Aforementioned postcard thread
May. 15th, 2007 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petronia(From an internet point in Milan I'm about to leave) I've been sending out postcards responsibly but probably none of the ones from Turin will arrive because they have the wrong postage. ^^; I took photos of them though so will reproduce the text when I get back. In the meantime, once you get yours, please to post the text and/or scan as a comment to this thread. XD They're numbered according to the order in which I wrote them, and ahh may contain other metadata tags, since they're basically travelling LJ posts.
Tomorrow: Verona, then Venice. ♥
Tomorrow: Verona, then Venice. ♥
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-16 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-16 10:38 pm (UTC)( 2 ) 14.05.07, Torino
Date: 2007-05-21 11:34 pm (UTC)Rome is foggy in the early morning, sunny for the rest of the day in that hazy, humid way. It's cooler than Montreal when I left, but doesn't feel like it. Smells -- pleasantly -- like petrol fumes and humidity and (sometimes) flowers, but one doesn't see the flowers.
The buildings, very old to various degrees of new, are shades of ochre red and yellow. But architecture never makes me feel like I'm in a foreign place; only vegetation does. T. told a story about her mother going to Italy and being shocked at the decorative orange trees. I laughed; give her a break, said T., she's Russian -- but it is a bit astonishing to see the big round oranges growing like crabapples. More palm trees than I expected, too.
The old Italian man in the next seat just became the 10,000th person to inform me my handwriting is tiny. "Pico, pico," he says.
Sabina
Il maggio
(Picture on postcard is a photograph of the Rome Colosseum taken by Giancarlo Gasponi.)
Re: ( 2 ) 14.05.07, Torino
Date: 2007-05-22 08:35 pm (UTC)Re: ( 2 ) 14.05.07, Torino
Date: 2007-05-23 02:07 pm (UTC)Or maybe this is 11 maggio.
SABINA WHY YOUR HANDWRITING SO TINY
(unnumbered) 18.05.07, Venezia
Date: 2007-05-23 12:50 pm (UTC)(Twinings Prince of Wales, which is a China blend and actually tastes like China tea, ♥)
Here, have a Sargent's eye view of Venice (this postcard is so nice I'm going to ask for an envelope in which to send it XD). This special exhibition was at the Museo Correr but I was the youngest person there by 30 years. Does no one under 50 like Sargent? I CRY.
Sabina, 18 maggio
(I went to the Doge's palace which allowed no photos so drew everything and it was like a FF map. Saw 1,000,000 Veroneses and Tintorettos and was satisfied in this respect. XD)
Card #8
Date: 2007-05-23 07:14 pm (UTC)Postcard: Front (http://web.singnet.com.sg/~fooshi/cardfront.jpg), Back (http://web.singnet.com.sg/~fooshi/cardback.jpg), HIDDEN STAMP GOODNESS (http://web.singnet.com.sg/~fooshi/stamp.jpg)!
Re: Card #8
Date: 2007-05-26 09:58 pm (UTC)18. Location: on train from Bologna to Florence.
Date: 2007-05-25 01:32 am (UTC)Murano is home to glassmakers for centuries, and I spent the entire time shopping for trinkets. It's bead heaven if you can stomach them being 2€-10€ each. ^^;
Burano houses lacemakers whose products are not extraordinarily different from Antwerp's, but mostly it's the prettiest little island ever, all house painted in bright primary colours and overflowing with flowers.
Sabina
19 maggio
PS -- guess how much a ball of the artisanal yarn used in the local handmade scarves costs. XD;;;
repost
Date: 2007-05-26 12:33 am (UTC)Mom: You have a postcard.
Mom: From Italy.
Me: ...did you read it?
Mom: It's very detailed.
XD; She asked what your name was and I had to explain about internet handles and how the card was not as intimate as it appeared to be.
***
#21
Picture: A closeup of the David's face. (He is glaring.)
Location: Having lemon sauce pasta and a strawberry tart at Gilly's.
Message: I did get in to see the David -- had a reservation for it, and even so had to line up for twenty minutes. 20 min in the Tuscan sun was quite enough, and it's only May. I can't imagine trying it in August; I'm pretty devoted to the Cinquecento but even so. ^^;
This is going to sound retarded but I hadn't realized it was such a huge statue. My high school junior class went to Italy on a second trip and I remember by BFF coming back & telling me in significant tones that the David was anatomically correct. Well, and what of it? I thought. But it really does have a je ne sais quios... it's even more impressive from the back, actually. You can in fact get a postcard just of its nether or anterior regions but I couldn't quite bring myself...well. ^^; It's not really a relaxed pose either, the way it looks from the side. He's glaring at the enemy, and it's that split second of stillness before he propels himself into motion.
Apart from the David and unfinished Michelangelos there're about 200 plaster busts and such of 18th century sculptures scattered all over the world (the plaster being the artist's models), after which one does start thinking doughnut-shaped ringlets are a good idea. They had this computer model for kids where you could rotate parts of the David and change the light source etc. So this kid moves the head around until it's looking you in the eyes, brings the light up 45 degrees, and suddenly I had a burning desire to find Araki and beat him. =_=; Though mind you I felt like I was on the trail of Kishibe Rohan!!! this entire trip, and that's with knowing a lot of his sources in advance.
Sabina zamaggio
correction
Date: 2007-05-26 12:39 am (UTC)XD;
Re: correction
Date: 2007-05-26 03:27 pm (UTC)(For that matter "Sabina" really is my RL name insofar as that's what everyone calls me in RL, although it's not my official document name. ^^;)
repost with the right journal
Date: 2007-05-26 04:39 pm (UTC)There's nothing incriminating about the postcard at all, it's just...your journaling style...it's very...chatty. Objectively speaking.
Whenever you mention Araki in these postcards, I can't help but think of all those English aristocrats doing the Italian portion of the Grand Tour. Going to Italy to study the Masters. ^^; I have to ask, did any of these plaster casts have actual donut-shaped ringlets for hair?! I could just picture that head-rotated contrast-increased David too...
Re: repost with the right journal
Date: 2007-05-26 10:14 pm (UTC)I think donut-shaped ringlets over the forehead were a Roman thing at one point, though not of that precise number or size necessarily. XD ...And it's a women's hairstyle (they date Roman busts by comparing the hair with that of the Empress on the offical coins). In the 1700s it was ringlets on the sides. But yeah, you get to see a lot of examples.
Also: extreme posing, masks, HEART DECORATIONS. I met Re-Miel and his gang on my last day in Florence and he was like, "So I see you went for the JoJo-esque jewelry," and I hadn't even thought of it - I just bought heart-shaped pendants because it was the most representative Murano glass trinket.
( 10 ) 18.05.07, Padova
Date: 2007-05-27 12:59 am (UTC)Chara, "Crazy For You" / Hirano Aya, "Bouken Desho Desho?"
More transportation adventures: bought this postcard in the arcades to the left of the picture when the tram I was riding dumped us all unceremoniously in the Piazza (there was a transit strike). So I walked down to S. Lorenzo Maggiore, and was glad because it was a funky, cool youth-hangout district. Found an internet point on the waterfront; all the clothes and records are too expensive though. (6-colour pen's from MUJI.)
Couldn't sleep so got up early to se the church where the Last Supper is, though one needs a reservation to see the painting itself. Then went to the Basilica of Sa Ambroglio (St. Ambroise, like the beer), patron saint of Milan. He's on display in an ornamental casket in the crypt, all boney and dressed in papal vestments.
... Actually, I got stuck in the crypt for a bit because they were holding services overhead and it was thunderstorming outside. So crashing thunder, mass sung in Italian, and me down in the crypt with a 1600-year-old skeleton (+ some more) surrounded by flickering candles. *sweatdrops*
Sabina
16 maggio
passing through Piotello, Casanno, Treviglio, on way to Verona
Front of postcard is a photograph of the Duomo in Milan, no attribution.
#23 Toscana
Date: 2007-05-27 01:56 am (UTC)Front: gorgeous field of poppies (ttp://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b188/silvermuse89/italy.jpg)
Toscana
Foto di Stefano Caporali
Location: drinking chianti at a traltoria just down the street from my hostel
Text: I kept feeling disappointed that there weren't postcards that showed exactly what I wanted to write about, but I've finally found one! The poppies were nearly the first thing I noticed after getting on the train from the airport to Rome Central - they're everywhere, in all the "third spaces" - the bits of untamed greenery that border highways and train tracks, overgrown backyards, fallow fields. I can't remember ever seeing real poppies before, only Remembrance Day pins, but they're the exact same colour. Sometimes a field is filled with them, green dusted with red, so vivid it doesn't seem real. From my experience this is also the exact same colour that defeats the JPEG compression algorithm - no matter how high the settings, artifacts of compression are introduced. Gold is the other colour computers don't handle well. There's a lot of that sort of thing, in Tuscany. I can't remember if Calvino had a filiform city consisting of what was visible from trains? He should have, and it ought to be filled with poppies.
Sabina
21 maggio
Correct link this time!
Date: 2007-05-27 01:57 am (UTC)[unnumbered] 16/17 May 2007
Date: 2007-05-27 02:44 am (UTC)location: on train from Verona to Venice, nearing sunset/in Venice hotel room
This picture, I think was taken from the bell steeple of a white romanesque church exiting onto the theatre. Would that we all had the same access as picture postcard photographers! but I have ones very nearly as nice XD
I don't know how to say what I want to say about Verona without turning it into a poem, and poetry is difficult. It's not a tragic or even melancholy place (as Venice is - there's a mono no aware to Venice's gaiety even when the tourists are out in full force), there are flowers cascading over balconies and children at play in the cobbled squares. There are Romeos riding their bicycles on handed with a cigarette in the other, and Juliets sitting on the balustrades of the river promenade studying English conjugaison. I saw more children and adolescents there percentage-wise than anywhere else - you could tell it's a good place to raise children and when tragedy happens people must look at each other and say, we never thought in our community! -
Sabina 16/17 maggio
16: Venezia
Date: 2007-05-27 02:52 am (UTC)I still haven't taken a boat ride up the Grand Canal--will have to skip Bologna and do that tomorrow! I did walk to the Rialto bridge but it was late and all the shops on the bridge itself were closed. Then I decided to find the Teatro La Fenice--it's less than half a kilometer as the pigeon flies, but I had to stop and consult a map on every street corner. The tiniest of alleys has a name: if there is an alley off Assassins' Street it's Assassins' Alley, if there's an alley off that it's the Little Alley of Assassins, and so on. (I'm almost sure I did see an Assassins' Alley. XD;) Apart from that there are grandviale, viale, calle, fondamente (blocks of houses built over commonly sunk foundations, maybe?) salizada (palisades?), of course bridges, plazas, squares, courtyards. My favorite is the "sobreportego" which is like this:
[sketch of what looks like a building with an open doorway that leads into a street]
Sabina
18/19 maggio
A sobre portego leads to my hotel's breakfast house, and beond that to the Church of S. Zaccharia which contains a gorgeous "Sacred Conversation" by Bellini.
---
Amusing note: My parents found the postcard in the mailbox a few days ago and asked me since when was I acquainted with someone who possessed such beautiful penmanship. Surprisingly, they weren't much worried by the answer; according to my mother, your precise handwriting serves as reference for your good character. I'll scan in the postcard once I'm back at school.
Card #17
Date: 2007-05-27 10:36 am (UTC)Postcard front (http://web.singnet.com.sg/~fooshi/card2.jpg).
(13) Verona - Casa di Giulietta
Date: 2007-05-28 03:38 am (UTC)(03) - Torino - Palazzo Carignano
Date: 2007-05-28 05:09 am (UTC)(11) - Milano
Date: 2007-05-28 05:10 am (UTC)Re: (11) - Milano
Date: 2007-05-28 03:43 pm (UTC)Unnumbered
Date: 2007-05-31 12:41 am (UTC)Stamp: Mozart, Città del Vaticano
Hullo Lu-chan,
I'm actually going to arrive home before you get this, but I realised they allowed you to buy Vatican stamps and mail them from within the Vatican and I couldn't resist. XD You should like it, it's Mozart. It's a picture of the Sistine Chapel because you're not allowed to take photos of it - some people sneak'em, but they keep it dark enough that there's not much point to it, compared to ubiquitous reproductions. It was v. crowded and as you walk around you hit the perspective points of the trompe-l'oeil and it seems to jump out at you. The tour took 3 hrs; if it had been just me I would've been in there for 8. ^^; I only wish I had a little more time with the Raphaels.
Neechan
22 maggio
(27) - Firenze
Date: 2007-06-01 12:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-07 10:18 pm (UTC)Thought of getting you one with bottles of chianti to match the beer one from Belgium but there's no such thing, so have some views of Rome by G. Gaspeni. I think nearly all the postcards I've sent are by this dude; he does take pretty pictures. You'd think it was impossible to take a bad one of some of these places but many of the tourists to whom I applied to take photos of me in front of monuments made a good go of it.
In two days I've managed to get to all of these (Piazza di Spagna, BTW, is where the kids gather after sunset to sit on the steps and drink beer, like Place des Arts in Montreal. In Florence and Turin it's on the banks of the Arno and Po, respectively. We actually went clubbing in Turin, in one of the converted warehouses in the riverbank walls. The popular drink was strawberry vodka + Red Bull.) I even went back to the Trevi fountain just to toss in a coin. Then a few steps away I broke my sandal by jamming it between the street cobbles, so I had it as a sign to stop walking. Instead I went and had a v. good lamb w/sage and potatoes at a wine bar, and a glass of chianti classico that hit me pretty hard as all I'd had to eat all day were six brutti ma buoni biscuits."
(19) Venezia
Date: 2007-06-09 12:30 am (UTC)Thanks.