This weekend I took a trip to Italy to visit my friend Paula who is teaching in Bergamo and to also see the Venice Bienalle!

I had expected getting on a train to be like getting on an airplane or even like navigating a mega stations in Tokyo. I left my office at 2pm for a 2:33pm train, and was a bit shocked when I was standing at the tracks at 2:04 with nothing to do. Could it really be that convenient?

Turns out it was, and I had lots of time to look for snacks in the station and have a leisurely walk to my train car.

I wrote my last newsletter while riding down to Bergamo and I’m writing this one while on the train back from Venice.

Unsurprisingly it is nice to (a) not be in a car and (b) getting to see the scenery float by as you glide on the tracks. We passed Lucerne on the way out of Zurich and I was shocked to see a postcard worthy view of people swimming, boating, and kite surfing on the lake with majestic mountains in the background.

The transition into Italy was notable and endearing. The trains were noticeably delayed, the platform had an automatic coffee vending machine that gave me an espresso for 1 Euro, and all of the store workers seemed happily exasperated and were making faces and expressive hand motions to match.

In Bergamo I was charmed by the seemingly small town life on the borders of the downtown. Paula and I went to a small food festival at a local church, and walked the twisting roads of the old town at sundown. It was a city geography that just doesn’t exist in America and I began theory crafting why.

Was most of America, especially the west, was developed after the advent of trains and automobiles? Or maybe at least reshaped after cars became ubiquitous. Is it that city centers are mostly in the lowlands where roads and trains can get to, and there was never a reason for things beyond suburban housing to grow and flourish in the hillsides? Who knows, but it just felt different to stumble upon a string of historic churches and squares along winding stone paved roads. Just spitballing here, but either way it’s idyllic AF.

The bus to Venice was not as relaxed or convenient as the train the day before, but still we arrived with little fuss. At first I thought that all the talk of canals and bridges was just twee accenting that gave the city a romantic sheen but didn’t really effect day to day life, but as I began to try to find my way around and had to search for connecting roads and bridges like a freakin’ platformer video game I realized all the hype was not for naught.

The lack of cars left the city with a distinct quiet mainly broken up by the sound of tourist families hastily rolling their luggage across cobblestones. But it didn’t take long after arriving to see not only the preponderance of water taxis, but also a water ambulance(!) and water garbage trucks(!!). It’s not just touristic gondola cosplay.

The birds rule the city, but despite multiple accounts of seagulls stealing pastries out of peoples hands I had no such luck, though not for lack of trying. There was art, though the best of it that I saw was not photographable. A spacial sound installation arranged by the Vatican that featured Terry Riley, Blood Orange, Suzanne Cianni, Jim Jarmush, and lots of others. A bizarre, slightly unsettling, funny, and interrogative hour long looping video about the mechanics of digital animation, the crowding out of other senses and emotions as we are overwhelmed with visual stimuli, and the pitfalls of taking short cuts in creative endeavors. And a raw vocal performance evoking the desperate need to stay upbeat, happy, and productive while confronting the claustrophobic and darkening world around us.

Although I’m now quite confident I’m still in the honeymoon phase, I am really enjoying the patchwork of cultures all overlapping. Hearing and seeing so many languages, accents, mannerisms, and norms all at once. Ok I said I would stay away from trite cliched observations. I’ll just say that I like drinking italian bitter sodas, and there’s a lot of them here.

Culture shocks

Watch this garbage collection barge - what a treat. I also watched this garbage man stand around for almost an hour, drinking espresso and yelling at people to not put their personal trash into the garbage cart. So Italian!

Here’s my new favorite vending machine

And here is a shared bathroom for helping your bambino

Sightseeing

Check out this beautiful mosaic graffiti that was part of the german pavilion at the Bienalle. Apparently it’s a copy of the artist squat in Berlin the artist lives in - but I forgot to take a picture of the interpretive plaque.

The train has a dedicated kids car

Lots of big fancy churches and small streets and canals

Lots of stacks of sheep, 3 flying animals of prey, and some weird lion amalgamation.

Albums

Frank Zappa - Over-Nite Sensation

I was making a playlist for someone and wanted to include The Slime, but ended up not. Regardless this stuck around in my brain/music app home page and soon I was listening to Montana and then the rest of it. On my re-listening I immediately pegged that the violin work on the album was done by Jean Luc-Ponty since he has such a distinctive violin tone. But I had no idea the backing vocals throughout the album (and especially on Dinah-moe Humm) were done by Tina Turner and the Ikettes(!). Anyway it was fun to listen through 2-3 times since the melodies are so strange and the solos and pre-written musical runs (is it jazz? can we call them heads?) are so good, but eventually the sheer indulgence of it gets a bit grating.

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

I had never listened to this album before, or at least I don’t think so. But I did seem to recognize two songs that I must have heard passively on the radio or something - Jesus, etc & Heavy Metal Drummer. Overall I’m not like that impressed which is maybe just me trying to justify my choice to ignore this band for over two decades. Am I imagining things or does there feel to be a distinctive Pavement influence here? Is this what people are talking about when they say that Pavement saved Rock & Roll?

Ok, that’s all for now

Ciao!

Noah