Looking for what's underneath...

Hi Everyone!

Sorry it's been so long between posts. As most of you know, I ducked back to Australia for the Superengine tour and so have spent the last month here just getting settled again! Anyway, it was great to see so many of you when I was back and awesome to find out that people actually read the blog!! I know that brevity is not my strongest point so it was nice to know that people are reading it, and (to my amazement) enjoying the waffle!! You know who you are....Anyway, I can't help but write regardless as there is so much to write about.....hard to know what to focus on.

So....I've decided to focus on Music! Yes folks, that is our topic for today's blog.

Given that music has been such a large part of my life and particularly so last year when I was playing in three groups in Perth, resulting in an average of three rehearsals a week, a gig and maybe watching a gig on my off night, it has taken some getting used to being without an obvious local music scene here in Venice.

Despite my intitial despair, Paul's encouragement and my improving Italian has enbaled me to start to consider / explore some of the less obvious, dare I say "underground" and one-off events happening in the Veneto region. I feel a sense of hope at last!

Of course I am speaking of original, experiemental, grass-roots-esque type music.....Vivaldi's Four Seasons continues to be performed every night and there are an abundance of classical concerts and operas to attend in amazing buildings. Good ol' mumsie paid for an outing to see "La Traviata" whilst she was here in Venice and to me, it was just incredible. Performed in a 18th century style salon.....intimate setting, limited set, and just amazing skilled performances.

In fact, it's not uncommon to experience operatic voices flowing over the piazzas / campos as you round a corner late at night. Truly otherworldly! In Milan we had the pleasure of supping on a couple of machiatti whilst listening to live opera from the opera school across the piazza. And Carnivale was just amazing for live music of all types.....now Biennale is just around the corner too which will bring even more high class music to the island.

So anyway, it's been of some surprise to me that a country with such a rich classical music history doesn't seem to be producing any decent modern music! Big statment I know and surely ignorant and completely unjustified, but on the surface, this would appear to be the case.....at least in Venice. Not helped by terrible television and radio stations that all seem pretty mainstream.....no doubt a problem caused by Burlesconi's monopoly over the media.

But in Venice, live, local music is definitely an issue and highlights the tension between the residents, the students and the tourists! The tourists want their Four Seasons and quiet, romantic gondola rides.....and maybe even a bit of over-priced jazz for the more trendy of cats. The students want places to party and listen to live music, and the residents want to get rid of everyone and everything that causes noise!

So it was very encouraging to learn about a group called "Bandita" (linked to another music organisation called Rivolta.....according to Paul there's a bit of political, socialist influence going on with these groups too). The Banditas have managed to lease a building near the bus station (so as not to cause noise) and put gigs on.....not an easy feat. It's hard enough to maintain local music venues in Perth let alone in a historic, tourist driven city such as Venice.

We went to the opening night a couple of weeks ago.....turned up about 9.30 and there were maybe 20 people there - the music wasn't starting until about 11pm so we had a long wait ahead of us.....BUT we were distracted by the police arriving 10 minutes after we got there and having to provide our documenti (passport, current address, planned names of our unborn children etc.).......just to go to a gig......a gig that hadn't even started......that wasn't even attended by anyone yet.

Couldn't help but wonder where these "police officers" were when we were getting crushed to death at the opening night of carnivale.

So apparently the Banditas had to cut some deal with the police in order to put on the gig. They get to put on the gigs and the police can access and ask for everyones details. Couldn't help but feel a great invasion of privacy!! But I now certainly feel a sense of committment to the cause of the Banditas and bringing live music to tha island! Viva la rivolta!

Anyway, things are picking up with the summer season. I just need to keep on trying to decipher those street posters and discover what's going on underneath......a challenge that applies to everything here in Italy!

Nice things in Belgium

Hi everyone, just a few notes from here in Ghent/Gent/Gand about what I'm up to and what I've seen.

Firstly, everything in Belgium is repeated in different languages. Great for assisting your multilingual ability but in the case of place names it does get confusing. I wonder how much of the GDP is wasted simply in the physical production of multiple languages on every sign, window, announcement, subtitle, office, business card and shopping docket. Hmm, maybe it increases the GDP? Perhaps Australia would have a larger economy if it was bilingual?...hmm, scary.

Let's move on to nicer things:


1) Door handles - I've spotted quite a few really cool door handles just up and down the street that I'm staying on. Venice has interesting door handles and doors in general but these ones here in Gent are funky.




2) Fish-scale buildings - Many buildings here have this diamond-shaped cladding on the walls which is the perfect grey colour to make me think of fish scales, and giant fish sticking out of the ground, every time I see them.

3) Mobile phone companies - Every time I check my phone there's the name "PROXIMUS" or "BASE" on it. Unfortunately neither of them will let me receive text messages from Ali or send them to her.



4) General Belgian organisedness - This isn't exclusive to Belgium but after a spell in Italy it's great to be in a country where stuff works and is organised to work. Perhaps it's a little too organised, but there are bike lanes everywhere, as well as footpaths, and when you have to cross the road there are separate sets of lights for people, bikes and cars. Also a result of being in Italy, I'm not letting myself get too comfortable around crosswalks - I know they'll mean nothing again when I get back there. The final great thing about Belgian organisedness is the pissoir - I think Paris is more famous for them but they are much more useful in Belgium on account of all the great beer there is to drink - very handy, solar powered (really) and located in handy places like main thoroughfares and the drinking parts of the city.

Yesterday I went on a daytrip to Brugge, and I've been around Gent pretty well in the last week but that's all that I'll see of Belgium - on Saturday I'll train straight back to the airport without time for Brussels. Didn't get a chance to go cycling either - but at least I tried out a Belgian climbing wall (Ironically, they're higher here than in Venice). Gent is a really beautiful town with a bit of everything - medieval wonders and nightlife and shops and musea and plenty of good pubs and restaurants - on top of the usual Belgian highlights of beer and chocolate. I agree with Eric that there's a lot of good things to visit in Belgium, and I'm happy to have left some for next time.

Ciao, Paul.

hello in belgo

First experiences of Belgium - Bemusement at the labelling of a person on the airport concourse in front of me: he was wearing a 'Stella Artois' jacket and a Tintin backpack; Mirth at the idea that there's a Belgian Beer Cafe even in Brussels airport, Excitement at the abundance of chocolatiers, Concern when trying to understand the train timetables.

Nonetheless I managed to cross the language divides and arrived here in Gent. I haven't been into the town centre yet but it seems like a very nice, organised, well-functioning western european city: bike lanes, traffic lights, fritjeries (fried food shops), big supermarkets. If I were in the french-speaking part of Belgium then I might have a chance with the language but being here in the dutch part I'm forced to learn some extra words. Any clues on pronouncing alstublieft, please?

Last night I was tired from the early wakeup that morning, so I contented myself with a wander around the local supermarket and bought the delights shown in the photo above. Perhaps another mark of your modern western suburbium is the impossibly overstocked supermarket, catering for every market: so it was great to see, and then be able to buy, fresh bread in loaves, different cheeses like Rochefort (with mould that actually looked and tasted like mould), Normandie Brie, types (!) of muesli, and even some belgian beer (only leffes, chimay, grimbergen, kwak, some lambics, nothing too exotic).

So, greetings from the land of the fry and waffle. Tried a waffle this morning (just a plain one) and will go around walking for most of the day to try and justify some fries for dinner, or maybe lunch...

Ciao, Paul.

Climbing up to the Moon

While listening to the Eels' album 'Electrochock blues', I've been preparing the latest website addition - some photos of my first Italian climbing outing, last Saturday at a local climbing site, about 45 minutes out of Venice. It was a lot of fun to actually be climbing real rocks and hanging off real cliffs compared to the rather sedate and knowingly safe climbing wall in the gym. Your approach to climbing changes completely when there are no obvious brightly-coloured bumps sticking out of the flat wall - instead you seem to feel your way along, testing every little cranny for the chance that your hand might be able to grip onto it and your foot might be able to not slip off...as I said, good fun, as long as you assume that the spiders that made that web are just gonna keep on sleeping, and the bees that made that nest are just gonna keep on nesting...

Before going to Belgium next week I've got to sort out my electoral enrolment - Italians are going back to the polls to decide on a new government (or non-government, depending on how you see it...) and now that I'm an Italian citizen I thought I might as well get my vote in...who knows - it might be my only chance in the two years that I'll be here! That's not a common occurrence - Italian governments have a short lifetime and rarely last much longer than a year before they collapse through coalitions splitting, ministers resigning over criminal charges or just spontaneous combustion. Lots of people are concerned that Berlusconi will get back in as prime minister, although the left coalition has a reasonable chance of making up a majority. Unlike Australia, there is too much political discussion in Italy - the newspapers and television are full of political commentaries and talk shows, respectively, which makes it difficult to know really what the larger public are thinking - all the media reports is opinion, which is only marginally less helpful than statistics.

Sorry about the rambling nature of this blog - I've been meaning to write a bit about Italian politics for a while, as well as Neapolitan rubbish, but too many other things get in the way. Like going to Abruzzo this weekend to visit rellies, and going to Belgium next week. I'll get back just in time for the elections - if I get myself enrolled.

Ciao, Paul.

What's in your garden?

Coming home the other day, I discovered that something new had happened in the Hillton hood. Someone had decided to put some strange things in our garden, like two sports cars, a musical spa and a miniature ranch! In addition to the luxury cruising yachts parked on the other side of the building and a couple more luxury cars and boats out on the fondamenta these postmodern garden gnomes are the attractions for the "passion" expo at the hotel this weekend. A bit of a surprise, I have to admit. Anyway, I suppose it means that we can expect strange happenings to happen in our garden this summer with some regularity...


Otherwise, not that much to say: Ali and I are busy with work and planning our respective travels (Ali about Australia with Superengine and myself to Gent and Vienna for work). We're planning to go down to Vasto for Easter to visit my rellies and are just beginning with forward planning of summertime visitors and gigs, so if you want to visit us get in quick with a booking! The website has been updated with some new photos (particularly of carnevale) and of course the coming weeks will provide opportunities for many more...providing that I don't fall off a mountain when I go rockclimbing tomorrow!

Ciao, Paul.

Carnevale!

I've fallen behind with my blogg-a-log-ing....I'm not as efficient, brief or reliable as Dr. Paul "Blog-a-longa".

So.....Carnevale.....I'll have to cast my mind back because it was four weeks ago now and so much has happened since!

Carnevale has been celebrated in Venice since the 13th century and marks the period leading up to Lent. The exact translation of "carnevale" is apparently debated (thank you Wikipedia) but the translation that makes the most sense to me is "farewell to meat"....a celebration of food and good times prior to the fasting of Lent.

The start date of Carnevale is always 40 days before Easter....and with an early Easter this year came an early Carnevale. Carnevale lasts for 11 days and finishes on Martedi Grasso (Fat Tuesday). It seems that Venice really comes alive during Carnevale. Normally Venice is very touristy but during Carnevale, the island is completely taken over for two weeks. During this time it's rare to hear much Italian spoken. There appeared to be a lot of people who go all out - staying in expensive hotels, dressing up in Baroque costumes and having their photographs taken.....by other toursits....like me.

So Carnevale was a massive party. We spent most nights just walking around the streets from one campo (piazza) to the next and soaking in the free music, drinking vin brulee and eating the traditional sweet of Carnevale, frittelle (basically small doughnuts.....but ohhhhhh so good!). Frittelle are only available during Carnevale so I over-indulged a little.....my jumper still smells like cinnamon from spilling vin brulee and frittelle on myself. Oh the shame.

This year a focus for the entertainment was Romanian music / art. Another focus was the theme of "six sensations" for the six sestieri (sections) of Venice. Highlights for me were therefore watching the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra for free in Piazza San Marco, and the experience of being led around a completely dark room by a blind Italian woman - the idea being to experience what it is like to be blind and to awaken your other senses! Of course I was missing two of my senses because I couldn't understand all of the Italian instructions!

However, one of the most interesting moments of Carnevale was at the beginning - the opening party. The background to this story is that the week prior to Carnevale, sadly, two Venetian warfies were killed unloading a ship containing maize.....I'm not entirely certain of the science, but there was some form of combustion in the shipping containers leading to the emmission of gas and the two workers died from asphyxiation. As a sign of respect, the start of Carnevale was postponed until 12am Saturday night. My italian teacher informed me that deaths at work are a significant political issue here in Italy - apparently 2 workers are killed on the job in Italy each day. It was impressive to see the level of respect that was paid to the workers.....flags were flown at half mast and some businesses were shut for the day.

However this meant that there was some uncertainty about the opening of the 'opening party' - a five room electronica / dance music spectacular that had been widely advertised. Paul and I discovered from looking at the website that we had to buy tickets......information that was missing from all the posters plastered all over Venice!!! We had assumed it was free like everything else. We also discovered that the time of the opening party had been pushed back two hours so that it would start at 12am.

So we go to buy tickets at 5pm to be told that there were none left. Paul didn't believe this and Erika was also unaware of the need for a ticket.....so we went to the party anyway. We were confronted with hundreds of people outside the doors of the pavillion and very little security to be seen. In fact the only official person to be seen whilst we were getting crushed in the crowd was perched on a gate taking photographs of everyone being crushed to death.

Paul and I were thinking....."So do we need a ticket? Where are they selling tickets? Do these people next to us have tickets? Are we going to get all the way to the entrance only to be turned away? Are we going to die?" etc.

So rather than dragging out the story any further, we got in, we survived. It was only in the coming days that we came to understand all the drama. They had planned for 2,000 people.....5,000 people turned up.....the gate was pushed in.....people pushed their way through the entrance.....no more cover charge.....bad luck to those people who bought a ticket......they compensated by rising the price of drinks at the bar to 10 euros each.....people had to wait up to an hour to reclaim their jacket from the cloak room......toilets couldn't be found so people created their own (this one I saw myself).....etc.

And it was only on our way out, high from the adrenalin of surviving, did we finally see some security. About 15 police officers standing in a circle about 50 - 100 metres back from the entrance....just chatting.

Ahhhhhh yeah. Italy will toughen me up for sure.

Australia Day 2008 - One month on...

Hi Everyone,

This is the first of a month's worth of blogs to catch up on all the busy things Ali and I have been up to lately. I guess it's one of those situations in which you're too occupied doing stuff to keep the blog on. Enough whingeing, here's the news:















A nice little Australia Day party was held in the apartment a month ago to celebrate all the greatness of Australian culture and achievement, and for the purposes of introducing Ali to some of my work colleagues and showing off the house. We managed to keep people distracted by painting up a traditional venetian mask in Aussie flag colours (just in time for carnevale!) and passing around the unofficial Australian Citizenship test (if you haven't done it yet let me know and I'll email it to you). Being mostly chemists, they came up with the other standard definition of "mole". Anyway that was just a primer before the food came out...



















A proper selection of Australian food was of the utmost priority, the only problem being that we didn't have an oven available! That cut out all the favourites (you know, pavlova, pies, roast barramundi, Anzacs, roo tail...) so we had to improvise. Our Aussie culinary experience consisted of vegemite on toast, Cheese-Ham-Pineapple stacks (which were a bit too much because we foolishly used Gruyere in the absence of plain old cheddar), Macadamia nuts, Garlic prawns and Chocolate crackles, accompanied by Coopers Pale Ale and Stouts (found on the website of a beer shop in Milan!). All that was finished up with some Tim-tams posted by my parents, but sadly we didn't have Milo to drink with/through it.















A bit of poetic license was applied to the chocolate crackles, which we re-named "roo-poo" given the similarity in colour if not size. They came out a lot more chocolatey than we wanted because you can't get Copha in Italy and we couldn't find vegetable shortening so we had to use a chocolate-butter substitute...so they were more like chocolate crackle brownies in the end, but tastey nonetheless. A bit of a shock to have leftovers but they were all eaten the following Monday by Ali's italian language schoolmates...















Ali and I were pretty happy with the spread but it's funny that just one month later we've learned so much more: that you can get Copha, Tim tams, Coopers, Little Creatures and Milo online from shops in the UK; that you can buy kangaroo from the London Borough markets; that the Italians have a creation similar to chocolate crackles but using molten mars bars instead of chocolate/butter/copha type coagulating agents, and that italian toasters do a really crap job of making toast. On the flip side, we're now very happy to be able to say that our government has apologised to the stolen generations and ratified the Kyoto protocol and moved to advance other similarly intelligent and morally decent initiatives.

Since Australia day we've "cooked" ceviche, tried out Venice's only Argentinean restaurant, experienced Venice's Carnevale, gone to the UK, Ali finished her language course and started working and last weekend I did some cross-country skiing! Hopefully it'll all appear in blogs soon.

Ciao, Paul.