Venice: Don’t Hate Me ‘Cause I’m Beautiful

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Venice. The name inspires wonder and envy from those who have never seen it, but if you start asking about the city with your seasoned traveler friends, they tend to give a dismissive sniff and say with upturned noses, “Oh Venice, it’s totally overrated. Such a tourist trap. And so overpriced. You’re better off spending your time in Florence.”

While there may be some legitimacy to some of the complaints (there are a hella lot of English-speaking tourists, the mosquitoes are wicked), I found Venice to be delightful and full of hidden charms. If you play your cards right, you can escape the heaving masses to areas blessedly free of foot traffic, with only the slow slap of waves to break the silence. It probably helped that I had a few Veneto locals to steer me around. (Valeria, we love you.)

Some basics: Venice was historically one of Italy’s most powerful city-states, and with the strength of its navy, the Venetian empire conquered and sacked various parts of Croatia, Constantinople, Greece and the Near East. You can see Byzantine and Muslim influences in the architecture even today. The city is well-known for its system of canals, which crisscross and connect the six sestiere (city wards) of Venice. At the front of each gondola, there is a piece of metal that includes six notches, one for each sestiere. If you look at a map of Venice, the islands form a fish-like shape.
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Arqua Petrarca: Love, Wine and Petrarch

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Clockwise: the entrance to Petrarch’s home; 13th century Venetian school fresco inside the Santa Maria church; Petrarch’s tomb; pomegranates growing on a roadside tree

Se ti agita sacro amore di Patria, t’inchina a queste mura ove spirò la grande anima il cantor dei Scipioni e di Laura. If you are moved by the sacred love of country, bow down before this wall where a great soul, the singer of Scipio and of Laura passed away.
-Inscription at the house of Petrarch

One of the best parts about living in Italy is that the country has immense historical and cultural wealth, simply by virtue of having advanced civilizations living here for eons. You can drive into almost any random small town in Italy and discover a Baroque church, a medieval castle, a Renaissance marble sculpture…try doing that in the United States and you’ll find a McDonald’s parking lot. Thus, I am often afflicted with country-envy when I speak to Italians, who don’t even bat an eye as they point out the astronomy tower that Galileo conducted research in, while my jaw drops in excitement. On the other hand, the other day I started grilling Valeria on the history of the Italian republic and it went something like this:

V: You know how every other street is named Garibaldi? That’s because Giuseppe Garibaldi was the one who led the drive for the unification of Italy in 1861.
Me: Oh, 1861? To me, that year signifies the start of the American Civil War. Wait a minute, modern Italy was founded in 1861? Then I shouldn’t feel bad, my country is older than yours after all!
V: …I guess you could look at it that way.

Rivalries aside, Valeria was kind enough to act as a guide and host her flatmates in Veneto for a few days. Veneto is a region in northeast Italy, where Valeria and several previous generations of her family grew up. It is most famous for the canal-lined city of Venice, but we were taking some time to explore the Colli Euganei (Euganean Hills), known for being a center of moscato wines. We wandered through Monselice and Este, paused to ogle at the castles, and eventually made our way to Arqua Petrarca, so named because it is the deathplace of Petrarch.
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Cruising the Mediterranean: Fortifications & Volcanoes

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The Placa, Dubrovnik’s main pedestrian promenade

Through a series of fortunate events, I ended up sailing on a Royal Caribbean cruise a couple weeks ago, departing from Venice with stops in the port cities of Dubrovnik, Croatia; Kusadasi, Turkey; Santorini and Corfu, Greece. It was the first cruise I’d ever been on, and thus, it was the worst (and best) cruise of my life. The sunsets were beautiful, the lox & bagels delicious (my first since leaving the US), and the ship rocked at a frequency of 1/10 hz for only one night (the frequency most prone to causing seasickness). The week was so fabulous, I almost stopped pining for internet access.
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Scenes from the Palio di Siena

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Liberamente nel Campo di Siena / Ogni vergogna deposta, s’affisse.
(Freely upon the Campo of Siena / All shame being laid aside, he placed himself.)
-Dante, Purgatory, XI 134-135

Having been born in Louisville, home of the celebrated Kentucky Derby, I was pretty keen to hear about another famed horse race in Italy, the Palio di Siena. This race is generally held twice annually, on July 2 and August 16, and takes place in the town’s main square, the Piazza del Campo. A dirt track is laid out on the ground, bleachers are thrown up and the town takes a day off to carouse and carry on a centuries-old tradition.

My WWOOF host family was also curious and intrepid enough to venture into Siena, so we drove out and managed to land a parking spot not too far from the center of town. The city was in a festive mood, buzzing with energy, packed with gawking visitors and locals happy to have the day off. Many people were waving flags or wearing them around their necks to show their support for one of the 17 Siena contrade, or city wards. To delineate the borders between the contrade, colorful flags and lamps lined the streets and buildings. Residents take a lot of pride and identify with their contrada, which functions as a center for baptisms, marriages, deaths, festivals and other celebrations. It is advised that you do not marry out of your contrada!

Inside a tabbachi shop selling flags, I asked the clerk which contrada he thought would win. He pointed to the goose (oca), dolphin (onda) and turtle (tartuca). “The tortoise, I really think this one has the best chance,” he said. Turtles winning the race? I scratched my head but we followed his advice and purchased a tartuca flag, vividly colored in blue and gold, with a turtle emblazoned in the center.
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Lessons from a Small Farmer

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Clockwise: aubergine growing in the garden; Barbialla Nuova’s lake; a spider makes its home amidst the blackberry brambles; drawing on the car’s dusty rear window for kids by kids

Over the last couple weeks while WWOOFing, I weeded a pumpkin patch, staked tomatoes, cleaned and revitalized a garden bed, created and turned compost piles, sanded and painted wood beams, and helped measure and construct a pergola. All these were activities I’d never done before. They were only the tip of the iceberg in what I learned while in Tuscany.

The thing is, volunteering with WWOOF is not simply a job or a means of traveling cheaply, it is adopting a lifestyle and exploring a set of values. I did it because I was interested in learning about sustainable agriculture and the rural lifestyle of a farmer, but I ended up getting crash courses on Australian folk music, parenting small children and welding. I was lucky to find a family who welcomed me into their daily routine, included me in meals and activities, and were genuinely interested in getting to know me. And although I initially wanted to live with an Italian family to improve my Italian, I am very happy that my host family was English-speaking because I wouldn’t have been able to connect beyond a superficial level otherwise.

A few lessons from an agrarian lifestyle:
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Freshly Pressed: One Night Stand or the Gift That Keeps Giving?

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Two Fridays ago around 5 pm (11 am EST), I noticed a slew of comments on my latest blog post on hiking the Männlichen summit. Not that I haven’t been getting occasional comments all along, but the majority are from people I know personally, and the spike in external commentators was unusual. I scratched my head over what could be inspiring the bump in traffic, then scrutinized my blog stats to find that WordPress.com was sending referrals my way faster than a time-strapped doctor. Sure enough, when I checked the WordPress landing page, there I was, featured in the top-right corner under “Freshly Pressed” blogs.

For a blog that has only been around for two months and hasn’t had time to develop much of a content library or a following, this is kind of a big deal. WordPress receives thousands of hits every hour, and even a sliver of that directed toward the average indie blogger is a tidal wave in comparison to normal traffic. Prior to being featured on Freshly Pressed, I received somewhere around 50 hits a day, which is not bad for an amateur blogger but nothing to brag about. On the other hand, the Freshly Pressed spotlight led to an immediate skyrocketing in views, with the aforementioned hiking post receiving 50 comments and 38 “likes”. Better yet, I was selected on a Friday, and since Freshly Pressed only selects blogs on weekdays, that meant my blog would stay featured through the weekend.

I am not going to lie–I have always yearned to be “discovered,” and receiving the Freshly Pressed nod sort of validates all the time and energy I spend writing this blog. For the rest of the day, I walked around with a huge smile on my face from my instant “celebrity.”
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