Rome last weekend was really much better than I imagined it would be. When thinking about this semester I knew I was going to go, but beyond that I didn’t think much about it. Turns out it was my favorite trip so far.After we arrived we visited our half star hotel (hostel really who are we kidding) and put our stuff away. That was the first big perk- no bag to carry. 2nd big perk was Krystina, in her infinite glory and mercy, told us that Rome would be a note-free trip. We basically landed a long weekend vacation with the best possible tour guide. Needless to say none of us felt a drop of the drizzling rain as we left the hostel.When we got off the metro at the Colosseum my mind barely processed it as real. I had seen it so many times in pictures and movies that my brain simply refused to understand it was right in front of me. That seemed to be a theme with me for most of rome actually. I was incredulous. Once reality set in though the sights were breathtaking.We saw the ruins of the Forum, the Colosseum, Trajan’s Column, The Vatican…basically all the big stops from an art history survey course. And with our lovely Canadian present and sharing her wealth of knowledge, the experience was that much more enlightening.Mike, Speedy, Colin, Meg, Stef, Naomi, Sheryl and myself all decided to stay for an extra night, and Tori met us there for her spring break. Really it was the best choice we could have made.The Guys and myself used all of our strength and woke up early Sunday morning and got some pizza across the street from the hostel. This was the pizza i had been picturing. It wasn’t the best in the world…but it looked it with its perfect spread of tomatoes and mozzarella. It was while we were eating that we decided that this semester has made slobs out of us, and that we were no better than the Barbarians who had come through there so many years before.We took a metro to the ruins, and visited the circus maximus, which is little more than a very long dirt track these days, and made our way back up to the forum. We pondered for a long time over visiting the Palentine hill, and the issue went back and forth in our decisions. When we thought it was free we were of course on board. When we learned it wasnt we decided to investigate the cost. 11 euro is too much. Well…is it? Wait…we can use the tickets from the Colosseum we had earlier. Forget it, Speedy and I don’t have ours anymore. We settled on buying to tickets and splitting them four ways, and as I am reaching into my pocket to give the woman exact change, Mike makes the interception of the year and pulls me out of line. He explains that if we show pictures of ourselves inside the colosseum we might be able to get in. We located a stunning picture of colin and myself and Mike approached the man. He looked at the rediculous photo, then back to us, and waved us on. The Palentine hill was cool on its own but that was the icing on the cake. 
We talked alot about how Venice is a great place to live because it is so different from everywhere else in the world, and that Rome, while cool, was another huge city. That being said huge cities have alot to offer. Finding pubs at night was about as easy in rome as it is as difficult in venice. the boys and myself had no trouble kicking back and enjoying the official beer of our semester, Guiness.We were also able to enjoy a delicious meal for a very decent price, although we did have to really look for it.We also took Krystina’s advice and got some really delicious gelato at supposedly the best place in rome. Based off of the banana, orange, and kiwi scoops i got i wouldn’t contest it. We caught an afternoon train home and basked in the recent memories of a glorious weekend, and prepared ourselves for an early italian lesson the next morning with Lorenza…”you know??”
Posted in Conor | Leave a Comment »
Before leaving for Italy I had all of these grandiose plans to document every moment and keep a loyal blog as to forever have something to link me to this wonderful point in my life. It is all to clear now, however, that I have been less than loyal to this blog. I pledge to do my best from here on out.I won’t attempt to describe everything since my last post, but I will jot down things as they come to me. I apologize for problems with chronology. The night we went to cafe blue we could not have done anything wrong. Literally everything went perfect for us. It was one of the first few nights that we went out, and the guys and I headed to a small bar that colin wanted to visit. We chose a good night, because Heiniken was on sale and it came with prizes. I won a few key chains, but mike won a backpack. It was awesome. Later we headed to Santa Margharita where we met up with the girls and stood around chatting with the Italain roommates. i had a truly good time. Lorenzo is a king amongst men, and his home is a palace as such. A while back the entire group was invited to dinner at Lorenzo’s house, where we were joined by Lynne Allen and Jen G. A gigantic, home cooked, genuine italian meal was nothing any of us was going to complain about (although the borshk was actually russian and I do think Colin complained about the vegetables, but it was delicious otherwise).After dinner we headed home with tremendous haste, for it was the Monday before Fat Tuesday, and the Italian roommates were throwing a party. Now I must admit I wasn’t expecting a huge crowd or anything. I had only ever seen around 20 or so italians at the scuola, so I was surprised at the rave we came home to. The italian music was thumping and the strobe light bounced light into the hallway were italians stood smoking cigarettes. It was a 70’s/ Andy Warhol Factory themed party, and some people were dressed as such…particularly Marco, whose outfit was beyond description.Previously Nando had recruited the other guys and myself to aquire the alcohol for this party, and that had proven to be a feat on its own. We went to the Billa by school so we could buy tickets to the superbowl party, but chose to ignore that it was much further from home. Mike, Colin, Speedy and I had the burden of 5 mini-kegs, plus our own groceries. It was heavy. The walk home would have been arduous as it was, but due to heavy Carnevale traffic our normal route was detoured into a maze of side calle that we were all too unfamiliar with, and thus we were lost. It took us forever to get home, and my body held a grudge for a week. After Colin, Mike, and Nando made a supplement run later on we stacked up all of the alcohol into a nice line on the floor and took a picture. It was impressive.Now at the party it was clear why we bought so much. I was comfortable drinking beer all night, much of which hadn’t been touched because the nozzles were tricky. I think I remember the girls panicking for lack of girly drinks, but when the night was over we all had fun.Padua We spent the morning with everyone’s favorite Canadian, and after the always awesome class was over Mike, Speedy, and I stayed on to explore the city. After getting pizza shaped into a cone (gimmicky and hot-pocket-like, but we had to try it for its uniqueness) we visited some sites Christina had recommended. It was all very interesting and surreal. Words can’t really describe being in the presence of such old art, so I won’t try. FlorenceI think everyone decided to stay after on this trip, but we didn’t run into anyone outside of the Uffici, which says alot for how much bigger Florence is than Venice. The guys and I decided to splurge on some nice Florentine steaks. Our waiter was this old Italian character, who seemed to like us. We ordered prima piatte, thinking that our steaks wouldn’t be too big, but we were of course wrong. The slab of meat before me was the size of my foot, but tasted much better. I would have liked the meat-to-fat ratio to be better, but the waiter gave us a free round of house wine, so all gripes were forgotten. Later we learned that what we ate was not at all Florentine steak, which is known for being lean, but past us didn’t know any better. We paid our hefty bill and headed to the “Friends Pub”- this nice pub with a small selection of beer on tap and stuffed with people speaking english. The girls never found the place, but for lack of service we never knew any better. We drank and talked all night, and headed home to our nice hostel when we had our fill. Before we went to sleep colin woke the whole building by yelling for his pillow, which had mysteriously disappeared, and then reappeared as suddenly as it had gone. We never solved that one. The next day we hit up the Uffici, the Acadamia, and attempted to climb the Duomo, but couldn’t because it was closed on Sundays. We realized that our departure time of 10 o’clock was really late, and we bummed around for a while until we found a small kebab place where the lady owner basically pulled in off the street and handed us kebabs. No complaints though, it was tasty. Afterwards we found an arcade where I got my ass kicked in Tekken and Colin played Time Crisis. It seems that a driving force for us is the pursuit of a good pub. I don’t want to come off as an alcoholic, because we could easily and much more economically drink at home, but we like the atmosphere. This being said we were again searching for the perfect place to kill out last few hours, and when it seemed all hope was lost Mike spotted the Guiness lamps better than Paul Revere could have. The place was literally perfect. Guiness on tap, a snack table featuring the best little squares of toast I have ever eaten, and it was all very close to the train station. We couldn’t have asked for a better end to Florence. Trieste Colin and I followed Speedy to a local Italian city that he had researched. It was a really nice place, with a definite maritime feel to it. We snagged burgers at a small restaurant and shrugged off the shame of eating very american food. We wandered around town, and climbed this large hill and enjoyed the view. Soon after we ran into Hannah Cole, who told us that she and her husband had just eaten lunch and that the restaurant they had gone to offered liter beers. Well we thought that was a lovely idea and went in pursuit of the delicacy that Venice unfortunately lacks. In retrospect we should have asked Hannah just where she ate, for we never actually found gigantic beer, but I guess hindsight is always 20/20. It didn’t help that we embarked on our quest right as siesta began, so most every option was closed. We wanted a pub, not a cafe, and discussed the cruelty of the italian interpretation of the word “bar” as we walked and saw signs for them everywhere. We did find a Benigans, but had fallen to siesta as well. We eventually settled on a cafe which had one beer on tap, which was less than great but we were cold and tired of walking. The waitress gave us free cheese poofs though, and we ate our fill. Afterwards we headed back to the train station and used their unique restrooms, and hopped on a train with some beer and snacks from a supermarket across the street. The ride home was fun too.Milan Christina is the best art history teacher any of us has ever had. I have no problem speaking for everyone here, because I know for a fact that it is true. She is literally perfect in every way. We get up at horrendous hours , walk miles, and stand awkwardly trying to take notes, and as colin put it, it would all be unbearable for anyone but her. Milan was awesome obviously, because I can say that about anywhere we go, but while we were there Christina locked herself into our hearts (as if she wasn’t already a shoo-in). She divided us into groups and assigned us works of art to describe. Not a new idea, but her excitement at our displays of retained knowledge was heartwarming. I swear i saw her do a little half jump/ clap combo when someone picked up on a painting theme. Beyond that, she told us that none of it would be on the test, so note taking was not necessary. This was only trumped by when she told us that the duomo would not be on the test, and we could enjoy the multiple century old cathedral without the burden of notebook and pen. My heart sang. I doubt i would have taken many notes anyways. My eyes were too busy to be looking at a page in my hand. The inside was beyond huge…so big in fact, that there was a misty fog filling the air. It was out of a movie. We took a lap around the ground floor and then exited in order to climb the 250 steps to the roof. I’ll let any and all pictures do the talking on that one. Suffice it to say that Milan had sights to see. I’m sorry about the length of this tome, I’ll try and stay on top of things and keep it manageable from now on. I know I missed some things, but I’ll insert them here and there in the future. I expect the other guys to start writing too, and to fill in stuff that I missed, because I know there is alot.
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
My first big catchup post
Hi. I wrote a lot down when I first got here and I’ve fallen out of the habit, so I’m hoping this blog will help encourage me to keep logging my adventures. Before leaving the states, my dad was encouraging me to record my adventures and he said very seriously, “You think you’ll remember it all. But you won’t.”
I’m also going to keep the stuff I write here from being too boring. Here’s some stuff rom the first few days:
———-
The Trip
- – - – - -
The first “day” was very surreal because it was more like 3 days. I woke up around 8am on a Thursday and spent the entire day running around handling some last-minute business. That evening I played a soccer game with my co-rec team and we dominated. I stayed up all night packing, then flew to New York and slept a lot of the time. I met with the group at JFK and got hugs and kisses from all the moms, and Colin’s dad gave me a handshake and a goodbye with mutually understood surrogate father vibes. We flew an overnight to Paris and I slept for almost none of the time, chasing a third sun as it rose over the Atlantic. I conked out on the shorter flight to Venice, but woke up as we were crossing the Alps. I woke up and immediately looked out the window and did this awkward gaspy breathing spasm. This was the first time I’ve ever actually had my breath taken away from the sight of something. The view was clear and these mountains were probably the most epic thing I’ve ever seen. We dropped through some clouds and popped out very low to the water and were on the ground within minutes.
I have no recollection of what time it was. My body’s clock was so screwed up. Conor’s recent post sums up the events of the rest of the day. I was doing fine until right after finishing the my huge pizza. It felt like earth’s gravity went into overdrive as my body truly started to shut down. I climbed in a bed for the first time in 60-something hours.
———-
The City
- – - – - -
On the first water taxi ride from the airport to the island, I realized that this ride was when I thought that everything would really be setting in. And I started to trip out on the realization that this moment was what the last months of discussing the trip with family and friends had been building towards, and it was all about to begin. Over the next days (even weeks), there were up and down peaks of the setting in of where I am and will be for the next four months. One of the first big peaks was seeing the dome of the Santa Maria di Salute (from the opposite side of the vantage point in the photo below), behind a couple sculptures holding up a giant gold ball.
http://lagoonies.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/img_8760-edited-web.jpg
It looked like something from Dinotopia, or Dinotopia: Planet Naboo Edition, and I thought about how many hundreds of years it could have potentially been there. I thought “Holy shit, I’m in Italy.”
When I woke up the next day (Sunday), I was struck by how damn quiet it was. SO quiet, because I was around absolutely zero cars, which you’d hear at any hour of the night back home. I heard some pigeon coo from who knows how far away. The only thing that regularly breaks the peaceful quiet from our palazzo is the chorus of church bells from all over the city every hour or half hour.
Everything here is beautiful. Colin pointed out that every view could have been a scene from a movie. This place isn’t an urban metropolis with a thriving nightlife and unlimited events going on all the time, but I wouldn’t trade this city for anywhere else in Italy, because what Colin said is so true. I love the walking. No cars, just a floating labyrinth of footpaths. Everything is variable here. What I mean is, almost nothing you see occurs twice anywhere in the city, which can’t be said for a rigid grid of city blocks with repeated reminders of the city planners’ efforts to create a cohesive civic aesthetic through uniformity. In Venice, no ground is level and there are no straight lines. I was baffled my first week there at how disoriented I was getting. I had never before experienced so many instances of having absolutely NO IDEA where I was or where I was headed. There are so many hidden alleys, courtyards, and bridges. I very regularly will turn a corner and run into a dead end at a narrow canal with no way to cross. There have been times where details of the paths and buildings have sparked a deja vu of fictive nostalgia, because I used to daydream and try to draw scenes from an imagined foreign city somewhere on some other continent. I am so excited to be here.
That’s all for now, and I’ll recap some highlights as soon as I can (so hard to find time, because sitting at a computer is the most guilt-inducing thing I could be doing here).
Posted in Michael | Leave a Comment »
I wrote these within the first few days that we were here. I’m posting them now that we got around to setting up the blog.
Saturday January 19th 10:25 Pm (venice time)
Well we have finally made it. The semester of tremendous expectations is upon us, and so far so good. We began our journey yesterday at 6:30 when we were called to board the Air France flight to Paris, where we would have our layover. The flight was more or less uneventful, and with some short naps, glimpses of poor movie choices and a screaming baby we arrived at Charles De Gaulle unharmed. The layover was nothing to note really. I found 2 euros which was pretty swell. Mostly we just sat around for 4 hours, exhausted and ready to reach Venice. The next leg of the trip flew by (excuse the pun) as I slept through the hour and 40 minute flight with great ease. We stood around the airport in Venice for a short while, a large group with clearly no idea of where we were to go, until our lovely guide Kaitlyn arrived to escort us via waterbus to to our island. The boat ride wasn’t too exciting, and I think most of us zoned out for the majority of it, becoming zombies in our sleep deprived, disorienting state. Once we finally hit land our final task to prove ourselves was to get to apartments with all of our luggage. It seems easy enough with the wheels until you reach The steps of Acadamia, a bridge that brought out the best teamwork but the worst of sweat. Needless to say it was a glorious feeling to cast my luggage upon the bed i would be sleeping in for the next four months, and begin to explore our new home. She’s a beauty for sure, but time has taken its toll on her and added a bit of…character. We inhabit four apartments i believe withthin the building, and each one is a bit different. Adam and I are on the 3rd floor, and we have a balcony and even scored our own bathroom.
Once we had settled in we went out to find some food,and walking through the narrow allyways and over small bridges next to the canals seemed surreeal. None of it feels real yet. We have barely been out at all yet but I am already stunned by the beauty of the city. We got some delicious pizza and took a long roundabout way home. Tomorrow is a day off…so it will be nice to catch up on sleep and explore the city some more. I expect a disgusting amount of pictures taken. I best get to bed before Adam “the Chainsaw” Pelerite starts snoring again.
Ciao,
Conor
Tuesday January 22nd 5:11 PM
I feel like I am running out of time here. It has only been 3 days. We haven’t even started with real classes yet. This place is so rediculous. Its entire existence is absurd, and non conventional, and only proves that breaking away from the norm can have devastatingly beautiful results. I feel more settled now, and I feel as though I might have some barings in the city. I don’t miss cars, tv, or even internet that much anymore. Everyday feels like I’m at some sort of festival, or that I strayed onto a movie set. The city is full of characters. It feels like someone only need to flip a switch and the italian language would become crystal clear, yet for now I still feel like I never even took the class.
Its funny to think about all that I worried about before I left home. It seems so impossible that anything could go wrong now. We have spent the last two days filling out paperwork and delivering it around the city. Even this has proven to hold exciting moments. We were at some post office waiting outside for everyone to finish, when an elderly man entered the doorway to leave the building. He was slightly portly, and carried a cane. He paused in the doorway and began chatting up a storm in Italian, none of which I could understand. He continued to chatter away, and we smiled politely and even laughed occasionally, as if we could understand his jokes, when eventually we came to the conclusion that he wanted some help down the 3 small steps leading from the doorway. First Nicole stepped up, offering her shoulder for some balance. He waved her away, stringing along 3 million Italian words a minute afterwards. Then Sheryl stepped up, and received the same results. He finally slowed to around 300 words a minute and his eyes found me in the crowd and glowed slightly. Alas it was clear! Colin stepped up, and with the help of a strapping young buck he was free to decend the steps. “Gracie, Gracie, Arrivaderci!” he said, and he slowly pattered down the calle. We never actually said any words, so I’m not sure if he knew we didn’t speak Italian, but I like to pretend he didn’t. If we can fool this seasoned Venitian maybe we stand a chance of fitting in.
Ciao,
Conor I’ll fill in the gaps shortly.At the risk of being redundant-Ciao,Conor
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
