Apple Syrup

Okay, so the strange story here happened on my transfer flight from Frankfurt to Venice (May 23, 2010). But before I introduce the ‘interesting’ Italian fellow, I’ll have to first quickly talk about the Alps, the Rhine, and the Lagoon, as this flight was definitely one of the most scenic ones I’ve ever been on.

flying over the Alps

My transfer was in the morning, and it was sunny all the way from Germany to Italy, providing me with the amazing opportunity to take in all that the Alps had to offer. Coming from the West Coast, I thought I’d seen enough mountains, yet the Alps looked quite different from the Rockies, and I just couldn’t help but surrender in its beauty.

Another aerial view that captured my attention was that of the sheer amount of farm lands all the way across the flat landscape of Germany. If I remembered it correctly, back home in North America, most of the farm lands are in perfect grid and one sees the same color across the land — probably due to the fact it is all of the same crop? But no, that was not the case in Europe. First of all, as you can see in the picture, it is extremely colorful; and secondly, they are all of different sizes and shapes. I took this picture as when we were still in Germany, so I guess that river you see there is the Rhine River… There was something about seeing a major river that made my heart jump a bit.

Now imagine flying through clouds and over these mountain ridges, turning your head away from the window just for a moment, taking a sip of water or something… then suddenly, the view changes — open water with small islands scattered across the horizon… and these islands become more and more dense as you go, until BAM, the Lagoon City! With its red roof tops contrasting the shallow green sea water, quietly reflecting sunlight off of all these surfaces, creating an ever-so-beautiful image. Venice, I am here! But wait, there is still the story to tell:

a view of the Rhine

This flight was also made interesting by the guy sitting next to me — another white-haired man. The difference between him and Pete was quite clear: he is born and raised Italian, speaks some English, but definitely not enough for us to carry a decent conversation… However, this didn’t seem to deter him from trying. Honestly by that point, after not having had much sleep on the cross-continental flight, I kinda just wanted to close my eyes and listen to my iPod during this 1hr or so short transfer. The man does not give up, he kept on turning his head toward me, and gesturing at starting a conversation whenever possible… So I caved, and it soon became one of the most bizarre conversations I’ve ever had on a flight:

The man apparently flies between Frankfurt and Venice a lot, therefore he was extremely enthusiastic at pointing out the valleys and cities we are flying over, and explaining everything he knows about them in as much English as he could gather at the moment. At some point, he found out that I speak some French, and I learned that most people in the Northern part of Italy speak at least some, so we switched over. With his fluent French, he must have felt extremely comfortable, maybe a bit too comfortable, as you will find out:

He is a Venetian native, his profession is doctor, and he has three sons, all are in the pursuit of medicine. Just as I was wondering the point of telling me all this, he asked: “Would you, by any chance, like to meet my middle son? He is about your age, 20-something.” Woah, seriously? You are gonna fix your son up with someone you just randomly met on the plane? I mean, it is sort of flattering that you asked, and quite sweet of you to be honest; but at the same time, how desperate does that make your son appear, mister? He was a nice old man though, so I smiled and explained that I’ll be in Venice with my school’s group, so I wouldn’t be able to. “Then what about the weekend?” I shook my head. “Well then, I can give you my phone number and address, and if you’d like, you can call my home, or even when you come back to Italy in the future?”

Well, at the end, I didn’t; even though he offered nicely again when we parted at the luggage claim. That was where I got my first European-style greeting: the double-cheek. Later when I told my friends about this sweet but rather odd encounter, one of them half-seriously commented “well, it doesn’t really hurt to get the contact info, does it? I mean, who knows, you could be on a private boat and getting a private tour of the island right now…”

"the lagoon city" here I come! - amazing view of Venice, with over 100 islands in the area.

During long flights, I tend to take out my laptop as soon as I am allowed to, and start typing all kinds of random thoughts that would be racing through my mind then. This one was from the flight from Seattle to Frankfurt (later there’s a transfer from Frankfurt to Venice) on May 22, 2010.

The section of the plane I’m in is this 4-row space right after the business class and before the economy coach… Why it is sectioned off, I have no idea; but I honestly couldn’t care less. I’m in a window-seat again (I seem to always get window seats, even when I forget to request it; it’s awesome), and the fact I’m the last row in this section gives me the liberty to recline my seat fully at any time, free from worrying about the person sitting behind being bothered by it. Looking around, I am also enjoying the interior design of this Lufthansa aircraft: the company has chosen the light grey instead of a darker shade of blue that so many airlines tend to use; it makes everything look cleaner, nicer, and more refreshing!

Sitting next to me is a white-haired and white-bearded man, Pete, whom I soon find out, has worked for NATO, and now lives in Germany. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, but he has not spend much of his life anywhere in North America. Since I am not the type of person who would prefer to remain silent on a 10-hr flight, the content of our conversation ended up covering much more than simply where each of us was from and going to. We exchanged many fascinating stories — well, he was mainly the storyteller, and I was the listener. This is one of the things I like about traveling alone: meeting interesting people.

Before long, our conversation has moved on to talking about the ways in which people travel in Europe. He has invited his friends and family over to Germany multiple times, hoping to give them a local feel since they could stay at their house, rent a car and do the travels by driving around — an opportunity I’d most definitely love. Instead, many of them choose the polar opposite — the bus tours. It is not the hop-on-hop-off kind we are talking about, but the pre-planned ones with a large group where you end up spending 80% of the time on the bus, and never get to see or experience anything in depth. Why oh why do people choose to do these tours, I never understood; I am not asking everyone to be a backpacker, but the idea of traveling is so much more than just sight-seeing — it is an opportunity to explore and experience different culture first-handedly, through strolling the neighborhoods or tasting the local foods… The ironic part is, now that Pete and his wife are about to move, all the sudden there are three groups of friends visiting within the next few months.

After Lufthansa’s rather impressive plane-food-dinner, we then started talking about his past experiences while been stationed in various countries. Pete remembers Egypt vividly, how he lived through the days of food shortage by getting black rations. Then it was Germany, during which he experienced the sudden change of currency when Euro agreement was signed. The most exciting story would be that of his friend, who was once on the cover of Paris Match newspaper because he was the only person standing in a crowd when a political leader was shot (Pete gave the specific name but unfortunately I can’t seem to remember) while everyone else duck for safety; the mentality of his friend was that he wanted to see what was going on, he was clearly fearless.

Pete’s mother has suggested him to write a book, yet to him, “everything that’s happened had become rather everyday-like” he says, justifying his lack of interest in doing so. See, that’s the thing, what’s normal to him is not normal to many of us, who do not have the job he did, and therefore didn’t experience world events on a daily life/micro level. Granted, we get to learn about the big historical events in textbooks, but small personal stories with blood and flesh like these are the powerful primary sources that introduce us to a whole new level of understanding. Without stories of the personal experiences of the commons, history and art history alike, would only reflect the interest and views of a collective powerful few…

Frankfurt is now in sight

To lighten up the mood, we decided to pull ourselves away from history and come back to the present. I shared with Pete how art history at UBC is taught as ‘social art history’, with an emphasis placed on the understanding of the political and social background of each artist and art work, and he told me more about his retirement plan of moving to the Northwest Coast of US, enjoying a laid-back lifestyle with his wife.

The rest of my flight consisted of my fruitless attempts to nap, and watching in-flight entertainment — thank goodness Lufthansa had a decent collection of movies to choose from. All in all, I’d have to admit that I do enjoy long international flights, especially when it makes me feel free, confident, and independent.

NOTE: There’s another blog entry, ‘The Sky is the Canvas, and the Light is the Artist‘, where I talked about a different aspect of this same flight — the view in the sky.

May 28-30, 3 nights in Vicenza (a small town between Venice & Verona):

We started off with studying the architectural structure of a façade at the city center palazzo, then we walked around a bit more familiarize ourselves with this charming little town. Yesterday, we walked over 1km with all of our luggage to get from the train station to our hotel as we arrived in the evening. I was quite exhausted then, had some cheese in my room, and just took it easy by watching a movie on the laptop then going to bed early. I have, actually, been sick for a few days now; nothing major, just some runny nose and coughs. The cause of this? Riding the boat in Venice at night. It was finally not crowded on the water-bus, so I was too excited to have gotten the seat at the very front of the boat and enjoyed the night view on the Canal, most definitely forgot about the cold wind until it was too late…

Anyway, so here’s an overview of my stops in Vicenza.

Teatro Olympico

• Definitely talked about this in ARTH 335, and the prof specifically said that “if you ever have a chance to go to Italy, make sure you visit this place!” That was when my roommate-in-Italy and i gave each other the knowing look — mental note, taken. The theatrical aspect of this place is amazing, especially the painted background to create the visual illusion that the stage goes on allll the way to the very far back. I’ve actually visited it today already, because we got here to Vicenza last night; oh it was even more amazing in person. I’ll blog about it in another post.

• here’s a video introducing the Theatre

Villa Rotunda

• One of the most important buildings we learnt about in ARTH 335. It’s based on the building style of a sacred temple but for secular purposes. And though it’s employed the 4-sides symmetrical structure, given its location, the view from each side is different, therefore giving a unique experience when viewed from or viewing from each side, despite the architectural structure similarity.
• Anticipate a large amount of pictures be posted after I travel to this villa (which will be tomorrow!).

Villa Valmarana

• The fresco from this villa seems to be an important point of interests.

Museo Civico

• We will be visiting the art gallery portion of the museum.

Sta Corona

• One interesting sidenote about these links and these locations in Vicenza: a lot of them are no longer searchable on Wikipedia. Whilst many might people find that annoying, I, on the opposite, find this to be extremely exciting — it means that we are getting to the cultural stuff that common tourists would’ve not paid much attention. It is opportunities like these that make me feel privileged to have chosen to study art history.

These will conclude my 3 days in Vicenza. Next stop: Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet.

Tomorrow my art history program officially starts, so here is a list of the places we will be studying/visiting during our stay here in Venice (every location is linked to a related website). The past one and half days in the Lagoon City have been lovely, a post will be up soon, I have so much to say; for now, I’ve only had the time to post some pictures on Facebook, album titled “the very first 24 hrs”.

Palazzo Ducale

• aka Doge’s Palace, situated right on the bank of the Grand Canal at San Marco.

Peggy Guggenheim Museum

• yes, this one is indeed related to the Guggenheim Museum in NYC, it’s run like a franchise. It is likely we’ll be enjoying a lovely drink on the open air balcony at the museum to end our day =)

Gallerie dell’ Accademia

• mainly pre-19th Century art from the Northern Italy, it was originally created as an art school. One of the three main bridges that cross the Grand Canal is named after it, the Ponte dell’Accademia.

Museo Correr

• a civic museum of Venice, and we will be visiting the gallery portion of it.

Bibliotecca Nazionale Marciano

• designed by architect Sansovino, located at San Marco across from the Doge’s Palace. Together they frame the square, giving it a theatrical quality.

San Zaccaria

• one of the many churches we’ll be visiting on this trip.

Frari

• another church, an exciting one.