madrid

so...this is way delayed but i went to madrid several weeks ago and it was el mejor.  i love love love spanish spanish (say what you will about the lisp, i think it's beautiful) and i just wish i could live in madrid for a while.  everything happens about 2 hours later than usual - dinner at 10? fine by me! and there is soooo much great art there! basically all i did there was wander around the prado and the museo reina sofia and it was maravilloso!

alexander calder in the courtyard of the reina sofia which is where picasso's guernica is and several dalí's and miró's and other picasso's.  i bought dalí's diario de un genio and i can't wait to read it.  he was just rawther eccentric and fabulous via this quote: " every morning upon awakening, i experience a supreme pleasure: that of being salvador dalí, and i ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this salvador dalí." don't you sort of wish you thought the same thing every morning? basically, i just wish we were besties. desfortunatamente, he died six months before i was born.  life is so tragic sometimes.

i was sort of surprised by the amount of time i spent in the room with the early italian renaissance paintings in the prado because 1) by this point i've seen about a million italian renaissance paintings and 2) aren't most of the good ones in italy?  well, yes but here's the thing of it:  1) no artist can move me to tears like the italian trecento/quattrocento painters (like fra angelico) and 2) if i were a painter, i would want to paint like botticelli.

that's not at all to say i didn't enjoy the spanish paintings at the museum, like the most famous - las meninas. one of the reasons i wish i lived in madrid is so that i could go to the prado all the time and just sit with masterpieces like this.  the problem with huge museums like the prado is that there is so much to see! i was there for about four hours and i still feel like i rushed through some things.  

one of my favorite things about going to museums is discovering new favorite artists.  this time it was goya.  i'd liked his paintings that i'd studied before but now i just find him fascinating mostly because of the room dedicated to goya's black paintings.  the black paintings are a series of paintings that goya painted late in his career when he was deaf and living alone in a house outside madrid.  on the walls of this house he painted a series of intense, dark, and haunting images unlike anything before in the history of art.  the main thing that attracts me to these paintings is the mystery behind them.  what do they mean? why did goya paint them?  i did some research and it turns out some scholars don't think that goya even painted them.  

so much of the value of a piece of art is in its attribution to a famous artist.  but should it really matter whether a beautiful painting was painted by one of the great masters or only by one of his students? the painting doesn't change if it is reattributed.  only our attitude toward it.  right?  but, in this case, i really want the black paintings to be by goya.  it's not just the physical painting but the story behind it that matters.  goya is one of the first romantics.  the black paintings can be seen as the manifestations of an aging artist's tormented mind.  what could be more romantic?

venezia: a tragedy in one act

scene 1: firenze, santa maria novella train station, 8.00

after rising at 7.00 with only six hours of sleep, clare and rebecca, running on the anticipation of seeing one of the most beautiful cities in the world, arrive at the train station ready to purchase their tickets and spend a lovely spring day in venice.  unfortunately, they discover that the 8.30 train is sold out as well as the 9.30.  the 10.30 train will arrive in a station they don't recognize so they decide to ask where the station is located in relation to the center of the city.  in those five minutes in which they hesitate the 10.30 train sells out and their only choice is to buy tickets for the 11.30 train.  they are severely disappointed in the reduction of their already short time in venice. little do they know, this will be only the first of their best laid schemes gone awry.

scene 2: venezia, santa lucia train station, 13.30

after returning shamefully home and napping for two hours, clare and rebecca board the 11.30 train and arrive in venice around 13.30.  unfortunately, the train ride has rendered clare rather nauseous.  thinking ahead, clare and rebecca decide to buy their return tickets now to avoid their earlier mishap and risk sleeping in the streets of venice.  they approach the ticket counter and successively inquire in italian when the last train for florence departs.  the response is 19.30 (even though they totally had later trains when i checked the schedule online!! a;kdhfiuesdfjh) and they have no other choice but to purchase the tickets and resign themselves to the fact that their day trip to venice is now a 6-hour trip to venice. they decide to make the best of it and board a water bus to san marco. this does nothing for clare's dizziness.

scene 3: venezia, ristorante near piazza san marco, 14.45

clare and rebecca manage to scarf down some pizza due to their extreme hunger even though it is by far the worst pizza they've have in italy.

scene 4:  venezia, shops, 16.00

the only real success story of the day is shopping.  typical.  purchases include: gifts, earrings, necklace, and parasol. so necessary as clare failed to bring her other parasol to italy.

scene 5: venezia, basilica san marco, 17.00

clare and rebecca are denied entry because rebecca is wearing shorts even though she is wearing tights underneath.

scene 6:  venezia, ponte di sospiri, 17.30

the famous bridge of sighs is under construction, and thus covered in scaffolding.  clare and rebecca console themselves with gelato, which is not even good.

scene 7: venezia, the grand canal, 18.15

just when rebecca and clare think that nothing else can go wrong, their water bus collides with a rogue motorboat driven by a drunk tourist and begins to sink rapidly.  there might have been hope if they had been able to get a spot in the open air part but alas! they were trapped in the enclosed seats and amid the mass hysteria they are unable to free themselves. as the polluted water closes over her and her lungs are about to explode, the final duet of verdi's la traviata plays and clare thinks of the french expression "voir venise et mourir." oh irony! oh cruel fate!

alternate ending - scene 7: firenze, la nostra casa, 22.00

after googling 'how to open champagne' and following the 7-step instructions, clare and rebecca pop open their czech champagne (which they bought in prague when they needed to get rid of their czech crowns) and rise their glasses to venice because it is, after all, a beautiful city that they hope to return to someday when they can spend more than 6 hours there, when they can actually go inside the basilica san marco, when the bridge of sighs is not covered in scaffolding, when they can afford to take an 80 euro gondola ride, maybe even with the love of their lives because in reality this trip was only meant to be a taste (because one cannot spend a semester in florence and not go to venice) - a preview during which one can imagine the rest of the plot: the art in the palazzo ducale, getting lost in the narrow, labyrinthine streets free of the noise of cars and motorini, the sunset behind santa maria delle salute, the kiss under the bridge of sighs.  here's to the future.  cheers.

FINE.

italian lessons

the italian language never ceases to amuse.

at dinner last night, we had mozzarella di buffalo which, my host mom explained to us, is made from latte di buffalo and is much better than mozzarella made from latte di mucca.  di che?? i ask.  mucca, she replies and then proceeds to expel a loud MOOOOOOO at the dinner table.  you know, mucca. she says as if this should have been self-evident. certo. i think i've found my new favorite italian word: cow.  i just can't get over how similar it sounds to the way a two year old might say it in english: moo-cow.

it's just so dang charming.

vienna

vienna was the city i was most looking forward to visiting on spring break and it certainly did not disappoint. it was definitely my favorite city.  it's absolutely beautiful, like a german-speaking version of rome and paris combined.  it was the home to mozart, beethoven, marie antoinette, klimt, and centuries of hapsburg monarchs as well as breathtaking palaces, avenues and architecture.  

the first thing we did was go to st. stephan's, the magnificent gothic cathedral.  italian churches are lovely but the italians just don't do gothic like northern europeans.  italian gothic churches are much more colorful, but they don't have the same overwhelming feeling that northern european gothic churches do, as if every aspect of the architecture is reaching upward toward the heavens.  je l'adore.

we also went to beethoven's house where he wrote most of his famous symphonies and saw his piano and later went to the cemetery and saw his grave.  we also went to mozart's house where he composed the marriage of figaro but didn't see his grave because he gambled away his fortune so he was buried in an unmarked grave.

vienna is home to several wonderful art museums including the kunsthistorisches museum (aka museum of fine arts) which is actually the best museum i've ever been to.  i liked it so much that i went back the next day (and the lovely museum attendant let me in without having to buy another ticket).  not only is the building itself absolutely gorgeous but it is home to some of the great masterpieces of european painting (several brueghel's, a few velazquez's, three caravaggio's, two rooms full of ruben's, a vermeer, a rembrandt, some durer's, a bunch of titian's and raphael's madonna of the meadow). and i thought they did a really great job presenting the paintings with informative and interesting labels and there were lots of comfy upholstered benches on which to sit and contemplate paintings. also they had a great exhibit on monsters and mythical creatures in art which was perfect for kids. and the museum shop had so many postcards with high quality reproductions which was just the icing on the cake for my postcard collecting self.

the other art museum we went to was the belvedere (also gorgeous, see above) to see...(drum roll please)...

KLIMTS!!!!!!

i just about died.  i adore klimt's paintings soooooooo much.  unfortunately, the museum is under renovation so several weren't on display :(((( oh well! now i have an excuse to go back. honestly i don't know if i could have handled the excitement of seeing so much loveliness in one visit anyway. i was more than happy to spend extra time contemplating the kiss. 

vienna is known for its music, so when one is in vienna, one must go to the opera.  we got to see la
sonnambula by bellini and it was just excellent - and happy! everyone lives in the end.  the female lead was absolutely beautiful.  if i had a second life, i would love to be reincarnated as an opera singer; i love the melodrama.

our last day we visited schönbrunn palace, the residence of the hapsburg monarchs from the 17th century until the end of the 19th century.  when i found out that this was where marie antoinette grew up, i totally understood why she never really fit in in france.  schönbrunn is versailles with all its opulence but without its stuffiness. perhaps because each ruler added their own personal decorative touches through the decades, including prints made by the princes and princesses themselves (the royal version of hanging pictures on the fridge). it feels more like a home than versailles does.  it too was home to a fashionable and tradition-defying female ruler who met with a tragic end: elizabeth, empress of austria.

she was considered one of the most beautiful women in the world in her time (1837-1898) and she worked hard to keep it that way. she spent hours primping every day and caring for her hair which was down to her feet! she would often refuse to attend royal family dinners because she wanted to maintain her slender figure.  she was a huge trend-setter and her hobbies included traveling, riding horses and writing poetry in which she referred to herself as a fairy queen.  in the end, she was tragically stabbed to death with a metal file in geneva by an italian anarchist.  therefore, she's my new favorite tragicomic historical heroine. obvi.

two last things: one, a fabulous fountain which just one reason vienna reminded me of rome - unlike parisians, the viennese apparently embraced the baroque which i just love.  secondly, by chance we walked right by the stables where the famous lipizzaner stallions live! the horse-obsessed 10 year old in me couldn't have been more excited.  

the bottom line:  vienna is in my top 5 cities i've ever been to.  i absolutely want to go back and spend more time there.