Les Vacances du Printemps partie 1: Venise

So it's been awhile since my last blog post, since then things in Strasbourg have been pretty normal, to the point where I feel like I'm getting a bit complacent sometimes. School is sometimes hard to focus on, that's for sure. But the weather has been getting better, with spring temperatures fairly frequent now, so that's been good. I've also met some French kids at the university who are coming to BC next year as exchange students, so that's been cool.

But, most importantly, I just returned from an 11 day spring break trip, with my good friend Devon and later my good friend Dave, also known as Emil. I started the trip by going to Venice to see Dev for a few days, then he and I traveled to Normandy for two nights, then Paris for one night, and then met up with Dave in Amsterdam, of all places, to finish out the vacation with a four-night, three day experience. It was all really, really fun, a great vacation, which was good, since now I've nearly no money left. Oh well, it was worth it.

So I figured I'd make this post the part 1, so to speak, when I describe my great trip to Venice.

Venice is one of those places that is so out of this world that I always wanted to go there one day, but never figured I'd really have the chance. Of course, this turned out to be untrue, the part about me not having a chance, anyway. Dev is studyin abroad there with some other BC kids, so I figured I'd go and visit him. My journed started April 1 with a 10:50 train out of Strasbourg to Basel, where I would take a train from Basel to Milan, then from Milan to Venice. Turned out to be the start of a lot of time spent on various trains.

Here come some pics, look out

Train station in Milan. Thought it looked pretty cool, it was really cold in there tho.

These next three pictures were taken on the train to Venice from Milan. I was amazed that the camera was able to get such good pictures from a moving train, even more amazed by the beautiful alps in the background and the fertile farmland in the foreground.

So I took the train to Venizia Mestre, the stop my ticket indicated. I didn't realize there were two train stations in Venice. I wondered if Dev was supposed to meet me at the other one, one stop down the line. He was. And I had forgotten to give him my phone number, and I didn't have his. Thinking quickly, I jumped into a cab and took a ride over a huge bridge to Venice proper, with all the canals and such. Got to the train station, finally met up with Dev with a huge sigh of relief. We got on a vaporetto, the public transportation in venice - literally boats that act as a kind of metro I guess, with stops and everything. It was already gettin surreal.

We went to a restaurant, where I met a bunch of Dev's Italian acquaintances, who were all great, as well as one of their professors, a Japanese man from Osaka. He was great, really funny. He taught business at the University, I guess, and was also into going out and drinking with his students.

We then went out for drinks, enjoyed some "spritz" the Venice signature drink, which tastes a bit like a shirley temple, but more sour, and with alcohol, of course. It was good. Not a masculine drink, but whatever. Do as the Italians do, I guess. We had a few, met up with Joe Weber, another BC kid who's actually Dev's roommate, and met some cool British kids at a bar. We made it back at almost a run to catch the last vaporetto going to "the island," which I'll explain in a bit.

Looking out at an island off of Venice proper from the vaporetto

A closer up view of the area of Venice near the plaza san Marco (or something like that), where the Doge's palace is. Apparently they were shooting a movie with Angelina Jolie and some actor in the city at the time. Sweet.

This is Dev and Joe's friend, Xander, on the way back to the island. I thought it would be a great picture to take, so I took it with Dev and Joe's urgings. He was funny, he loves his alcohol as they say. No relation to XXX aka Vin Diesel, or so he claims. I'm still spellin his name with an X though. He's from Duke. Which is cool, I guess.

The next morning I walked outside Dev's room and took this picture. Yeah, they have a balcony. and they live on an island, which is really more of a resort than anything else. Large rooms, with a cleaning staff, a communal kitchen, green space (which is non-existant in Venice) a computer room, and get this, their own b-ball and tennis courts. Unreal lifestyle if you ask me. I won't get into the specifics, but I can safely say some BC abroad programs are given more attention/planning, meaning some kids' set ups are amazing while others are barely mediocre. No use beatin a dead horse, my pa used to say.

This is part of the Doge's Palace, which is in a sweet town square, all of it is super old, I guess Venice was founded well before the 11th century, maybe even around 500 A.D. or something. The only downside: this part of town was crammed with tourists. SO many.

View looking on the Grand Canal of Venice

First in a series of canal-style shots. Venice is so unreal, there are no cars, the only transportation is vaporettos, water taxis, and gondolas. And other boats.

A church we stumbled upon near sunset. Dev had never seen it before. Neither had I.

Back to the Island, at sunset on my first full day...

Sweet sunset shot. One of my favorites. See the mountains way in the background? Awesome.

The next day, me and Dev went wandering, all the way to the soccer stadium. On the way, we came upon a nice neighborhood that was obviously much newer, judging by the width of the streets. It was pretty peaceful, it was a beautiful day, and there weren't hordes of tourists.

Sweet sort of boat/raft I found

A little before the two preceding pictures were taken, we walked through a park, which turned into one of the strangest places I have ever seen. We walked a large completely deserted area, which was full of different buildings with the names of different countries. Any country you could think of (almost) was represented by I would say at least 15-20 buildings. Uruguay, the U.S., Germany, France, Italy, China, Japan, Greece, etc. All the buildings were boarded up and empty inside, and the whole place looked kinda derelict - trash on the ground and stuff. There were almost no people around, it was cool but a bit eery. Me and Dev amused ourselves by imagining that we were suddenly in a world similar to "Lost," a deserted island of some sort. Not too creative, but it was pretty fun.

Here's Canada's building. Not the best looking structure, probably the ugliest honestly. But definitely had the coolest mysterious spray painted message next to it. It was spookily appropriate.

France! You may be asking, why I didn't take a picture of the U.S. building. I didn't feel like it, it looked a lot like the White House, and everyone's seen that.

We ended up in this little square. This tower reminded me of Isengard (Even though it's really more appropriate in Minas Tirith).

The first leg of the trip went great. Great weather, good italian food, lots of people watching, and being in one of the most surreal cities in the world is not a bad combination. To top it all off, on Saturday night me and Dev decided not to do anything too intense because we had an early flight the next morning. Joe's parents had been visiting all week, and they had left the day before. Joe left Saturday for his spring break, during which he was going to Spain I believe. Why is this relevant/important? Joe and his family had gone to the Venice Opera House the night before, and due to an initial scheduling error, they had booked tickets for Saturday night as well, though they obviously wouldn't be there any longer. So basically me and Dev scored four free tickets to the Venice Opera House, the most famous in the city and undoubtedly one of the most famous in Italy. We took two tickets, and gave the other two to a girl we met on Dev's island who claimed (falsely, as it turns out) that she would come and that she would give the fourth ticket to a friend of hers. She never showed up, such a slap in the face to generosity and the generosity of Joe's parents in particular.

At any rate, me and Dev went and saw Mozart's requiem performed at the Opera that night. I had never seen an orchestra like that before. Suffice to say it was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had, probably because of all the pageantry of the place itself and because of the amazing performance by the orchestra. Also, though, because I'm not really usually into the opera or stuff like that. I actually enjoyed it a lot, so that was great. So, let me say thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Weber for giving us those tickets! It was so great.

The next morning, me and Dev were off to Paris, where we were catching a train to the west coast of France - Normandy, to be specific. But that and plenty more will wait until subsequent posts...

À tout à l'heure!