Eating words

G'day tutti

As per usual, Dr. Blogalonga is out in front....hard to keep up.

The summer is in full-swing and I confess, I've had to eat my words somewhat about there not being enough music, events etc. in Venice. In fact, now there is too much for me to do and I just don't have the time to go to everything. Ahem. I smell hypocrisy....

We've discovered a really cool local band called Grimoon who play alternative type folk music with lots of keys (including a Farfisa!), violin, guitar etc. and a French singer. They also create their own short films to accompany the music. We also saw another group playing traditional Italian music on a boat in the canal outside one of our favourite drinking spots. Great atmosphere with some crazeeeeee regional Italian dancing going on. So yeah. Seems that when music is hapening in Venice, it happens in style!

The other two reasons why I've had less time to go out is because I now have my own keyboard (whoo hoo! so I'm back to feeling guilty about not practising enough!) and because I've been taking-on a lot of the students at the Oxford School who want to continue over the summer whilst all the other teachers (sensibily) take-off for holidays in Spain, Croatia etc. I'm the crazy Australian who's teaching over the summer holidays because to me, it still seems like it should be winter, in the middle of the year when I am (or should be) the most productive!!

Anyway, I'm loving teaching English. So far, most of my students have been adults from the various large companies in the Veneto region - particularly engineers - so I'm learning a lot from them about the operations of the port city - transport systems, customs, and oil / gas mining and refinery. I also have a lot of students at Telecom - one of the many telecommunication companies here. But this is another blog in itself...

Finally, my Italian is SLOWLY improving.....a fascinating yet frustrating experience. It really has helped me to understand the difficulties that my English students face.....and also how similar learning a language is to learning music (jazz particularly!). You need to understand the structure of the language....but if you only follow the rules, you sound rigid and unatural because the rules always change....but you can't just improvise on the spot unless you've practised some key phrases and vocab that you can adapt in the moment.....and then when you're out there performing, you have to think ahead, behind and in the moment all at once to predict, guess and say something appropriate at the right time in context. Normally for me this is an emphatic "Si!" or "va bene" or "O-kaay" or "Certo" or "Un macchiato, grazie".

And of course, the more you practice, the better the performance. BLAH!

Birthday blog

Hi all, a little update for those of you who want to know what I did to celebrate my birthday on Saturday. The "celebration" really occurred from Friday through to Sunday, although Sunday evening was the hangover if one could apply a Bacchanalian analysis to the events that preceded.

Since getting back from Germany about mid-June the hot temperatures and dense humidity of Venice has been stifling. Wanting to get out of it for a bit, I'd started to think about spending the weekend out of Venice, up in the mountains and somewhere I hadn't been before. As it happened, the girls from my climbing course were planning a similar thing: Claudia proposed a weekend up in Alto Adige, her regione of origin, to go climbing and walking about this quite autonomous and unique part of Italy. Autonomous in the sense that it's autonomously governed and unique in the sense that the regione (state) has german as it's first language, was a part of austria as recently as the start of last century and happens to be smack-bang in the middle of the Italian Alps.


The weekend started early on Thursday night, when Francesca, Marta and I caught a train to Verona in order to take a regional train up through Trentino to Bolzano, where we met Claudia. Her home town is Lajen, set at 1100m a.s.l. and overlooking Ponte Gardena and a couple of nearby valleys 600m below. On Friday we travelled up Val de Funes to the Odles mountain chain where we went climbing for the day, on an outcrop of sitting around 2000m, at the feet of the mountains! We'd walked a few kilometers from the car to the mountains, past a meadow with a refuge and cows and their bells ringing persistently - reminding me of Raphael's birthday party up in the Swiss Alps. The weather was spectacular - warm and dry and a little cloudy, which ensured that we weren't too sunburned by the time we got back at the end of the day. Dinner was Knodler (an accent should be in there somewhere), a fist-sized ball of bread, cheese, garlic, greens and herbs which was cooked in a goulash-type broth. Delicious!

On Saturday we were up early again to go climbing at a wall near Bressanone, the next city up the valley after Bolzano. The climbing was different because the rocks were different. Compared to the dolomite of Friday, Bressanone was a rock wall (falesia) of weathered quartz, with fewer holes and more cracked, craggy and diagonal fissures which required a completely different mindset. From an analytical point of view it was interesting to see how climbing a different kind of rockface required a different approach toward what was acceptable as a handhold or a foothold. I had a nice sense of closure as the first climb we did was a chimney-pipe (4b) which was similar to the first climb I'd ever done in Tasmania, and I completed a really challenging 5c lead climb that involved a few voli, but I was glad to have stuck at it. In the afternoon, Ali came up from Venice (she'd been teaching on Friday) and we spent the arvo wandering around Bressanone, a fairytale-like town which instantly reminded me of the old-town of Munich, with it's southern German/Alpine style of buildings and small laneways. That afternoon we caught the bus back to Lajen and had a barbeque, celebrating my birthday with delicious strudel. We then did some drinking and dancing in town centre, where the local fire brigade where putting on a fundraising party. The only thing missing was the themesong of our 2008/2009 european experience: Opus' "Live is life".

Sunday we slept in and eventually went for a hike/walk/passegiata around the hills near Lajen, wandering past dairy farms and sunbathers until we got up to another refuge with a fantastic vista. It was nice to be able to practice some of the German words I'd learned in Bremerhaven and Munich: Hallo, choos, schlussel, kase and abfahrt, among others. By the early afternoon the weather was turning grey and nasty so we went back to Claudia's and had a nap until our train which was due to arrive at 16:15. We spent 50 minutes at the Ponte Gardena train station, listening to the pouring rain and watching a kid have fun with the rain while her stressed mum tried to keep it together. It was at that point that the hangover of the weekend party came to its head-splitting synthesis: the trains were striking.

It must be understood that in Italy and Europe, strikes are a part of daily life. In South America, strikes and protests seem to be occasions of solidarity and socialist advancement whereas they seem to have an overall dulling effect, at least for me. People on the trains and in the bus stations get frustrated over something that they have no control over - they can't get out and push the train, they can't step out and take over the switches, so instead they get frustrated and complain loudly about something that they can't control. My attitude is to prepare for a train trip that could be double the expected duration: a reasonable book and the ipod is enough to keep me occupied for any travel on European spatial scales. The 16:15 arrived at Ponte Gardena at 17:00 and suffice to say, we arrived in Venice 3 hours late about 11:00. The whole experience did provide a few laughs, such as the people who jumped off our train as it took an improvised 45 minute rest at Descenzano, deciding to run over to the Eurostar sitting on the other side of the platform. The murmurs of class angst at the well-lit Eurostars on the other side of the station which seemed to zoom on past while our cheapo regional train remained firmly set in the station waiting list. The funniest part was the three young chainsmokers trying to suck as much out of their cigs as possible between when the doors open at the station and when they close again - the boys were jumping over one another trying to get back onto the train before the doors slammed shut, dropping their cigs on each other in the mad rush of mixed loyalties between being on the train, deep lung smoking and not getting cigarette burns on their clothes...the Marx brothers couldn't have done better.

Sorry for the cynicism - it's 23.42 and I'm going to bed now.

Ciao, Paul.

Drinking games beside the canals of Venice

Hi all,

Quick blog to let you all know that the season of birthdays happens here in Italy too. Last night Ali and I were hanging out at the Rialto markets, celebrating the very recent birthdays of Francesco (Franz) my climbing instructor and Francesca (keka) a climbing friend. One of the very nice things about Europe is the very relaxed attitude to drinking and responsibility in public places. A group of kids with 3 litres of wine and a whole bunch of plastic cups, drinking quite close to a reasonably deep canal with no licenses, barriers, security or police checking, controlling and domineering. One of our favourite spots in Milan is the zone near to Naviglie where there are some Roman columns leftover from a building, which at night time is taken over by young people meeting, drinking, hanging out and socialising - on, around and between the thousands of years old ruins where people were probably doing much the same thing at much the same time of night back then too. Great to see and experience!

Anyway last night we got the chance to learn some fun drinking games. One I've decided to call "mezzo limone" which means "half (a) lemon". The drinkers sit in a circle, with the birthday boy called "capolimone". Each other person in the circle receives the name "un limone" (1 lemon), "due limone" (two lemons), "tre limoni" (three lemons), and so on. The capolimone goes first by saying (for example) "Capolimone mezzo limone due limone" (head lemon half lemon two lemons) as fast as possible. If he makes a mistake, he drinks. The player designated "due limone" or whatever number is called then has to say (for example) "Due limone mezzo limone quattro limone" (two lemons half lemon four lemons) and it becomes the turn of "quattro limone" to respond...make a mistake, drink. answer too slowly, drink. forget where you are, drown. The most common mistake I made was to say "mezzo melone" (half melon) instead of "mezzo limone" but I wasn't the only one...

The other drinking game we learnt involved the following song:

"Filome, Filome, voglio stare insieme a te.
Sul sofa, sul sofa, con lo ziggolo ziggolo ziggolo za!"

Maybe Ali can explain that one...


I'm going climbing this weekend around Bolzano, up in the Alps of Alto Adige, which is going to be a lot of fun. Ali's coming up on Friday or Saturday and it'll be nice to celebrate my birthday in good company...but it would have been nice to spend the time with family and friends in oz too.

Ciao, Paul.

A 53º (N) cycle

It's been an interesting stay here in Bremerhaven so far - Bremerhaven is a port that sits on a river 30 km away from Bremen, which may or may not have been a place you've read about on a label of Becks beer. Considering that Bremerhaven has been relegated that historical position of being the lifeless satellite orbiting the quite-lively planet Bremen, it's not doing a bad job of reinventing itself as a centre of polar and ocean research, spicing it up a bit with an immigration museum, straight-outta-Dubai sail-shaped hotel and the yet to be completed Klimahaus, which will be a museum dedicated to climate, changing climate and variability found along the longitude of Bremerhaven - 8º East. For nightlife, graffitti and contemporary culture, refer to Bremen.


...but the weather has been compliant and today's blue skies and balmy weather invited me to go for a cycle up the coast - originally a very long way, but the headwind and dodgeyness of the bike helped me decide to go easy. Besides, there's nothing worse than working in a coldroom with aching legs as well as numbing fingers and toes...makes it hard to concentrate on not dropping the ice cores or pushing too hard through the bandsaw...

Anyway, I found it interesting how the countryside on the otherside of the car- and container-processing port facility was so mixed up compared to our very linear and organised Australian landscapes. It's almost as if we can't accept fields with cows and wind turbines in the background.




or tidal plains mixed up with container loading cranes:




Landscapes that seemed miraculous here would be labelled..."eyesores" back home...

Gotta go watch a football (soccer) match now. Ciao! Paul.

North of Germany

Hi all,

Long time between posts but just a quick update from here in Bremerhaven where I'm sub-sampling the Talos Dome ice core with a mixed group of students and scientists. The ice core from Talos Dome is the material that I'm working on for my fellowship, and while it has already been drilled, there remains about 600m of 1-metre long tubes of ice which need to be cut into square or triangular pieces for all the collaborating labs (my piece is square). Yesterday I got in to Bremerhaven after a few days in Munich, and I'm happy to indulge in such decadent pleasures as muesli and cycling...the hedonism!

Considering we just started this morning we got 37 metres processed today, so I'm expecting us to get at least 60 m done tomorrow. Took some photos but I still have to transfer them off the camera - hopefully have them up soon. Quite nice here but Bremerhaven is a very sleepy little town and I haven't seen a huge amount to recommend...but you can walk through a WW2 U-boat in the harbour which is an interesting experience of the cramped spaces and technology of the time.

Enough from me for now!

Ciao, Paul.

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.