Venedig und viel mehr! (Venice and much more!)

Dear Readers,

When last I left you we were poised on the brink of an amazing cliffhanger…my fast approaching trip to Venice.  And from there is where we will continue:

Venice: January 3^rd – 6^th

Once again, traveling is an interesting thing.  You take tours, read plaques in museums and pretend to learn things, but only bits of it stay with you.  So here’s my recreation of my time in Venice, after a month has slowly taken the accuracy off of the details…

The Peggy Guggenheim Museum: My favorite thing in Venice.  Partially because of the modern art, but mostly because of the mini history lesson we got from an intern on Peggy Guggenheim’s life.  She was basically an American heiress who moved to Europe at a young age and lived on a stipend her whole life.  She was also a hottie and a flapper.  She made introducing the world to modern art her life’s work and hung out/slept with all sorts of awesome modern artists and accumulated their work (sometimes cheaply, sometimes gifted).  She hid all of it in a barn and fled during WWII, came back and it was all miraculously still there.  Then she bought a house in Venice and made it into both her home and a museum simultaneously.  She never married, but had lots of dogs and is buried next to them. Tasha and I both want to be Peggy Guggenheim.  Excellent taste, lots of art, no need to work, the admiration of a bunch of hot and creative artists, and a nice house in Venice…seriously.

One of the pieces in Peggy's sculpture garden, and the hottie flapper Peggy

Other activities: We visited the Basilica San Marco.  It was huge and beautiful.  We went up in the tower at San Marco’s Square.  We also visited the historic Doge’s Palace.  Basically what I learned from this is that old-timey Venetian government had like a million different councils and governing bodies created for different purposes that somehow had to work together.  And the doge was a figurehead who didn’t really have any power, whose freedom was horribly restricted, and whose activities were closely monitored (reminds me of the emperor in Japan).  And they had a frickin’ scary out-of-the-fairytales dungeon right underneath the palace.

The Doge's Palace

Super Scary Dungeons

The Hostel: Tasha and I stayed in a place called “A Venice Museum.”  25 euros a night, right by the canal, inside an old building with high ceilings, free dinner each night.  We met several other cool backpackers to hang out with (a group of four recent grads from California, a study abroad student from Wisconsin, a girl from California who had been living in Denmark, 2 Australian sisters traveling around the world in 6 weeks). 

Eating: We ate 3 pizzas in 3 days.  It was beautiful.  I just wanted to be Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love and have an affair with my pizza.  One afternoon, we made no plans to tour and reserved several hours for sitting in a café with tiramisu and lattes.

PIZZAS

Tiramisu + lattes

 The cafe where we consumed the tiramisu and lattes.  We were the only patrons and thus decided the place was actually "Madeline and Tasha's sitting room"

Other than the touristy things, Tasha and I had deep and meaningful discourse about philosophy and the nature of our existence (ie why boys are such idiots for not automatically loving us).

Back in Linz:

I have been teaching (lessons on the different regions of the USA, violent rhetoric in American politics, turn of the century inventions, the Winter Carnival in Minnesota, gun control…), tutoring even more people, going to the gym regularly, attending two more Maturaballs (Josh’s and Calum’s)…nothing all that interesting.  OH! Except I have joined the Austro-American Society’s book club.  Which is basically 5 TAs and 4 older Austrian ladies.  We just had the planning meeting so far, but after we start reading I will update you all.  I can tell it’s going to make for some very interesting social interactions.  Ohoh!  And Josh, Calum and I have been having Star Wars viewing club…one of the movies each week.  Calum and I had an argument about whether Chewie is irritating and dumb (me) or super awesome (Calum).  Calum has now taken to Chewie-like sound effects on a daily basis to prove his point.

The Social Scene:

January has been a month of social upheaval in Linz.  I have been avoiding talking about “personal relationships” in this blog, but Josh coined a term a fitting term for it a couple months ago…”Linzcest.”  SO January has been the month that all of these Linzcestuous relationships have been falling apart and friends are awkwardly choosing sides and avoiding each other.  A humorous conversation I had about the situation:

Joseph: Well, it’s January. What do people expect?

Tasha: What does that mean?

Joseph: I think January should be a get-out-of-relationship-free pass.  No questions asked.  You can just be like, ‘It’s over.  Sorry mate, it’s January.  No explanation necessary.’

Madeline: And the girl is supposed to be like, ‘Oh, I completely understand.  No hard feelings, it IS January, after all.’

Joseph: Of course.  But obviously girls can do it to guys, too.

Tasha: I don’t think this holds.  Josh and I ended in November.

Joseph: But he was anticipating January.  It was like, ‘Well, January is coming up, so what’s the point?’

Madeline: You could pretty much do the same thing in July.

Joseph: Exactly.  

Tasha: So no one should ever have to explain their reasons for dumping someone and no one should ever be upset about break ups, because after all, someday it will be January, and it will end anyway.

Joseph: Right.  This January concept would be amazing.

So in recent weeks anytime anything socially dramatic has happened I’ve just been thinking, “What did you expect?  It’s January!”

Kirchdorf and The World Cup Ski Event:

Last weekend I went to Kirchdorf with Sarah to visit two TAs (Steve and Ben).  Kirchdorf is a tiny town, but Ben and Steve get to live in a house with an older Austrian couple: a sauna, huge bedrooms, and two cats for 180 euros a month.  So jealous.  The cats are actually only 6 months old and the couple got them just as Steve and Ben arrived, and thusly christened them Stevie and Benji.  Even more jealous.  As I said, the drama in Linz surrounds Linzcestuous relationships….

In Kirchdorf, the drama surrounds the cats.  It reminds me of my parents’ house.  Basically, recently Ben and Steve were walking to school one day and Stevie followed them (sounds already like a country fairytale or something). They tried to send him home/assumed he would give up and turn back, but he followed them for a long time.  That night when they got home after work, the older couple told them Stevie was still missing.  Ben and Steve explained the story…and the couple apparently passive aggressively blamed Ben and Steve for Stevie’s disappearance and the whole house was extremely tense for the next several days.  Attempting to make amends, Steve and Ben searched high and low and told all their students to search, too.  Stevie was apparently eventually found with his tail stuck in a fox trap.  Definitely even more like a country fairytale…a fox trap!?! Well, anyway, Stevie’s tail had to be amputated, but Stevie is now safe at home.  Luckily, otherwise the older Austrian couple might never have forgiven Steve and Ben.

After the night in Kirchdorf where we visited THE bar, we all headed to one of the days of the World Cup Ski Event in Hinterstoder.  Joseph met us there.  I remember very little of the actual event.  What I do remember is that immediately after entering the gate, Steve purchased an enormous Austrian flag and Joseph purchased an air horn.  These two props sort of provided the center for which the rest of the event revolved around.  

Steve waved his flag proudly to and fro, saying, “I bet if I wave it really good I’ll get on the telly!”  He then spent about 10 to 15 minutes attempting to wave the flag in front of the Austrian mountains as a backdrop so that Ben could take THE BEST PICTURE EVER.  They realized that the timing on this was nearly impossible.  At which point Steve realized that the wind was blowing and he could just hold the flag still and the flag would blow on its own...derp.

Joseph spent most of the event blowing the air horn in my face.  It was really rather painful.  He told me to lighten up.  He was very, very, happy with his air horn.  So happy in fact, that on the train ride home, while I was sleeping, he blew the air horn in my ear and captured my annoyed face on camera.  You can view this gem on facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=10150094965903556&comments

The photos are Joseph's...I think he's doctored them weirdly with some software:

The winners of the World Cup Super G race (the one we saw).  1st place: Hannes Reichelt, Austria, 2nd place: Benjamin Raich, Austria, 3rd place, Bode Miller, USA

 This is Bode Miller, the American.  In case you're interested:

Samuel Bode Miller (pronounced /ˈboʊdiː/; born October 12, 1977) is an American alpine ski racer. He is an Olympic and World Championship gold medalist, a two-time overall World Cup champion in 2005 and 2008, and is generally considered the greatest American alpine skier of all time.  He is the only ski racer in history to win five World Cup races in each of the five alpine disciplines.

Sounds a little like Michael Phelps.

From left: Steve, me, Ben, Joseph.  Also, note Steve's triumphant Austrian flag in the background.

TODAY:

Tasha’s birthday is soon approaching and today is her birthday party.  The theme of the party is that EVERYONE is required to wear dirndl and lederhosen.  This gave me the amazing excuse to go out on Monday and buy a 130 euro dirndl.  It is a wondrous thing…it really made my whole day.  And I am going to put it on tonight at 6 pm and not take it off until I crawl into bed.  There WILL be photographic evidence.  In fact, today I am going with Calum to buy lederhosen.  So this whole party should be epic.

For those of you who don’t know, Wikipedia:

A dirndl is a type of traditional dress worn in southern Germany, Liechtenstein, Austria, Switzerland and Italian South Tirol, based on the historical costume of Alpine peasants.

 Basically, I am hoping the whole party will be like the above photo.

Future Plans:

William and I have booked tickets for Barcelona in two weeks!!!

UPDATE:

Photo from Tasha's birthday: me in my dirndl and William in his Lederhosen :-)