Spagna, etc.

It's been a long time since I've written and it will take me far too long to write in detail about Bologna, Venice, and the rest of my last academic trip, but suffice it to say that it was amazing. Bologna is a wild city full of college students (often rioting), miles, er kilometers, of arcade-covered sidewalks, and some pretty dang good food. Venice was the most touristy place I have been to date--there are seriously more tourists in the town than there are Venetians, and the Venetians don't particularly care for the tourists. The city is built on an ancient foundation of tree trunk piers that were driven into the sea floor forever ago, so now it is actually sinking and floods every time it rains, which is about every other day. The pigeons are egotistical--I kicked three of them not because I was trying to, but because I fully expected them to move when I walked their way. Still, the city is very beautiful and the food is incredible; a must-see in Italy. Oh, and yes--I did get to ride in a gondola--twice. It was a 50 cent taxi gondola that went about 50 meters, but it was an actual gondola nonetheless.

After the Emilia-Romagna & Veneto trip I spent most of my time in studio finishing up my project. I had to design a mixed-use apartment builing that had shops and restaurants on the first level. Not my cup of tea, but it turned out pretty well. Afterwards we started our final project of the semester, a semi-professional project (some of our ideas may actually be built later) in which we are designing three regions of the small town of Campello about two hours north of Rome. I'm in charge of a block of about 7 or 8 houses on a pretty steep grade up the side of district that resembles more of a mideival hill town, so it's been a challenge. Due December 13th, so far so good.


Assisi - I went with about 10 other people on a trip to Assisi that ended up being a pilgrimmage. Not that that's a bad thing; we just weren't prepared for it. We rode a bus for 2 hours with about 30 or so college girls who didn't speak much English and a nun who didn't speak any. It was a good cultural moment. There ended up being a huge Italian youth conference in Assisi the day we were there and we all went on a big walking pilgrimmage up to the Church of St. Francis, praying the rosary in both Italian and English the whole way. Got to see St. Francis's and St. Chiara's tombs, so that was cool. Assisi is a beautiful city built up the side of an ancient hill in the middle of Umbria. There are several random little plaques and monuments throughout the winding streets that mark places where St. Francis was known to have been, including a little patch of earth marked "Terra Sacra" (Holy Ground). The main piazza at the Church of St. Francis has an unbelievable overlook of the valley below (as you can tell from the picture). The church itself is gorgeous on the inside--full of frescoes and mosaics--but I couldn't take pictures because the church would rather get money from selling post cards. The bus ride back was spent singing songs back and forth with the Italian girls and practicing our Italian--good times.

In other news, I turned 21 on the 11th of November. That was a grand old time. We hopped around to some of our favorite bars for the evening, then the next day Tereza took me on a trip to Villa Borghese, particularly the Galleria, to see some of my favorite sculptures by Bernini and paintings by Caravaggio. Priceless. She also got me the first Harry Potter book in both Italian and British English (the original version), so I've been reading one chapter in Italian, followed by another in English to see if I know my vocab. I'm actually doing quite well and there are only a few weird translations that I don't pick up on. Dumbledore's name is translated to "Silente," which I think is pretty funny.

Spain - Tereza, Theresa, Ying, Yojana, and I went to Barcelona and Madrid, Spain over our Thanksgiving break. We flew into Barcelona Wednesday evening and had a nice warm (literally) welcome to the city. We were sweating in our winter coats by the time we got to the hostel, which was right around the corner from Gaudi's Casa Battlo, an interesting building to say the least. We ate a great meal with tapas (little appetizers) and Sangria, all of which was delicious. Rambled through La Rambla, a mile or so long road/piazza lined with shops, bars, street vendors, and all sorts of interesting/frightening people. Got to see some very ocean-like modern architecture down by the bay. We took a free tour of the gothic quarter of the city, which was especially great for a group of architecture nerds. We visited Sagrada Famila, Gaudi's famous organic basilica that's been under construction for over 100 years now. It's supposed to be finished by 2026. We got to climb to the top. Quite the experience. We met up with three of our other friends for Thanksgiving dinner. There wasn't any turkey or stuffing on the menu, so I had a giant plate of salami (thought it was a sausage--lost in translation) and some spicy potatoes with Sangria to wash it all down. Other people had ox, seafood paellas, and catalunyan sausage. Sadly, no football, but there was a small "parade" of college students protesting fascism.

Madrid was an entirely different city, but also very cool. It was much colder there--a lot colder than Rome (I wore shorts here yesterday). Our first stop was a trip through the Prado, the world-renowned art museum. We got to indulge in our artsy nerdiness--I saw one of my favorite paintings by Pieter Bruegel that I didn't even know was in the museum, so that was awesome. We spent the rest of the time roaming around the main streets and public squares, wandering in and out of churches, eating and drinking different Spanish delicacies. Yojana brought her stuffed animal frog named Julio with her, which she always takes pictures of next to famous monuments and the like. Anyways, she accidently left it at one of the metro stops on the way to the airport. After we all got checked in we had about an hour before our flight boarded, so Yojana decided she wanted to go back real quick and find Julio. Not wanting to let her go by herself, I tagged along on the quick search and recovery mission. We ran the whole way from train to train, but we missed a couple and wasted a lot of time waiting for the trains to show up. When we finally got where Julio was supposed to be, he had apparently hopped somewhere else and we only had 30 minutes or so until our plane took off. We ran back through the metro lines and through the airport as fast as we could, got through security and to the gate (which was still hooked up to the plane and open, ready to let us on board), but the little jerk taking tickets was having a bad day and decided he wasn't going to let us on, even though we had called ahead and the plane was waiting for us. It was frustrating and embarrassing, but at least Yojana speaks fluent Spanish, so we found the cheapest flight we could--4 hours later. We had some fun down time at the airport wandering through the shops and whatnot. Made it back to Rome by midnight after a creepy train ride next to some strange Italian who was on some undetermined substance that caused him to smell like death and laugh way too hard for way too long at very strange times. Luckily he passed out after about 10 minutes and Yojana and I were able to sneak away to other seats. Yikes.

So that was Spain. Next on the list is about 2 and a half weeks of solid work--just wrote a pretty important theology paper, have lots of work to do on the design project, working on an application to be an RA next year, getting ready to contact and explore all my possibilities for work next summer, planning Christmas travels, and the list continues. The plans for Christmas so far are a couple days in Brussels, Amsterdam, and Berlin, followed by a week skiing in Austria on a surprisingly affordable all-Notre Dame trip, followed by about 6 days back in Rome to save money, and ending with a little jump over to Greece with a few of my non-arkie buddies from school. I'm pumped, but my checking account is not. We'll see what happens.

I miss you all, keep in touch.

Brian

P.S. - since the internet was reconnected it has been painfully slow. It will take me forever to upload large pictures onto my picture site, so I'll try to come up with something else in the meantime.