Vespas and Italy

There is a reason Vespas are so popular in Italy. Many towns still have their medieval street plan intact. First came the carriages, and they widened, famously for instance, the roads in Paris to help the carriage traffic; then of course came the car. Vienna still has its tight cobblestone streets, designed for the carriage and not the automobile. Italy seems to have somehow avoided the modernization project for carriages, so the streets can be pathetically narrow. Hence the Vespa to zip around town. Practical really.

The photos are of Pascal in front of the cathedral in Sienna. BTW the cathedral is really a wedding cake sort of building. The ornamentation is great, but maybe a little thick, just like on a cake, the frosting looks good, but maybe it's just a little bit too much of a good thing. Funny the Italians are usually so more restraint in their architecture, as compared to the baroque stuff typical in Wien.

Tessa turned 16!!

Tessa's sixteenth birthday came during our Tuscany vacation. The picture above we shot just before her birthday. Only now at home while reviewing our vacation pictures did I realize the house number in the picture. 15!! So Tessa is at 15 knocking on the door to get to 16!! Get it?

Tuscany

Pascal resting after his little parkour run around the plaza.

So good at acting bored and crazy.

Examining the surf. We actually surfed that little air mattress Tessa is holding.

Pascal getting on people's nerves!

Pascal getting on people's nerves.....

Sienna. They were getting ready for a horse race the next week. The flags are for each of the 14 provinces? which enter the horse race. The race track we saw, and it is crazy! It goes right around the main plaza, and everything is stone and narrow. Dangerous! I'm sure a thrill to watch.

Typical hill towns in the early evening.

Tessa in Pisa.

Hamming it up to match the graffiti.

We vacationed in Tuscany this summer. Great food, beautiful hill towns and landscape, and the aqua green mediterranean sea. We had a house in the hills about 20 minutes by car from Piombino, the port city close to the island of Elba. Our house was all the way at the top of a mountain up a very bumpy dirt road. I got pretty good driving the road - by the middle of the week I was pulling the parking brake to get the back end of the car to slide during a turn. Anika was scared the first 5 times, but then she got into the trill. I only kind of crashed once a little bit into a thorny bush, but still on the road!

Every other day we went to the beach. Our favorite beach was on the other side of a pine forest. For a couple of days there was even some wind swell big enough to body surf. The water was waist deep and warm for maybe 100 meters. So pretty mellow beach. Just off the beach was a outdoor restaurant which had great panini, pasta's, etc. The italians just know how to eat! The restaurant also played great beach music - mostly a mix of reggae music. Very chill.

The little hill towns in Tuscany are very beautiful. They are real medieval cities, stuck on a hill top with winding passages through the town. And although the towns a clearly oriented to tourism real people live in the towns. In America I often heard the story about someone visiting their italian grandmother in the village of their parents. Well these are the towns the grandmothers come from. Really little has changed in these towns for 100s of years. In general the towns were in superb shape, clean and well maintained. Not at all a bad life these grandmothers lead!

We took some trips around Tuscany and visited Pisa and Sienna. Pisa is well worth the visit, and not only because of the leaning tower. Actually the church and baptisterium in Pisa are quite amazing, and wouldn't need the leaning tower to attract visitors.

Flowers from Anika

Anika spent the day at home (school holiday) alone. She went shopping, and got us some flowers. Here they are.

Florence Sketches

Some sketches of Florence. The hills with the church, and the hills with the clouds were sketched from our hotel pool. Nice view, eh? The simple outlined hill with clouds is the biggest hill around Florence. It has a distinctive shape and is usually a flat dark color as it is far away. If cezzane were a florentine, he would have picked this mountain to paint. The branch of leaves is from an oak tree. On our last day there was a huge rain, complete with crazy winds and even hail. On the walk back to our hotel there were branches and leaves strewn all over the road. I like the shape of the oak leaf, especially how each leaf is different yet still the same.

Michelangelo's Pieta

In a museum next to the Duomo in Florence, is Michelangelo's unfinished pieta. Above is my sketch of it. I only included the arm of the figure on the left, mostly out of laziness, but also because it is not the most interesting figure anyways.

The pose of Jesus is just perfect, lots of pathos, and a feeling of fate (as in somethings must be). I always liked the main figure behind Jesus, the man in the cloak holding Jesus in a way that he is almost presenting the body of Christ to us the viewers. I've always assumed the figure is Michelangelo himself, presenting the body of Christ, or his sculpture of Jesus to us the viewer. Apparently, the pieta was meant for Michelangelo's grave. Now the idea of the cloaked figure being Michelangelo himself makes even more sense.

Anyways, regardless of the identity of the cloaked figure the main achievement is really the body of Christ. Here, although still muscular, the Michelangelo makes the body of Christ seem weak and beaten by lengthening the limbs, and by the wonderfully limp/languid/resigned pose. The way the other figures support the body of Christ is also important, as they do it with such grace and care, yet the physical weight of the figure is also apparent. The slumping body being laid down as gently as possible, but the weight of the dead body pulls everything down. Man, this sculpture is really the finest poetry.

BTW: christ doesn't have a left leg in Michelangelo's sculpture. Really it just isn't there - this is after all an unfinished sculpture! It doesn't really seem to matter though, does it? Maybe the leg ruined the composition, and that's why Michelangelo quit the sculpture ('cause really you can't have Christ with a missing leg). Also, a beautiful detail is how christ holds the (in my drawing) missing figure on his right holding up his leg - he holds his arm so lovingly around her shoulder, but he's dead, right! It's such a beautiful contradictory gesture. His love extends past his death - that's the death of christ in a nutshell isn't it? I'm telling you this sculpture is sooooooo crazy good.

Two

MATURE :: IMMATURE

Sabine in Florence

There's Sabine walking down the lane toward the two cypress under a blue sky. Beautiful! Sabine also got to enjoy wearing a dress during the hot weather. Looking very cool with her shades next to a statue in the Boboli gardens. Don't ask what is going on with the statue above, looks like a May-September romance. Sweet.

UP!

In florence you are often looking up. Up at a blue sky, up at a church tower, and almost always up at a painted ceiling. Sabine is showing the correct pose for looking up, not looking directly over your head, but a little nebenbei, otherwise you get dizzy and tip over ;) Really, there was so many ceiling paintings, and a total lack of any kind of furniture in most of the rooms we visited, I began to imagine that back in the day the denizins of Florence lay around on pillows staring up at their ceilings. It would be great to look at the ceiling paintings this way, more dreamy, like laying in the grass watching the clouds roll by. More seriously, it is a totally different thing to look at a painting hanging on the wall. Is there a difference between reading a book on your back, or sitting upright? I think, actually, yes. They should throw around a couple of those really super sized pillows in the florentine palaces for the viewers to enjoy the ceilings properly.

BTW: a lot of the paintings in the palaces were painted on wooden planks then installed on the ceiling. You would think ceiling paintings are always frescos. But installing wooden painted planks on the ceiling makes a lot of sense - it is no fun painting on your back, painting dripping down your arm or in your face. And then you need scaffolding, and you can't really step back from your painting to get a different perspective on it.....

MEAT!!!

Ahh, a meat store! Look at all those prosciutto legs hanging from the ceiling! I think this man is in heaven. They cut the prosciutto by hand here, which means kind of thick and uneven slices, not the typical machine cut prosciutto I'm used to buying at the supermarkt. But then thicker = more meat per mouthful! I also had carpaccio, which I think is meat from lung. Sounds Bleahhhh, but taste good. No, after a quick google, carpaccio is simply raw meat - maybe it was lung maybe it wasn't. Anyways the meat looks nice too, a deep wine like red. The meat is a little dry. But in this case, since the meat is cut pretty THIN, it melts on your tongue. Mmmmm.

Perseus and the head of Medusa

Without wading too deep into greek mythology........ here is a bronze statue, by Cellini (ca. 1550) of Perseus who cut the head off Medusa. Perseus was given winged sandals from the god Hermes, a sword from Zeus, a invisible cloak from Hades, a mirrored shield (to be able to look at the Medusa) from Athena, and finally and most practically a bag from Hesperides for Medusa's head. Thus fully outfitted he went to cut the head off Medusa. A gross detail to the sculpture is the bloody stump of Medusa's head. What looks like the shredded muscle of the cut off neck is upon closer inspection, writhing snakes. This refers to the fact that two creatures (Pegasus and Chrysaor) sprang from Medusa's severed neck.

Another cool detail to the sculpture: when looking at the back of Perseus's helmeted head you can see the image of the sculptor's face! The banding of the helmet forms the nose and eyebrows of the face, and Perseus's hair becomes the sculptor's beard. This type of hidden image is somewhat typical for renaissance art, and in painting the most extreme example of this trickery can be seen in the "fruit face" paintings from Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

Firenze!!!!!

Sabine and I took a much overdue 'sans-kids' vacation to Florence (thanks Oma and Opa for watching the kids). What a city! Don't know where to begin. How about a picture of the main Doma (taken from inside the tower), and two pictures from our hotel/B&B. We stayed outside of the city center, a 10 minute bus ride away, another 10 minute walk up a hill. The hotel had a splendid view over the country side, with a perfectly situated pool! The hotel itself was a converted old smallish stone castle, with beautiful relaxing gardens all around it. We highly recommend it: I Parigi Corbinelli.

The walk up the hill to the hotel was hot at times, but let us soak in the country side. One evening after dark the whole way up the hill fire flies were floating about. We even caught one. They are really strange because they make no noise, fly slowly enough that you can catch them, and the only thing you ever see is their bright flashing glow - we never saw the actual bug! It's a little like catching pure light! Very magical, and it was the first time Sabine and I had ever seen fire flies. If it hadn't been for learning about fire flies from reading children's books, I think we would have been pretty spooked. Dancing specks of light as if from the spirit world.

Who's the Monkey?

Went to the Albertina today, to see works from the 'Der Blaue Reiter'. Link. Beautiful stuff from Kandinsky, and Franz Marc. Their work is almost 100 years old now, but it is still so fresh, and inventive. Kandinsky's abstractions are so wonderful - I have to try some myself!

Mr. Pascal ( pictured above) is playing the monkey in front of some permanent sculptures at the Albertina. I think he would gladly switch places with the monkeys instead tagging along through the museum!

Spring Rain. Bus Stop.

A light spring rain. Waiting for the bus. Bus was 12 minutes late, and Pascal had plenty of time to amuse himself, by watching the bubbles floating down the gutter, or the cars spraying the curb as they whizzed by.

Slacklining is Kool!

Got a slackline for Anika's birthday. Really it's for the whole family. But then Ani is the best so far - she's up to an unassisted mount and 4 steps. But Papa's close on her tail ;) The first day we took the slackline up to the park next to the Haus des Meeres. The next day we went to Prater Park.

Bunny and Cross

Here's the beaded wooden egg, mentioned below, with the bunny on the one side, and the cross on the other.

Wise Goat

Goats appear wise. It's the beard, the rectangular pupils, and the steady gaze. This one has been thinking inside his glass box for decades.

Vienna Marathon - Haile Gebrselassie

The marathon is here! They ran right past our apartment. They were handing out !Go Haile! placards. Early in the morning the race people were setting up a water station below our apartment. We went out before the first runner went by, so we were sure to catch Haile Gebrselassie. The first runners were running FAST! They mostly keep up this pace the whole length of the marathon - amazing!

About half way through the race the water station - which had 1000's of water glasses set up -was empty. The workers could barely pour water fast enough to keep up with the demand. They resorted to pouring the water first into a tub, then dunking the individual plastic cups in the tub to fill them up. Also the street was covered in empty plastic cups, and with the runners stepping on them all it filled the street with a sound not unlike a running creek. Further up the street, the sound was just of the runner's feet striking the pavement. This sounded like a soft rain - mellow.

Here is Haile coming!

Here is Haile going (our apartment front door is just over his right shoulder).

Easter Shopping

Went to the Osternmarkt Saturday. Even had some warm sunny weather. There was A Huge display of painted eggs, and they even had plain eggs already hollowed out, ready for painting! Also got a small wooden egg, with a bead mosaic of a bunny on one side, and a cross on the other - very nicely done. But what exactly does it mean to have a cute bunny on one side and a bloody cross on the other? Weird opposition.

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