Semester running out

Hey everybody, it is Monday night right now and our semester is winding down pretty quickly.  Our final review is a week from tomorrow so between now and then I'll mostly be working on getting ready for that.  Luckily all our other classes have ended, which kept everyone busy up until today but will be nice for this last week.  Today we turned in one final project, a short movie about the ghetto neighborhood in Rome.  Drawing class ended last Wednesday, my final project for that was a kid's story called "Viktor and the Statue" about a boy growing up in Rome who gets in trouble by talking to statues.  I wanted to illustrate the book but only had time to do five pages, but I think they turned out well.  There were a lot of good drawing projects and movies in our class, and we got to see everyone's which was really cool.
Tomorrow I'm going to go to a soccer game with some friends.  The match is Roma vs. Milan-International.  I'm looking forward to that a lot.  I might get a Roma shirt before I go.  Hopefully I don't get caught up in a riot.  Supposedly it's not going to be the most crowded game, so I should be safe.  Ok, with that I think I'm about ready for bed.  I should probably go to sleep soon since our building is having maintenance work done on it now and I know I'll be woken up at 7 by jackhammers.  Sweet dreams to everyone in America!

Monday April 4th

Hey, It's Monday the 4th today.  I'm in studio right now getting ready for class to start at two this afternoon. Since my last post a few things have happened.  The first was a concert that took place in our studio last Wednesday.  One of our professors for this semester who specializes in music, Miriam Zach, brought world-class opera soprano Agnes Klauder to sing in our lecture room as part of Miriam's symposium of women composers.  Agnes sang with Miriam accompanying on piano and one of our classmates played violin on a few songs.  Afterwards we were supposed to comment on whether we discerned a difference between the songs composed by men from women.  I couldn't, but the concert was really amazing.
On Thursday we took the final test in our history class, which I think went pretty well.  Afterwards Cory and I brought American rock classics to Piazza dei Santa Maria in Trastevere again, which was fun. Last Friday our class took a trip to Tivoli to see Villa d'Este and Villa Adriana.  Tivoli is a small town east of Rome.  It's about a twenty minute drive between the two towns, but our drive there lasted about an hour and a half due to a public transit strike in Rome.  Eventually we made it out of the city, but it took a little patience.
Villa d'Este is a big mansion with a huge garden out back.  It was built in the 1600's by a cardinal who nearly became pope.  The gardens are famous for their many fountains.  After that we had lunch in Tivoli.  The lunch was covered by the program costs so it was a pretty big meal.  After that we went to Villa Adriana, the old estate that was basically the personal village of the emperor Hadrian.  Hadrian built himself a palace, exercise areas, large and small baths, a theater and piazzas out in the country.  The villa was big enough to require its own fire department.  After Hadrian died the villa fell out of use and into a long period of deterioration, so not much of it stands now in its entirety.  Today it is a beautiful park, perfect for napping off a large lunch, which is what most of us did there.  After Villa Adriana we drove back to Rome.  By that time the strike had ended and the drive was much smoother than on the way out.
On Saturday a group of us went to Sperlonga beach, which is about an hour south of Rome.  It was a bright sunny day, and I did get a sunburn but not too bad.  We played volleyball against some Italians and it was close but they ended up winning.  Sorry, America.  Sunday and the morning today were spent doing homework.  The weather for the last week or so has been really sunny and warm, so hopefully it doesn't change too much from here on out.  Ok, well that brought me a little closer to the start of class.  Best wishes to everyone back in Iowa, ciao!

P.S.-  Congratulations Tim and Sara!  Dad sent me pictures of Kate, she looks great.

 Gardens at Villa d'Este

 Villa Adriana

Sperlonga.  Weird name, cool beach.

Nice Friday

Hello everybody!  Today is a very nice Friday.  It is about two in the afternoon and I am done with class for the day.  We took our last walking history tour class this morning, which was kind of sad because I like that class.  Today we visited all the big piazzas that we hadn't talked about yet,  Piazza Navona, Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps.  I also wrote a paper about the Spanish Steps this week, so I feel like a real expert there.  It helps that there's not a whole lot of history to learn about the Spanish Steps, they've just kind of always been a cool place to hang out and people-watch.
Not much else is new, we're starting our final project for the semester, a music school in an old industrial neighborhood.  No big plans for tonight or this weekend.  This afternoon classmate John and I plam to work on a movie about a neighborhood that we researched at the beginning of the semester, the Jewish Ghetto.  Our teacher advised us to go there at five o'clock on Friday afternoons to interview old women who sit on the street. So that should be interesting.  Until then, I guess I'll just relax and enjoy the nice day.  Hope everyone back home gets a chance to do the same.  Arrivederci!

More Trip Stories

So I've been back in Rome for two days now.  Thursday was a very rainy day where I did not do much, but Friday was bright and sunny so I went to the Spanish Steps to start taking notes for a paper I need to write about them.  I found Villa Borghese for the first time, Rome's largest public park.  Then I was looking through my pictures from the trip and realized there were some other things I wanted to write about.  We'll start back in Verona.  First is a picture of me and Adam next to a couple helping Verona earn the name "City of Love."  After that is me with the Juliet statue.  I know I'm not exactly being a gentleman in this shot, but supposedly it's good luck to rub Juliet's, uh, bosom.  There was no Romeo statue, which, now that I think about it, seems a little bit odd.  Probably he didn't want to hang around to see armies of tourists feeling up his girlfriend.  I think we can all benefit from the wisdom of  Pat Benetar when she said, "love is a battlefield."

Next is a picture of Castelvecchio, just because I didn't put up a picture of it last time.  The next picture, in between the scaffolding covers, is the Bridge of Sighs.  Underneath the scaffolding on the left is Doge's Palace, and underneath the scaffolding on the right is Venice's prison.  Doge's Palace was the home of the Duke as well as the courthouse.  The Bridge of Sighs gets its name because for any prisoner sentenced to life in prison in Doge's Palace, the Bridge of Sighs was the last place where they would be able to see the sun.  That'll make you think twice about taking one of those gondolas for a joy-ride.  The last pictures are from an art show that opened up our last day in Venice.  It was an exhibit of the best entries in an art contest.  The piece shown is an array of tiny paper boats (or maybe hats).  Visitors were encouraged to take one for themselves, so I did.  I'm not sure what the idea behind it was, but I thought it was a cool piece of art.  There as also a toilet filled with empty eggshells, and a tree made out of wires.  Make of it what you will.

Also, if any of you were wondering how I managed to get these pictures when my camera was falling apart, I realized I could fix it quickly with some masking tape.  So my camera now works though it slightly resembles an arts 'n crafts project.  Hopefully when I get home I can get a more permanent fix.

While I was Gone

So, this post is a bit overdue, thanks to my being busy finishing our second project for the semester and then the immediate departure for our second field trip and then a few days of extra travel after that. The last time I wrote I was just about to leave for Florence, which was a fun trip.  As I predicted, we saw the Duomo, which was an amazing climb, and the David, which is much bigger in person than expected.  After that I had a busy week with my group for project two finishing up that project.  It was a lot of work to do in one week but we were all pretty happy with how it turned out.  That was last Monday, after that we had to get ready to leave for our second field trip which took us to North Italy to see some old buildings designed by famous people, famous cities and a few things designed by a relatively new guy, Carlos Scarpa.  A few previous studio instructors had mentioned Scarpa's work as being very well-done, so I was mostly excited to see his work, though the old stuff was impressive in its own way.
On the first day we visited mostly buildings by Palladio, an old mansion called Villa Barbaro in a small town I don't recall the name of, as well as a theater and a basilica in Vicenza.  The best thing we saw that day, though, was a cemetery in Brion designed by Scarpa.  It's without a doubt the nicest cemetery I've ever been in, and much nicer than many places that are meant for living people.  We spent that night in  Verona, hands-down the cleanest Italian city we've seen so far.  The next day in Verona we visited Castelvecchio, (old castle), an old medieval castle that has been renovated into a medieval art museum by Scarpa.  It's a really amazing place, both for the art and the building.  After that we saw other sites around Verona, such as Juliet's alleged balcony and a Colosseum-like building known as Arena.  All in all, Verona is a very nice city.  Much cleaner and quieter than Rome, if not as exciting.
After that we went to Venice, hands-down the most confusing Italian city we've been in, and the worst to try to lead a tour through.  When we first arrived the schedule called for a class tour involving the major landmarks and another museum by Scarpa.  After pausing several times for the teachers to check their maps and wait for half of the group to catch up, everyone pretty much decided that we could see the major sites on our own, but that we would stick with the group long enough to see the museum.  When we got there, it turned out to be less of a Scarpa-designed museum and more of a boring Venetian museum where Scarpa had designed a garden and entrance staircase.  So that was a little disappointing, although the staircase and garden were beautiful.  After that everyone went to explore the city on their own.  From the people I talked to, it sounds like everyone independently got lost, but everyone also agreed that it was a very beautiful city.

 The cemetery at Brion.  My photography skills and equipment can't really show how cool this place is, but I'm giving it my best shot.

 A bridge in Verona, with a hill in background.

Canals in Venice.

 St. Mark's square at night.

When the scheduled part of the trip was over, I took a small side trip to Levanto, a town in the Cinque Terre area of Italy.  Cinque Terre is a string of five coastal towns on the Northwestern Mediterranean coast of Italy connected by a scenic network of trails.  The picture shows me with Cristin's horse poster and the town of Manarola in the background.  It was a  fun trip.  I stayed at a hostel and made friends with some guys who were on vacation from California.  We hiked two of the more difficult trails in the rain, which made for an exhausting and fun day.  Then we made friends with a Kiwi (New Zealander) and the four of us found the only two bars that were open on a rainy night in the off-season.  Cinque Terre is a really beautiful place, and I imagine very exciting in the summer when more people are there.  It seemed, however, that most of the trails would've been impossible to navigate with the kinds of crowds that would be there in the summer.  So if you go for the trails, go in the off-season, but if you're just looking for beautiful beaches to spend the day on, then this would be a great place to go in the summer.  That's all for tonight.  I still have a few empty days in Rome before class starts back up again, so maybe I'll go to some sights I haven't made it to yet.  To everyone back home, I miss you and look forward to being back in land of 20 oz Hazelnut roasts in a few months.

Vatican

So it's Friday, and Mom and Dad just arrived back in Chicago, and I went to the Vatican again today with our art history class.  I'd been there before with Mom and Dad, but I learned a lot more about the building by going there with our teacher.  Mom and Dad, apparently that big red circle you pointed out was also where Charlamagne was crowned.  Maybe you knew that already, but I just learned that today.  What I'm not sure of is if that happened before or after they moved it to the front of the church and let everybody walk on it.  We also went into the grotto and saw John Paul II's tomb.  The only thing I have left to do at the Vatican is take the steps up to the cupola, but that can wait a little bit.
Tuesday was a very eventful day this week.  First, in our urban culture class, we visited Corviale, a kilometer long building on the south-southwestern outskirts of the city.  It was a low-income housing project that used to be a pretty bad place to live but now is a successful community.  We played a quick game of soccer there which was really fun, then headed to EUR to see some fascist-era buildings, one of which was hosting a convention about the "State of the City."  Some of the students there met Santiago Calatrava, a famous architect/engineer.  Patrick, I was telling you once that Calatrava should do something in Minneapolis because he almost always builds near water.  Renzo Piano, another famous architect, was supposed to speak that night, but when some other students and I went back to see him he turned out to be a no-show.  He thought it would be a conflict of interest since he had declined a spot on the Roman Olympic Council, or at least that's what I heard.  The night wasn't a bust, though, because after all of the speakers the convention concluded with a buffet of delicious Italian food and wine.  So we ate our fill and then went to see the jazz band downstairs.  In other news, we had a paper due in our art history class this week, which kept me pretty busy.  We had to write about art in two churches dealing with St. Cecilia.  I mention it because I really liked the sculpture of St. Cecilia.  You can see the photo of it below.  On that note, thank you to Adam for all of the photos below.  We have a shot of the Sistine Chapel, taken without the approval of the Vatican Museum guards, a shot of us playing soccer, the St. Cecilia sculpture, the Baldachino towering over the papal alter in St. Peter's, and St. Peter's dome towering over the Baldachino.  The last shot is me next to a golden ball sculpture in one of the courtyards of the Vatican Museum.  It looks kind of like a decrepit gold death star, and it's exactly the same size as that tiny golden ball on top of St. Peter's cupola.  So that was this week, tomorrow I'm going to Florence for the weekend with some friends, to see the David and the Duomo and possibly make a side trip to Pisa.  I have to get up really early for that, so I'll probably go to bed pretty soon tonight.  That's all for now, arrivederci!

 

Pilgrims

Hey everybody back in the states!  Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, I've been doing school and spending most evenings with Mom and Dad.  I've been doing my best to be a good tour guide for them, or at least recommend good places to go.  I think I've been doing all right, they're enjoying their stay here.  On Saturday the three of us saw Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps and our studio.  Since then, we've been to Vatican City a few times, and Mom and Dad have found their way around the city admirably on days when I'm in class.  Well done, chaps!
Today was a rainy day.  Only the second rainy day since I've been in Rome, and also the "rainier" of the two.  Early this morning I caught the #8 tram and #23 bus to Vatican City to hear the pope speak with Mom and Dad.  Thank you, Father Leocke, for helping us get the tickets, we had great seats.  So we went to the Vatican early and found our seats in the papal auditorium, or as Dad called it, the funny-looking building.  Like good pilgrims we got there early so we had to wait awhile, but the pope did come out and speak.  His speech was entirely in Italian so none of us have any idea what he said, but still, how many chances to you get to see the Holy See?  Afterwards priests and cardinals of different nationalities came to the mic and announced the groups present in their native languages.  We weren't mentioned specifically, but I think Benedict knew we were there.  He had a wiley look in his eye.  Some of the groups were schools or choirs that would sing after they were called up, which was pretty cool.
To close the ceremony the pontiff lead the crowd in the Latin version of Our Father, and then we went back out into the rainy piazza.  We got some pizza for lunch and a restaurant in Piazza del Risorgimento, then I left to go back to studio.  On the way I made a detour to try and see rain come through the opening in the Pantheon, but right after I got there the sun came out.  I kind of couldn't believe it, because it had felt like it was going to rain all day.  As sure as I'm standing here, though, it stopped right at that moment.  I was a little disappointed, but you can't call any trip to the Pantheon a bad trip, so it wasn't too bad.  Hopefully there will be another rainy day while I'm in Rome.  April's coming up.  My fingers are crossed.

P.S. - My camera is currently in need of some repair, specifically the replacement of a few screws which hold the casing together.  So until that happens the posts will be text-only, excluding some sketches if I remember to scan them.

Thursday Night

Thursday night seems like a good night to blog.  Things have been pretty calm since we got back to Rome.  We're starting a new project in studio, writing a program for a school of music and picking a site for it within a given neighborhood.  This is a group project and I think I have a good group so I feel good about it.  It's also a competition project, so for our final project we'll have to design the music school according to the program of the winning team.  Excitement!
Other than that not much is new.  Our survival crash course in Italian has come to an end, though some of us students who want to continue taking Italian classes are talking to one of the teachers about continuing class once a week.  In place of Italian we have started our drawing class, which is really fun because the class currently consists of going around the city and drawing.  We're practicing different methods of drawing so we can develop our own style to drawing ideas quickly.  It's really fun.  In the next few days I'll scan some sketches to post, but I haven't done that yet so you'll have that to look forward to.
Mom and Dad arrive in Rome tomorrow so I'm looking forward to that.  It'll be good to see them and hopefully they won't mind taking me out to some nice Italian restaurants.  I love you Mom and Dad!  Seriously, though, it's gonna be fun.  Ok, hope everyone back home is doing well, love to hear from you guys.  I'm about ready for bed now.  Buonasera

Back from the Mediterranean

Ciao tutti!  So Adam and I got back into Rome last night around six after a weekend in the Mediterranean.  The first place we went to was Baia, where we visited the ancient baths.  My favorite thing there was the echo chamber, a big dome where people took baths and everything you said echoed at least four times.  My second favorite thing there was the pizzeria where we ate lunch.  I got a Ulysse pizza, which had tuna, onions and tomato and was delicious.  That pretty much set the tone for eating awesome pizza the rest of the weekend.  That night we arrived in Paestum and the hotel served us a seafood dinner and then we hung out on the beach.  Friday morning we saw the ruins at Paestum, three of the oldest Greek temples and what remains of the original city.

After Paestum we went to Pompeii, one of two cities that was simply erased by Mt. Vesuvius.  Pompeii was the first site we went to that still felt like a city.  The city was so well preserved under the explosion that some of the frescoes are still on the walls.  That night we spent in Naples, well-known to be the birthplace of pizza.  What is less well-known about Napoli, is that it is also the birth-place of "The Bomba," a 4 euro burger that has egg, olives, tomatoes, a hot dog, prosciutto, cheese and comes with French fries.  The Bomba can be found at Napoli's famous "Black Out Pub."

Ok, so that brings us to Friday, which was entirely spent wandering up and down Capri.  That was also the day when the weather turned from cloudy and windy to bright and sunny, which was nice.  After that Adam and I went to Sorrento, where "off-season" means "no one else in town and all the scooter rental places are closed."  Still it was a beautiful town and we took the bus down to the Amalfi coast and wandered around those towns, which were also beautiful.  Then Sunday we left to come back to Rome, and on the way took a taxi up Mt. Vesuvius.  So that's our weekend in the Mediterranean!  Oh, I almost forgot, while we were site-seeing, we kept seeing this strange horse image.  It showed up under rocks, in gardens, and along walkways.  Not sure what it means, but it made the trip a little more interesting.

 What a find!

Fun fact, the 8th dwarf in this garden, is a horse!

Parting for Napoli

So tomorrow we embark on our first studio field trip.  I won't be bringing my laptop on this trip so I wanted to make sure I put a post up before I left, because I won't be back until Sunday and don't want to keep everyone waiting again.  Our bus departs at the impossibly early hour of 8 in the morning, our first destination is Baiae, where we will tour an archeological wonderland and eat lunch.  Then we depart for Paestum, site of many ancient Greek temples and some of the finest seafood in Italy (I hope).  We will then visit the ruins of Pompeii, Italy's sexiest ancient city (that's actually true) and end our travels in Napoli on Thursday and Friday.  Weather permitting, they may take us to Capri, and I really hope the weather permits because the alternative is to spend the day in museums.  On Friday we are released from class and from there Adam and I are going to Sorrento for the weekend, not sure what we'll do but we heard it was nice.  If scooter rental turns out to be affordable we'll probably do that.
In other news, Adam and I have self-appointed ourselves as the official wine critics of the apartment.  Our credentials are Adam's semester in a "Beer, Wine and Spirits" class and my being friends with Adam.  Actually I was inspired when, upon discovery that our bottle collection shelf was completely full, the apartment agreed to only keep unique bottles.  I decided to try as many types of wine as I could while spending as little on each bottle as possible.  That decision being made, it seemed like something that I had to include in my blog and I requested Adam's help to lend some legitimacy to my critiques.  Also, no one wants to drink alone.
So, this wine is a chianti, it cost 2.50 euro, and falls into the DOCG wine category.  Adam assures me that this means something, but not necessarily anything, from what I gathered.  In any event, this wine was a medium red with some fruity flavors, we guessed cherry, or some other dark berry.  It was definitely lacking in herbaceousness.  All in all, we concluded that it was a mediocre wine in every sense, smooothness, heaviness, brightness and economy.  Not a bad wine, but not good enough to warrant the expense when 1 euro bottles are available.  Ok, that's all for tonight, I'll get back to you on Sunday! or Monday!...one of those days.

Can you believe some people use these for books? 

The Roman Boonies

Hey, sorry for the big delay in posting, I don't know how far back I'll be able to remember to write about, but there is a lot that happened in the last few days that I can write about.  In last Friday's history tour class we saw the Imperial Forum, where the we saw lots of old ruins, including the remains of a temple to Rome's coolest-named god, Mars Ultor.  We also looked at Trajan's column and the remains of his old basilica.  We ended that class looking at the Ara Pacis, the altar of peace which is the stone box inside of a glass box seen below.  That was where Romans would sacrifice bulls to the goddess of Peace.  Then on Saturday, John, Adam and I went out to Appia Antica to visit the old catacombs.  Unfortunately both of the catacombs were closed when we got there, so we walked down the road a bit and found the old Circus Maxentius, which I'm going to go ahead and say was my favorite historical site I've seen so far.  Today its basically a big open field, but its easy to imagine Ben Hur charging around that big field.  Near the entrance there was an old twisted tree that was really good for pictures, but I think Adam might have gotten a more dramatic shot.  We also went to the huge castle-looking building which turned out to be a mausoleum, but it was kind of a disappointment inside.

So when we were at the castle the lady at the entrance indicated, in a mix of English and Italian, that our ticket for the castle was also good for another museum, which was just down the road a bit.  Or that's what we thought, but after walking down the old Appian highway for over an hour, we decided that it was certainly farther away than we thought, so we found ourselves out in the middle of the country, without knowing how to really get home.  So that began another journey of bus hopping which was very tiring, but at least ended with our learning how read the bus route signs.  On a side note, whenever I see the old Roman road, I wonder what Thoreau would think of them, "The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the Highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!"  

The last thing I want to write about is a bar we found last night called Spazio Sociale Incantiere, which we think means "Singer's Social Space."  Anyways we went in last night and saw a show which was some weird mix of open mic and interpretive performance theater.  In the picture below, the woman is reading, the drummer is drumming and the piano player is tuning the piano.  We don't know if the reading had anything to do with either of the other two, but it was really cool to watch.  After that a guitar player did a one-man show which made me think of Leo Kottke if Kottke had a day job pouring concrete.  We'll probably go back there.  

So, today is Sunday and tomorrow is our first review so I'll be spending most of today finishing drawings for that.  Then on Wednesday we take our first field trip, south to Napoli, Pompeii and some other places.  I'll be sure to put some stuff up from there, best wishes to everyone back home.  Ciao!

Sushi in Rome

Hey!  So since the last post I haven't been taking much pictures, partly because I keep forgetting my camera.  In one of our classes we visited a museum that was an old power plant, so there were ancient sculptures with gigantic diesel engines behind them.  It was pretty cool, sorry I can't portray it better here.  It's called the Montemartini museum, so look it up if you feel cheated.  We also visited an old Italian port city called Ostia Antica, or really we visited its ruins.  I did get some pictures there.  The biggest attraction there is the Roman theater, seen below with Mikesch at center stage.  Other developments were we went to an Italian Chinese restaurant that also served sushi, so Adam and I got some, it was delicious.  Also I figured out how to make my camera take artistic extreme close-up photos, so get ready for more of those.