2018 Feb 22-25: Outside-Venice: Lake Garda, Mt Baldo, Verona (at night)

This is part 2. Saturday, 24 of Feb. The first part, just Venice, is here.

Venice, a sinking, surprisingly chilly, wet mess.  Time to get out of town and explore some real nature. Of the outings possible,  the one to Lake Garda seemed best (despite the 3 hr combo train and bus ride), in part due to finding a hiking route from a town  (Malcesine) where one could ride up to the mountain top (Mt. Baldo, ht 1760m), so great view and sunshine even if hiking proved impossible.

Would be nice to go back in the summer, fly into Venice and immediately get out of town and do something like cycle the prosecco route to Valdobbiadene.

The bus travel was actually very simple because the "transfer" in Garda was actually just the bus waiting a few minutes and then changing its name.

Route was:

• Train from Venice to Verona
• Bus from Verona to Garda (Line 165/Line 164)
• (which became) Bus from Garda to Malcesine (Line 483/484)

[Mt Baldo: stunning views, no skiing for me]

Video of going down the mountain later, into the clouds. 

Once on top of the mountain (in the middle of the trip, decided to go up to the top, and some kind people charged us not quite the full rate to fix our tickets) , took a quick break to change into hiking boots and rain pants (in case falling in snow) and warm up a bit. View from the restaurant there:



The views were just incredible. There was a natural, rather short, route to walk along where people were skiing (we followed the family who had brought their dog along instead of their skis).

Near the restaurant:



A bit further from the restaurant, one could take a short break and look down at Lake Garda and appreciate the view and the sunshine, above the clouds (which later rolled in a little, but at a lower elevation). Here is very quick video with the same view, panning left to right.



Here is the view from close to the edge of the walk:



I really like the following picture. The walk ended at some fencing. Some people decided to keep walking further, but I think they had snowshoes and maybe an utter lack of self preservation (the descent was rather steep!). The sign clearly directs you to what is likely in summer months a nice hiking path into the valley.



Me sitting on the fencing, Garda lake behind me.

[Walk down from Mt. Baldo, Malcesine]

Took the sky-gondola down the mountain to the middle stop and hiked down from there. It was warm enough to take off the extra outer layers (necessary also in Venice!) and also the thermal trousers. The walk was mostly well signed, used some open street maps to correct when a bit lost.

Views up the mountain: 

Another mountain view:




Warm enough that succulents are doing well in people´s gardens:




Once in Malcesine, walked around their old town and up to the castle (which you can see in both  pictures, at the edge of land/town):



View from Castle in Malcesine:

[Walk around nighttime Verona]

Ended up doing dinner as a picnic in the train home, ended up wandering around Verona at night.
Verona also has an airport with lowcost flights from Frankfurt, and it is a lively (and clearly rich) city, which has also clearly been right a long time. The shopping streets were mainly Italian designers. The buildings were old but well maintained. Lots of young people out enjoying an apero and snacks, or later dinner.



Juliet's balcony was well-visited, and the statue of her had its boobs polished to quite a shine. People had covered all the walls with graffiti, which was being fought in some efforts by the city. The former home of Romeo was more battened down or maybe inhabited than hers. Included picture of people getting pictures with the Juliet statue. There was quite a line. I was not interested.




Cool shop windows (felt more like homes than shops, from layout or furniture quality or art):



Got back to Venice, slept, went to the mainland for Brunch, had some running around that had to be done to make it to the airport, made it home safely. Mainlaind by Venice was not very photogenic.

Ciao and until next time.

2018 Feb 22-25: Venice (part 1)

For the impatient, all pictures may be found in this album on flickr. 

At the end of February, I had earmarked some time to go on a trip, which I decided to go ahead and do despite some complications in life, which also made picking the destination rather last minute and slightly dependent on luck with flight search engines.

Venice had the cheapest airfare and shortest flight (and easiest way from the airport), and is one of those things one should see before they become entirely submerged and unlivable in the next 50 years or so.

Thus, Venice in February, after the Carnival, with its 2wks/1 month of masked balls.

hand made masks on display in a shop

[Thursday: Arrival]

Maybe the post-festivities energy drain lead to some of the feel. The rest was likely the weather, and the general feel of Venice to be a floating sarcophagus, a museum of a city, with no real residents, no local children, no schools.

Stepping of the rather short flight resulted in immediately being drenched with cold rain and battered around by winds that snaked around buildings and along canals. This was not an auspicious start. Some of the evening was used for getting back to the mainland to a store to buy rain pants and a cheap rain jacket to throw atop the semi-permeable one I had brought along.

Stayed at Alberghiera Venezia  (positives: floor heating, big windows, kitchen, comfy bed (firmish mattress), very thick walls, clearly recently renovated. Like staying in your own rather nice apartment)

Discovered that the train station has a really great sandwich/snack shop of which I wanted to eat everything, it looked so delicious:

[Friday: Seeing Venice. Water taxi, Cathedral, Bridges]

The thing you should do in Venice for sure is take one of the water taxis. 

It is hard to convey how surreal they are.

As a warm up, here is a picture of a boat designed for construction-y type use. Like a Venetian digger/crane/whatever they are called.

• A short video of the trip which I took.
• Another short video. 

Some pictures from the water taxi: 

There is a neat art installation highlight the general sinking state of Venice:

Landed at the canonical place, near the canonical church. 

 Walked by the market which was shutting down, and took a lot of pictures of seagulls fighting over the scraps. 

The water is a weird greenblue. It really offsets the bright buildings well. And the sort of dilapidation as well.

Walking around (and up and down the many bridges):

Came across some stores with lovely store fronts. One had four displays of people-sized people doing various crafty/artisanal things. 

Another cool shop window, full of jellyfish lamps:

Turns out, there is only one disco in Venice. It is, as you might expect, sort of tiny.  Left picture is the door, right is the sign above the doorbell. 

Next post is part 2: Lake Garda, Mount Baldo

A day in Nuremberg, 17.12.2017

There was a dance event in/around Nuremberg and I decided sort of late to go. The company christmas party was Friday, which ended up making a bit late getting out Saturday. I got into Erlangen (by Nuremberg) at about 5pm, made it into Nuremburg (Nürnberg, auf Deutsch) the next day, for the Christmas Market and the Rechtsparteigelände (old nazi party parade grounds).

My hotel room had a dragon on the door, which was pretty adorkable.


A short thought on Nuremburg: it has about 500 000 people, and a lot of the old architecture (well especially Art Nouveau era) is still standing, including a castle and a large inner square. It feels kind of like what Heidelberg would be if it were that size, scaled proportionally (and will fewer hills around).

If you don't know, Nuremberg, outside of its Nazi past, also has the largest Christmas Market in Germany. 

Which everyone complains is super crowded and unpleasant, so I made sure to go pretty early (around noon) and brace myself. 

The train station is pretty regal 

The weather, like all of Germany in winter, was pretty bleak, with sharp winds and the occasional snow flurry.  I miss the clear, crisp, cold snowy days I spent in Copenhagen in winter in 2012, or similar (but much colder!) winter days stateside.

Walking towards the Christmas market from the train station, I found something magical, a (reconstructed) portion of the old wall and fortifications:




(Created 1450, destroyed 1945, rebuilt 1953)



Inside was a beautiful little village of oldtimesy shops (Frauentor was the name written somewhere of this area)

   

which sold pottery and stained glass and very cute christmas baked goods.

Once through, the view looking back:



The walk to the center of town was full of other lovely architecture as well




Finally, arriving in the center of town (just past the river), and the Christmas market.

Christkind (made up weird religious figure meant to out-compete santa claus, and is somehow tasked with bringing gifts) decoration hanging in the christmas market:



My favorite part was the Markt der Partnerstädte (Market of partner cities):



which included both booths from Palestine and Israel (surprisingly close to each other), as well as Turkey (selling tea) and Greece, and a sad gaudy booth of crappy american candy and googaws coming from Atlanta.  It was also the location of the only food booth in the market selling more than just sausage in bread (Nuremburger würstchen)

In the main market, there were a lot of cute stands and cute signs.



Oh, see the guy with the blue cap? There were groups of men wearing caps of this kind with different colors and what looked like semi militaristic sashes and things under their coats. My guess was fraternities (in the German sense). This picture suggests I am correct.

Views along booths:





A cute sign for a booth of miniatures:



After getting quite cold walking around, I went into an adjacent cafe with good views of the square from their balcony.



Obligatory photo of me with the market:

After some hot chocolate and a break from crowds, I decided I had enough energy before leaving town to go to the Documentation Center of the Nazi party rally grounds. 

As I arrived (just before 2pm), I noticed there was a tour of the grounds about to happen, and quickly signed myself up, feeling more like a tour than a solemn wandering through a museum.

Tour was to be 2 hours, which was a bit tight with my schedule, but I had already handed over my 8 euros and decided I could bow out early if needs be.

It was about 0 Celsius with a brisk wind, so maybe less than the best idea, my feet got pretty cold.


First stop was the building adjacent to the Documentation Center, the never-finished-being-built Congress Center


Much more imposing from the outside, across the (allowed to dry up in winter so it can be dredged of silt) pond:



It was never finished, and since then various things have been proposed as replacement uses for the building (finished in granite, Hitler's favorite stone), including a shopping mall.

So, the various political parties pre WWII would have rally days, which usually changed city each year, but the NS-party had decided to do their rallies always in the same place, which then lead to post-takeover, pre-war building.

Between the above viewpoint and the actual location of the museum (i.e. first stop) was a very long bridge/walkway, used for marches and later used by occupying us troops as a landing strip. If you walk by raising your leg up about 45 degrees with each step, each block is 2 steps. Granite again, and made rough to prevent slipping. The color coding is on purpose, to make it easier to arrange platoons or whatever they were called. The direction being faced is where people would camp during these huge rallies (trying to keep the rowdy guys away from town), which became more permanent dwellings post-war, and the general layout can still be seen walking around the streets.




The Zepellin- Stage, deconstructed in stages post-war to try to remove any possible (neo)nazi fetishism associated to the site, which was in pretty well-preserved condition post-war:


Advantage of a tour: could go inside.

The big basin looking thing was a flame holder. There were two. One has been repurposed as a kiddie pool in some swimming pool in town. This one was locked inside.



Of the buildings (and planned buildings) on site, this was the only completed one.
We got to hear about the purposeful de-fetishization of things, and stuff like e.g. how trees have been planted and encouraged to grow around the never-completed congress hall, which, back then, had purposefully no greenery around it to make it look more massive/imposing/stark, and also to look larger with the reflection on the pond.

One of the more important buildings was destroyed by a stray bomb (the in-use congress/meeting hall). An unplanned hall had really only had a foundation laid, which was at the bottom of a sort of pit, which was then filled with rubble from the city, some of which was toxic, and then water.

It has since formed the "Silver sea", due to the color it picked up from the toxicity, and is not someplace animals or people should swim.

I would like to make a trip back to Nuremberg to actually visit the Museum, as well as the Albrecht Dürer House and perhaps the castle itself.