Steph is coming to visit!

Hi. Steph is coming to visit this weekend! She should be here in a matter of hours, so I'm quite excited. However, this means there will not be a post until Tuesday or perhaps later. Just a heads up. I'll update this thing then.

Pictures from Venice

Gondolas Everywhere

Venice from the main bridge

Venice in a nutshell

The square at night

Part of the ceiling in St. Mark's. Ridiculous

St. Mark's square, with the basilica itself in the back

Close up of one of the mosaics. St. Matthew.

Venice Was Cool Beans

Blogspot is being beyond frustrating right now. It isn't letting me upload pictures, so I'll try again tomorrow and just have a post of Venice pictures. So this post is going to be all text, my apologies. This weekend we had a program-wide trip to Venice, which was something I was looking forward to ever since arriving in Italy. And I definitely was not disappointed. Venice was probably the most unique and overall best city I have ever been to. I'm very glad that I'll get the chance to go back there with my parents when they come to visit in November. We departed the Villa at about 7:30 Sunday morning, and headed off on a bus to Venice. And about 3 hours later we arrived.

The very first thing we got to do was to take a private boat tour through the main "canal" of Venice. Venice is actually just bunch islands with a whole mess of canals running through it, and one main canal that is shaped like an S that weaves through the main island of Venice. Somewhat confusing, but it was really cool to see canals and boats roaming around everywhere as opposed to cars, buses, mopeds, etc. I didn't see a single car the entire time that I was there, which was really weird. There's a lot of these little narrow side streets and alleyways all over the place, and everything was really jammed together, which was pretty cool as well. But the first stop on our private boat tour was the island of Murano. Murano is extremely famous for producing the highest quality glass in the world, and the island was basically nothing but glass factories and glass shops. Some of the stuff in these stores were absolutely ridiculous. We got to see a demonstration of glass blowing / the whole process as well so that was pretty neat. I guess it's basically a family tradition type deal, which made it even neater. So that was Murano, a whole lot of glass.

After Murano, the boat tour continued. It was really nice to get to see Venice from that perspective, and just seeing all the buildings built right alongside the water and canals. After driving around, the boat docked right by our hotel, where we stayed Friday night. The hotel was pretty nice. Kind of small rooms, but it had a courtyard a lot of us chilled in late Friday night which was nice. From the hotel, we walked over to the main piazza of Venice, St. Mark's Square. I'll have a picture of this that I'll put up once this site gets it's act together. But it was a huge square, lined with shops, these really cool buildings that used to be used for administrative purposes, and of course the church of San Marco. And Pigeons. There were so many pigeons all over Venice, it was pretty ridiculous. 

We had some time to chill in the square for a bit, but then we got to go on a tour of the Ducal Palace, where all the politicians, governors, and politics in general took place in Venice. It was a really cool building, built right by San Marco. A ton of political frescos, and a bunch of different rooms. Almost all of the ceilings were made out of / had some type of gold in them, so that was really cool to see. There was also this gigantic room, probably larger than a football field, that held the entire Venetian Parliament, which I believe was made up of a couple thousand men, so that was pretty neat to get to see. After the tour of this palace, we had some free time. Some buddies and myself just wandered around the streets of Venice, and tried to get away from all the tourists. BTW, way more tourists in Venice than any other city I've been in. But anyway, we walked along some streets, stopped in some shops, nothing too exciting. Just really cool to get a chance to experience some parts of Venice I feel like I normally wouldn't have.

One quick note, the food in Venice was nothing special. All the meals we had weren't that great. We were all very anxious to get back to the Villa and enjoy a meal prepared for us by Bruno on Saturday night. Pretty funny how spoiled we all are with food now.

Also, another side note, gondolas are great. I didn't actually go on a gondola ride because they're hella spendy, but they are everywhere and look really cool. I have a picture of them as well that I'll put up. Super stereotypical as well. The drivers all wore striped shirts and those hats, pretty much exactly what you imagine / see in movies or whatever.

The best part of the entire trip was easily a private visit to San Marco Basilica at night. It was honestly just our program in this tour. The brought us into the Basilica in the dark, then slowly turned the lights on the reveal this place. It was unbelievable. There are very few times in my life where I've been speachless but this was definitely one of them. The Venetians were heavily influenced by the Byzantines, and absorbed a lot of Byzantine culture. So the entire ceiling of this place is gold mosaics of various biblical scenes and figures. It was probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I'll have pictures of this as well, because I can't even begin to describe it. We also got to go up on the altar / behind the altar which was neat. There was this altar piece made out of gold that had thousands of precious stones in it, which was really cool. AND, we saw the tomb of St. Mark himself, and got the chance to go into the Basilica's catacombs. It was far and away the best part of the trip.

Saturday morning the weather was finally nice, and some of the group including myself went to Venice's main art museum. It was pretty neat, a lot of Titian's and Bellini's and such. Venetian painters were a lot different than Florentine painters, just in the way that they use colors and such, so it was nice to get a chance to see different styles than what we've seen in Florence thus far. The rest of Saturday was basically devoted to wandering around Venice. And again, we didn't do a whole lot. We got some food, walked around the heart of the city, and took the time to walk down some side streets and such. It was nice to have all that free time just to be able to get out and walk around Venice and see things that I normally wouldn't get the chance to. Then around 4 in the afternoon we hopped back on a boat that took us to our bus, and headed back to Sesto. That about sums up the Venice trip. It was a great time and I'm very anxious to get back there. One of the most interesting and unique places I have ever been. I'll try to get these pictures up as soon as possible.

Villa Chillin

Hi. Not much has been happening since I last posted, I just didn't want it to be a week before I threw something else up here. Just been finishing up hw for the week, the minimal amount that there is, and lounging around the villa. This weekend, however, we are going to Venice. We leave super early Friday morning, and come back to have a dinner at the Villa on Saturday night, so it's an overnight adventure. Should be a good time, I'll write a real post about Venice once I actually get back from it. Then I'll have to spend that week up until thursday working ahead on HW and such because STEPH COMES A WEEK FROM TODAY! Very excited.

Beer Heaven

Group of Wisco kids on Saturday Morning at the Hacker Tent

 I honestly don't even know where to begin. This was the most ridiculous weekend of my life, hands down. It was a ton of fun too. If you have the means or opportunity to go to Oktoberfest, in Munich, take it. A group of about 15 of us from the villa left on a coach bus to go to Oktoberfest at 11:30 PM on Thursday, and we arrived at about 9:30 AM. The ride there was pretty cool just because we drove through the Bavarian and Italian Alps. We could see all the little houses and cities lit up at night, which was sweet. However, I didn't sleep for more than probably a half hour tops. So that blew. Then, we arrived at the campsite we were staying it. It was pretty legit. The tents they gave us kept us dry, and they fed us breakfast every morning. Also, there was basically free brew on site as well. It honestly reminded me of camping in Wisconsin or Minnesota. Germany = the midwest is what I learned from this trip. So there's the description of the campsite. So we left for Oktoberfest at about noon on Friday, and the first tent we went to was the Paulner tent. Here is a picture of the Paulner tent

This picture doesn't really do the place justice. It was gigantic, and so many people were geared up in their Bavarian outfits and Lederhosen. It was awesome just being a part of that atmosphere. Everyone was so happy to be there, and just looking to have a good time. The way the place was decorated was awesome. The outside of Oktoberfest wasn't anything special, just a long street with food vendors and the outsides of the tents, which looked just like normal buildings. There were also a ton of beer gardens on the outside of the main tents as well. But the insides were phenominal. Just tables everywhere, bands playing German tunes, people singing and dancing, cheering and what not. It was unbelivable. And the Beer.... good lord was the beer amazing. It might have been brewed by the Gods themselves. Easily the best tasting beer I have ever had in my life. I think I said on numerous occasions while enjoying it that I was the happiest man alive. Here is a photo of the fantastic brew. I honestly can't describe to you how good it was. Here's another photo of some of us at the first tent

Amazing

So that was basically day number one, the only day with nice weather. I was dead tired from the drive up there / spending the day at Oktoberfest, that I went to bed at 7 PM that night. I slept through a whole mess of rain and a hail storm which was nice, thank goodness for those sturdy tents. So the next day we all woke up at 6:30 in order to get into a tent in Munich. Apparently the tents fill up very quickly on Saturday's, and they don't let people in after a certain amount of time. We get into the Hacker tent, shown above, at about 7:30 AM and the place was PACKED already. It was easily the best part of Oktoberfest though. Everyone started chanting for beer and it was served at around 9 AM. Highlights of the Hacker tent to speed this whole post up. It was definitely the best tent we went into.

Me and a buddy with one of the Beer Maidens

1) Being the only Americans in the tent, no joke
2) Cheering and singing songs with the Germans around us
3) Singing Varsity with the Wisco kids
4) The gigantic pretzels
5) The beer maidens. They could carry an unbelievable amount of beer at one time, and always seemed to show up at your table at just the right moment
6) The whole atmosphere. Everyone was dressed up and chanting, cheering, having a blast, etc.
7) My pretzel stash, nibblinz just like back at home
8) PROST!!!

We got kicked out of that tent though at 12:30 because it was reserved. A lot of the tents were like that, so me and a couple buddies wandered around for a while trying to find A) some place to sit and hang out and B) some place to get a rotisserie chicken. That was easily the best chicken I've ever had and we were honestly on a quest searching for hours to find a place that had room for us to sit down and order one. We finally came to this outside beer garden and sat at a table with these Australian girls. There was also some Englishmen and Americans at tables near us too. So we all just kind of talked and played different kinds of drinking games, which was a lot of fun. One of the best parts of Oktoberfest was just meeting different people from different countries and hanging out with them. It was pretty neat. 

So that was pretty much Saturday. At this point I have no more pictures because I gave my camera to a member of our program for safe keeping. A great choice. Anyways, we got up on Sunday and decided to go to the concentration camp at Dachau. This was a complete 180 from Oktoberfest, but I'm so glad that we did it. It was crazy that such a place existed basically right in the midst of a city / near such a large city as Munich and that hardly anyone knew what was going on. Dachau was one of the first camps, and imprisoned over 500,000 people. More than 40,000 died there. It was an extremely chilling and sobering experience to go there, to see the barracks, the prisoner's quarters, the grounds, the fences, as well as the crematorium and the gas chambers. It really made you think a lot about how the hell something like that could have ever even happened. I think it was a really good thing to get a chance to see though. It really makes the whole holocaust deal that much more real, actually seeing and walking on the place where thousands of people were murdered. If you get the chance, I definitely think you should go visit one at some point in your lifetime. But after Dachau we all went home, got on the bus, drove through the Alps which was beyond beautiful, saw all these little mountain towns on the way, and finally got home.

It was quite the weekend

The Whole Crew

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

No Thank You, Pisa

On Friday a group of us went to Pisa. It was terrible. Easily the worst experience I've had in Italy thus far. We get to Pisa just fine, about a 1.5 hour train ride from where we were at, and from then on everything went south. We were all jonesing for some pizza, so we head towards this random restaurant on the street that is clearly marked as a "pizzeria". Right before we walked into the place, these people told us not to go in there, and that the food was bad. We should have listened, but at that point it was 2 or so and we hadn't eaten all day so we just went for it. The food was so bad. And expensive. AND, despite being called a pizzeria, they did not have any pizza available at the time. So we each ended up paying about 15, 20 euro for an awful dish of pasta. Honestly worse than what I make for myself back in Madison. So we're all grouchy because of that experience, then it starts to rain. Pow.

The Classic Tower Pic

That just made matters worse, so now we're wandering around Pisa in the rain trying to find this tower and what not. First off, for how famous it is they make it difficult to find. It was really far from the train station, and there wasn't too many directions posted on how to get there. Second off, Pisa is kind of ghetto. It was pretty run down and somewhat sketchy. Thirdly, the tower isn't even that great. It's not really tall or anything, and it leans a lot less than you'd expect it to. So that was a let down as well. Pretty much just everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. To top off the visit, one of my buddies forgot his ipod on the train, and when he went back to the platform to look for it, he saw it in the window of the train as the train was pulling out of the station. Pretty tragic. But that was our day at Pisa. I would not recommend wasting your time there. Literally all there is to do is to take your picture at the tower.

Some of the crew at the tower

Saturday, however, made up for Pisa. There are all these hills / mountains everywhere in Tuscany. And there's some right by where we're staying in Sesto. So four of us decided to go hike around in these mountains during the day. It was a ton of fun. It was a pretty steep hike, but we found some really cool places, and got some unreal views of Florence and Sesto from up in the mountains. We hiked up to this really nice Villa in the mountain, as well as to this church that was supposedly build around the year 1,000. So that was neat just to see something that old in such a random place. The trees are really different here from back home, so that was kind of cool to see, and there was a ton of olive trees all over the place during this hike. Definitely is something that I'll be doing frequently now that I know how to get there / get up there and all. After that a group of us guys went into Florence for dinner at this place called Dante's. It's a good spot, and they also give students free wine. The wine isn't that good, but it's free, so there ya go. Then we wandered around looking for a place to just chill for a little bit, and we came across this Irish pub. So we were there for a while, then called it a night. AND, for lunch on saturday, we went to this small cafe in Sesto right by our Villa, and had possibly the best meal I've had since being here. The food is really good there, and everything is only 4.50, which makes it even better. So to sum up this post. Friday = Awful, Saturday = a lot of fun. Other than Dante's, I haven't gone anywhere twice yet, which is really nice. Trying a ton of different restaurants and bars. Now it's nothing but homework and relaxing this week in preparation for OKTOBERFEST IN MUNICH all weekend next weekned. Needless to say I'm very excited. I'll do another post tomorrow or Tuesday before I head out for the weekend talking about classes so far and what not.

This picture is one of the many views we had on our hike. Pictures really don't do this place justice. You can actually see our Villa. It's in kind of the middle of the picture, off to the left just a tad. It's the building kind of surrounded by trees, right in front of all the other buildings of Sesto.