A thousand words

I am a little behind on updating. This is because I have been very busy and now it is a daunting task to write about everything. So instead of telling you anything, I will post a few pictures.

The Speisers invade Venice aboard vaporetto #2; Mom and Alex.

First, we went to a souvenir shop, then we took pictures of each other; In other words, the beginning of every Speiser vacation. Dad.

On the street someone asked me if I was Venetian; they wanted directions. All I know is that you are going to have trouble finding directions or a real Venetian when you are in Venice.

Compare this to the arkansas river.

The religious graffiti artists of Venice were here.

Now, in Ferrara.

"I am not able to enter!"

There is a recurring graffiti here in Ferrara of this character named Human Alien. Since he is beginning his campaign for the upcoming election, he has combed his hair and put on a tie. I would vote for him before I'd vote for Berlusconi.

Just your everyday, average Italian doorway

Porta Diamanti

Merde, merde, ha caduto nella canale!

Last Tuesday, I went to Venezia for the last day of Carnevale, Martedi Grasso, or as we say, Fat Tuesday. It is incredible walking out of the Venice train station into a world of canals, bridges, and boats instead of streets and cars. Among thousands of others there that day, we headed toward Piazza San Marco. We decided the go on foot since we really had no place to be at any particular time. Even with the approximately 50,000 extra people in Venice that day, we still managed to wind up alone in tiny little alleyways trying to go in the general direction of the piazza. This is one of the wonders of Venetian city planning.

Piazza San Marco by Day

One of the first places we stopped at was Harry's Bar, which is famous because Hemingway drank there. My friend Dave wanted to go there, so we walk right in, get a table, and look at the menu. At this point we realized how obscenely expensive the drinks were. In the end we decided to stay and have a drink, but I don't think any of us will return anytime soon. I got the house specialty, the bellini, which is a mix of champaign and peach something. It tasted good, like soda. It's a neat bar, and if I hadn't gone there that day, I probably would have gone another time; I don't regret it.

Every single shop was selling the venetian masks that people(tourists at least) love so much, and indeed many people were wearing the masks. It seemed to me, though, that young Italians preferred halloween type costumes as opposed to the traditional Carnevale dress. At first I kind of wanted to get a mask, but decided to let the drink at Harry's be my only stupid purchase for the day.

After that we went to a shop and bought bottles of wine for a fraction of our drink prices and wandered back towards San Marco. By 6 or 7 the piazza was pretty crowded and by 9 the whole place was packed. I was surprised by how well our group managed to stay together. We went the classy route and decided to drink our wine out of plastic cups, as opposed to straight from the bottle. There was a big stage setup in the piazza and several bands played, including a celtic-rock girl group(fiddles and short skirts galore) and an Italian reggae band, who were really good and people seemed to know. People were dancing and throwing confetti and drinking and posing for pictures and it was really fun.

San Marco by night

Before the trip we were joking about how someone was bound to fall in the canal and how funny it would be. Well, a girl from my study abroad actually did wind up falling in the canal. I'm sorry to say that I was not there to witness the spectacle, but maybe I should hang out with them next time in the hopes it will happen again. Apparently the Venetians have a special song reserved for this type of occasion. The translation is something like, “Shit, shit, she fell in the canal!” over and over. The girl that fell in had a cold train ride home that night, but otherwise she was okay.

I took a lot of pictures, and since it was dark out, I decided to try to learn to use my flash properly. However, I wound up taking some rather grotesque pictures where people have no faces because they were completely washed out by the flash. As usual, my best shots were ones where I didn't use a flash.

Boy riding a stone lion

Ghosts of Carnevale past

Grotesque Eyes

Electric Venice

Last weekend a group of six of us went to Bolzano, which is a city in northern Italy on the edge of the Dolomite Mountains. This part of Italy used to be part of Austria, and German is still the main language spoken there. Whenever anyone spoke German to me I would get a deer in the headlights kind of look and have no idea how to respond. Most people also speak Italian, though, so everything worked out okay.

Bolzano's version of the big church they have in every Italian town

On the train to Bolzano a very strange Italian man sat next to us and proceeded to talk to us for the next four hours, whether we were interested or not(I was not and proceeded to take a nap for the middle section). He spoke English quite well, and topics ranged from love affairs in Mexico to the dangers of polar bears. Every ten minutes or so he would say that he would stop boring us and start to read his newspaper, but then would immediately start back up saying something like, “Let me tell you about how I call into talk radio shows...” Anyway, he was quite the character, definitely a bit crazy.

Bolzano was quite a nice city. The cuisine was more German than Italian and I had sausages and beer for dinner. When we walked out of the restaurant after dinner I became confused by the large number of people dressed as cowboys and indians. All these people were dressed for Carnevale, as we figured out eventually. We overheard one “cowboy” exclaim in english, “I'm from West Virginia!” and start singing “These boots are made for walking.” There was also a group of girls dressed as nuns and singing songs from Sister Act(Completely off key; the cartons of wine they were carrying had taken effect (yes, you can buy cartons of wine in Italy, kind of like juice boxes)). American culture is everywhere.

The next day we took a bus and went up into the mountains. We made friendly with the bus driver who was really funny and dropped us at a great place to just hike around a bit and enjoy the snow and mountains. Our bus driver on the return trip was a madman who drove down the mountain at top speed. Maddie and Liz were so nervous they put on their seatbelts. Anyway, it was a great weekend trip.

Sometimes the mountains just make you feel good

Coming up in the next edition!: I will recount my adventures in Venice for Carnevale.

For our first Saturday trip we went to Mantova (English name: Mantua) and we saw two palaces (Palazzo Te and Palazzo Ducale) that were cool and had a some really great paintings and such. However, because of the fog I can only say that I went to Mantova, not that I've actually seen Mantova. The whole city was covered in heavy fog that lasted the entire day. Even at 2pm you could not see anything but lights on the other side of a piazza. But really, the highlight of the day trip was our lunch that stretched out for three hours.

Lunch in Mantova

The following weekend we went to Padova, which turned out to be great town with lots of action, at least on a Saturday. There were at least four large markets set up in various piazzas around town. These markets are like traveling malls and grocery stores because the vendors just set up their stand in the morning and move on in the afternoon. In Ferrara these markets appear on Mondays and Fridays; I guess we're not important enough for a Saturday market. Anyway, on our tour we saw the main sites: three big churches, a small church, and the Jewish ghetto. While churches are great and all, the best thing about Padova was that there were people on the streets everywhere. I guess it helps that Carnevale is going on. Outside of Venice, Carnevale is not as wild and is an excuse for little children to dress up in halloween costumes and throw confetti at strangers in the streets. The streets really were bustling. We had another fantastic lunch; this one by far outshined the Mantova lunch. I learned a word today to properly describe it: Squistito!

For some reason I like the sewer covers