(updated with photos and more stuff to say)
anyway after only 5 days - i wished i could stay longer but finding cheap accomodation that is right where you want to be is a bit of a pain - my Italian adventure is over and now i´m entering central Europe - and you can definitely feel the difference between the sunny Mediterranean and the landlocked Austria.. glad i´ve got my winter jacket.. Italy did come alive in the last 2 days if the cloudy foggy weather combined with the dull countryside and abandoned industries of West Italy - Torino and Milano -plus the depressingly slow trains - or fast train but with pedantic train conductors - didn´t paint a v good picture of Italy.. wonderful food and mostly cheap if you´re not in Milan, Venice or San Carlo square in Torino.. people well i guess they can be quite friendly once u speak Italian even though didn´t feel as close to them as i did with the French..
negatives about Italy - well there´s the fact that everything seems a bit of a disorganized mess bar Torino which in fact was the capital of Italy for a while coz it seemed only the Savoys could unite the Genovese, Florentians, Venetians, Romans, Milanese, etc. then again i can´t really count that as a negative because that would make Italy just another Britain or Germany with organization and queues behind the yellow lines.. Milan as Doncaster? yuck.. much as i love Doncaster.. (sarcastic).. the trains are rubbish but then again when u come from France with its wonderful SNCF i guess everything seems crap.. the conductors as i said can be pedantic arseholes, i.e. Milano Centrale-Torino Porta Nuova Eurostar where the conductor actually got a whole coach to redistribute itself all over the train! oh yeah they keep playing the same TIM, LG ads on those TVs they have at the train stations all over Italy.. what a waste of brilliant technology esp when u see what they do with the undergrounds in Barcelona and Wien - the TVs actually tell u that right now, Condolezza Rice is pregnant with George Bush´s child and that earthquakes are killing 50 people a day in some part of Colombia called Cali which happened to inspire Mr Lucas and his Temple of Doom back in the 80s... not the same old ad about an Italian woman dreaming abt some freakin elephant with a mobile phone ad.. and the abandoned industrial sites which dog the Piedmont and Lombardy countrysides outside Torino and Milano.. on a cloudy foggy day in which I had two of them in that region, it was the most depressing thing to see especially on those slow Regionale trains which stop at places like Alessandria, San Giovanni etc.. if only all Italy was like the east with wonderful Verona, Lake Bergamo and its vineyards and more vineyards.. no abandoned steel factories or dockyards like what I saw between Ventimigila and Genoa..
just realised i´ve complained quite a bit about Italy.. then again complaints are more interesting than praise.. cheap and good food yeah but Italy could be Kazakhstan or some anonymous European country if it didn´t have its spaghetti pesto or Venetian liver.. wonderful country though although not quite a country i´d find myself living in in the near future esp if they keep making those awful football shows on terrestial TV with Italian women probably picked out from the Old Quarter of Genoa.. Italy just doesn´t have the organization of Britain and Germany and the same sort of flair - and friendliness - can be found in France once u get the language right whilst they can get u from Paris Gare du Lyon to Milano Centrale on time as long as Sarkozy keeps his mouth shut..still a beautiful country though and regret not spending more time.. but there just isn´t enough cheap accomodation and in the right spot.. they just can´t get them right in Italy.. in the north at least..
anyway what abt Venice, aka Venezia.. what an exhausting city.. well at least at the hostel that i was staying at which had a wonderful party atmosphere and yeah let´s just say it was p rowdy and glad i drank a lot of Venetian tap water the next day even though it meant having to part 1 euro to go to the toilet.. it was Halloween in Venice too so that was prob the excuse to party.. the city? well have to say that while it is definitely all i imagined it to be, i was glad i was only there for about 24 hours.. Venice has to be the world´s largest, most famous and oldest theme park.. the ´roads´are just always jammed with people and there´s always a long queue to see the likes of St Marks Cathedral - the smaller churches were quite easy to get in but just as wonderful with great works of art.. and the roads are narrow windy too so it can get a bit slow getting from one place or another even if Venice isn´t at all that big.. and of course food and most things are p expensive although did manage to do a bit of Italian shopping without busting my wallet even if it was at Foot Locker..
tips - well not everything good comes with a queue..if u´re into art and quite like Venetian art, then walk and try and find the Cathedral San Giovanni Batista with its wonderful stained glass, the largest in Venezia and currently abt to be restored to its past glory, that cathedral that u always see on the other side of Saint Marks square with its great Titziano collection, Santa Maria with the wonderful Assumption painting by Titziano (Titian to the rest of the English speaking world, golly they even do it to painters, Picasso should have been Picase if he was in Chesterfield or Maheno) , etc. churches and the art shops have more art than u could ever dream of and they´re either free or less than 5 quid.. wonderful stuff..
didn´t quite see the Palazzo Dogges coy the queues were long and wasn´t sure i wanted to see an old prison.. and the famous bridge cum building over the Venetian canal could be seen along the Piazza.. so went to St. Marks instead and what a building.. the finest cathedral in all of Europe bar St Michaels in Wien or the Sagrada in 10 years time.. it´s no wonder why they don´t let u take photos when the gold panels themselves should warrant u getting the postcards.. the gold panels are the Bible itself with stories of the Great Flood, the Crucifixion, etc. and there´s still the Treasury and Golden Altar to come.. they sure knew how to do church in a nice building 500 years ago..
anyway gotta go soon and go see my first classical concert in almost 5 years at the Schonn.. Vienna is such a breath of fresh air after the hectic nature of Venice.. and the art and museum scene is just wonderful - they´ve got this MuseumQuarter which u can spend hours browsing through all the museums although Leopold is prob by far the best - reckon better than the National Gallery but not quite D´Orsay or the Louvre..
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