A Broad Abroad

Vicenza, Verona and the beginning of Milano

2008-11-30T16:37:00.001+01:00

Hello there everyone!

I am on my last day of Thanksgiving break, which started Thursday. The weather here has been quite rainy, but my classmates and I have been enjoying our free time nonetheless. On Thanksgiving we had a gigantic feast for 15, complete with four Thanksgiving chickens (turkeys are ludicrously expensive here), mashed potatoes, stuffing (made by me), gravy, fish and vegetable tempura, carrots, green beans with bacon, spinach salad, and pumpkin and apple pies with gelato. Everything was made from scratch and was perfectly delicious.

I have some more photos I thought I’d share, since I have a little free time (although I should be working on my final history project, but that’s okay). Picking up where I left off, in beautiful Vicenza, Italy.

4 September, 2008
This day was all about Andrea Palladio, a famous designer who definitely left his mark in Vicenza in the 1500s.

Lyndon and Vivian, while we were standing around outside our hotel, waiting to leave for a day of walking.

Our hotel was on top of an enormous hill overlooking Vicenza, so we had to walk down this rock-paved road to get into town. The rocks are like a rather uncomfortable foot massage.

Outside of Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico

Cheerful folks on a bench in the garden outside of the Teatro Olimpico. Kendall, Brandon, Lyndon, and Heath.

Inside the Teatro – this theater was built using forced perspective. The buildings in the far background are actually much smaller than those in the foreground, to make viewers think they are seeing further than they actually are. When this theater was used for productions, dwarves were cast to play the roles of villagers in the extreme background, so that they would seem normal height in comparison to the shortened buildings.

Some studenti americani enjoying lunch on the steps of something or other by Palladio. Heath, Lyndon, Caitlin, Sarah R., Kristin, Liz, and Jackie.

Palladio’s distinctive style.

I’m not sure where this is, but this guy was watching me.

Palladio’s famous La Villa Rotonda. It’s built in the round – it has four identical facades (just like the one seen here). It’s also the 16th-century version of sustainable. Back then, villas were the summer retreats of rich families who lived in cities for the better part of the year. The family who commissioned this villa wanted it to be very cool in the summer, with extensive cross-breezes. Palladio gave them just that.

Vivian and me by the Villa.

LJ and Vivian loving the columns at the Villa.

Caitlin and I joined them in column-hugging, hehe.

Walking across the Villa’s sweeping lawn. Brandon, Vivian, Kristin, LJ, Caitlin, and Jen.

After La Villa Rotonda, we walked along a (completely uphill) stone path to another villa by Palladio, Villa Cogollo. The man who commissioned this villa had a daughter who was a dwarf, so he had all of the garden statues made of dwarves, and told a fairy tale about them to his daughter so that she wouldn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed. Here are some dwarves lining a garden wall. My camera battery died soon after this, so I have no more pictures of this day, which mostly consisted of dinner and passing out from exhaustion anyway, so nothing really exciting.

5 September, 2008
This morning we woke up and hopped on our tour bus to Verona, home of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

We started our touring with the Basilica san Zeno, a truly gorgeous Romanesque church.

Here’s Brandon being a goofball in front of the church, while we waited for people to get back from getting cappuccino.

Inside San Zeno. I didn’t get very many good interior pictures, but I thought this one was cool because my professor’s stroller was being illuminated with a heavenly light.

This is the Museo Castelvecchio, which is an old castle in Verona that was renovated and added to by Carlo Scarpa and made into a museum of old Christian art.

Here’s a view of some of the Carlo Scarpa additions to the Castel.

These stairs were also in the Castelvecchio. One of the coolest staircases I’ve ever seen. That’s Ryan standing on them, by the way.

More Castelvecchio.

After the Castelvecchio, we were given free range to run around Verona. We ran into Verona’s Arena. Incidentally, all of the sidewalks in Verona are made of marble. Extremely cool, extremely lavish, but extremely treacherous when wet.

We also wandered into this tunnel which was full of people, and plastered with love notes in a hundred different languages.

This graffiti is tolerated because the tunnel leads to Juliet’s balcony, an icon of one of the most tragic love stories ever written.

A close-up of some of the notes – they are stuck to the wall with band-aids, gum, and various other bootleg glues.

Juliet’s balcony. I’m fairly certain it’s just a gimmick designed by some tourist-trapper in Verona, but it’s rather iconic.

Oddly, instead of the statue of Romeo we expected, there was a Juliet statue beneath the balcony. Apparently you will have luck in your love life if you touch her right breast.

We had some takers:

Mike

Brandon

That night we rode the bus to Milan and had dinner at a gigantic table in the basement of a fantastic pizza place. Here are Brandon and Caitlin laughing just after we sat down.

Everyone at the table looking over menus.

Everyone actually looking at the camera.

Sarah points exuberantly to the pizza-throwing guy on her take-out box.

Vino rosso! Our professor Dave and his wife Beth were eating with us, and they just kept ordering more and more wine.

That night, a bunch of people went to out to a bar together, and I went to a club with Vivian, LJ, and Kendall. It was a good time. We met a lot of Italians and danced the night away, four American girls in a sea of Italians. It was my first awesome Italian nightlife experience.

That’s all for now. I hope to post again soon, but, of course, I can’t make any promises. I’m still trying to decide how to best end the blog – I’m not sure if I should stop updating once I get back to the States or if I should continue to chronicle with all of my back-logged photos. Tomorrow is my 21st birthday, and I’m returning to the States exactly two weeks from then. It’s crazy to think I have so little time left to explore and buy Christmas presents!

Love,
Rachel

more Venice, plus Bassano and Vicenza

2008-11-18T23:52:00.002+01:00

I’m sorry I make so many promises regarding blog updates that I never actually follow through with.

But here’s one for real. With photos! Starting where I left off, in lovely Venice.

First, let me say that I and my classmates just got back from a three-day trip to Torino to see our work in an exhibition. It was amazing to see our stuff displayed for people to see and appreciate. Now we’re back in home sweet Rome, working on our new project.

And here are the photos, the continuation of the North Trip.

2 September, 2008

This was a free day for us in beautiful Venice, and although the day started off rainy, it cleared up quickly. Several of my friends and I chose to spend the first part of the day visiting the nearby island of Murano, a place that is famous worldwide for its hand-blown glass. We took a waterbus to get there, of course. Adventure on the high seas.

We got to go to a little sneak peek of the glass-blowing process. These guys are pretty hardcore. It was fascinating to watch them work.

A close-up of the one glassmaker rolling the molten glass to get an even shape.

After watching the glassmakers and a bit of shopping through Murano’s hundreds of glass shops, we decided to wander around the island, and meandered through some back alleyways. This happy dog was in one of them.

Here’s the crowd ambling without clear purpose. Left to right: Lyndon, Caitlin, Vivian, Kristin.

After a morning in Murano, nearly all of us 22 ragazzi decided to go to the beach again, so we did. I didn’t swim this time, but nearly everyone else did, and it was lovely just to read on the sand in good company. Sadly, I don’t have pictures, because I didn’t want to bring my camera and have it be swiped.

That night we all got dressed up and went to dinner near the famous Rialto bridge. Here’s Vivian, Jen, and Sarah B on the waterbus to the bridge, with other familiar faces in the background.

A very blurry picture of the group on the bridge – some ladies from Georgia took this photo for us. Kristin, Jen, Jackie, Kendall, Kevin, LJ, Lyndon, Heath, Brandon, Liz, Sarah R, Vivian, Rachel G, Caitlin, Sarah B, Adam, Jeff, Me (being a geekwad).

Obligatory crooked photo with creepy lurker next to me, who no one knew, haha.

So we had pizza and pasta (yay Italy!) at a restaurant and it was delicious. That’s all I got for this day, haha.

3 September, 2008

The next day we woke up bright and early and boarded a large charter bus, headed to no-one-knew-where, because Cinzia, our program coordinator, often forgets to tell us where we’re going when we get on a bus. It’s okay, though, because we always end up somewhere awesome.

For example, on this day we drove to Bassano, Italy, to the Brion Cemetary, designed for the Brion family by Carlo Scarpa, a truly great architect. Here’s a picture of Cinzia, standing in the marital rings in the wall of the cemetery. The rings are a recurring theme not only in the cemetery, but in all of Scarpa’s work.

A view over the cemetery walls at a pretty little church.

Nash, my professor’s little boy, walking between the tombs of the matriarch and patriarch Brion, who commissioned the cemetery. The two tombs lean towards each other.

The cemetery has its own sanctuary/chapel, with these beautiful windows that have thin marble sheets instead of glass in them – they let in the light quite prettily.

Looking out of the hallway to the meditation area, at the bridge that arcs over the two main tombs. The four-step staircase you can see is interesting – each step makes a different hollow clunking sound.

Faye, my professor’s daughter, climbing in the chapel’s circular doorway.

One of Carlo Scarpa’s stipulations in building the cemetery was that he be buried there. His grave is supposed to be in a grove of seven cypress trees, but they were being replanted while we were there. Boo.

The marital rings from the inside of the hallway, looking out.

At the cemetery we had obligatory architectural sketching time – here are Adam and Jen doing just that.

The Brion family’s cemetery is adjacent to the town cemetery, which you can see here.

I was attempting to take covert pictures of Faye picking flowers, but she spotted me, and I ended up with a dandelion in my hair.

Caitlin sketching by the bridge.

Vivian took the opportunity to look super-keen while sketching.

After the cemetery, we walked back to the bus, past a vineyard.

We then drove to the corporate headquarters of the Nardini Grappa factory, which are located inside two glass bubbles, called the Bolle, that are perched on top of one another. They were designed by the contemporary Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas. Normally, there is a pool of water below the Bolle, but they were working on it while we were there, so it’s dry, as you can see.

Inside the Bolle, the light is totally blue like this. Regretfully, my camera died halfway through this visit. The Bolle are very cool though.

The Bolle are not stacked one on top of the other, but at angles, so there is a diagonal elevator shaft that connects the two. This is a poor picture, but it was a very cool, all-glass elevator.

Brandon.

Everyone rabbling around.

Once my camera died, I wasn’t able to recharge it until after we had had a grappa tasting (not really my cup of tea) and walked around the beautiful town of Bassano, sketched a bridge designed by Andrea Palladio, then drove to the town of Vicenza and checked into our hotel (which was run by a slew of happy nuns).

Here are Kristin and Rachel G at dinner in Vicenza.

Me and Vivian.

After dinner, Cinzia bought us all tiramisu in honor of the 21st birthday of Kevin, pictured here.

That’s all for today! I’m off to do Italian homework!

Love,
Rachel

What Happened to October?!!

2008-11-03T20:11:00.002+01:00

Man, October just flew by! In exactly six weeks I will be home in the US of A! It's crazy, because I feel like I just got here a week or so ago.

I'm sorry I've been so utterly negligent of this blog! As usual, I've just been going going going. In addition to all of the work, this past week my parents and grandparents were in Rome to see the sights and to see me. It was incredible to see them all, but they're quite the time-suck, haha. We went to some fantastic restaurants and had an interesting time hopping about in the rain.

Hopefully I will be updating with more pictures soon. The good news on the photo front is that even though I'm horribly behind on the posting now, I'll have oodles of time over Christmas break to update, because I'll be home and recovering from surgery, with nothing better to do.

At the moment I'm bursting with excitement for tomorrow's election! I'm going to a big all-night election-watch party of Americans in Rome tomorrow night/morning, complete with pancake breakfast. I hope everyone who reads this goes outs and votes tomorrow!! Please do it! Think of the future...

Anyway, I've got to get going, I hope to post again (fairly soon)!

Love,
Rachel

Venezia! (or, if you prefer: Venice)

2008-10-12T17:24:00.005+02:00

Ciao!

Today I have the lovely treat of pictures taken in Italy! After all this time, I’m finally getting to them. Enjoy.

31 August, 2008

Lyndon and Brandon on the train. I’m not sure where this picture is from…I thought it was from Vienna to Venice, but we had a compartment for that ride, not seats, so I’m not clear on where we were going in this photo, but I really like it, so it’s going in, hehe.

Here’s one of Lyndon and Brandon on the train from Vienna to Venice. To catch the train we had to wake up extremely early, haul all of our luggage across Vienna onto a very crowded tram car, and pile into our compartment, all before 6:30 am. It was nice, though, because the four of us had a compartment to ourselves, and we were able to play cards for most of the ride. Also, halfway through the trip, Brandon and I got up to go to the dining car, and discovered that our good friends Vivian and Caitlin were on the train with us. Spastic greetings ensued.

Heath and me looking super cheesy.

Lyndon looking out of the train as we went through a tunnel.

The train ride through the Alps was beautiful, and we all took dozens of pictures of the scenery, but not many of mine turned out. Here’s one of a fantastic aqua-colored river that we passed, complete with Brandon and Heath photographing in the foreground.

Lyndon being goofy.

Venice!! The walk to our hotel was fairly awful, because we all had large luggage, it was very hot, and we had to cross three or four stepped bridges. But the hotel was lovely, and we met up with the rest of our class and our two professors. Then a group of us took a waterbus to the beach nearby, and went swimming in the Adriatic Sea! It was gorgeous and refreshing after a long day of travel and luggage lugging. That night, we went out for aperitifs and dinner as a group in the Jewish Ghetto. It was quite pretty.

My table at dinner: starting in the foreground, moving back and to the left we have Liz, Kevin, Heath, Vivian, Brandon, Caitlin, Lyndon, and Sarah R. We had our own little back room with three tables, because Cinzia, our professor from Roma, is very talented at negotiation. For dinner I had spaghetti with clams, and it was entirely delicious, a perfect first Italian meal.

This crazy accordion player came into the room near the end of the meal, and would not leave me alone. It was fairly humorous for everyone, including me, if a little embarrassing. Vivian took this photo, by the way.

1 September, 2008

Our second day in Venice, we went on a crazy Cinzia-style walking tour of beautiful architecture, starting with a short trip by waterbus. Here are Vivian, Brandon, and Caitlin on the waterbus.

Classic Venice: Gondolas.

Me on the waterbus, cheesy as usual.

Collection of buildings, canalside.

View inside the waterbus – the curly hair in front of me is Sarah R, and Vivian is the girl with the thick blonde braid.

We went up the bell tower in Piazza San Marco and got to look down over the Piazza. This is a view of Basilica San Marco and Venice behind it.

Me, Vivian, and Caitlin. No, that’s not a green-screen. We’re really there. =)

Heath, Brandon, Lyndon, and an awkwardly intrusive pair of binoculars in the bell tower.

More pretty Venice.

Kevin (boy on the left) telling some funny story to a group at the top of the bell tower. Included is Caitlin, Kristen, Kendall, Adam, Sarah B, and Jen’s hair.

Lyndon and Heath in the bell tower.

Viv in Piazza San Marco

The best way to see Venice is to get yourself lost down the labyrinthine streets and alleys. We did this a lot. Shown are Cinzia, Caitlin, Lyndon, and Vivian.

More alley ramblings and people’s backs.

A rare sight – grass in Venice. This is Cinzia doing what Cinzia does best – explaining something cool, in great detail, without being boring, and without using any notes. She’s quite fantastic as a tour guide and professor.

Ciao, Venice!

The group, walking along a canal.

Cinzia somehow convinced the staff of the Molina Stucky Hilton that we, as architecture students, should be allowed free reign of this beautiful and historic building. This was after a whole day of walking Cinzia-speed (fastest speedwalking possible) around Venice, so we were quite tired, as you can see. From left to right is: Heath, Brandon, Lyndon, Jeff, Sarah R, Sarah B, Adam, Jackie, and Matt.

The tour went on, despite our fatigue, to several churches. Here are Rachel G, Kristen, Ryan, Jackie, Jen, and Caitlin in front of one of them.

That evening, while waiting for people to finish getting ready, we all congregated outside of the hotel and took photos. This was our hotel, by the way. It was quite lovely and comfortable, except that it was next to a church whose bells were directly outside the window of the room I shared with Caitlin, Vivian, and Liz. The church bells rang over a hundred times at 8 o’clock each morning. It would have been great if I weren’t sleeping most mornings at that time.

Vivian.

Caitlin and me, canalside.

Liz, Vivian, and Caitlin.

Okay, so we all wanted to be in this picture, and to try to achieve that we made a pile of purses and put my camera on top with the self-timer on. Unfortunately the camera was very crooked, and we all leaned in order to compensate for it, but leaned the wrong way. This photo came out so well, but crooked, that we decided to make crooked photos our group trademark in Italy. There are many more to come. In this one we have: Caitlin, Jen, Rachel G, Kristen, Jackie, LJ, Kendall, Vivian, Jeff, Liz, me, and Kevin.

Over the summer, Caitlin, Vivian, and I all bought the same pair of Birkenstocks. We found out that we had done this when we met up in Venice. It’s kind of silly but kind of fun. Liz just had black flipflops, but she’s included in the photo.

Another group shot that I decided to take instead of be in: Liz, Sarah R, Kristen, Jen, Vivian, Caitlin, Kevin, Rachel G, Jeff, Adam, and Sarah B. The twelve of us went out to dinner together that night.

Dinner was outrageously fun. We got lost on purpose and found this completely deserted pizza restaurant, perfect for a group of twelve. The waitstaff was extremely fun – they talked to us in Italian and English, tried to encourage us to speak Italian, and allowed us to coerce them into giving us free wine. Vivian is an expert negotiator when it comes to haggling – we got several free carafes of wine, and the pizza was delicious. Shown are Vivian, Kristen, Sarah R, Jeff, and me.

That's all for photos. As far as my life in Roma goes, things are lovely. We're still doing a lot of work, but it's in ROME, so I can't really complain, haha. One interesting thing we've been doing is site analysis for the project we're going to start in about a week, which involves sketching in Piazza Venezia, a square near our apartment. The Piazza is constantly crammed with tourists, because it houses this gigantic monument of Vittorio Emmanuele that everyone wants to see. So sketching there is a game of finding places to sit, stand, and lean where no one will blow a whistle in your ear and tell you to move, having broken-Italian conversations with tourists and locals who stop to peer at your work, and periodically having to wait for large groups of people to move out of your sight lines. I might post some photos of my sketches at some point, but who knows.

I hope everyone's October is going well!

Love,
Rachel

The Island of Ventotene

2008-10-08T15:33:00.002+02:00

Hello!

I spent this weekend on the tiny island of Ventotene, a one-hour train ride plus two-hour ferry ride away from Roma. It was completely beautiful, and I'll do a fully detailed post with pictures at some point, but for now I have this spastic video that I took during the sunset on Saturday. For reference "Ventotene" means "holds the wind." You'll see that it's an accurate name indeed.

Shown are: Lyndon (boy with the grey hoodie being a bit obnoxious), Jeff (boy with the glasses), and Liz (blond girl). Several other people are in the background.

Pictures of Venice soon!

Love,
Rachel

I voted! + more photos

2008-10-03T14:59:00.003+02:00

Today I sent in my absentee ballot!
I encourage everyone who reads this to participate in the US government by voting in the general election a month from tomorrow!
For those of you who aren't in your hometowns for election day, votefromabroad.org is an excellent resource for absentee voting, and it's not too late!

Propaganda aside, I'm finally finally finally posting more photos! These photos are still from the infamous first two weeks of travel, because the internet in my apartment is too slow for me to upload Torino and Roma pictures to Flickr, but I will try to have

28 August, 2008

We spent the day wandering about Munich with no clear purpose.

We had sausage and fried potatoes for breakfast that morning, at a stall next to this flower stand.

Walking around Munich – look, it’s the Frauenkirche!

Lyndon and Brandon stopped to buy raspberries and antics ensued.

We wandered into this garden place that was surrounded by arcades. Arcades of the column variety, not the videogame variety.

More of the garden.

This dome was in the middle of the garden.

Inside the domed building were some fishy-looking fountains.

I kept seeing this building from afar, and taking pictures of it in all its crazy, curli-cue glory. I still don’t know what it is, but it makes me happy.

We went to the Pinakothek der Moderne, a museum of modern art and architecture. This is the ceiling in the museum’s main atrium. They had some interesting exhibits with original drawings from some cool architects, and a really fascinating antique furniture exhibit, but other than that I thought the place left something to be desired.

That night we went to the largest biergarten in Munich – Hirschgarten. It seats 18,000 people, although there were probably only a few thousand there the night we went. I got ½ hendl (half a hen) and German potato salad. So delicious. The boys all had fries and wurst.

I tried to capture a bit of the biergarten. We were near the edge, so imagine rows and rows of these tables behind me (the person taking the picture). This is Brandon, Heath, and Lyndon still, by the way. This biergarten is amazing, by the way, and you should go there if you ever go to Munich.

We stayed at the biergarten for a long time that night. Not drinking heavily, just people-watching and being part of the fantastic ambience that places like that have. Afterwards, we went back to the hostel, where we used the internet and hung out for awhile, at which point I convinced Lyndon to accompany me to the hostel bar. We met a few Aussies and an Irish guy who, like us, were traveling around Europe. All of the people in our hostel seemed to be young and chipper and eager to be out in the world. Meeting and chatting with people in the hostel bar turned out to be a great way to spend an evening.

29 August, 2008

On the morning of the 29th, the boys and I woke up just in time to catch our late-morning train to Vienna. The ride there, through the Alps, was beautiful, and I wish I had pictures, but my camera doesn’t do through-a-moving-train-window shots very well. We got there in the afternoon, and after settling in and having a kebab dinner, it was dark out. So, all of my pictures from the sightseeing walk we took look terrible, because my camera hates darkness. All I’ve got from that day are the following:

We had to split up into groups of two because Lyndon and Heath made reservations before Brandon and I, and by the time we tried to do it, it was too late. So we were in different hostels, but it was fine. They were fairly close to one another. These are Brandon and me in our hostel room. We’ve got on our “oh god, it was quite a hike to get to this hostel and we have too much luggage” faces. We’re geeks.

And the only other picture is through the window of a bread shop we passed. It’s a turtle-shaped bread! A bit like the one Mom and I made a few days before I left for Europe. Homesickness strikes at odd times. <3

30 August, 2008

Our first full day in Vienna! We spent the day wandering, just like we did our last day in Munich. I’m sorry there are so many pictures of buildings, I promise there are more people in my Italian pictures! Just wait for it.

A shot down a Viennese street.

There was some sort of film festival going on at this building, Rathaus, and there was a gigantic food court with “international” foods – a stall for each of several dozen countries. Of course there was plenty of beer and wine as well.

We had lunch there. I had some sort of Caesar salad in an edible bowl. It was yummy. Lyndon makes ridiculous faces.

Here’s a shot of the food court.

After lunch, we happened upon the Austrian parliament building, in all its Greco-Roman splendor.

It was very bright out, and Brandon just so happens to be a rock star.

Boys on the steps of Parliament. Classic Lyndon photo stance included. Heath and Brandon are the epitome of casual.

Me and Athena hanging out in front of the Parliament building.

We discovered a rose garden near the Parliament building and had a rest.

Random statue and cupola.

This is Loos Haus, designed by Adolf Loos, a crazy crazy man. We spent days talking about this building in our architectural history class. It was completely astonishing to stumble upon it in the middle of Vienna, although I guess if I’d paid closer attention I might’ve known it was there. This sort of thing happens a lot in Europe, I later realized.

St. Stephan’s as seen from a side alley.

Shot of a walking street with shops. Look at the superimposition of modern and old architecture. Cool.

I was standing in a crowd watching street performers, and I saw a little girl let go of her balloon. Photo op! The sky obliged by being beautiful.

St. Stephan’s Cathedral. We went into the cathedral, but none of my interior photos turned out. =(

‘Nother street shot.

I like flower stalls. =)

So there you have it! Three days in one post! The next photo post I make will be Venice photos, complete with people, so you’ll get to see all the jolly people with whom I’ve been living and working for the past month (Lyndon, Heath, and Brandon are three of those people, by the way).

Hope to be posting again soon,
Love,
Rachel

Roma.

2008-09-30T23:43:00.002+02:00

Whew.
As in a sigh of relief.
Because I'm finally in Roma!

After 3 weeks of very little sleep and very large amounts of schoolwork in Torino, I and my classmates arrived here in Roma on Saturday. I'm sorry I haven't been posting much, but I've been so busy settling into the apartment here in Roma and finally relaxing a little bit. Plus, classes have started for us, so that's a bit of a time-suck as well.

I promise I'll post with pictures soon, but for now, here's a little distance comparison:
I live....
10 seconds away from the daily fresh market in Campo de' Fiori
1 minute away from the place where we have most of our classes
7 minutes away from where Julius Caesar was killed
10 minutes away from the Pantheon
12 minutes away from the Pope
30 minutes away from where my Italian class is held

Just to give you an idea of my location. It's pretty great, especially compared to the Torino housing.

More details on the apartment and photos to come, along with pictures from the notorious first two weeks of travel.

Thank you to everyone who has been commenting and sending me e-mails! I love hearing from you all!!

Love,
Rachel

Studio - Torino Style

2008-09-19T00:57:00.003+02:00

So, I'm sorry I haven't been updating too much, but the "study" part of "study abroad" has really been hitting me and my classmates hard. School here is an interesting contrast to school in the States. At our university in New York, we archies (short for "architecture students") have an entire building to ourselves. In said building, each year of archies has their own rooms, known as studios, where each student has a large drafting desk, chair, and workspace where he or she can keep belongings of an architectural nature, leave out unfinished work, and work at any hour of the day or night, any day of the week.

Here in Torino, no one has a designated desk. There is no place for students to keep their architectural belongings at school. There are simply large classrooms with rather vague rules about who may occupy them at any given time (for example, during a class, there may be people who are not enrolled in the class camped out in the back of the room doing work and chattering). In addition to this, the entire school closes at 7 P.M. every weekday, and is closed on weekends. So students have to work from home. It's a completely different way of working than that to which we studenti americani are used. So, of course, we establish our own rules and bend things to our will. We are architects, after all.

Our place of residence is odd. I have no idea what to call it...it's a collection of buildings containing dormitory-esque rooms, and it's run by priests -- we've been fondly referring to it as "the Cloister" due to the midnight curfew and other odd restrictions, or "the Eagle's Nest" due to its location at the top of 270 concrete stairs. The 22 of us live on two floors of on of the buildings of the Cloister, with various other random Italian students. On one floor of our building is a large circular computer room (I'm actually sitting in said room as I type). When we got here, the room contained a few mismatched desks and chairs, some ancient desktop computers, and four hardwired connection ports. Now the room is outfitted with a wireless router (we bought it ourselves) and many more desks and chairs, dragged from our bedrooms and crammed in alongside one another.

This tiny room has become our makeshift studio. At night, we all squeeze in here with our laptops to work on the massive project we've been assigned. Many of the Italian students with whom we are working on the project join us too. It's like the condensed version of studio - very loud (at least two people are blasting music at a time, and everyone is discussing projects at the top of their lungs, over the music), very tightly packed (2-4 people to a desk, no room to move around the desks), and very pungent (most of the Italians smoke, and about half of all of the students are drinking some sort of alcoholic beverage as they work). But it's pretty cool. I've always enjoyed the studio culture of American architecture school, and this "studio" we've created merely shows our persistence to get things done on our own terms.

Sorry about the lack of pictures this post. The internet here is quite sluggish (perhaps it's because we have thirty people on one router?) and it's tricky to upload pictures. Not to worry, though, they're on the way.

Keep the comments coming! I want to know what everyone who reads this thinks about what I'm doing!
Ciao,
Rachel

Munich's Olympiapark & BMW Welt

2008-09-15T14:08:00.004+02:00

Hi everyone!

I'm continuing the photo-upload madness. Enjoy!

27 August, 2008

On our third day in Germany, my three (architectural) comrades-in-arms and I went on a jaunt to Munich's Olympiapark, followed by the BMW Welt ("welt" is German for "world") and the BMW Museum. These boys like BMWs. The day was sweltering, with humidity adding a lovely overtone of oppression to the heat. Sunlight made sweat trickle down our backs and forced us to squint at everything. But it was amazing.

Fresh off the subway, Heath and Lyndon attempt to read a map to try to figure out how to get to the Olympiapark. Little did we know, it was immediately behind the gigantic building that was right in front of us:

The building turned out to be the BMW Welt, designed by Coop Himmelb(l)au architects, but we didn't realize that at the time. We just thought it was awesome and thus took pictures.

Another shot of the BMW Welt.

Yet another.

Lyndon takes pictures like this. He looks ridiculous, but apparently having the camera strap wrapped around him allows it to lend stability to the camera, similar in theory to a tripod. I still laugh at him though. =)

After we found the Olympiapark - a faraway shot of the stadium and other buildings, designed by the firm of Behnisch and Partners.

Super awkward/blurry photo of me in front of the far-off park.

After quite a long walk along some shaded paths, we finally approached the main Olympic buildings.

The Olympic Spire and a bit of tensile structure. Trivia time: The Olympics were held in Munich in the summer of 1972. They were supposed to show the world a new, lovable Germany after that whole World War II debacle. Unfortunately, though, the entire Israeli Olympic team (11 athletes) was assassinated during the games by Palestinian terrorists. It was pretty horrific.

I was actually sitting on this support beam to take this picture. It was very hot.
The large, horizontally oriented piece of stone in the center of the photograph is a memorial to the athletes who were killed during the games. It isn’t attached to the beam above it.

The same beam – this is where it goes.

Lyndon and me under the steel-and-plexi-glass, tensile covering. This photo was taken by Heath on his camera.

This tensile structure is beautiful, and although it seems fairly tame nowadays, it was entirely ahead of its time.

Lyndon, me, and Brandon, enjoying the shade under the structure. This photo is also from Heath’s camera.

The sky was gorgeous.

Just checking out the structure, like a bunch of architecture geeks. Notice how huge that support is in comparison to the boys.

The Olympic Stadium. We had to pay 2 euro to get in. It was extremely hot and we had no water. But it was beautiful! So we walked all the way to the other side and then back again.

View from the other side of the stadium. The seats are varied in color, and the effect makes them look the exact color of the grass. It’s hard to tell in this photo, though.

You could pay an exorbitant fee to go up this crazy ladder and walk around the edge of the roof. It sounded very hot and very terrifying, but awesome. We didn’t go, though, because it was by appointment only.

Around the front of the stadium there was this lake and gorgeous landscaping, complete with the hill shown in this photo. See the highest point of green? That’s where the guys decided we needed to be. So we went up this massive hill, with me in the rear, wheezing heavily with exertion.

The view was totally worth it. (Click on this, or any, photo to see it full-size)

The BMW Welt from far away. Check out that vortex.

The Olympic Spire – it has a revolving restaurant on the top, apparently.

Another photo from Heath’s camera – he set it on a step, put on the shutter delay, and ran into the picture with us.

Another use of Heath’s shutter delay. Gorgeous.

Tired after the hike to the hilltop. Note the extremely German man in the background.

After hiking all over the Olympiapark, we found the front of the BMW Welt.

Random shot of the BMW corporate building and the museum, which is that bowl-shaped thing to the rightish. These buildings are across the street from the Welt.

Complete with lovely, awe-inspiring vortex.

Brandon wants to know why exactly I’m snapping a shot of him as he crosses the road. The vortex is cool.

The inside of the vortex was a car showroom, with a ramp spiraling up the sides. The ceiling was odd – this is it.

Brandon, Lyndon, and Heath ogling an engine. Priceless faces.

This is inside the main part of the Welt. Pretty cool.

There was a big display of BMW bikes inside the BMW Welt. Needless to say, we tried them out. This is Heath, by the way.

Brandon looks just a little too happy…..

I could get used to this. =)

A shot from the ground floor of the Welt, looking up to where the bikes are on display. Great massing.

There was a bar that sold bottled water inside the Welt, and we’d been parched ever since the Olympiapark. We took a break on this oddly curving, leather sofa.

I have TONS of pictures of cars, but I think this one is the coolest – the Hydrogen 7, the car that runs on hydrogen.

Proof.

Another shot of the inside of the Welt.

One final exterior photo of the BMW Welt, taken from just outside the BMW Museum.

After the day before at the BMW Factory and the whole BMW Welt experience, I was completely sick of cars, and more specifically, boys talking about cars. So I sat on a posh leather couch in the museum lobby while Lyndon, Brandon, and Heath paid an exorbitantly high price to walk around and see a bunch of old BMWs. Albeit they were in beautiful condition, and there were rare ones, and the building was really cool, I just didn’t have it in me, hehe.

Later that night, we attempted to find a restaurant that was listed in Heath’s Munich guidebook. We took a subway to this oddly suburban, residential area of Munich, and then we wandered around, marveling at the quiet emptiness of the whole neighborhood, still looking for the restaurant. Finally, after much wandering, we found the place tucked away behind a fence. It was a biergarten, fully outdoors, complete with a football-field-sized area crammed with picnic tables, shaded by huge trees, that contained what seemed like most of the neighborhood. Everyone was drinking beer and eating ribs and having a grand old time. The food was amazing (I had half of a roasted hen!, the boys had ribs). We spent a long time there, hanging out and enjoying the ambience of the place. I wanted to take a picture, but I didn’t want to photograph a bunch of people I didn’t know and psych them out, so I settled for this:

If you go to Munich, go to the Taxisgarten.

Thanks for viewing, and thank you to everyone who has commented so far!
Love,
Rachel

Leipzig Pictures!

2008-09-13T12:08:00.005+02:00

It's Saturday, which is lovely. Today is the first day in three weeks that I (or any of my classmates) have been able to sleep in and not worry about any kind of structure in our day. Of course, we have a very large assignment due Monday, but that's just what architecture school implies. We're used to it. =)

26 August, 2008
On my second day abroad, my friends and I took a day trip from Munich to Leipzig, to have a guided tour of the BMW Factory Plant, the central building of which was designed by the rock-starchitect, Zaha Hadid, who is probably the most prominent female architect in the entire world. The building was quite beautiful, but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos anywhere inside, except in the lobby. In addition to that, our tour ended about a minute before we had to catch a bus back to the train station, so we had almost no time at all to take exterior photos either. All that aside, this building was pretty incredible - I won't go too far into the hairy architectural details, but I think some of the photos I have convey a bit of the genius. Basically the central building houses administrative and other desk-job-type personnel, and connects the three other plant buildings: body shop, paint shop, and assembly. Because it connects all of these buildings, completely silent conveyor belts carrying cars in various states of assembly crisscross the ceiling of the central building, so that all of the personnel there are constantly aware of what is going on in the buildings around them. A very cool concept. On to the pictures!

(if you want to see a photo a bit bigger, just click on it!)

To get to the BMW Factory from the Leipzig train station, we had to take a tram and then a bus. It took a very long time. These are my boys on the tram.

In the main lobby of the central BMW building.

Sneakily trying to photograph deeper into the building, while still technically standing in the lobby. The ramp-type thing curving in from the left is a walkway, and the two large ramp-like things in the top right-ish are both conveyor belts.

How can you pick an architecture student out of a crowd?

A 125i on display in the lobby.

The round thing is a turn in the conveyor belt - it rotates the cars around Zaha's curvaceous design.

Some bodies in white on the conveyor belt - on their way from the body shop to the paint shop.

Zaha is famous for her curves.

Exterior shot - under "the Bridge" which connects the body shop and central building.

Under the Bridge - body shop to the left, central building to the right

The front of the building. (as I took this picture, the bus that we needed to take to get back to the train station was revving its engine at us...)

Continuing to take pictures, despite the revving bus.

One more, right before booking it to the bus.

"Aw, why did we have to leave the pretty building?" Lyndon on the bus.

Leipzig train station.

That's all for now!

Love,
Rachel

Finalmente!

2008-09-10T20:48:00.004+02:00

...that's "finally" in Italian, haha. I'm learning!

So, I have pictures! After rough and violent struggles with Flickr, Photobucket, and Snapfish, all of which refused to upload my photos, I have discovered that the only way to upload them is to size them down in Photoshop one by one and then use Flickr's overly-time-consuming "Basic Uploader" to upload them in sets of six. If anyone knows of an easier way to complete any part of this process, please let me know!

Alora...
25 August, 2008

After our uneventful flight to Munich, Brandon and I collected ourselves (and took pictures) in the Munich airport and waited for our friends' flight to arrive. We were quite tired, as you can see.

After we dragged all of our luggage through a beautiful glass atrium that connects Munich's airport and its airport train station, we figured out how to buy train tickets and found an elevator down to the platform, boarded the train, and read maps?

We got to the hostel (where our friends [the ones we'd been waiting for in the airport] were waiting for us) and lolled around waiting to check in, then got settled. This is one-third of our hostel room, complete with a surprised Brandon.

Once we stashed our stuff at the hostel, the four of us set off to explore Munich. These
are my traveling companions for that week: Brandon, Lyndon, and Heath

Random shot in Munich. The street-car electrical lines annoyingly criss-cross every upwards photo one attempts to take in Munich.

A pretty arch that led to a walking avenue lined by shops.

Some lovely lads serenading the city.

The aforementioned walking avenue, complete with facade-facaded church and pointing boys.

The Frauenkirche, or "Church of Our Lady." It's hard to get a photo of it from further away. Pretty cool, though.

Heath, Lyndon, and Brandon inside the Frauenkirche. They clearly didn't want a photo, haha.

A lovely fountain that's directly opposite the Frauenkirche. We sat by it for awhile and relaxed.

I appreciate humorously random, stenciled graffiti.

So, the four of us visited Munich's Hofbrauhaus, the oldest (and most famous) biergarten in the city, and had lovely drinks after many hours of travel and exploration and lack of sleep.

Brandon and I are winos! By the way, it was a pretty big culture shock to go from America, where we can't even attempt to drink alcohol in public, to a place where the waiter wanted to bring us all a liter of beer before we'd even ordered.

Heath and Lyndon got a traditional wurstelsalate, cold cuts and onions with oil and vinegar. They ordered it blindly, and it turned out to be quite delicious, apparently.

The classic emblem of the Hofbrauhaus

That's all there is for today, but hopefully I'll have more tomorrow! For now, I have to go do schoolwork.

Love to everyone in the States,
Rachel

Oh no!

2008-09-09T21:38:00.001+02:00

For some reason, it's horribly difficult for me to upload my pictures! I've tried several different sites, but none of them will work for me! I promise I'll have pictures soon, though. Bah!

Torino!!!

2008-09-09T20:59:00.002+02:00

My, it's been awhile. Sorry about that - the Internet hasn't really been available in most of the beautiful places I've been visiting recently with my classmates and professors.

I am now in Torino, Italy, and will be living here for the next three weeks. The 22 (including yours truly) architecture students from my school are participating in a brand-new program of collaboration between the architecture school at our university and the architecture school at the Politecnico di Torino. I'll post more about Torino later.

Now for the good stuff! I've finally got some photos uploaded, so I'm going to spend the next few weeks playing catch-up with all of the pictures from the places I've been so far. Just as an idea, here's where I've been so far:
August 25 - arrival in Munich, Germany
August 26 - Munich, Germany; day-trip to Leipzig, Germany
August 27 - Munich, Germany
August 28 - Munich, Germany
August 29 - morning in Munich, Germany; train ride through the Alps; evening in Vienna, Austria
August 30 - Vienna, Austria
August 31 - early departure from Vienna, Austria; train ride through the Alps, evening in Venice, Italy (met up with rest of students and professors)
September 1 - Venice, Italy
September 2 - Venice, Italy
September 3 - early departure from Venice, Italy; visit to Bassano, Italy; evening in Vicenza, Italy
September 4 - Vicenza, Italy
September 5 - early departure from Vicenza, Italy; visit to Verona, Italy; evening in Milano, Italy
September 6 - Milano, Italy
September 7 - early departure from Milano, Italy; evening in Torino, Italy
September 8 to present - Torino!

Whew. That's a lot. It's all been extremely exhausting but beautiful and extraordinary. I can't wait to show off my pictures!

Germany!

2008-08-27T22:32:00.004+02:00

Hi there everybody!

I'm sitting in a hostel in Munich, Germany. That's München (mewn-chin) in German. I've been staying here with three of my friends from school for the past two nights. The hostel is very clean and has a great environment, so no worries in that department.

The past three days have been excellent. I wish I could post pictures, but the internet here in the hostel leaves something to be desired when it comes to speed, so I can't do that at the moment. For now I'll just give a day-by-day breakdown, I suppose.

24.August.2008
After a bit of spastic running around and last-minute packing, I finally got out of the house. My parents drove me to a small airport, and I boarded a plane to a larger airport, where I met up with my friend Brandon, and we flew together to...

25.August.2008
...Munich! With luggage in hand, we took a train to our hostel, where our friends Lyndon and Heath had also just arrived. We checked in, then walked around the city for the rest of the afternoon and night. Munich is lovely, with lots of beautiful architecture of different styles, all jumbled together. The four of us went to a beer garden, apparently famous, and had beer and wine, and felt like silly Americans, but it was loud and crowded and German there, and thus fun. We practically fell into bed, terrifically tired from the jet lag.

26.August.2008
Having gone to bed quite early, we awoke early and spent a good deal of time trying to procure Eurorail passes in the main train station in Munich. We finally spoke with a ticket-seller who was clearly American, and extremely sarcastic and helpful. She helped us book a train to Leipzig (lipe-zeeg) and back, and after grabbing a bite to eat, we got boarded the train for the four-hour ride to Leipzig. In Leipzig, we had an appointment for an English-speaking tour of the BMW central building and factory, and we had to take a tram and then wait a ludicrously long time for a bus to pick us up to get to the factory. We barely got there in time for our appointment. Our chipper tour guide took us around the beautiful central administration building, designed by Zaha Hadid, and into the body shop. It was so fantastic to see the way these cars come together, and I'm not even a BMW-freak, like Lyndon and Brandon. After the tour, we frantically boarded another bus, followed by another tram, to get back to the central train station. Leipzig is a very industrial city, with graffiti covering nearly every surface, but it does have some beautiful architecture. After the four hour train ride back to Munich, we all went to bed.

27.August.2008
Today we woke up late and went jaunting about the Olympic park here in Munich. It's made up mostly of swooping steel-and-plexi-glass tensile structures. It's generally very beautiful, and has held up remarkably well, considering it was built for the summer Olympics of 1972. We did an absurd amount of walking around the park, and took lots of pictures, which I'll hopefully post soon. After that we went to BMW World, a dealership/showroom/beautiful building, and then I loitered in the lobby of the BMW museum as the boys went on a 12-euro tour. Cars don't interest me quite that much, but I amused myself looking through books in the museum store and writing in my journal.

I have a bit more to write about today, but I've got to go for now.

Pictures will be up soon, hopefully!

--Rachel

I Can't Believe I'm Really Going

2008-08-24T08:31:00.000+02:00

Hello, my name is Rachel. I'm a 20-year old American student of architecture.
Welcome to my account of my travels abroad.

Hopefully this blog will allow me to tell (and show) my friends and family what I'm doing, what I'm seeing, what I'm experiencing as I spend the next four months in Italy. Here goes nothing.

My study-abroad program is run by my school, a small private university in upstate New York. The program consists of 22 architecture students, in third and fourth years of study, and several professors. For reference, I'm a third-year, and it's a five-year program. Through school, the 22 of us are meeting up in Venice at the end of August, spending a week traveling throughout northern Italy, settling down for three weeks in Turin to participate in a seminar with students at the politecnico there, and then heading to Rome for about the next three months. At some point during the Rome stay, there's going to be a southern Italy tour in there. We've been given time before and after the program, as well as most weekends, during which we can travel to our hearts' content.

I'm starting out with three friends in Munich, Germany. We leave tomorrow. I don't speak a word of German. Well, that's a lie. I do know how to say "snail". My bags are nearly packed. This should be fun.