The Calm Before the Storm

 Well, there's not a whole lot going on. Oktoberfest is on the horizon, which I could not be more excited about. A group of about 15 of us total are headed there, leaving via bus on Thursday night at 11:30, and arriving early Friday morning in Munich. We're staying at this gigantic campsite right outside of Munich, and there are shuttles that run throughout the day between Oktoberfest and the campsite. It should be a great time. Honestly going to beer heaven for a weekend, plus it's pretty cool that a lot of kids from the villa are going as well. Strength in numbers and all.

Anyways, with Oktoberfest on the horizon, I've mainly been doing homework and what not this week to get everything out of the way for the weekend. Which I should now probably run down my classes since I haven't done that yet
1) Western Europe in the High Middle Ages: Pretty easy so far, no homework or reading for it yet. Also, pretty interesting. Our professor is this 70 year old man who teaches at Duke and has a strong German accent. But he's awesome, possibly my favorite professor I've had to date

2) European Societies: This class is really interesting too, and also not very tough. It's primarily about the creation of the European Union, how it came to be, and how it works. This is something I know next to nothing about, so it's been really interesting so far.

3) Italian 3rd Semester: Yikes. Definitely should not be in this class, as I haven't taken Italian in over a year. There's only 3 kids in it too which makes it even worse. BUT, I'm taking it pass/fail so it's not really an issue. Plus, I'm already getting a lot of my Italian back.

4) Finally, Florentine Renaissance Art: This is basically an art history class about all the Renaissance artists in Florence. Like Michaelangelo, Donatello, Da Vinci, Boticelli, Ghiberti, etc. The best part about this class is that once a week we get to go into/around Florence to tour museams and churches and what not. Our first visit was to this basicalla and then to Santa Maria Novella, which I think I already talked about. But this past week we went to the Museo Dell'Opera Del Duomo, which is right behind the Duomo. The cool thing about this place is that it houses many of the original works of art and sculptures that were placed on the Duomo facade. There were a lot of Donatello's in this Museum as well. The biggest let down though is that Ghiberti's famous "gates of paradise"/ his bronze doors that were placed on the Baptistry, were under rennovation so we did not get to see them. There was also a lot of old models of designs for the dome and for the facade. Also, they had original pulleys and levers and what not that were used to create the Duomo on display as well. The coolest thing there was probably Donatello's last work "Magdalene Penitent", depicting Mary Magdalene. The craziest thing is that he carved this thing out of a tree trunk. To get that kind of figure and detail from a tree trunk boggles my mind. Here's a picture of the Mary Magdalene. The other is of Michaelangelo's La Pieta. The face of the hooded figure is supposed to be his own. He was a senior citizen when he carved this bad boy out of marble. Absurd.

We also went inside the Duomo, my first time inside there. It was free to go in so that was pretty cool. The inside of the church is pretty basic. It's gigantic, and the floors are really decorative like the other churches we've been to so far. The most amazing part was easily the painted ceiling of the dome itself. It was unbelieveable. I guess it was painted in just about a week, since it had to be done quickly before the plaster or whatever dried. I'll put up a picture of the dome but it doesn't come close to doing this thing justice. You're just going to have to go see it for yourself.

Not a very good image, but a portion of the painted dome

The last thing that I wanted to talk about quick was going to the Uffizi last night, the largest art gallery in Florence. This places houses Da Vinci's, Boticelli's, etc. including Da Vinci's "annunciation" as well as Boticelli's "Primavera" and "The Birth of Venus". It was great because a group of us went after dinner, since the Uffizi is open until 10 on Tuesdays in September. Apparently no one else in Italy knows about this because we were basically the only ones there. For a place that usually has one to two hour lines for entry, it was great. To get a chance to be that close up and intimate to priceless works of art was definitely undescribable. I got a chance to just sit uninterrupted infront of the birth of venus and primavera, it was really cool. I'm not really a huge art guy, but I was blown away by some of these frescos and paintings. These people had some chops back in the day. You should look up those paintings if you don't know what I'm talking about. I'll definitely be going back on some solo missions to the Uffizi once tourist season dies down.

FINALLY, for real this time... STEPH IS FOR SURE COMING TO ITALY!!! I'm very happy about this. She gets here on Thursday October 7th and doesn't leave until late afternoon Tuesday October 12th. We are chilling in Florence on Thursday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. BUT, on Friday and Saturday and during the day Sunday we will be at Cinque Terre. Quite excited