Ah, Venice

Waterbus on the Grand Canal.

It's difficult to look anywhere in Venice without framing a scene fit for a postcard.  The canals are fantastic.  The gondolas are quaint.  Everywhere you look there is a palace or church with a story and a stunning visual.

One thing we automatically think of when Venice comes up is the gondolas.  They have a lot of them, but not an unlimited supply.  Venice has a system in which the city limits the number of gondola licenses (also has the effect of keeping the price high).  The men who have the licenses keep them for years and then either sell them or will them to family members.  Indeed, a gondola license may be one of the most valuable items in the city.  (These men, according to accepted gossip, make a great deal of money even if they are not good at their job.)

Gondola parking

The most famous landmark in Venice is St. Mark's Square.  This Piazza is a lively pedestrian-only city center near the waterfront.  A couple of large churches, a line of super high-end cafes and a huge palace outline the Square.  The palace is the former home of the "Doge," who was the mayor of Venice, although royal - not elected.  Now it is a museum.  On one of the days we went to the square, we saw a youth rugby team from England on their European tour.  These kids managed to sneak their ball into the Square and made it into their own personal rugby pitch, the formal music being played by a live band 40 feet away ignored by these ruggers as mere crowd noise.

Rugby kids in the foreground, 6 piece band and cafe in the background.

St. Mark's Clock Tower at 3:50

On one side of St. Mark's Square is the appropriately, if not terribly creatively, named St. Mark's Clock Tower.  Although the Clock Tower in Hill Valley, California is arguably the most famous clock tower in the world (as we all know, it was struck by lightning on November 12, 1955 providing the 1.21 gigawatts required to activate the flux capacitor), this one is certainly in the running as the most ground breaking.  Above the clock face in the photo above, you can see on either side of the balcony one of the first digital clocks in the world (showing a time of 3:50).  The time flips every five minutes.  (Reminder - daily savings time "flips" this weekend in the US)

The second famous, or rather infamous, aspect of this clock tower surrounds the bell ringer on the top.

The clock tower is designed with the ringer on the outside of the bell.  On the hour the green statue rotates to bang his hammer against the bell to create a ring.  According to the locals, during construction a worker was standing behind the hammer when the green statue guy starting ringing the bell.  The backswing of the statue knocked the worker off of the tower and he fell to his death.  This is one of the first reported deaths caused by robot activity.  (Just a matter of time until SkyNet becomes self aware).

And, finally, the opera.  Because Anne is a cultured person and Mark needs some culture, Anne and Mark decided to attend an opera in Venice.  The venue was a beautiful converted church dating back to the 13th century.  Mark and Anne were dressed up, excited, and ready for some La Traviatta.  We got on the water bus, a fairly efficient manner of travel uniquely adapted for this unique city.  We traveled from out hotel in Lido (an island) to our stop along the Grand Canal near the center of Venice.

As with any trip through the Grand Canal (one of the most popular tourist destinations in Venice), the boat got very crowded.  As Anne and Mark approached their stop, they realized that it was taking passengers two and three stops to get off the boat once they started making their way to the exit (which, unfortunately, was also the entrance).  Apparently, the custom in Italy is that if you want to get on a boat, you get on, even before the other people have a chance to get out.  Since the new passengers do not wait for the other passengers to get off the boat, some people are blocked from getting off the boat before it takes off again.  As a result, the boat becomes crowded quickly and it is difficult to move around, thus exasperating the problem.  So Mark and Anne decided to try to start moving toward the exit well ahead of their stop.  This led Mark to a cultural interaction to remember.

Mark was standing on the boat, ten feet or so from the exit.  The passengers from the dock had started entering the boat, so Mark's progress was stopped (remember, Mark is 'Minnesota nice,' so although he may be ABLE to push, he chooses not to push, unless absolutely necessary).  Realizing no more forward movement was happening at this stop, Mark stood as far out of the way as possible to allow the new passengers to pass by.  However, as a person with mass, Mark still occupied some space.  This really pissed off an old Italian lady.  The visual here is important, but Anne was too busy laughing at Mark to take a photo, so a verbal description will have to suffice.  Think... the body of a Hobbit with the head of the Mrs. Fratelli from the Goonies.

PERMISSO!

So, this old lady steps directly in front of Mark and says, "Permisso!"  Mark, whose skills in Italian are - admittedly - weak at best, interprets this to mean, "Excuse me, sir, please allow me by, if possible."  Mark was unable to move without pushing someone else, so Mark shrugged his shoulders - the international sign of "Sorry, lady, there's nothing I can do.  I'm stuck here."  Or so he thought.  Apparently, this is actually the international sign of "Screw you, lady!  I'll see you in h*ll before I let you through!" because she got mad.

She yelled (yelled!) "Permisso!!" (which Mark now understands to mean, "Excuse me, sir, please violate the laws of physics by making your body take up no space, or, at a minimum, push everyone out of the way so that I, the queen of the world, may pass by.")  But, Mark did not get this message either.  So, our friend, Goonielady Baggins, took matters into her own hands.  This Rudy-esque ("5 foot nothin, 100 and nothin") lady put one hand on Mark's chest, put her head on the back of her hand and pushed.

Despite being asked to change them, the laws of physics still applied.  One of them (Newton's 2nd... or Lombari's 1st, maybe?) is that Mark is not going to be physically moved by little old ladies, ever.  Even if Mark had wanted to move, he could not because there was no empty space in which to move.  For some reason, however, this woman thought this was going to work.  Maybe she thought Mark would push someone out of the way, thus creating some space.  (However, if Mark were to pursue that strategy, he would probably start by drive blocking anyone who was yelling "Permisso" into the Grand Canal - so that still would not have worked out well for her.)

Other than causing shock to Mark (is this really happening?) and uncontrollable laughter to Anne (which has lasted several days, now), this technique had no effect.  But it was funny.

Then we went to the opera.  As near as we could figure, here's what happened: this lady fell in love with a really old, fat guy.  The old, fat guy's father (who was clearly younger than he was, somehow) had a scary, deep voice that scared her away - so she broke up with the fat guy, which made him sad and caused him to sing sad songs.  Then at the end, they got back together, but she immediately died of too much partying.  Culturized?  Check.

View from the opera house.

Buried Cities and Steaming Mountains

Not far from the Amalfi Coast is the city of Pompeii, located in the shadow of Mt. Vesuvius.  Pompeii was buried by a volcanic eruption a long time ago (like in the '60s or something).  Anyway, the city was mostly covered in hot, volcanic ash (rather than lava).  While either form of volcanic output is deadly to everything living there, a town destroyed by volcanic ash can be dug up hundreds of years later and examined by Mark and Anne (a town destroyed by lava - not so much).  Pompeii has been largely excavated and we were able to walk through parts of the city (some parts are still under excavation) and see various areas of the town in remarkably well-preserved form.

These little guys stood (and still stand) above the lockers in the bath house.

The menacing form of Vesuvius serves as a backdrop to the ruins of the forum in Pompeii. 

One of the most famous aspects of Pompeii is its "residents."  Some of the people living in the city were unable to escape and were enveloped and killed by the volcanic ash.  Over the centuries that followed the eruption, the ash hardened and these people's remains decomposed.  This left a void in the rock in exactly the shape of the person in their final pose.  Now, when the excavators find a void in the volcanic rock (where a human body was before it decomposed), they fill it in with plaster and remove the rock.  This leaves them with casts of the people of Pompeii in their last positions before dying.  Some of these casts are on display in the city.

In addition to being able to create plaster casts of the citizens of Pompeii, the ruins have yielded a tremendous number of ancient artifacts.  Some of the ancient relics found at the site have been removed and placed in museums.  Others are on display at the site.  However, there is a very large volume of 'less important' relics.  They are simply placed into storage.  Apparently, the first jug we found is priceless, but the 10,000th jug - just throw it on that pile with the others.

Look closely to find the famous ancient Rubbermaid baskets of Pompeii.

As with any visitors to any city (even ancient cities), Mark and Anne naturally gravitated to the places they felt most comfortable.  Predictably, after a few days traveling with Mark, Anne went looking for a tavern while Mark got into an argument with an inanimate object.

Anne finds a tavern.

In fairness, the statue of Apollo started it.

After touring the city, Mark and Anne decided to take a closer look at the volcano itself.  Mt. Vesuvius is a national park in Italy and, assuming it is not currently erupting, you can climb to the top of the mountain and look inside.  Along the climb (and at the top), you can also get a heck of a view of Naples and the landscape in this part of Campania

View of Naples

On the day that Anne and Mark climbed the mountain, there was no eruption (*note to readers - in the event of volcanic eruption, the management of this blog reserves the right to cease publication - no refunds will be issued), but there was steam escaping from vents in the rock.  From the lip at the top of the mountain, Anne and Mark could clearly make out the scent of sulfur.  There was no real danger of eruption, but the sulfur smell and steam was close enough to ensure that Anne and Mark kept close tabs on where all the other tourists were (you know the old saying, you don't have to outrun the lava, you just have to outrun the other guy... oh, wait, maybe that's just for bears...)

The ash from the volcano really makes Mark's hair look gray.

Next... Venice.

Amalfi Coast

After Roma, Mark and Anne rented a car and drove the 3 hours or so south for the second leg of their journey.  The area between Sorrento and Salerno is called the Amalfi Coast, and Mark and Anne stayed nearly in the middle of it in a town called, appropriately, Amalfi.  The area is significant in ancient mythology, popular among the high rollers in Italy, and absolutely beautiful.

View from our hotel, first morning in Amalfi

The cities are basically built into the sides of the cliffs.  This makes for a stunning visual effect.

Partial view of Amalfi taken from dock.

Mark and Anne drove a portion of the coast on multiple days.  It was a singular experience.  First of all, we're rolling in our rental car (see below).

Just like high school.

Second, the locals find it to be standard practice to tailgate, even if they are not going to pass you, which is very thoughtful of them.  Third, this road is straight out of a video game.  Uphill, narrowing to one lane with two way traffic, pedestrians, bicycles, no shoulder, and 180 degree switchbacks.  The first time driving it was very stressful, but after a time or two, Mark and Anne started to get the hang of it and had a bit more fun.

Good view of the road from the next cliff over

Anne and Mark decided to take the public bus one morning from their hotel in Amalfi to the city of Sorrento (a city that appears in Homer's Odyssey as the home of the Sirens).  Sorrrento is another picturesque town, not unlike the one in which we were staying.  When it was time to leave, we returned to the bus station to learn that the bus drivers had gone on strike shortly after we had arrived (one of those "mid-day"strikes, I guess).  A friendly cab driver offered to give us a ride back to Amalfi for 100 Euro.  The bus ride cost 7 Euro round trip, so we turned him down.  So, we ended up having an extra couple of hours in Sorrento, as a consequence of the general strike against austerity measures in Europe (or whatever).  Eventually, a bus driver showed up and we began the return trip to Amalfi.  This bus driver was not the same one we had on the way there.  Apparently, because of the strike, they found some replacement bus drivers at the Mario Andretti racing school.  The ride there took 1 hour and 45 minutes. This dude made it back (with more stops) in an hour and 15.  It was quite an adventure sitting in the bus and looking straight down out the window to see not a road, or shoulder, but the freaking sea.  But the guy made it happen.  Mark wanted to get his picture taken with this bus driver, his new hero, after we arrived.  But as you might expect, this guy while a busload of the need for speed was the first person running off of the bus.

View from a bus at 50 mph.

View from the bus at a stop.   The road ahead is visible.

The city of Amalfi, itself, was very pretty and charming.  Although it must get thousands of visitors each year, it manages to retain the feeling of a small town of locals.  If you ever get the chance to visit, go ahead and do it.

Amalfi's main drag.

Dinner in the main square on our last night in Amalfi.

Seriously, What Does That Mean?

Cities like Rome and Venice get a lot of tourists every year.  And the tourists come from all over, so these cities try to design signs that are easily interpreted by people from all over the world speaking hundreds of different languages.  Some of the signs are very effective.  Then, there are the less effective signs.  Luckily, Mark and Anne are experts at interpreting signs.  For example...

This is a traffic sign we found in Sorrento.  Obviously, this sign limits the towing loads that snails are allowed to carry.  

Earlier, in Rome, we found the following sign outside a church:

Rock n Roll ain't noise pollution

For some reason, the city of Rome feels the need to ban either singing or rock n roll music in general.  (Also note the "no aerosol" sign on the left, which - apparently - bans underarm deodorant).  

Many signs are easy to understand, given the context in which they are found.  We found and decoded this sign on our hike up Mt. Vesuvius:

In that context, the meaning of this sign is clear: When you fall off this mountain, you should roll up into a ball to roll down the mountain faster.

Sometimes, though, the signs are not clear, even given the context.  For example, is this street sign from Venice banning nipples or underwear?

No people without necks allowed?

Sometimes, signs make even LESS sense, given their context.  For example, we found this sign on a trash can which banned depositing of bagged trash and .... unbagged trash.

So... what goes in here?

And, finally, this sign is awesome, although bewildering in that it was found in Italy: No Soccer.

Anne and Mark: like a walking Rosetta Stone.

First Stop: Rome

You might not be able to see it, because Mark's biceps are in the way, but this is a photo of the Coliseum in Rome.  We arrived in the city early on Sunday morning and made the 20 minute walk from our hotel to the first of our many "can't miss" sights in the ancient city.

The Coliseum is very accessible for visitors (assuming you don't mind plopping down a few Euros).  They have restored parts of it very well and excavated others, leaving the effect that you are viewing a "cross section" of the entire facility.  You can look down into the underground chambers where the gladiators, wild animals, criminals and Christians waited for their time in the arena (that list arranged by odds of survival from best to worst).   The "stage" at the far end of the photo below was the level that the games took place - unless the game was the staging of a naval battle, in which case they flooded the whole thing.  Very impressive.

Later we went to the ruins of the Forum and Palatine Hill, all of which have been restored to various degrees.  We saw the place where Mark Antony gave the eulogy for Caesar ("Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears...") and the place where they burned ole Julius' body.  Believe it or not, people still bring flowers and what not to Caesar's crematorium.

That evening we did a walk across the city center, as shown in the guidebook given to us by two friendly guys from Kansas we ran into in a restaurant in Rome.  They were on their last day in Italy and gave us their gently used travel bible.  Here's a big shout out to two guys from Hiawatha, Kansas.

One of the first places we stopped was the Piazza Navona.  (This is a big square with huge fountains and cafes; we think this was used as a setting in one of those Dan Brown books.)  In the evenings, local artists set up stands to show and sell their work.  In the photo below, Anne inspects paintings from a local artist (while Dom from "Entourage" executes the photobomb).

We continued along to the Trevi Fountain.  The local custom is that visitors to Rome throw a coin into the fountain to ensure that they eventually get a return trip to the city.  While there, a guy with a camera ran a mini-scam on us (offered to take a Poloroid, we accepted, he overcharged - and you can't even see the fountain in the picture - blerg!).  You can tell how happy Mark was when he learned this other local custom (ripping off tourists) associated with the Trevi Fountain.

But all in all, it was a fun couple of days in Roma.  We came, we saw, we conquered.  More or less.

Next... The Amalfi Coast

Travels, Milestones and Public Enemy

"Greetings readers."  That's how big time bloggers have to address their readers.  And as of late October, 2010, Anne and Mark are officially big time bloggers.  The count of visits to this blog has now ticked over the total of 1,000 (!).

Anne and Mark did a little research to figure out who, exactly, is making these visits to our little corner of the internet.  The website gives us some information (country of origin, type of operating system), but not much.  However, we were undaunted and searched out the remainder of the data to figure out who our audience is.  The readers of this blog are in 5 basic categories, as shown in the pie chart below:

For those who are wondering, Anne and Mark have no information on the lost colony of New Bulgaria. Other conclusions to be gathered from this data: First, hi, mom.  Second, if the 3.3% of you keep logging on, Anne and Mark will continue to check to see if you wrote any comments.

In other news, Anne and Mark just returned (Nov. 1) from a week in Italy.  We visited Rome, Venice and the Amalfi Coast.  Obviously, there will be several posts forthcoming covering such thought-provoking topics as "What does that sign mean?" (we have some guesses), "Does that little old lady really think she can push Mark?" (yes, she does) and "Why does the Vatican Museum have an entire wing of exhibits from ancient Egypt?" (umm... we got nuthin on this one)

But before we get to that, we should probably note that the trip almost did not happen.  You see, normally, the entertainment options here are ... "hit or miss."  For an example of a "miss," please note this advertising for an upcoming, local concert:

As far as we can tell, this is some type of Village People cover band (without the Indian).  This type of entertainment, we can live without.  However, every once in a while a true, legendary giant of music stops by, and it would be almost an insult for us to miss them when they do.  This was the situation we faced immediately before our scheduled departure for Italy when we saw this advertisement:

Public Enemy?  Live in Sofia?  Are you kidding me?  Flavor Flav in cyrillic?  It was almost worth canceling our trip so that we could be in town to see this.

Almost.

But if we had, we would have missed so many awesome sights.  Like this one (spotted on the jacket of the guy in front of us at the Passport control stop in Rome - looks like officially licensed gear to me):

Burgers and Movies

This weekend Anne and Mark nurtured their American roots a bit by ordering up some burgers and going to the movies.  And we're not talking those weird "Shot Food" burgers (see blog entry from last month), we're talking good, old-fashioned, artery-clogging, "Have It Your Way" goodness: McDonald's.  A colleague of ours knows someone who has some type of delivery route that runs from Sofia to Blago daily or nearly daily.  This colleague will, on occasion, order something from Sofia and have this delivery person bring it for a small fee.  Our colleague, let's call him "Burgmetheus" (from Greek mythology, the son of Titan who brought burgers to the humans) gave us the heads up that he was going to order some Micky Ds and asked if we wanted in. So, bim bang boom, Bob's your Uncle, Friday afternoon Burgmetheus delivers 8 luke warm double cheeseburgers.

Maybe you have in mind the best cheeseburger you ever had, and maybe you would not describe it as "luke warm." Or maybe you're going to tell us how terrible McDonald's food is or what not (yes, we saw the story about the 6 month old burger).  And maybe your idea of the best cheeseburger ever doesn't look like this.  Well, that may very well be.  But Anne and Mark have reached the conclusion that this cheeseburger (yes, the one pictured above) was the best food since manna fell from the sky.  Absence makes the heart grow fonder?  Um, well it certainly makes the stomach a bit more anxious to see an old friend.

After filling up on trans fats and other nastiness, Anne and Mark ventured out to the movies on Saturday afternoon.  This was our first movie at the theatre in Bulgaria.  The experience was not bad.  The theatre only has one screen and there are no previews, so you need to show up when your show is starting.  They do have 8 movies playing a day, though, so there is some variety.  Each gets one showing per day and they rotate showtimes, so you can go to the theatre at the same time every day for a week and not see the same film twice.

The seats were pre-assigned (the tickets had your row and seat printed on them).  The entire film was shown as produced, in English, with the only noticeable differences from how it would be in an American theatre being a high level of volume and Bulgarian subtitles.  Oh, and the theatre-going experience was much more affordable than in the US.  Two tickets cost 7 leva (about $5 - granted we went in the afternoon and paid matinee prices, but full price would have been 8 leva total).  The popcorn and drinks cost another 3-4 leva.

How is that the trademark of a popcorn company in Bulgaria?

Anyway, the film we chose was Social Network.  Quick review: Mark Zuckerberg (the guy who started Facebook) and Sean Parker (the guy who started Napster and worked on Facebook) are real jerks.  It's good that they know about computers and programming, because their social skills are quite suspect.  But I digress.  Anne and Mark both gave the movie a thumb's up (Go See It!).

Another movie currently playing, The Other Guys, is a comedy we saw before we left the U.S. last August.  So, some movies get here pretty quickly (a couple of weeks), while others can take a long while (months).  We are also told that American movies are generally popular, but comedies sometimes flop because the humor does not translate across the cultures.  Action movies do best.

And finally, today's adventure in parking:

We call this one "Jackknife in the Fog."  Notice the use of perpendicular angles and how the light is changing from day to dusk.  Notice how the driver has left the vehicle just slightly on the sidewalk and just slightly in the lane of traffic, effectively annoying both pedestrians and drivers, but not truly impeding either.  We have concluded that this driver is an artist and this is performance art, obviously symbolic of the inner struggle that this artist is enduring.  Or he's a jerk (maybe it's the Facebook guys).