice versa, so some foods might not stay good that long. Also, everything coming into a country has to go through customs, to see whether there needs to be an extra tax on it, and sometimes food is not allowed through customs, or there is an extra tax put on it that you have to pay when you receive the package. It goes the same for bringing back food in suitcases, too, so I don’t think I’ll be bring back much food stuff, if any. It’s easier to get different kinds of souvenirs. I haven’t gotten any souvenirs yet, it’s still a little early for that, I think, seeing as I’ve only been here a week and I have nine more to go. The Italian food is pretty good. We eat mostly on the island, since those meals are already paid for in the cost of our trip, but we have eaten out several times, and everything has been excellent. The best stuff, of course, is the gelato.

There were also several questions about the squid that I mentioned in another post. Who eats squid in its own ink? People in Venice, it is a Venetian specialty. Because Venice is basically on the ocean, seafood is a staple here. And yes, they really do fry squids and do different things with various different fishes. I didn’t try it this time, though, because I am not a fan of seafood and I just wasn’t feeling it at the moment. If I get the chance again, though, and I probably will, I will try the squid cooked in its own ink. It is very strange looking, though, because the ink is black and because the squid has been cooked in its own ink, the entire dish is black. It actually turned some people’s teeth in the group black until they drank some water to wash it off.

Italians use the Centigrade scale, instead of Fahrenheit, which we use in the U.S. They also use kilometers and centimeters instead of miles and inches, which makes it a little difficult sometimes to know exactly what the temperature is and what the distances are of different things.

There aren’t really any fairs like the Farmer’s Fair or Fall Fest, but there is the Biennale, which is a huge art fair held every two years in Venice and which displays art from all over the world. We have seen several of the exhibits and are going on Friday to see more. The exhibits we have seen so far are pretty cool, like one in a church displaying all sorts of instruments, like violins and clarinets and harps, from the 1500s and 1700s. So we are learning something, not only about Italian art, but about art from all over the world.

There were also a lot of questions about “favorites.” So, here we go. Favorite thing to do? Walk around Venice and just take in the sights, though riding on the vaporetto comes close second because I love being on boats. Favorite place in Venice? So far, my favorite place we have gone to was the church that held all the violins, because I used to play the violin, and also because we stumbled onto it as a complete accident while we were looking for something else. Favorite part of Venice? I actually really like Sant Elena, where our Italian class is held, because it’s less crowded with tourists, it’s more like a suburb where normal people live, but I also like San Servolo, where we live, because the island is very quiet and peaceful compared to the main city and it’s very pretty, with great views all around. Favorite country? Well, right now I would have to say that Italy and the U.S. are tied for first. I love the United States because it’s my home and I will be happy to come back to it, but right now I am loving Italy because I feel so lucky to get to spend this time here and I want to enjoy it while I’m here.

The insides of most buildings are for the most part as interesting and beautifully decorated as the outsides and many of the ceilings in buildings we have been in are quite high. Why did I talk about the mountains in my first blog post after getting here? Simply because they were awesome to see from the plane, and because I love mountains, and because I just thought they were pretty cool. Are there haunted houses? I have heard that there are haunted buildings in Venice, however, we haven’t been in any yet, and I’m not sure if they celebrate Halloween the same way we do, with haunted houses and things. We have visited a library, and are visiting another one today, but I haven’t needed to check out any books yet, so, no, I haven’t checked any books out yet. I probably will when it gets closer to time to turn in a couple of big projects. Why don’t they fly straight to Venice? There are some flights from the U.S., usually that leave from places like Philadelphia, Atlanta, or JFK airport in New York City, that do fly straight from the U.S. to Venice, but I think the reason they fly north over Canada and then down over Europe instead of straight over the Atlantic probably has to do with wind currents and things, and maybe it has something to do with then being always within a few hundred miles of land just in case something goes wrong.

Some of the names of the streets are confusing, and it is hard sometimes to remember which street is which and where they go because Venice is such a twisting maze of canals and calli (the plural for the little streets, calle, which run across the city).

Is it hard to understand Italian? Yes, when you don’t speak it. It gets easier, though, the more you learn, though it can still be hard to understand Italians even when you understand the words, because they talk very fast. The Italian word for cheese is “formaggio.” “You’re welcome” is “prego.” And I can’t really translate a name into Italian, because the Italian for anyone’s name is just your name. Sometimes, though, you can make a name sound a little more Italian by adding an “a” or an “o” at the end of it, like Mark becomes Marco and Emily becomes Emilia.

As for what it’s like to be in Venice, that’s what this whole blog is about. Is anything different? Quite a few things, but again, that’s what the whole blog is for, so you will have to keep reading to find out!

Again, thank you so much for all your questions and comments! Keep them coming and I will try to answer as many of them as I can.

Ciao,
Maria : )

Pictures!

Hi everyone,

I am happy to say that I have finally put up pictures! I'm sorry it's taken so long, but this week has been crazy and this afternoon was honestly the first chance I've had to get this done.

So, the pictures are actually on Flikr, because that was way easier and better than trying to paste them directly into the blog. Just click on the little scrolling pictures on the side of the blog, which will take you to Flikr. Then, the picture you clicked on should show up in the center of the new page and you can read about each picture underneath it. Then, to go to the next one, just click on the next picture on the side, under where it says "mariacsteinmetz's photostream" which will bring up each picture and its description.

Hope you enjoy them!

Maria

First Week of Classes

Hi all,

Gratzie (thank you) to everyone again for the wonderful comments, I really appreciate them. In answer to a couple of questions in the comments, yes, the food is very good, especially the gelato, which is like ice cream only better, and I have not seen anyone eating snails, I think that’s more a French thing, however, they do eat a lot of fish, including squid that has been cooked in its own ink. Also, yes, I am liking it very much and it is a lot of fun. I was pretty tired when I arrived because I didn’t get much sleep on the plane, it was pretty uncomfortable, (and unfortunately I didn’t see Niagara Falls, it was getting dark when we were going over Canada) but I’m good now. Do I like the time difference was a good question, and I would have to say that it’s good and bad. It’s good because I like that it makes it feel like things are happening sooner, in a way, but at the same time it’s bad because it makes it hard to get in touch with people at home, because they are still at work or at school while I am already getting ready for bed. As for pictures, I am working on getting those up, but it might be another day or two, just because I’ve been really busy and I haven’t had a chance to do that yet.

Today was the end of the third day of classes. They’ve really flown so far, probably because we haven’t really been doing much class work yet, except in Italian class. Our Italian class is taught by Paolo Venerando from the Dante Alighieri Institute, which is on Sant Elena, at the far end of Venice. We catch one boat from our island, San Servolo, to the mainland of Venice, then catch another boat (vaporetto) from that stop to Sant Elena. You can also walk to Sant Elena from the main part of Venice. We walked back from class on Monday, it’s really a great walk, takes about half an hour, and is right along the waterfront, it’s a really pretty walk, there’s park all along the one side for most of the way and the lagoon on the other side. Italian class itself is so far really great. I’m not even sure exactly how he’s doing it, but Paolo makes it incredibly easy to learn the language. After only three classes, he already has us writing sentences in Italian. True, they are very short, simple sentences, such as “Mi piace il gelato” (I like the ice cream), but still for being only three classes in, that is pretty good. He’s very funny, too, especially when he does impressions of how Americans mispronounce Italian because he does a very good American accent.

We haven’t done much yet in our main class, but that’s because we have been busy taking tours and getting familiar with San Servolo and with Venice. On Monday, we got a tour of San Servolo and Venice International University. San Servolo Island, which is now home to Venice International University, plus a very busy conference center, was originally a monastery way back when. The monks eventually left and it then became a convent. Then, after the nuns left too, it became a hospital. It was a normal hospital for awhile, but eventually it became a mental hospital. It was only fairly recently, the 1970s, that the island ceased to be a mental hospital and instead became Venice International University and the conference center.

The tour of the island was nice, we got to see the computer lab and the really nice library, and then we just walked around checking out the views from different parts of the island, because there is a great view of the other islands and of the lagoon from anywhere you look. There are also lime trees on the island and it is perfectly fine to pick the limes and eat them. Then, Monday night, our group joined the other VIU students to watch a movie, A Dangerous Beauty, which is about Venice during the plague in the 1500s, and we met some of the students staying here who are from Duke University.

Tuesday was better than Monday because we went for a tour around the main part of Venice. We didn’t actually go into any churches or any of the usual tourist stops, like the San Marco church or the Doge’s Palace (the Doge was like the king of Venice back in the 1500s), we are going to go to those when some of the tourists have left in a few weeks. Instead, we went around the streets to learn about where places like grocery stores and post offices were. It sounds like it would be kind-of boring, but it really wasn’t because we ended up at a lot of places where tourists don’t typically go and instead there were real Venetians, just people going about their normal business, which was much more authentically Italian. It was pretty exhausting, though, because one of our professors, Dino, walks very, very fast and it was hard to keep up sometimes. The weather’s been pretty warm too, definitely in the 70s during the day, though it does cool off quite a bit at night. Tomorrow it is actually supposed to be about 76 degrees and we are planning to go over to the Lido, which is basically Venice’s beach resort. The only problem with this nice weather is that I didn’t pack enough short sleeved shirts, because I thought it would be cold and rainy, and so it’s already time to do laundry! I can’t really complain about nice weather, though, because warm and sunny beats cold and rainy every time.

Today we continued our tour of important spots in Venice. We started off by catching a vaporetto over to a side of Venice we hadn’t been to yet, the Accademia, on the Giudecca Canal. The water was extra choppy this morning, so the boat was really rocking on the water. We were sitting in the lower part of the vaporetto, which has windows on the sides so air can get through, because it can get pretty hot and stuffy in the lower part. I was sitting by the window when the vaporetto hit an especially large wave which sent up a huge splash which came right in through the window. I got pretty nice and wet and so did our VIU guide Francesca, who was by the window in the seat in front of me. Luckily, the water was actually surprisingly warm and it didn’t take long to dry.

Once we got off the vaporetto, we went to one of the Ca’ Foscari libraries. Ca’ Foscari is another university in Venice. One of the librarians showed us around, it was a really nice library, with a great study area. Apparently, it is several hundred years old and the librarian made sure to point out the massive timbers that stretched across the ceiling and supported the building. Most of the ceilings in many of the buildings here are really spectacular. There are a lot of very high ceilings and often they will have some design on them, either in wood, or painted on and a lot of them have exposed beams, which actually look very cool.

After leaving the library, we went to the grocery store down the street. The grocery stores in Venice are very different than the ones in the U.S. For one thing, even though this was a large chain store, it was only about the size of a Dollar Store, probably smaller. The aisles are pretty narrow, because it’s small, and people are constantly saying “scusi, scusi,” (excuse me, excuse me) to get through. There were a lot of different looking brands and foods, but there were also a surprising number of American products, such as Coca-Cola and M&Ms. We then all got Billo (that’s the name of the store) cards, which are exactly like a Kroger Plus card. That was exciting, you really feel like you belong when you have a grocery store discount card.

After all that, we walked (very fast, because our professor, Dino, was leading) across a large part of Venice, through tiny, narrow little alleyways, then more open sidewalks right along the canals, and across big, open campos (a campo is like an open square or space where people can just hang out, most have a church on one side of them and shops all around and often vendors selling things like scarves or sunglasses or knick-knacks or t-shirts in the center) until we got to a restaurant for lunch. The food was good, I had an olive that I think had been deep-fried, a pastry with tomato inside it, and a casserole type dish with ham and cheese and some herbs. Other people in the group had slightly more exotic food, like Dane, who got the squid that had been cooked in its own ink. The dish was completely black. He said it was good and several of the other people in the group who tried it also said it was actually pretty good. I didn’t try it today, I figure there are still two more months left, I’ll work up to that.

After lunch and after Italian class today, we went to our professors’ house for dinner. First, though, we played soccer, or football as they call it here, in the campo near their home with their son, Lorenzo, who is four and a half. By the way, I don’t think I have mentioned it yet, but our professors are a married couple. That was fun. There were many local people out on the campo, just chatting, kids were running around playing, it was very relaxed and just a nice atmosphere. Whenever the ball would go out of the circle, people walking past would stop every time to kick it back to us.

Dinner was excellent. After the antipasto, which is the name for appetizers, we were all sent in pairs on a scavenger hunt to find items that we would need for later in the meal. Not especially difficult, except for the fact that one of the rules was that we could only speak to other people in Italian. Unfortunately, my partner Sara and I failed in our mission. We were supposed to bring back strawberries, fragole, from a street vendor on a specific street. However, the only street vendor we could find was on the campo and we were not supposed to go there because it was too easy. So, after running up and down the street where the vendor was supposed to be on about eight times, turning down a few side streets that didn’t take us anywhere, and thoroughly embarrassing ourselves in front of the waiter who had watched us run by several times and couldn’t figure out why we weren’t just buying strawberries at the campo, we had to return empty-handed because time had run out. It turned out not to be a big deal that we didn’t get the strawberries, even though we offered to go back to the campo for them, and the rest of the evening went nicely.

Our biggest surprise came between dinner and dessert, though. We got to go on a gondola ride! It was awesome. With no cars and surprisingly few people on the streets (in the non-touristy areas anyway) after 8:00 pm, it was incredibly quiet and the ride was like going back in time. You could almost imagine that it was Venice during the Renaissance, back in the 1500s and 1600s, except for when people drove past in more modern boats, playing songs like “Footloose” and Alicia Keyes “No One”. The ride itself was very peaceful and calm, and a lot of fun, but getting in and out of the gondola was a bit frightening. The boat wobbles and moves and seems to really want to tip over. Once everyone was seated, though, it was great. It was such a classically Venetian thing to do, which made it seem even better, I think.

So that’s been most of the first week of classes. Tomorrow we have lecture for a little while, then we are going to try to hit the beach for a bit. No Italian class on Thursdays, so we have the afternoons off. Then it’s the three-day weekend. We are not traveling anywhere this weekend, but we are going to the Venetian ghetto for a tour on Friday morning. This is quite a bit different from the type of ghetto we are used to talking about in the U.S., but more on that after Friday. Thank you all again for all your comments and questions, keep them coming! I will try to have pictures up here within the next day or two!

Ciao,

Maria

Finally Here!

First of all, thank you everyone for your posts, that was a really nice surprise when I logged on here. Sorry it took so long to get this post up, I was having technical difficulties with my Internet, hopefully things should go more quickly from now on. I actually wrote this post Sunday night after I got here, but, as I said, due to technical issues, it’s only just going up now. I should have something else up tomorrow about the first couple of days of classes.

It’s been almost exactly a year since I first saw the poster advertising the call-out meeting about spending a semester in Venice and now here I am. In Venice. I still can’t quite believe it, even as I’m sitting here typing this in my dorm room on San Servolo. If I look just to the right, around the trees, I can see the lagoon. It’s a pretty nice view. There are actually church bells going off right now, I’m not sure from where, but they sound really pretty.

The trip over was good. The flight to Philadelphia was quick and easy, the four hour wait between getting to Philadelphia and boarding the flight to Frankfurt, Germany was not. However, I did finally board and we finally took off. There was a delay because they were short two dozen meals and they had to have them brought over from across the airport.

The flight over to Frankfurt was long, naturally, but not bad. It’s interesting because instead of flying directly across the Atlantic, like you would imagine, they actually fly up through Canada, then over until they’re only a few hundred miles from Iceland, then down over England, over Amsterdam, then finally into Frankfurt. The city was really beautiful at night. However, the Frankfurt airport was less so. Thankfully, most of the employees spoke English pretty well, but that still didn’t keep me from getting lost, going down the wrong concourse, then having to turn around and go back the other way. Then, everyone had to go through a passport check and then go through security again. On the plus side, though, they were not making people take off their shoes like they normally do at security. Despite all of this craziness, I did still manage to get to my gate with twenty minutes to spare before boarding.

The flight between Frankfurt and Venice was by far my favorite. The seats were roomier, there was more legroom, and the views, when the clouds went away, were absolutely stunning. We flew over a mountain range, possibly the Nordkette range, which is, I think, part of the tail end of the Alps, that was so fantastic that the entire trip was worth it for that view alone. Some of the tallest mountains had snow on them, but most of the lower ones didn’t yet, they were still just brown rock. The mountains themselves would have been spectacular enough, but every now and then there was a lake high up in the mountains that had the clearest looking blue-green water; the combination of the two, the snow-capped mountain with the sparkling lake hovering just beneath the snowline, was just awe-inspiring. My favorite parts, though, were the little villages squeezed into the valleys between the mountains. There were tons of them, scattered throughout the range. They just looked like little toy villages set down there.

About twenty minutes after the mountains had been left behind, I got my first views of Venice as we were descending to land. It looked from the air exactly how you would imagine it to be, just like all the pictures, the old buildings with church steeples everywhere, and the canals winding throughout the whole place. Tons of boats were out, too, plus at least half a dozen massive cruise ships were docked just outside the city. I actually met two ladies from Oregon who said they had been on a cruise in the Greek isles and Venice was their last stop. The one lady told me that she had lived in Indianapolis back “in the war years,” as she put it. We were all waiting in line to get vaporetto (the boats that are the Venetian equivalent to city busses) passes. Those two ladies, myself, and another lady in front of me were, I’m pretty sure, the only native English speakers in the entire crowd. There weren’t just Italians either. It sounded as if there was a lot of French and German being spoken, as well.

After waiting in line close to an hour, I finally got my vaporetto pass and headed down the sidewalk to the bus stop that would take me to San Marco, which is the main plaza. I didn’t actually go into the square today, I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much when I was lugging two suitcases, a duffel bag and a backpack along. The vaporetto ride was really fun. A bit crowded, but the people standing by me were nice and helped me get my bags down the stairs. In Venice, the boats are the equivalent of cars, so the waterways are as busy as a typical street. It was a beautiful day though, and the view of the city from the water was incredible. It’s so perfectly Italian that you’d almost swear it’s fake.

I switched vaporetti at San Marco’s and boarded the one that went to the island I’m staying at, San Servolo. It’s a small island, you can walk all the way around it in about twenty minutes. It’s really pretty though, the buildings are very Italian, there are so many trees that it’s more like a park than a campus, and, possibly because of the Biennale, the art festival held every two years in Venice, there are different statues and works of art scattered all across the island. Some of them are pretty neat, some are a bit strange. There are also a lot of pigeons that seem to be the San Servolo/Venice International University equivalent of Purdue squirrels: they’re all over the place and they’re crazy. I also saw two little lizard things, they looked kind of like salamanders. Oh, and there are palm trees. That’s one of my favorite parts.
I met up with my group this afternoon, after I had checked in and unpacked. Actually, we are supposed to meet for dinner at 7pm, which is in about twenty minutes, so I’d better get ready. Then, classes start tomorrow!