Venezia!

Here we go again with the whole cities with different names in different languages thing....

Venezia in Italian is Venice in English and Venedig in German. If variety is the spice of life, then this city well seasoned.

We left for Venice on the night train at 1:30am on Saturday and got there at 8:30. It was a cheap way to go, even if the compartments tend to smell like feet...

We spent the morning mostly walking around the narrow streets and canals. It is beautiful. It's not really a city to go to in order to see or do a certain list of things (though there are some), but mostly just a great city to be in, to enjoy its own uniquenesses. Here's me sporting my cougar pride near said Venetian beauty:

And no Venetian blog post could be complete without a picture of a canal (most of them are not this big):

One of the top sites in Venice is St. Mark's Basilica. We went inside, but weren't allowed to take pictures. Here's one of the main doors outside. The inside is covered in golden mosaics, the most beautiful mosaics I have ever seen. Story goes that St. Mark the Evangelist (the author of the gospel of Mark) is buried under the church's alter.

Another must see (which is really impossible not to see) are the many gondolas and gondoliere all around the city. We didn't pay for a ride (we're college students on a budget after all), but here's a picture of some of the boats:

Among the beautiful day and awesome time we had, however, there were a few dents in our experience. When we were having pizza (of course) at a café near where the above picture was taken, a pesky Venetian pigeon chose to relieve itself right above where I was sitting:

This was after I attempted to wipe it off; I survived. I'm just hoping for no resurgence of avian flu. An even more unfortunate circumstance was when one of my friends fell in a canal. There's no photo evidence (it just seemed inappropriate at the time--as I was fighting back laughter), but trust me, you do not want to swim in these canals...

The timing of our visit was also very important as we were there for Carnevale (Venice's Mardi Gras). It did mean that the city was packed with other tourists (though not unusual for Venice), but it was absolutely worth it. All day we saw people dressed in costumes like these:

So, of course we had to join in the masked fun!

At night, Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square) is still full of people in masks and costumes dancing, throwing confetti, and watching shows.

We returned on the night train to Salzburg leaving Venice at 12:30 and arriving back here at 9:45am. It was a long day, but absolutely worth it.

Many of my friends said they felt like they saw all they needed to see of Venice in a day. It isn't a city like London or Rome where the to-do list is infinite. That may be true if you go to Venice to see Venice, but if you go to BE in Venice, then you could easily spend much more time. The beauty is amazing, but the experience is so much more--the cafés, canals, gelato (how could I just now remember to mention the gelato?!), and simple unique beauty I could soak up for a long time to come.

Venice also left me with an overwhelming desire to learn Italian--and by "overwhelming desire" I mean: it would be cool if it could just happen because I will probably never attempt to actually learn it.

Oh well.

Arrivederci for now!

Important Advice

So,

Last night I was going to go to a Fasching party (a pre-Lent party, like Mardi Gras) held in another dorm.

So I leave my room,

walk downstairs,

and turn the handle of the door.

Only, the door won't open.

So I take out my key and turn it in the lock, all the way around.

And the door still won't unlock.

I turn it all the way in the other direction.

Still no luck.

This went on for about five minutes.

At one point, I actually said out loud to myself: "Is this a dream?"

By that time I had worked up a sweat trying to maneuver the lock and in the panic of realizing that if the building were on fire I would be in a much more desperate situation. So I decided just to go back to my room and go to bed, after I wrote the blog post about München.

So at least you (hopefully) benefited from my hypothetical near death experience.

This morning, the following note was posted on the door:

Important advice indeed.

München!

We went to München!

Or Munich, in English....why do we even have different English names for other countries and their cities? A question for the ages, my friends.....

For example:

Deutschland = Germany

Österreich = Austria

Salzburg = Salzburg

Hey! We got one right!...except that it's pronounced "ZAHLTS boorg" auf Deutsch (in German :)

Anyway, this bustling metropolis is quite a bit bigger than our little Alpine city of 150,000 inhabitants...and cheaper. How does that happen?

It was just a day trip, but we had the opportunity to see quite a bit.

Now I shall impress (or bore) you with some great Bavarian architecture!

This church was paid for by one man...too bad he couldn't afford to do much interior decorating...

This is the city hall (I think). It was build in the early 1900s...those tricky Bavarians, it looks much older. They call that Neo-Gothic.

And this is the main cathedral, a symbol of Munich. They should have hired the decorator from that other church....on second thought, maybe its better that they didn't....

Now, because everyone likes candids they weren't read for, here is one of us on the city tour with our guide, Andreas. It's so helpful to have a guide who is 12 feet tall. It's harder to get lost that way.

And here is our table at lunch.

This is the Hofbrauhaus, where Oktoberfest is held every year...in October...in case there was any confusion about that.

And lastly, some castle that I don't know the name of probably because I was too tired and it was the last thing we saw. But hey, I'd live there nevertheless. If they offered. Or would accept my offer of 10 Euro. But I'm firm on that.

München really is far to big to see in only one day, but what we saw was well worth it. As always, thanks for reading! And commenting!

Bis später!