Die Glasmenagerie

I only have 40 minutes remaining on my battery time because apparently this train doesn’t have outlets for such things as cell phone or laptops. This train, by the way, is the train from Milan to Venice. I am on my way home from my weekend trip to Zurich. It was quite an incredible weekend too. J But first thing is first… I don’t know if I told “you” but at the beginning of this month I moved up a level in my Italian class therefore I have a new teacher for one of the classes. Apparently, he has been to Binghamton but I didn’t inquire about why because I didn’t/don’t really want to discuss Binghamton while I’m in Venice.

So Zurich… It was a last minute decision but this time it worked out fine. I was a little nervous at first though because I wanted to call the hostel I was staying at to triple check the directions about how to get there from the main train station. Nobody was answering the phones but I figured it out by myself with the help of an old Bavarian man who I met on the tram. Speaking of the tram… Zurich has quite a remarkable public transportation system. Everything is super clean and super punctual. To the minute! I could literally talk for hours about how amazed I was at this public transportation system but that would certainly be less than interesting. So after all my traveling to and from, I ending up having all day Saturday and Sunday until 3pm to spend in the city and I loved it. Saturday I did most of the sightseeing that was suggested by the books and tourist offices and so forth. Including:

-The Botanical Gardens, which other than the greenhouses was pretty barren yet still beautiful.

-St. Peter’s Church, has Europe’s largest clock face, the Swiss boasting there clock making skills.

- The Grossmunster, where the Protestant Reformation began in Zurich, I climbed to the top of one of the church’s towers. For half the way up there was only a tiny spiral staircase on which people going up had to squeeze by people going down.

- The Zurich University and the Federal Institute of Technology, two learning institutions with beautiful buildings right next to each other and from where you can see a great view of the city.

- Some of the city’s theatres, Opernhaus Zurich (Opera House), Tonhalle (some concert hall), and Schauspielhaus Pflauen (apparently on of the most important German-speaking theaters… I saw The Glass Menagerie there IN GERMAN… thank god I’ve read/seen it many times before… it was awesome)

-Rapperswil, a nice small town about 40 min by train from the city center… some nice views of the lake and a cool Medieval castle.

- Fraumnster, another church with 6 stained glass windows by Marc Chagall. These windows were just as impressive as the ones he did in Jerusalem.

- The Kunsthaus, a modern art museum. They had a lot of cool stuff by some really big names which is always interesting to see (Meg and Alli- lots of stuff from Aruna). They also had two really cool special exhibits. The first was called Europop. It was an attempt to prove that Europe had important pop artists before or at the same time that pop art was making it big in the states. I think the exhibit failed at this stupid-to-begin-with goal because the exhibit feature work by Warhol and Lichtenstein (Americans) and because the subject of a lot of the European pop was whining and annoying complaining that America stole the idea from Europe. It was annoying but there was still some cool stuff and I always love seeing Lichtenstein pieces… my fave. The other interesting exhibit was photos by Edward Steichen, a photographer who in the 20’s and 30’s did a lot of work for Vogue and Vanity Fair, called In High Fashion. It was really cool to see because it features photos of some of my favorite Old Hollywood starts as well as other celebrities of the time (Gloria Swanson, Al Jolsen, Fred and Adele Astaire, Joan Crawford and her husband Douglass Fairbanks Jr. on and on goes the list… President Hoover, Amelia Earhart, George Gershwin). It was a remarkable exhibit. It was also really cool because I read about so many of these celebrities in the biography of Cary Grant that I just finished. Unfortunately he was not featured in and of the photos.

I don’t know what more to say… I had a great time. I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of Venice yet and I’m already leaving to go see other places… I have some heavy-duty sight seeing planned for the next few weeks within Venice. It will be interested because I can accomplish some of it in my one-on-one Art History and Venetian History lessons/excursions. The teachers for these classes are really cool and I enjoy their courses so much. I feel very lucky to have this unusual and incredible opportunity that these classes offer.

 

Peace. 

\/ the lake from Rapperswil \/

\/ at the top of the Grossmunster \/

\/ at the bottom of the Grossmunster \/