|
Europe 2007 2008 Monday, December 3, 2007 Many Europeans greet each other by kissing on the cheeks. A few years ago, on another trip in Poland, I saw gentlemen greet ladies by kissing their hands. It was almost like seeing a movie from the 1940’s. However, without a doubt, the Italians are the most hugging and kissing people I have ever seen. It’s actually quite nice to see how affectionate they are with one another. In Italy, people kiss and hug a lot; they kiss and hug on trains, busses and in the streets. Like in other countries, Italians often walk arm in arm or holding hands too. They just seem to really enjoy touching and closeness.  Venice
is much cleaner than the cities I visited in the south. In Venice, it is a
serious crime to throw trash into a canal. The signs say fines range up to
500 Euros, about $750. There are even signs that warn people to clean up
after their dogs, and for the first time in Italy, I have encountered very
few dog-deposited land mines walking along the streets. However, the most
amazing thing is that Venetians seem to use public recycling containers, and
unlike the southern cities, there are no piles of trash anywhere that I have
been in Venice.Today I visited, the Galleria dell’Accademia and the island of Murano. The gallery contains a large collection of paintings by Venetian artists from the 13th to the 16th century. I have gotten into the habit of renting audio guides whenever possible, and the explanations of the paintings were invaluable. I never studied art seriously, and like so many subjects, there is just too much for any one person to learn everything. Art historians are specialists. So having an expert explain this particular group of Venetian paintings made for a much better learning experience. Here’s just one example: In one of the great rooms in the gallery there were nine large canvases. Each canvas could cover an entire large wall. The nine paintings told a story, but if I did not have the audio guide, I would not have known what I was looking at. Each of the nine paintings has multiple scenes that in context take the viewer though the tale. The story is about an English nobleman who wishes to marry a Venetian noble lady. In an early scene, messengers have come with the marriage proposal. With great pomp, it is accepted, and officials are shown at the signing ceremony. However, the condition set forth by the Venetians requires the Englishman to convert to Catholicism. He agrees, and departs in large British merchant ships for Italy, where the Pope performs the ceremony and weds the couple. In another canvas, the noble lady, Ursula, is shown having a dream that some something bad will happen. However, ignoring the omen, the wedding party departs in their ships and land in Cologne. There they are attacked by Huns, and the newly weds are killed; the last canvas has the scene entering heaven. Actually, I have left quite a bit out of the complete story, but I think you get the idea. It would simply have been impossible to understand what I was looking at without the audio guide explanation.  In
the afternoon, I headed to the island of Murano, where world-famous Venetian
glass is manufactured. There are hundreds of shops selling glass items; the
array of colors and objects is extraordinary. I met an American who bought a
large ruby-red glass chandelier. I asked him if he was going to furnish his
room in the classical Venetian style to match his new purchase; he did not
quite understand what I meant, so I told him to go look at the restaurants
near the Rialto bridge. At one time, I was told, artisans would be put to
death if they tried to leave the island of Murano. The secret to Venetian
glass making techniques was too important to share.In Italy, stores open at odd times. Most stores are not open during what we Americans would call normal business hours. Almost all the stores and shops open in the late evening, around 4:00 p.m. and stay open until perhaps 9:00 p.m. or later. Some stores are open during the morning hours, but not many, and almost everything is closed during the middle of the day. Restaurants and Cafes have their own special routine. Cafes are open during most of the day, but close in the early evening; while restaurants don’t even open until around 7:30 p.m. or later.  The
odd thing to me is that stores do not have signs or advertisements. In fact,
most stores are shuttered during the day, so walking down the street all you
see are closed doors and large wood or metal-shutters on buildings. There is
no indication that a shop that selling shoes, or clothes or anything else is
even there; it’s like everything is hidden until the magic hour at night
when they spring to life by opening the shutters and turning on the lights.
Even the small hotels and guesthouses have no signs. You must look at the
buzzers near the doors of buildings to find a written name of the hotel.
Then you press the buzzer, they open the door, and you walk up to the proper
floor where amazingly, everything is quite normal. On the outside,
everything was essentially hidden, but on the inside, everything is fully
exposed. Even museums have few or no signs; you have to find the entrance
door, and actually go into the foyer to know if you have arrived at the
correct place.Thursday, December 6, 2007 Sadly, I left Venezia yesterday to continue on my journey; like many of the other places that I have visited, I just skimmed the surface of Venezia, and I could have stayed twice as long without seeing everything. However, it was time to move on, and I took the train to Bologna. The difference between southern and northern Italy is striking to me, and the train is a good example. In the south, I found the trains shabby at best; the stations lacked signs, and the timetables were just approximations that are never taken seriously. However, the train from Venezia to Bologna was modern, clean, and on time. It’s like being in two countries that speak the same language, but have a great cultural divide. Getting to Bologna in the afternoon left time to find a place to stay before going into the old part of the city to look around. Bologna, a major university town has many old red brick buildings in the old part of the city, many belong to the university. The former Jewish ghetto is also in the old part of town, but there is not much left to see. Interestingly, the synagogue is on Via della Inferno, “the street of hell.” The real reason I came to Bologna was to take a side trip to Modena and Maranello. Modena is the source of traditional authentic Italian balsamic vinegar, the best of which is aged for years in oak barrels, like wine. This traditional balsamic vinegar made directly from sweet grapes tastes nothing like what we use for salads back home. This vinegar used sparingly on all kinds of dishes adds a flavor that is intense, almost sweet, but hard to describe. Maranello is the home of a small Italian car company called Ferrari. They offer guided tours, and although I do not expect to ever own a Ferrari; however, they are great to look at and admire. On my travels in Europe over the years, I have visited, in Germany, the Volkswagen museum, the Porsche museum, and the Mercedes museum. Now I’ve seen the Ferrari museum too. When I get back to the United States, I am going to have to visit the Ford museum in Michigan. Ferrari is special, of course, having won thirty Formula One world titles since 1952, and now, the current 2007 world champion. The museum even has a couple of Formula One cars that have been modified as simulators that people can “drive.” It’s just like playing a video game, but you sit in a real Formula One Ferrari. Friday, December 7, 2007 - Remembering “A Day that Will Live in Infamy” Visiting Pearl Harbor last year, and driving, almost daily, down the valley past Schoefield Army Airfield from our camp on the north end of Hawaii, provided a great insight into the Japanese attack in 1941. The initial Japanese air attack came right down the valley to take out the American aircraft at Schoefield. Only five American fighter aircraft took off. I met a man whose father was a medical officer during the war and lived through the attack. He told me stories of a friend of his father, also a medical officer, who arrived at Hickham Field on flight of B-17’s from California. The man died and the clinic at Hickham is named for him. The stories of the attack from a personal viewpoint are ones that I will never forget. This morning, I left Bologna and headed to Firenze (Florence). The train trip took about somewhat over an hour. Having printed out a map and directions to a hotel helped greatly as Firenze train station seemed crowded with tourists and there was a long line at the tourist office where I usually pick up local maps and information. I checked into a hotel close to the train station in an area where there must be a hundred hotels. My plan is to use Firenze as a base to explore more of Tuscany.  So
after settling into my room, I left for my orientation walk about town.
There seem to be quite a few tourists milling around probably for the
Christmas season. Along my walk, I came across another Chanukah Menorah set
up in a local park with four of the lights on. I walked over to the
cathedral, a jaw dropping structure of multicolored marble, and I peeked
inside. It took one hundred and fifty years to complete the construction of
the cathedral. The building has an immense red-brown tiled dome, and
standing next to the cathedral is the bell tower, also of immense
proportions. Directly in front of the cathedral is the baptistery, an
octagonal building with huge embossed gold colored doors called the doors of
paradise. The marble that on all three buildings, the cathedral, the tower,
and the baptistery, is incredibly colorful. They used red, white, green,
gray and other exotic colored marble for the columns, and the exterior
walls. The marble texture includes veining and patterns giving the structure
an unbelievable glow in the sun.After admiring and photographing the cathedral, I then made my way to the Galleria dell Accademia, the home of Michelangelo’s statue of David. Each year, more than one and a half million people come to see this incredible sculpture. David is more than five hundred years old, and for many years had stood outdoors. The galleria shows David in a large alcove especially designed for the purpose about two hundred years ago. Michelangelo found the marble block abandoned in a churchyard; two other sculptors had tried to carve a monumental figure, but gave up. Michelangelo was twenty-nine when he completed David. To many, David is the finest sculpture in the world, and I relished seeing the work up close. A group from the University of California created a three-dimensional computer model of the statue, and I had an opportunity to examine the model of the statue using the computer and monitor in the museum. The computer model allows you to rotate the image and change the angle of light and shadow on images of either the entire statue of David or various parts of the statue, like the head, the arm, and the hand. You can see the lifelike veins in back of David’s hand and of course you can see the muscles of his arms and the skeletal outlines of his ribs and other bones in the body clearly. David is realistically carved in the style developed by the ancient Greeks twenty-five hundred years ago. Firenze has several full size statues of David. Michelangelo’s original David is in the galleria, but another marble copy is in the Piazza Vecchio where the original once stood, and a bronze version is on the south side of the river Arno high up the hill overlooking the city. Every souvenir shop in town has multiple size versions of David for sale; in the galleria’s shop, a bronze statue of David, two feet tall, had a price tag of a thousand euros (about fifteen hundred dollars). The galleria had other works by Michelangelo and by many other famous artists from Firenze. I enjoyed the display of Russian icons: it’s the largest collection outside Russia. I also liked the display of rare musical instruments, including a Stradivarius violin, and many instruments carved from marble and decorated with precious materials. Evidently the Medici enjoyed both the visual and the audible arts. Saturday, December 8, 2007  Early,
I walked past the cathedral on my way to the great Uffizi Gallery, and
despite getting to the Uffizi before it opened in the morning, I still had
to wait about thirty minutes on line. In the summer the wait can be half a
day if you do not buy an advance reservation. This is a museum! However, it
does have an incredible large and famous collection of painting and
sculpture in a palatial setting. I rented an audio guide and spent about
five hours walking from room to room, and gaping at one work of art after
another. Both the Uffizi and the Accademia have entrance metal detectors.
Security is very tight in both places; they have guards in every room.
However, with so many visitors each year, I guess they have to be watchful
to protect the art treasures. After leaving the Uffizi, I bought a sandwich for lunch; it was a simple sandwich of sliced tomato, roasted eggplant and melted mozzarella on large Panini roll, but the sandwich tasted very good. Then I walked past the Ponte Vecchio, a pedestrian bridge over the Arno river. There were crowds of tourists on the bridge jostling each other to look at the shops that line both sides of the roadway. I headed for a less congested bridge further down the river, and walked across to the south side and then up the hill to the San Miniato church for a spectacular view of the city in the late afternoon sun. On my walk, I met several groups of American college students who are studying in Florence. The American students are easy to spot; I hear them speaking English, and as students, they usually travel in groups of three or more. I always try to stop and talk to them and to find out where they are from, and what they are studying. Most are just completing general college course requirements, but a few are actually working on a subject in their major like art, architecture, language, or history. Sunday, December 9, 2007 I spent most of the day in the large Medici palace, Palazzo Pitti. Like the Uffizi, the Pitti has an unbelievable amount of things to see. Each of the royal rooms is decorated in a different style or color, and unlike many other palaces, the original furnishings still survive. The Pitti has several different museums and galleries in different wings of the building or on different floors. The so-called modern art collection contains works from the 17th and 18th century; earlier art and family portraits of the Medici are in the royal rooms. Another section contains fancy dress clothing and personal objects, and a place called the Argiento has beautiful small objects of art, like jewelry and pillboxes. Scattered throughout the museums are religious objects in silver, gold, ivory, and rare wood. Despite the drizzly weather, I walked through the garden behind the palace up to the collection of porcelain in a building about half a mile up the hill. The formal style of the garden contains statuary and pools covering great expanses of green space and formal paths, but the garden also has some wooded areas on each side. The porcelain exhibit contained some interesting objects made from seashells and quartz crystals and pewter. Almost all of these objects had heads and unusual faces imbedded in the other materials. The display cases had extraordinary porcelain made by Sevres of France, Italian Neapolitan, and Meissen of Germany. The Medici’s were wealthy. I walked back to my hotel along a street called the Via de Tornabuoni, an upscale shopping street in Florence. Fancy stores lined the street for several blocks; they included Cartier, Vernace, Gucci, Tiffany, and many other very pricey boutiques. Coming back down from the area of stratospheric prices, I passed two McDonald restaurants. One of the McDonald restaurants had a section they called the McCafe that served coffee, tea and Italian pastries. Italy has made coffee an art form, and although we have Starbucks back home, in Italy, every little café offers essentially everything available in Starbucks and more. The standard Italian drink is an espresso standing at the bar. Food and drinks at a table are double the price. In Greece and Turkey the standard drink is also coffee in a small cup, but it is not espresso. Greek and Turkish coffee is made by cooking the coffee grind in water, and pouring the strong coffee into the cup. In Greece the grind is coarser and the coffee is filtered, but it is still very strong. In Turkey, the grind is very fine, and there’s always a mud like paste at the bottom of the cup. In all three countries, people put a teaspoon of sugar in the cup too. The coffee is sweet, but extremely strong. Philip Sternberg Scoutmaster, Troop 1131 |