ms_n_thrope

So I went to Italy for our big bad spring break last week. On the way though, I stopped in Brussels Belgium for a night and half a day to see the Einstruzende Neubauten concert. For those who dont know who they are, they are an experimental german rockish type band. A really good concert, though I probably would have enjoyed it more if I were more familiar with them than one album worth of stuff and a few other random songs. The next day I went to left to Venice. I was rather skeptical of Venice, as I heard its really dirty and a huge tourist trap. It was, but I still really liked it. I was afraid it was going to have a strange artificial feel, but that idea was unfounded. It never felt like people didnt live there. Locals carried on with daily activities and chores while barely even paying too much notice towards the throngs of tourists with silly felt hats and stupid comments and questions. I went to St. Marks square and toured the big ol church. Ive always had a problem with really overly decorated, lavish churches because it seems to me a little hypocritical. But after seeing some of the churches in Italy, I must admit they are interesting and beautiful and interesting if you look at them as works of art. After wandering around and wasting two hours looking for it in the wrong place due to an inaccurate map, I finally found the Peggy Guggenheim museum, a really nice little modern art museum. The next day I was planning to do the Torcello, an island about an hour boat ride away thats an old Italian ghost town, but the weather was horrendous. Windy, rainy, cold. So instead I visited doges palace and another modern art museum instead.



After that I was off to Florence. My hostel was way up in the mountains near Florence, about a 45 minute bus ride from the train station and then a 15 minute walk from the last bus stop. I got lost trying to find the place and probably would have been totally screwed if not for a nice man walking his dog that showed me the way there. The hostel was a converted monastery, which was interesting. Huge rooms, fire places, stone walls and floors and poor heating. It was still really nice and had a great view of Florence really nice country scenery around it in general. I also met some fellow Americans who were staying there. Also met a guy from Sinapore and we waxed philosophic about god, religion and the human race for a while. The weather was much nicer than Venice too. After waiting in line for the famous Uffizi museum, I ended up just paying an extra 3 euro for a reserve ticket the next day. It ended up being a bit of a let down as it was pretty much just a handful of biblical events painted about 30 times each. It was nice to see the Birth of Venus in person though. Other than that, I visited a few really nice churches and ate a lot of gelato, carrot being the strangest (it was that or celery). Also found a CD store that had a lot of really good music (at least in my opinion), and ended up splurging a bit. One album was easy to rationalize as its out of print and I could only find it on line for around 25 bucks second hand(brown book by death in june), but the other was just one of those I found it and I want it purchases (Patrick Wolf- Lycanthropy). Florence in general was just plain nice.



Rome was a bit of a disappointment in that it just felt too much like a big city that also just happened to be really old and have a bunch of ruins. The coliseum was pretty steep at 10 euro. Maybe I wouldnt have felt so robbed if it actually had something more to do inside than walk around and skip through a really crappy museum type section. The ruins near by were nice (and free). That pretty much all I did my first night there. The next day I went to Vatican City. Really crowded and the sistean chapel was closed. Afterwards, the pantheon, Spanish steps, and fountain trevi, all of which were swamped with a bunch of smelly people and none of which were really all that interesting. Went to dinner with a couple people from my hostel that night and had some yummy spinach gnocchi. And then the next day, a part in the clouds and a ray of light: I went to the Capuchin Crypt. Its a crypt that is decorated with the bones and bodies of monks after their bodies had to be transferred from their original resting place. http://www3.sympatico.ca/tapholov/pages/bones.html



And thats all. Back in Maastricht and just recuperating. My class this block is about Hollywood films and why they are the most dominant type of films in the world. Basically we just sit around, listen to a little bit of lecture and watch films. Sometimes I wish my classes were actually somewhat challenging so I wouldnt end up getting so bored with nothing to do from about one o clock until eight or nine at night. Oh well.



That's all for now. Need to figure out if I'm completely broke yet so I can figure out if/where i still want to travel. June 10th will be here soon enough, so I'm just going to ride it out no matter what and then it's back home to the states.