DAY 270: Venetian Holiday

Hello readers! So, so sorry for the massive delay--but I have so many photos and commentaries to share this time around, so hopefully it's worth it!

Spoiler alert... I did this again. From a gallery in Vienna, unrelated to the Biennale but also just hilarious.

Teaching ended a few weeks ago, so I spent the first weekend of June in beautiful, dreamlike Venice! I know, I know, I probably referred to Vienna as a dream earlier on this blog. And it still is! But it's more of a realistic dream, where things are a little more magical and special but still grounded in reality. Venice, conversely, is like the dream having a dream. Dream squared. Dream-ception. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... it's unreal. The streets and alleys are so narrow, the bridges so quaint and picturesque, the buildings in those bright, red-clay and tumeric-yellow colors... 

I first went to Venice in March/April of 2007, so it was literally over ten years ago. I went for my Bat Mitzvah trip--since I was about as social back at age 13 as I am now (read: not enough for Bat Mitzvah parties), my family decided not to have a party and we took a trip to Italy over spring break. This was when I was becoming an expert on the Italian Renaissance, so I naturally gave my parents tours all over the museums of Italy.

Here is a really blurry photo of me and my dad in Saint Mark's square in spring of 2007, back when I was practically an infant with braces and a head small enough for most hats.

Venice is... wait for it... another TEN-HOUR BUS RIDE from Vienna. I lied when I said I wasn't going to do another bus ride like that again. But it was still a better option than having to change trains a bunch of times, which would have been more expensive and just as long in duration. I left Vienna in the morning from the Hauptbahnhof (howpt-baahn-hohf), the main train station in the city, from the same spot where I'd caught the Berlin bus. I am basically a pro at international bus travel at this point.

Give me charging ports and a wifi connection and I'm basically good to go on any trip.

The bus ride itself was completely fine--I slept on and off, listened to an album I reviewed for PopMatters, and worked on a review for Paste. So basically... exactly what I would have done had I just stayed home and not taken a TEN-HOUR BUS RIDE. I did eat a lot more junk food, but I always end up eating more in general when I do this kind of travel because I never know when I'll have time to get a proper meal at a stop or whether it's just a ten-minute bathroom break and protein bar kind of pause.

Massive Nutella jar that I didn't buy, but holy crap so much Nutella. THREE KILOGRAMS OF SOLID NUTELLA.

On the bridge from the mainland to Venezia...

I was pretty sore when we finally pulled into the Venice station, so I decided to walk to my hotel to stretch my legs and get my blood flowing. I like to walk as much as I can when traveling, both to see the city and to avoid spending money on transit, and since Venice doesn't have subways or buses near the Grand Canal, I figured a gondola ride would be massively overpriced. The sun has finally decided to stay out until around 9pm, so walking the 30-minute trek to my hotel with my suitcase and bags at around 8pm was no hassle at all. After checking in and getting my stuff dropped off into my little single room, I headed out to grab some dinner (I had pasta, of course) and walked around a little bit as the sun finished going down.

Every view looked like this and I wanted to scream a little.

My hotel bathroom had a bidet! ... I think?

Cute little bookstore I ducked into that was still open this late on a Saturday night! (It wasn't that late, but it would have been late for homebody Vienna, who likes to finish shopping by 6pm on Saturdays...)

Time for Venice day one! 

So I came to Venice originally not really having a concrete plan of what to see, which was silly, I know. But I put two and two together and realized that the Biennale, aka the massive show of contemporary art that happens in Venice every two years, was going to be on display when I was there, so I pre-ordered a ticket a few weeks before I left. After all, now I can definitely rock that fancy "oh, well, I did so enjoy the Biennale when I went in 2017--the [insert name here] was a little gauche, but it was so stimulating over all" art critic/curator cred. Also, because of the massive, massive scale of the exhibitions, I was interested in how the curators would tackle making so many artists and so many different works come together in a cohesive way. It seemed quite the Herculean task.

I made someone take a photo of me on the main bridge. But they did a good job!

Aaaand here's me (not on the same bridge) ten years ago, squinting against the sun.

Day one was Biennale day, then, so after walking about forty minutes from my hotel I arrived at the main exhibition hall, which was divided into seven pavilions, all with a different theme, then walked over to some of the country pavilions. The whole display was big and bold and very keen on overwhelming the viewer with large-scale installations in dazzling colors and textures. (I don't like to repeat images I share, so you can check out my summary posts on Instagram.)

Yes, you walk through the GIANT HAND.

Hall of mirrors, anyone?

I have to say I liked the country pavilions on the whole better than the themed pavilions, because they were much more coherent and concise (but that was in their nature). Over 100 countries, many of them with large buildings in a park-area, picked the best of their home artists and put on shows. It was kind of like the costume aspect of The Hunger Games, actually, because some of the buildings themselves also reflected their countries. So on that first day, I went to the American, Japanese, British, Korean, Venezuelan, Italian, Chinese, Canadian, Spanish, and Nordic pavilions, to name just a few.

The American pavilion naturally looks like someone stole it from the University of Virginia.

Venice day two!

So... I dun goofed on this one. Since it was Monday, I didn't realize the Biennale would be closed. I often forget that things are closed on Mondays, for whatever reason, because I've always had to go to school on Mondays, so Mondays are an "on" day just like the other weekdays. But never fear: Venice has plenty of art that was viewable on Mondays! So I decided to walk to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection first, where I'd been with my mom back in 2007, and waited in a relatively long line (twenty or so minutes, but I hadn't had to wait at all for the Biennale) to get in and see the works. There was the permanent collection, of course, but also a really luminous and lovely show by Mark Tobey, which I was not allowed to photograph (sad face). Since it was the summer, the place was crawling with interns--no one I had any mutual acquaintances with, but it wouldn't have surprised me if there had been--giving tours, taking tickets, and generally standing around being helpful. It made me feel both older and wiser (as I've graduated from undergrad and was older than these kids) and nostalgic for my days as an intern...

I call this the Screaming Creature. It's supposed to be a lion--I just found it very amusing to look at. 

No, Italy. THIS IS NOT OKAY. ITALY IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE CAPITAL OF FASHION AND WE ARE NOT BRINGING BACK SPAGHETTI STRAPS OVER TEE SHIRTS AGAIN. NO.

Not a part of the Biennale--just a lovely contemporary show of glass in an old palazzo. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE when people stage contemporary shows in older buildings. It seems to require a lot of creativity to make sure the effect isn't totally incongruous or jarring, and honestly, it seems like a challenge I would love to undertake in the future.

Loved seeing this Dustin Yellin in the glass show. I actually saw his works a few years ago and wrote about it here--before he was in the LA Times and everything, so it's really cool to see him succeeding abroad.

I went to a few other smaller country pavilions that were open on Monday--some of the countries don't get their own buildings, and so they're scattered around the city and have more discretion about when they want to be open. So, all in all, not a mistake to include a Monday in my trip--just maybe something I definitely should have checked first.

Venice day three!

I went back to the Biennale to check out the pavilions I missed last time, and saw the Australian, German, Finnish, Austrian, Venetian (which gets its own pavilion, for some reason), Polish, Greek, Brazilian, Romanian, Serbian, and Dutch pavilions, to name a few. The Austrian pavilion was a lot of interactive fun, but the Finnish pavilion was, of course, the weirdest. (I listen to Finnish music, so I can confidently say that the Finns' artistic output is on the oddball side.) 

I don't even know how to describe the narrative of what was going on in the Finnish pavilion, but it involved video art, animatronic talking spherical forms, and lots of discussions of Godliness.

Austrian pavilion. I have to get over my sheer terror of accidentally breaking something in an interactive exhibition. There are just so many more of them in Europe than I've probably seen in all my life in the United States. I wonder why the approach to contemporary art is so different across the Atlantic? 

The Venetian pavilion was purposefully gaudy and kind of overwhelming in a bad way, but I have to think that was the point. It was just all covered in gold and shiny surfaces and was extremely loud and hard to look at. I did like this dress though.

In the German pavilion, we were elevated a good foot and a half above the normal floor, standing on panes of glass that freaked me out. Even though I know it was structurally sound, I kept worrying that I was going to fall through a panel or something. 

Ah, my favorite country: the country of Swatch, which got its own sponsor display in a prominent spot in the park.

The next morning, I woke up at an excessively early hour to leave Venice--checking out took exactly zero time, and I'd already packed the night before, so even after walking the half hour to the bus station, I had about an hour and a half to wait before we left. This was an active choice on my part, as my family can tell you, because I like to have two hours of waiting time at the airport after I go through security, just to be on the safe side. I like to be early! 

Walking around the deserted streets of Venice at 6:30 am was rather romantic--just the sound of my loud footsteps and the clatter of my rolling suitcase until I got to the part of the island with buses and trains. I did see a cute little birdie, as pictured below, which was a nice break from the endless pigeons of Venice, who will come for your food even if you are at the table at the time, and you have to scream at them to leave.

I am no orinthologist. Someone get my aunt, uncle, or Jonathan Franzen on the line to identify this bird for me.

So that was my trip to Venice in a nutshell. I ended up having spent exactly the right amount of time for me, and I didn't feel like I'd missed out on anything when I left, unlike Prague, which I really only had a day or two in to explore properly. I guess I'll have to see what Venice is like in 2027, because at the rate I'm going, that would be when I visit it next.

Day 214: Back to the States for long enough to mess up my body clock!

Hello dear and loyal readers!

So sorry for the extensive delay in this post--I was doing my usual jet-setting type of thing, naturally, and between the flights, conference-ing, and everything else going on during my trip back to Los Angeles, I didn't have much time to sit at the computer and blog. When I did end up sitting at my computer (or lying on my stomach, as the case usually is), I was furious at work for my next couple of pieces. But I'm getting ahead of myself! Let's begin.

Me at the Melrose Trading Post, sinking into a partially-inflated America. I don't know how to unpack that unintentional metaphor...

So my application to the Popular Culture Associate/American Culture Association National Conference was successful, which meant that I needed to get myself over to San Diego to present my paper on Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series (nope, not even joking a little. I contain multitudes). My paper, which I wrote for my fan studies class last spring, examines the self-referential nature of the series with regards to its fandom, and how fan interactions become incorporated into the text of the series itself as it continues. (I did it. I managed to write about Yu-Gi-Oh! for academic purposes; I have officially gamed the system and I love media studies, because media studies says these kinds of explorations are worthy of attention and interest.) I was scheduled to present my paper on Friday April 14th, and thanks to a travel grant from the PCA/ACA (for which I applied separately), my plane rides were partially covered.

The first flight was a short one-hour jaunt to Zürich, during which I somehow managed to sleep. The next flight was fifteen hours from Zürich to Los Angeles, during which I slept intermittently and watched some of Westworld, which I'd never gotten into when it aired, but found very fascinating once I got through the first two or so episodes. As you can see in the photo below, I noticed that they used part of the Skirball Center patio as a set in the show, which cracked me up as I used to volunteer there in high school, and I am pretty sure there is no cabana there, as the show portrays it in another appearance.

I've probably stood exactly where these actors are standing and being all cryptic and pseudo-philosophical.

I love the view I get when the plane starts to land over Los Angeles. I always try and spot my house but we don't live close enough to the airport for that to happen.

(Nota bene: don't ever buy Swiss Airlines wifi because even the most expensive package lasts for about twenty minutes of standard email and social media-checking. It's by the megabyte and not by the hour, so it really drains quickly!)

The next two days were a whirl of trying to get on the Los Angeles time zone, as well as eating delicious food and celebrating two Passover seders. My mom and I also went to our favorite Los Angeles flea market, the Melrose Trading Post, and bought a dress, some jewelry, and took the classic sunglasses photos (albeit at the different stand, since the usual stand's owner yelled at us).

I do basically have glasses in this shape, but we didn't want to dawdle at this stand picking other shaped frames.

Rainbow rolls from Ugly Roll Sushi, aka the best sushi I've ever had. It's a little hole in the wall joint, cash only, by my high school, and I swear by it when it's got an A rating (although I don't eat raw fish from places with less than As).

I also made it over to the Third Street Promenade, where I basked in the glow of stores that were open at 8:30 pm on a Sunday evening. (Imagine that, Austria!)

The Santa Monica version of Mariahilferstraße!

I can't wait to show this photo to my students. These are the standard opening hours for the grocery store near me. 

By the time Wednesday rolled around, I was ready to head on down to San Diego for the conference! Unfortunately, Amtrak canceled my train, setting me behind over an hour (and giving me several more gray hairs in the process, no doubt). After waking up before seven in the morning and taking two trains to get to the Amtrak, I was more than a little peeved that they didn't seem to have a contingency plan. They didn't even give us any freebies as an apology! As an American, I demand freebies as an apology! 

I always forget how beautiful Union Station is... and how much I'd like to go back to Olvera Street sometime.

I think I took this as we were pulling into San Diego. New glasses ahoy, because I needed to fix the sat-upon ones back in Los Angeles.

The conference itself was pretty overwhelming at first. Apparently there were something like 3,000 attendees, which certainly is bigger than the other conference I've participated in (the German Conference at Lafayette about a year ago). Still, though, people were really, really friendly, even okay with me slipping into a panel late (quietly, of course), and when it was time on Friday to read my paper and show my slideshow, the attendees were really thoughtful and welcoming to me even as a newbie. Despite my resolve and planning to attend as many panels as I could, I actually spent more time ~networking~ in the Exhibition Hall, where different academic publishers peddled their wares (and in the case of Penguin, offered them for free in exchange for signing up for their email list!). I shouldn't have been surprised that I felt more at home standing around chatting in a room full of books than in a conference hall, even though many of the halls were pretty small, as far as those sorts of things go. I also got to make some great connections with scholars over lunches and dinners, talking about subjects as variable art, what "quality" means, media, superhero media, why Ben Affleck is the best Batman, Judaism, and all that good stuff.

I got one book for free, and managed to restrain myself enough to only buy one book. I'm so proud of myself! Usually I always buy more books than I have time to read...

I also enjoyed walking around San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter. San Diego as a whole actually reminds me a bit of Tel Aviv--at least in terms of the beaches and hotels on the water.

I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, okay? Don't judge me, don't shake your head at me, you know you would park it on Market if you had a car...

Because I am me (what a weird statement. Anyway!), I managed to find a museum to visit even in downtown San Diego (most of the museums are in Balboa Park, away from the downtown area). One of the buildings of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is actually located in the San Diego train station complex, literally a few doors down from the station's waiting room. And it was free!!!! It wasn't a super large space (I think the main location down the block is undergoing renovations) but it had both a great exhibition (Dimensions of Black: A Collaboration with the San Diego African American Museum of Fine Art) and a sublime installation (Jennifer Steinkamp: Madame Curie). The third show didn't make much of an impression on me, but overall it was a great way to kill an hour before the museum closed and I went to wait for my train.

Part of the Dimensions of Black show. Really, really ethereal. I also really liked the Carrie Mae Weems photo they had on display (which didn't photograph well).

Inside the installation. I wish I could have just lain down and watched the animations move...

Overall, it was a good visit back home. Of course, now I'm back in Vienna and I'm super jet-lagged...

Miscellany of the week:

• I got to review The Handmaid's Tale for PopMatters. Watch it. That's all I'm gonna say here.
• I took a bunch of photos from the first Seder for my student, who don't really know many (or any) Jews beside me. I hope I get to talk about the holiday and its rituals to at least one of my classes this week!
• Photos of the week:

Here is the cover of a book I wrote about my fish Oberon for a sixth grade Spanish class project.

Even though these drawings are so bad and should never see the light of day, here I am, posting them on this blog. You're welcome, world!

Seder dessert of Passover-kosher shortcake, fresh whipped cream, and strawberries!

This coffee shop near LACMA transformed itself into what is basically Bernieland. I'm not sure if it's even a coffee shop anymore...

Despite my fiercest wishes and strongest efforts, grad school is not happening this fall. So... please hope for me that I get a good job! I've been getting a few emails asking me to come in and interview, only for them to tell me they would want someone to start before I get home. So I guess that's a good sign?

Day 200: Berlin calling and Vienna in the springtime

Hello readers! 

(How is it already day 200??!!)

Sorry about the lateness of this post--this week was rather busy, as I was in Berlin for the Fulbright Conference, where over 500 Fulbrighters from various countries in Europe and elsewhere met to participate in panels, discussions, and other activities. I'd been so excited to go, because I couldn't wait to meet other Fulbrighters and learn about their teaching and/or research projects, and while not all of the scheduled parts of the conference were as enjoyable or interesting as I would have wanted them to be, I did end up making some friends with some Germany-based Fulbrighters with whom I walked around the city on various days.

It was lovely to be back in Berlin for a few days in the spring after being there for Christmas--it felt like an entirely different city. Coincidentally, the hotel Fulbright put us up in was a few blocks away from the hotel I'd stayed in for my Christmas visit, so I was, of course, an expert on what to do in that immediate area, and how to take the scenic routes to the main part of Berlin--along the street that borders the embassies, or beside the river past the Bauhus-Archiv and Kulturforum. Another major difference between the trips was that I refused to take another ten-hour bus ride from Vienna to Berlin, so I took a short flight. More expensive, for sure, but it only took about an hour and not ten. I managed to catch a few winks during that flight, which is one of the few actual tangible skills I have noticed I've cultivated as a college student (or, rather: the ability to fall asleep anywhere given a relatively stable temperature and quiet environment). My handwriting might have degraded as a result of me typing more notes and papers, but my napping expertise certainly has grown by leaps and bounds.

Good morning, star shine. My nap went great!

Essentially, the conference activities fell into the following categories: larger assemblies/performances where people spoke to us about how great we were and how important the Fulbright program is; panels where people presented their research and then answered questions; and breakout groups, which we signed up for in advance. My breakout group was, unfortunately, not a really educational experience. While other groups used their time to discuss global politics, diversity within the Fulbright organization, and other topics I would have found interesting, my group, which was supposed to be about communication, essentially amounted to us meditating while standing for a good thirty minutes to clear our minds. It was, I guess, self-communication in that we wrote down a question at the beginning of the session and then waited to see if the answer would come to us after the meditation, but unfortunately, the meditation did not exactly bring me the clarity that would have been ideal. I did manage to clear my mind, which was pretty interesting as I usually have racing thoughts most of the time. The panels were more successful as a whole, because it was really cool to learn about what other people were doing with their grants. There was a Fulbrighter studying solar power in Spain, another grantee doing archeological research in Greece, yet another studying recidivism rates for DUIs in Finland--truly a wide range of projects in many fields!

Fancy evening welcome ceremony. I was hoping they'd give us medals or certificates or something like that. Sadly, we got no fancy tchotchkes, but we did get tote bags and pens!

The entrance hall to the fancy Berlin municipal building! I wanted to roll down the steps like a burrito, but that might have been more than a little painful.

Art installation in Bikini Berlin, the ultimate (only?) hipster mall.

This was a kind of kinetic sound performance with unconventional instruments, like velcro. It was pretty cool in theory, even if it didn't sound that fancy.

One of my roommates snapped this on the return flight because somehow I was seated behind her! Out of deference to her, I made sure not to kick the seat like a baby. I'm so considerate like that.

I went inside KaDeWe, which is basically the Berlin version of Harrod's, and had to try on this lovely fancy dress, because every time they let me try on the designer clothes I have to do it. In person it was a bit lighter, and while I would have definitely worn it to the Oscars or something, the color is a little bit too Statue of Liberty-y.

It's finally spring in Vienna. Of course, now that I have just typed this out, it's probably going to snow tomorrow, because the world loves irony. The sun no longer sets at four pm--now it's between seven and eight, a far more reasonable time. Every year I forget what walking around in springtime sunlight is like after spending so much time bundled up in sweaters during the winter, and so when I went for an afternoon walk around the city I found myself sweating in my jacket and shorts. I made my way over to the banks of the Danube and had a city-related Stendhal Syndrome moment--it was too beautiful to be real, just like much of Vienna was at the beginning of this journey. The trees were blooming along the water, the grass was green, people were lying out in the sun, jogging, biking--it was perfect picnic weather. Perfect weather in general, actually. 

Los Angeles should take a hint about how cities integrate rivers without filling them with concrete...

It's just too pretty. FAKE!

Walking around in the perfect weather did make me feel a little strange, though, because if it's springtime it means I have less than three months left of my grant. It honestly feels like I've been here for not that long, and now that I've gotten through the winter months, I have a sinking feeling that summer will sneak up on me before I know it. People told me that the Fulbright would change my life, and it has in certainly obvious material and physical ways, but I still feel like the same person I was when I left. I guess when I come home I'll feel different, but it's always hard to feel like you should have changed or developed and haven't noticed any real differences aside from the mental changes I've had to make to adjust to living in a foreign country. I will say, though, that when I come back home I'll sound so snobbishly European when I talk about "the states" and "going to university" and all the other tweaks I've gotten used to using in an Austria context... 

Younger than springtime?

Bonus photos of the week:

Spotted at some store in Berlin. Who thought these shoes were remotely allowed or okay?!

YESSICA HAIRCUT. One of Count Olaf's shabbier disguises. 

Thanks for telling me what the bag is for, H&M Berlin... really appreciate it...

I think this is a lamb-shaped cake?

This top combination is painful on the eyes and belongs in the early 2000s.