Milan's Liberation

The next day in Milan, the sun was shining and it was a glorious relief compared to the downpour of the night before. We set off for the center of town to where Il Duomo is and notices along the way that many shops and places were closed, but we figured it was because it was early.

  The duomo of Milano is gorgeous. It's one of the most important examples of Gothic architecture in Europe (at least that's what our guide book said, although it was in Portuguese because we borrowed it from the shared bookshelf at the PGC, so some of the words we had to guess). It has a ton of gargoyles and flying buttresses. We climbed 250 stairs to get to the roof, and you could see the entire city. This was the best part of the day relaxing in the sun sitting on the roof of the duomo

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 There was a sign at the top which I didn't understand, see if you can decipher it's meaning. If it leads to a treasure of statues, please remember who pointed you in the right direction when you're splitting the reward:

Afterward we walked to the Novecento(900) Museum which houses Italian are from the 20th Century. Lots of Futurism in there, but they also have an amazing neon sculpture by Fontana, 3 rooms of Marino Marini, and some interactive optical art. All for only 3euros!

When we finished wander through 900 we decided to find the restaurant that a fellow intern recommended but it was closed. So we looked for a cafe she also pointed out and it too was closed. So we found cheap panini and wandered around. All the stores we wanted to go into were closed. It turned out to be the Festa della Liberazione and most places were closed for the holiday. Not very convenient when you're only in a city for a day. 

Luckily, PAC was open and it had an exhibition of Marina Abramavic called The Abramovic Method. For about 33.45 seconds we thought she was actually going to be in the exhibition because of what she did in MoMA. But then we realized she invited spectators to be a part of it instead. She's a performance artist and her work is all about challenges: physical pain, endurance, disturbances. A few years ago she realized the mind controls the body so she should challenge her mind instead and so she comes up with these scenarios that involve concentration and meditation. The participants had to sit, stand, and lay down for 30 minutes in each position on different chairs, stands, and tables made of wood with crystal rocks, magnets, and copper in different positions. Then the viewers observed them in person and more closely through binoculars. Do you think you could do this?

We spent the rest of the day relaxing on the grass in a medieval castle. I love that in Italy,  with just a couple of steps or bus rides, you can experience 4 different centuries. 

Milano is No Cookie

This month the big trip we took on the Tuesday we all have off was to Vercelli to see the exhibition of Mondrian, Miro, and Calder that has most of Peggy's art works of those men in it. There were so many of us who signed up to go that instead of taking a train they rented a coach bus. It turns out Vercelli is West of Milan so it took us 5 hours by bus to get there. Mind you this was a day trip, and a tour of the exhibition only took and hour. Also, Vercelli is a run down little town with nothing much going for it. The bus driver got a little turned around when we first arrived and we ended up near some abandoned factories with brick walls and a gate that looked like the entrance to Auschwitz. That does not inspire much fun in a day trip.

So, instead of getting back on the coach bus for another thrilling 5 hours back to Venice, a few of us decided to take the train to Milano. One of the interns is from Milano so she gave us a map and a list of places to see and where to eat. When we got there it was pouring rain and the directions to our hostel were less than helpful. We ended up asking about 5 different people, 2 of whom were policemen, how to find the bus line that ran to the street we needed. Finally the last person gave us detailed directions and we eventually found the hostel. Along the way my friend realized he forgot his passport, so all we could do was hope the hostel was nice enough to let us stay. The conversation with the front desk man is as follows:

Front desk man: I need all your passports
Friend: (Pretending to scour his bag) I can't find it, I think it was stolen.
FDM: Do you have any form of ID?
Friend: No.
FDM: You cannot not stay here without it.
Friend: I have a credit card with my name on it. (Shows the card)
FDM: Do you have anything with a picture on it?
Friend. No, but I can show you my facebook.

This worked. Got to love hostels. We dropped off our stuff and found a bus to the area called Navigli where there are supposed to be a ton of apertivo places where you pay about 9euro for your drinks but all you can eat buffet. That is not what we found. I don't know where we ended up but there were about 2 bars and pizza place. We picked the pizza place and it was a bad choice.

We finally ended back at the hostel at 1am, where there was a new Front Desk Guy waiting for us. He told us that he called the police and that our friend couldn't stay without an ID, and we would have to go to the police station to fill out a theft report. This is not the kind of thing you want to come back to after overpaying for bad pizza and waiting for a bus for 45 minutes...eventually we got him to relent. Next time we'll just have to stay at the Four Seasons.

Taglio di capelli

Mi sono fatto un tagliare i capelli e mi piace tanto. Che pensate?

I was worried about getting it cut because I do not have access to all my sculpting tools. The salon is called "Hair Luka La Fenice" (Hair Luka The Phoenix), so I was immediately put to ease, with a name like that how bad could the cut be? What helped more was that another intern got a haircut at the same place and had a wonderful experience. The best part was it's about 3 min walk from my apartment on Fondamenta Misericordia, so all I had to do was roll out of bed and walk over.

Things you may want to know before getting a haircut in Italy:
1: Agree on the price ahead of time
2: Go in with basic knowledge of the words for the length and shape you want
2.5: Have a basic knowledge of how to explain why you want such an extreme cut, and that, no, you don't think you have beautiful hair, and, yes, you are sure you want it all gone because its dry, dead, and a pain to deal with. Please stop trying to talk me out of this.
3: Italians neither tip nor expect a tip
4: Buckle up it's going to be a long ride (1 hour 45 minutes)

Aqua Alta

For some perspective: the water usually only comes up to the first step.

Every year Venice is sinking. To add to that there is a season called Aqua Alta (High Water) when the tides in the lagoon rise (there are a number of different reasons that cause this such as melting snow on nearby mountains, I'll allow you to look up the other reasons yourself). During Aqua Alta, (October-December, and April apparently) the lowest parts of the city are covered in water and all of the city is covered depending on how severe the level gets. San Marco is the lowest point in the city which is why it always floods first.

Sorry this is blurry, I need a better camera, but here is San Marco flooded.

Tonight there was Aqua Alta. The city is warned of it, first on the internet and through the weather forecast, but then traditionally 2 hours before the highest level a loud alarm sounds over the city. It sounds as if there is about to be an air raid, in fact I would not be surprised if the alarm dates back to the war, when air raids were popular.

Even the shops flood.

Nevertheless, the city continues functioning and in the low parts of the city planks are set into place and become temporary walkways. This night was Aqua Alta and we decided to go through San Marco on our way to meet friends in Castello for drinks. This was a mistake. Not because it wasn't beautiful. It was gorgeous with the lights reflecting off the water as it literally bubbled up from between the stones in the piazza. It honestly felt as if we were sinking. No, it was a mistake because the planks are only put out in the touristy area when the water is not extremely high. So after we passed San Marco the water cleared up but just around another turn where we needed to go the water rose up again. 3 of the 4 of us didn't have rain boots. So we had to try a different route, only every 5 minutes we would run into more huge puddles of water blocking our path. What should have taken 20 minutes took 45. This is about the time Aqua Alta stops being beautiful and Venice turns into a weird video game where you cannot forge the water or you'll die so everyone loses. At least that's how my brain spent the night, thinking it was trapped in a twisted version of Frogger.

This is in front of Tintoretto's house. (which is no where near San Marco)

San Lazzaro

Once a day at 3:10pm there is a boat that leaves from the San Marco area and goes to the little island of San Lazzaro. It is named after the Armenian monastery that encompasses it. The problem with being told "San Marco" is that it's a huge port. There are so many docking stations that one could easily spend upwards of 20 minutes running from one to the next in search of the only boat that goes to San Lazzaro. We barely made it onto the boat, but the running around was worth it just to feel the warm wind in your hair and simultaneously begin to sing the theme to Titanic. (The other passengers were not impressed).

Since there is only one boat per day, there is only one tour per day and it begins at 3:25 exactly. There were 2 guides, one of whom was to speak in both English and French and therefore had around 25 people gathered around him, the other was to speak in Italian with only about 7 people around her. Guess which one we chose. From what I understood, it began as a leper colony in the 1100's (I'll let you know if my skin starts falling off) and was then given to a group of Armenian monks who restored a church and expanded the island. It has become a museum for Armenian culture because the monks were obviously also scholars and published around 4,000 manuscripts and house an entire library of over 100,000 books. They also have rooms and rooms of glass shelves which house various wordly treasures that the monks collected and/or were donated to them, such as ivory pipes, swords, ornate metal crosses, and belts, china, and (my favorite) a mummy!

Lord Byron also randomly studied Armenian there for a year sometime in the early 19th century. So there is even a plaque for him:

At the end of the tour we were lead back to the entrance 5 minutes before the next vaporetto was to go back to San Marco (actually the stop is San Zaccaria #20, if you want to get technical and not run all over the fondamenta). Naturally that was plenty of time to stop in the shop and buy some of their famous rose petal jam. (For the price, there better be some gold in that jam as well). We made the boat just in time and this cutie was rowing toward us:

Titanic

On this day(or tomorrow, no one I ask seems sure because it happened in the night and into the morning, and I should probably just Google it but I don't trust that search machine anymore) exactly one hundred years ago the RMS Titanic crashed into an iceberg and sunk in the Atlantic. You might be familiar with the story.

What you might not know is that Peggy's father, Benjamin Guggenheim was aboard. He was making some poor investments in Europe in the early 20th century, and decided to rush home to New York in order to borrow more money from his brothers, and also make it back in time for his youngest daughter, Hazel's 9th birthday. He should have waited for the next boat.

He is reported to have denied his seat on a life boat (as a first class passenger he had priority) and instead dressed in his best suit and helped women and children into the boats instead, saying "I'm prepared to go down as a gentleman" or something to that effect. Here is James Cameron's version.

Poor little Peggy was only 14 and it was the first in a lifetime of tragedies and disappointments that would shape the history of her involvement with men.

P.s. Did you know that the best ticket one could purchase on the Titanic, cost the equivalent of $75,000 in today's currency. I don't think they got their money's worth.

Buona Pasqua!

There are 30 interns working for the museum this month and only about 6 of them left for Easter weekend. Which left 24 of us to participate in what makes my Easter special (besides the obvious Resurrection, of course), the hunt!

We each pitched in a couple euros and 3 supermarkets later I had 30 eggs, 27 candy bars, and 6 bags of various other candies. A problem arose from the beginning because Italy and generally all of Europe only sells brown eggs. So when we tried to dye them yellow and orange they only turned slightly different shades of brown. Red was the only color that worked. But I think my subconcious is smarter than the average bear because red is the traditional color of dying eggs in Europe.

We hid the eggs in Peggy's sculpture garden and when the intern found his or her name they claimed their prize which was a bag of candy. There was one grand prize egg which said "You win!! You are the eggspert hunter!" the finder of which received a giant chocolate egg.

Other trick eggs designed by the decorators (Faberge was too busy, so it ended up being me a 2 other girls) to deceive the hunter into thinking they found the grand prize egg included phrases such as, "You haven't cracked it!" and "Congrats!! Loser." and my favorite, "This is not an egg."

It was a successful hunt except for the fact that we couldn't find one of the eggs. Hopefully we'll find it in a couple days when an egg tree starts spurting out of the ground.