viaggiando...

PHEEEWWWWW. Man. I FINALLY came to a decision and booked my flights for fall break and let me just tell you, it was ABOUT TIME. I have been so deliriously happy since I’ve been here; I literally have not shed one tear (which I’m sure most of you know is a BIG freakin’ deal...) and have totally forgotten what it feels like to have anxiety or feel overwhelmed... but then this past week rolled around. Venice was obviously INCREDIBLE, but then I got back Sunday night and realized, oh wait, I have a week and a half until I am kicked out of my homestay for 10 days and I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE I’M GOING. Plus, for some reason all my professors have decided to act like this is real school and give us “homework” and “projects” and “midterms” over these next two weeks, but trying to get myself on flights and in hostels with enough money left over to, oh, FEED MYSELF for the next couple of months was a big enough project on its own. So I had my first bout of anxiety last night, after spending two hours at one travel agent and then two hours at another, only to come to the conclusion that I am an IDIOT for waiting this long to figure my shit out and that unless I made organizing this trip my number one priority over all else, I would either be a) stranded and homeless in Florence for a week and a half or b) incredibly, unfathomably broke. Trying to explain the cause of my anxiety, through tears, IN ITALIAN, to my host mother did not make it any easier.

HOWEVER, after bailing on my friends for my first meal at Acqua al Due (I DON’T want to talk about it...) in order to sit at home on the computer for four hours poring over crazy European our-planes-are-so-rickety-they-may-kill-you airline websites, I finally solidified my October break. Here it goes:

Thurs Oct 25 - Sun Oct 28: flying to Vienna with some friends from the program; staying in some crazy hostel

Sun Oct 28 – Thurs Nov 1: flying to Amsterdam to stay with some friends from USC who are studying there (particularly excited about this leg)

Thurs Nov 1 – Sun Nov 4: flying to Barcelona to meet up with Sam, Jess and Tyler; probably staying in some crazy hostel again

So yeah. Many stories to come, I believe.

arte e barche

Jesus. What a weekend. I feel like everywhere I go and everything I do here, I could spend twice as much time doing. I could have spent 5 days at the Biennale, and at least a week in Venice... probably more like two.

Damn, that show was CRAZY BUSINESS. Just to get everyone on the same page, the Venice Biennale is a huge international contemporary art show that takes place every two years in Venice (I mean, duh). In theory, each country in the world gets its own "pavilion" where it can display the work of one artist that it chooses to represent the contemporary art of that country - however, this was definitely not the case, as this was the first time that Africa was included at all, and there was only one pavilion for the entire CONTINENT. But anyway, since that is A LOT of work nonetheless, the show is split into two sections, in two adjacent neighborhoods of Venice: the Giardini (in Venice's only public gardens) and the Arsenale (which - you guessed it - used to be an arsenal). We did the Giardini yesterday and the Arsenale today, however, the "school trip" portion only offered to train the students up to Venice Saturday morning, pay for their entry to the Giardini, and train them back THAT NIGHT; so students wouldn't even set foot in the Arsenale, let alone have even a spare second to explore the rest of Venice, so naturally me and some friends decided to come early and leave late for a whole-weekend affair, which I will get to later.

But as for the show - SOOOO incredible. Well, parts of it. I am now OBSESSED with a French photographer named Sophie Calle - her piece for the French Pavilion was freaking INCREDIBLE and would take to long to explain fully, but in a nutshell, her lover broke up with her via email and she was so flabberghasted by it that she had the email translated into every conceivable language and sent it to 100 different women, chosen on the basis of their particular profession or background, and asked them to give their interpretation in whatever format the would like. Thus, a Japanese pianist turned it into a musical composition; an Italian mamma made fun of the author's melodrama and self-pity, while ironically chopping an onion in her kitchen; a French teacher boiled it down into words simple enough for her students to understand; and all the while, Sophie photographed each woman reading the letter and often filmed their interpretation as well. It was SO innovative and mind-bogglingly comprehensive, and yet so accessible and relatable as well. It just felt so utterly HUMAN, and particularly made me really appreciate the mother-tiger instinct that seems to exist in all women, lying dormant until it is provoked and we need to swoop in to protect one another, regardless of what language we speak or what background we come from.

Language seemed to be a major theme of the Biennale as a whole, come to think of it; I guess being an international exhibition, this would kind of be a given, but it really spoke to me for some reason. Maybe because I am living in Italy, in this grand mega-country we call Europe, where so many different languages and cultures are squashed together and constantly rubbing shoulders, but where each one is constantly vying to maintain its sense of identity and keep from disappearing into the gradually homogenizing western mass of Europica. I am simultaneously enthralled and repulsed by the fact that I can cross a border and suddenly have no idea what anyone around me is saying. I am dying to become fluent in all the romance languages, and yet find it totally strange that I would even have to.

I found myself really drawn to long-term projects and series like Sophie Calle's, as well as politically charged works (there was A LOT of stuff about the war), but at the same time I was equally drawn to things that I simply found clever (like a tiny projection of the bottom of tap-dancing feet onto the inside of a hanging light bulb in the Spanish pavilion, making it appear that there was a tiny tap dancer tapping away inside the light bulb), and even to works that I simply liked because they were really, really pretty. Haha. I basically have no idea what I personally am driven to create as an ARTIST, since it appears that I am too damn busy admiring everything that is already out there to even sit down and bang anything out myself (unless you consider taking 300+ photos of pretty buildings and other people's artwork as creating "art"...). Oh well, I've got some time.


As for the non-art part of the trip (or at least the non-Biennale part, since pretty much everything in Venice could be considered art...):

I don't know how, and I don't know why, but I have somehow managed to be traveling with the vulgar alcoholic girl from Capri, Sandy. I really really don't understand how Mel is friends with her, but somehow, she is, and she also managed to include her on our trip this weekend. But luckily my friend Irene came as well, so we managed to split off from the group most of the time to avoid the whole Mel-and-Sandy-are-total-assholes-when-they-are-together aspect for the most part. However, we did all end up spending the first day together and making a pretty good time of it.

It turned out that our hotel was also a SAILING SCHOOL, and well as a design school, so it was very sleek and well laid out, and when they mentioned the option to take a four-hour private boat tour around the city for only €100 total, which we could then split between the five of us, we obviously jumped at the opportunity. It didn't hurt that our driver was an adorable little 23-year-old Veneziano named Marco, who not only drove us to the train station to pick up Irene (who came in later than the rest of us because she had a class trip earlier in the day), but also took us out for a spritz afterwards at his favorite bar which just happened to be on the water overlooking the Rialto bridge. And for most of you who have not experienced the joys of the Venetian spritz (Paul and Steve, get ready to start salivating, Paul and Steve), it is a cocktail unique to Venice, usually composed of white wine, a red liquer (usually Campari or Aperol), and some sort of carbonated soda component (sometimes aranciata, sometimes tonic, and sometimes just plain soda water), topped off with an olive. Our were particularly classy, as they were made with Prosecco, as well as regular soda water and Campari for a more bitter, bubbly take on the classic. We certainly started our trip in style.

After our drinks, graciously paid for by dearest Marco, Irene took charge as our personal tour guide, as her brother studied abroad in Venice a couple of years ago and he had shown her all the insider spots when she went to visit him, so she had the city down to a T. She took us to this totally eccentric, FANTASTIC restaurant called Trattoria alla Madonna, which just happened to be conveniently around the corner from the bar where Marco took us for drinks. It had a line around the block (good sign..), but they still somehow managed to seat our party of five in under ten minutes, and on our way to our table, we passed an enormous spread of every kind of antipasto and vegetable imaginable, their daily selection of seafood all laid out, and a giant vat of what appeared to be tar, but that we later discovered to be their indescribably rich and ocean-salty house specialty, nero di seppia, otherwise known as squid ink.

We started off with a bottle of the house white, which was already drained by the time the bread arrived at the table (thanks in the most part to our token alcoholic, Sandy), followed by a fantastic platter of verdure stagionale (seasonal vegetables... i mean, duh.), of which the peas were so freakin delicious (and by "peas" I really mean butter with a sprinkling of peas) that we promptly ordered "un'altra porzione - una GRAN porzione, per favore - dei piselli, per favore!!" Our enthusiasn for those little buttery peas was so great that our waiter gave us the extra portion (and it truly was a GRAN porzione) on the house. Cute.

Next came mountains of seafood and carbs of all varieties: spaghetti alle vongole (dressed with crushed tomatoes and again, drenched in butter - thank you, Northern Italy, for your whole-hearted embrace of this glorious dairy product), spaghetti al nero di seppia (smothered with that fantastically tar-like, tooth-and-tablecloth-staining, salty, life-giving elixir of the sea), and a plate of grilled calamari with polenta, doused with MORE nero di seppia. Heaven. We finished up with a slice of torta di mandorla (almond cake so delicious that we promptly ordered another), and left our table looking like a mix between a war-zone and an early Jackson Pollock, what with all the abstract blobs of red and black from our convivial, albiet messy, meal.

After dinner Sandy and Mel went back to the hotel (probably a good thing), while Marinna, Irene and forged on, making the winding trek to Campo Santa Margherita, the evening hangout for 20-something Venetian students and in-the-know international travelers. Were we not so cripplingly stuffed we would probably have stayed out longer, but alas, after like 10 phone conversations in my shotty Italian with different water taxi companies, we managed to track down our hotel's shuttle and collapsed face-down into our beds.

The next day was a Biennale binge: we grabbed some coffee and headed early to the cute neighborhood around the Giardini to do a little exploring, then met up with the rest of our class, who were just arriving from Florence that morning at 11:30. From then until the closing of the show, we soaked up some damn fine international art, and afterwards, a damn fine sunset. Pretty idyllic.

But after the glory of the sunset passed, we looked around and realized we were surrounded by something like 60 hungry Syracuse students all looking for "a good dinner," and acting like we were somehow all going to share this "good dinner" together - sensing the imminent disaster of this situation, Irene and I fled the scene ("um, we're gonna run to the bathroom really quick"), grabbed ourselves a bottle of Bellini, some plastic cups, and Irene's friend Whitney, and parked it at the foot of a nearby statue, conveniently hidden from view by some lovely garden foliage, to discuss OUR dinner plans. Marinna wandered by so we clued her in, and eventually set off in search of Trattoria dai Tosi, a quaint little pizzeria where Irene's brother worked while he was studying abroad and living in that very same Giardini-adjacent neighborhood.

We found the place, had a wonderful, leisurely meal (house white, Bella Napoli pizza and a fantastic "big salad", or insalatone, with tuna, baby shrimp, mushrooms and parmagiano, followed by the best profiteroles I have ever had), all for a huge discount (thank you, brother of Irene).

After dinner we made a more successful expedition to Campo Santa Margherita, parking it at Caffe Noir (all the bars are named after different colors - can't decide whether I think it's dorky or cute...), where Marco and a couple of his friends eventually came to meet us, which was just OH so ideal, as Whitney was taking a 3am train back to Florence so we didn't want her to wait around the train station for hours by herself, but the hotel shuttle - which is the last mode of transport back to our island hotel for less than €40 - ends at 12:30. So this is where it becomes VERY convenient having friends with boats. And this time we REALLY lucked out, as Marco's friend is actually a water taxi driver, and those boats are freakin' SWANK... so we got a lovely taxi ride home, warm and cozy in the taxi's wood-paneled cabin.. for FREE. Score.

The next day we made a valiant attempt to do the Arsenale portion of the Biennale, and while I did make it through the whole thing and was even moderately moved by some of the work, I must admit that my attention span was much shorter this time around; I can't decide if it was a matter of the work itself (because this section was notably drier, and it was basically in the format of one large curated exhibition rather than a lot of smaller pavilions, as the Giardini was set up); or that I was just a teensy bit exhausted from our late-night antics the night before. But anyway, I ended up finishing the exhibition in a little less than two hours, and spending the rest of the day taking a solo stroll through the city. Wandered through the Rialto market, grabbed myself a rotolo (this GENIUS Venetian-street-food invention of wrapping a slice of pizza around typical panino ingredients - this particular rotolo had arugula, mozzarella, prosciutto and tomatoes - thus creating a perfect union of the two best Italian lunch foods of all time), and made it to the train station in time to buy the first train ticket with an actual SEAT reserved for me in a LONG TIME. All in all, a lovely weekend in one of the most beautiful cities on earth.

Can't wait for next weekend.

this is my life.

Mille foglie and tiramisù semifreddo from Vivoli. Enough said.

art talk and art bar

So last night was the contemporary art discussion over by the Palazzo Pitti with the director of the Uffizi and the director of the Bargello, however it turned out to be more of a screening of a portion of a documentary about contemporary art, and then a long-winded presentation about the Renaissance works in the Uffizi and the Bargello and how art history needs to be emphasized in Italian high school graduation exams. Hmm. And meanwhile there was the wishy-washiest translator EVER who would let them go off for like 10 minutes at a time and like twitch in his seat trying to send them ESP messages to get them to stop for a minute to let him translate, and by the time he finally would, he would give the blandest, most superficial summary of what he caught, which even with my little Italian I could tell was glossing over pretty much anything interesting that had been said. This was another instance of me being frustrated with people who are living in this country who don't speak a word of Italian, because although the discussion as a whole was kind of misleading anyway, I think it would have been far more interesting if it wasn't constantly being interrupted by this inept translator trying to accomodate the apathetic Americans. But if nothing else, the discussion was in a bomb location, with the most beautiful view from the roof of the sun setting over Florence, so if only for that I thought it was definitely worth it.

But oh, the night was just beginning. Since I knew the discussion was going to end too late for me to make it home for dinner, I took maximum advantage of this rare opportunity to actually eat out in this cool area and met up with my friend Ali for drinks and aperitivi at a chic place along the Arno called Noir. However, we were feeling cheap and were not into the €9 cover so we abandoned that plan for a nice €4.50 daquiri-cum-fruit-cocktail and unlimited free popcorn and the Italian equivalent of Cheetos at Art Bar (I mean come on, its not like my diet here doesn't consist of alcohol and carbohydrates anyway). We have a lovely drink and an even lovelier chat (complete with a juicy bitch-fest about my smelly roommate whom I have developed a minor loathing for, just because I can - I mean, the girl hasn't ONCE washed the washcloth she uses in the shower EVERY DAY since we first got here... the bathroom reeks of her armpits. I am utterly repulsed), and then make our way over to Rex for another low-key drink with Sam and Nicole... but on the way, we are stopped by some chic-yet-distressed-looking Asian girls who were in Florence for the weekend and heard us speaking English and asked for directions to YAB, the disasterous club of yesterweek with the bar mitzvah soundtrack and skeezy Italiani, so we steered them away from potential disappointment and towards more reliable (and less expensive) dancing at Twice, which happened to be a block away from the bar we were going to. So basically we got to be those cool locals who go above-and-beyond the "make a left here and then a right at confusion street" norm and actually say "follow us!", and on the way got to clue them into all our favorite spots to make their weekend here truly memorable. We passed Twice on the way to Rex and seeing that it was only 10:30 or so, the place was pretty dead, so we invited them to Rex with us for a drink, which they graciously paid for. Quite a lovely way to pass the time while waiting for our friends to show up and for their club to pick up.

Sam and Nicole made it to the bar and Danny called and asked what we were up to, as he and the guys were going out and wanted to meet up, so we told him where we were and 20 minutes later he showed up for a drink, even though the rest of his gang headed straight to Twice (cute.) After we finished our round, we headed over to meet up with everyone and ended up tearing up the dance floor on what we originally imagined to be a relatively low-key night. After we closed down the club, the boys walked us home to finish what I like to call a lovely little Wednesday evening qui a Firenze. Not too shabby.

cabbie love.

What a fun night. It was one of those nights when I didn't have too much homework and just sorta felt like not sitting in my room all night, so I went over to the boy's apartment (which they call "The Spot"... go figure) to chill for a little bit and hang out with the random assortment of 20+ who are always there no matter what day of the week it is. This is always the kind of situation where I end up re-connecting with people that I never run into at school but had made friends with at some point, and usually some random kind of travel plan comes out of it. But this time instead me and Danny got to talking and in passing he mentioned that he and dumpy girl Tamar had "broken up" the weekend before... and so the plot thickens. I mean, not really. haha. But still. At least now I can pseudo-flirt without feeling like an evil homewrecker. (But who knows if that will kill all the fun...)

Anyway, I didn't feel like going home at that point but I do have a field trip at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow, so I decided to walk downtown with everyone and go dancing for a bit (I mean... this is my exercise, people), which was fun/mildly ridiculous, but I got tired early and sort of knew that the price I would pay for going out on a night that I kind of shouldn't have was not having anyone to walk home with, which was indeed the case. So I said fuck it and called myself a cab and ended up having the funnest cab driver ever. We rapid-fired in Italian the whole way back to my house and even though it was past the designated "sconto per le ragazze singole" time (from 9pm-2am single women traveling alone get some sort of discount which I don't even know how much it is because I never manage to get a cab before two), he still gave me the discount because we were tight like that. Fo sho. Ok but now I need to go to sleep. Domani a Siena! Whee!!

yoga and acid trips

Dude. I’m, like, LIVING in Italy right now. Like, found-an-Italian-yoga-studio-and-signed-up-for-3-months living in Italy. This is crazy business.

It's amazing, I want so much to hate painting and have an excuse to quit cause it's so goddamn impractical and time-consuming and so many bad things, but the days when I really get to sit and paint for a good three hours, I come away feeling SO good. So happy and fulfilled. Today I didn’t even have class, but I did my homework, which was to do a self-portrait (AGAIN. semi-ugh), and had some sort of color epiphany. In class right now she's having us really focus on exploring reflected color and the wide variations of hue within any given tone (i.e. in a simple white shirt, there can be bright pink and hot yellow in the highlights and dark purple and green in the shadows but as long as they are the right tone, it will read as a white shirt), and this is something I had always KNOWN, and like SORT OF utilized in my work, but for some reason when I was sitting in the studio today and started methodically laying out my lights and darks like I always do in what could only be described as “skin color”, I suddenly looked again at my face in the mirror and saw this giant green shadow across my cheek. And the bridge of my nose was hot orange from the bright light. And the highlights in my hair were pure white – but underneath it was orange and green. it was SO WEIRD. So I just put it all on the canvas and it was so exhilirating and I -GASP- only did half of my hair and only a swipe of background and didn’t even TOUCH my clothing, which, if you know ANYTHING about how I paint you will know that I am a chronic “finisher” and this is SUPER out-of-the-ordinary. I was just so into the fact that I could put purple on my collarbone and it would still look like a collarbone...

And as I’m saying this, I’m sure you are all imagining this acid-trip looking, wacky Van-Gogh-esque self-portrait, but alas, it pretty much looks like any other self-portrait I've done. But it's about the process, man...

So anyway, yoga: while the class itself was awesome, the best part about it was that it was taught entirely in Italian but I still totally got it. AND the studio is like two blocks away from my house. It just made me feel so local... in addition to all the great things that yoga makes me feel that are too hard to describe. So, all in all, a good day.

la vita è bella

It's October. Holy crap.

Sorry I've fallen behind on updating this thing. These past few days have just been so roller-coaster-y that I felt like I would write one thing and then totally contradict it the next day so I thought id just give it a rest for a bit. But we're back in action.

Just fyi, yesterday was definitely a 2-gelato kind of day; first, a cone with pistacchio (pis-ta-KEY-oh, as the gelataio corrected me, since he detected that I wasn’t a total lost cause when it came to the Italian language so he wanted me to know how to avoid a common American mistake), gianduja (which is basically nutella, but of the most artisanal, slow-food variety), and because I made friends with the gelataio with all my questions and earnest attempt to make botched conversation, a free smidge of cioccolata fondente (basically the richest chocolate you can get. Yum.)

THEN, after some errands, I treated myself to my second gelato of the day (we’re going by visits here, NOT flavors – Jesus, people, give a girl a break) at Vivoli. I just can't pass that place without getting one. It's simply impossible. Especially that day, because their flavors were particularly enticing – I got pera al caramello (caramelized pear- YUM), and honey (HOLY GOD ECSTASY-OF-SAINT-THERESA yum). Oh Jesus. I'm gonna be dreaming of that honey gelato for at least a week... but probably two.

But back to other news – this whole not-having-any-inkling-of-a-plan-for-fall-break thing has been really stressing me out, since it's really only like 3 weeks away, but now, like Michelangelo’s statues (which I got to visit today at the Accademia; more on that later), I've been slowly chipping away at the rough marble of my fall break possibilities and I'm beginning to make out a recognizable form, namely in the shape of some sort of rendez-vous with Alex Reynolds, potentially in Madrid (where she is currently studying) or potentially elsewhere (Vienna?), then a jaunt to, um, MOROCCO with Sam and Tyler (yes, AFRICA. I mean, why the HELL not??), and then either Barcelona with Sam and Tyler or a spin around Sicily and Malta with new-friend-from-Capri Jen, and back to Florence just in time to celebrate my 21st birthday… and then go to Paris the next weekend. I'm just a baller like that. Now talk to me in two weeks and see how much this plan has changed. But ANYWAY…

Socially, things are good. I've rekindled a bunch of friendships with some really cool people that kinda formed in the first week but then we never crossed paths again, which is relieving/exciting/comforting. So I'm happy about that. Beautiful Greek girl Irene and I re-bonded on a school trip to Ravenna amongst the glittering mosaici (and twinkling designer boutiques… of course Syracuse fails to prepare us for the bomb shopping that awaits in Ravenna…) and over a nice grilled Piadina (a type of sandwich typical to Ravenna- it's basically a panino, but made of this delicious doughy flatbread that tastes like a mix between naan and the kind of pita you get at Zankou Chicken, but without the pocket; you wrap the goodies in it like a tortilla, but it's a fatass tortilla. Ours was stuffed with prosciutto, pecorino, rucola, and some fantastically piquant roasted tomatoes. HEAVEN.) Now we have plans to head to Venice together next weekend for an extended stay around our class trip to the Biennale. And we have ALSO discovered that we live 2 blocks from each other in Florence, and that there is a fantastic enoteca by our houses that has unlimited finger foods with the purchase of a $5 drink or glass of wine. Lovely.

Also, Sam, my little Vassar friend whose style I was afraid I was beginning to cramp just because we tend to see each other all the time and do the same kinda stuff since we have SO freakin' much in common, but alas, my fears were squelched tonight- Me, her, and two other girls Nicole and Courtney had decided to have a little girl's night and go out dancing, but the club we ended up at, YAB, was totally sketchy- they played straight-up American-bar-mitzvah-in-the-late-90's music the whole time we were there, AND they charge you a euro if you leave before 12:30 (wtf??) so we peaced out, Jen and Courtney went home, and me and Sam ended up parking it on a stoop on Borgo Pinti and talking for two hours. Oh, how hashing out convoluted male histories can eat up half a night.... but it ended up being way more of a proper "girl's night" than it would have been if we had stayed at the club and continued to be hit on by 30-year-old Italian sleaze balls. So all in all, quite the win-win situation.

Oh, and in other life-is-awesome news, my painting teacher just informed us today that next Wednesday we would be ending class early to head down across the Arno near Piazza Pitti to this art lecture and screening of a documentary about modern and contemporary artists that is apparently a SUPER big deal - like, the directors of the Uffizi and of the Accademia are going to be there, and only 200 or so people in all of Florence get invited, and we get to go. SO psyched. And, that means that I won't be home in time for dinner so I'll get to have a classy evening at one of the great wine/aperitivo bars along the Arno with some of my non-homestay friends. Sa-weet.

And speaking of the Accademia... I got to see the the David today. In the flesh… or marble? Whatever. In Mikey B's hands it’s the same damn thing. And in David’s hands… I am putty.

Sorry for such a schitzo entry but long story short, things are great. I miss you guys, give me an update on your lives and let me know that SOMEONE is reading this thing other than my mother. kthanks.... ciao!!