Scoutmaster trip to Eurpoe 2007

Europe 2007 2008

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

My destination, Palermo, diagonally northwest across Sicily from Syracuse, took about four hours by bus. The first bus up the east coast to Cantania, took about an hour. Then after about an hour wait, I took a second bus along the north coast to Palermo. Just outside Catania on the second bus, I got to peek at Mount Etna as it showed itself through thick clouds. Further on, the bus went through one of the largest national parks in Italy, a beautiful mountainous area about an hour east of Palermo. Around Syracuse the vegetation is lush and semitropical; it includes palm trees, and cactus. Closer to Palermo the land is drier; the bus passed many areas where cattle grazed on dry grasslands.

Italian businesses often close in the afternoon and reopen in the evening. People are out shopping in the late evening until about 10:00 p.m. Restaurants in particular, don’t open until around 8:00 p.m.; I am usually very hungry by the time trattoria and pizzeria restaurants open. Strangely, gelatteria (ice cream), café-bars that sell pastries and coffee, and wine shops are open all day. I have been good. Despite a strong desire to swim in a sea of tiramisu, I have restricted myself to only one dessert every third day or so. Tiramisu is the best dessert in Italy, and tiramisu gelato is the best ice cream.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Palermo is a big city with wide streets; my hotel sits on a street lined with fashionable upscale shops. Palermo has many churches that reflect the history of the area and of Sicily in general. Among the most striking churches are those that were decorated by Arab mosaic artisans, and later had Christian paintings done on the interior woodwork and ceilings. The cathedral is one such church; it’s a large ornate building whose exterior brickwork is the extraordinary work of Arabian artists. I visited several other beautiful churches, including the Cappella Palatina located under the Sicilian Parliament. The Cappella Palatina contains the remains of the ancient 5th century B.C.E. Greek city walls under the beautiful chapel, but unfortunately much of the chapel’s blue and gold frescoes are being restored.

The modern art gallery features paintings and sculpture by Sicilian artists. The collection is not really modern art, as most of the sculptures and paintings are 19th and 20th century work. The gallery is in a palace with a newly renovated interior. Another palace, Palazzo Abatellis, is filled with older Christian art. Its collection is called the Galleria Regionale Sicilana, and it is near the seacoast. The Archeology Museum, Museo Archeologico Regionale, has a few interesting objects, including a bronze statue of a ram, and carved stone lion heads that were ancient water outlets on fountains.

Walking the back streets of Palermo is like navigating through a maze of foreign countries. People from the Middle East, Africa and India or Pakistan are everywhere. I saw street name signs written in three languages, Italian, Hebrew and Arabic. I am not sure why Hebrew is included; to the best of my knowledge there are no Jews here, but I may be mistaken. Palermo is certainly a multi-cultural city.

I took a guided tour of the Teatro Masimo, the opera house in Palermo; it’s the second largest theater in Europe, and Paris has the largest. If you saw the movie, “Godfather Part 3,” then you may recall the opera house. Scenes were filmed on the long entrance staircase and in the seats in the royal box. Some interesting aspects of the theater include a giant stage of more than a thousand square meters. Built just at the end of the 19th century, the dome of the theater could be opened in sections like windows to allow air to circulate out of the theater. Today the theater is designed to seat more than a thousand people, but when the theater first opened, more than three thousand people could stand in the theater. The opera season started in the spring, when it must have been quite warm inside the theater. So opening the dome to let air circulate was really important.

The theater has an intriguing circular room called the “secret room.” At intermissions, men would gather in the “secret room” to smoke and talk. The acoustics of the room have unusual characteristics; sounds reverberate off the walls and ceilings, and in order to be heard, people have to whisper. If everyone spoke in normal voices, the room would just be an echo chamber, and no one would be able to hear a thing. So the need to whisper caused people to call the place the “secret room.” I stood in the middle of the room and spoke in a normal voice; I sounded like I had spoken in a loudspeaker. It was an extraordinary experience.

Friday, November 30, 2007

I booked my flight to Venice on the Internet, and found a cheap fare on an airline called MyAir, an airline that appears to be the Italian equivalent of Ryan Air. However, this was not my lucky day. Unbeknown to me, a series of transportation strikes were called today, and as a result my flight was delayed about two and half hours, and I guess I am lucky to have gotten there at all. I discovered many airline passengers were stranded overnight. My flight was on a very new Airbus 320 with wide, soft leather seats throughout. I thought for sure we’d get a snack and a drink, but as a discount airline, they only offered water. I called the bed and breakfast that I had looked up on the Internet from the airport in Venice. I wanted to be certain they had a room available before trudging into the city.

Here’s the best part of the story. It was already night, and would you believe, just as my plane touched down in Venice, the public busses went on strike. The strike would last only about five hours, a short walkout, but that did not help me. Without busses, my options for getting into the city from the airport were limited to land-taxis, and boat-taxis. The land-taxis don’t actually go into the city; they stop at a parking lot pretty far from the B&B where I planned to stay. The real means of transport within Venice is the canal boat, but tonight, the canal boats were on strike as well! The other option, a private boat-taxi from the airport, would have taken me about an hour and a half, and would have cost me one hundred Euros ($150.00). That was out of the question.

So I walked outside the terminal to where the busses usually depart, and three fellow travelers were discussing their options. I joined them to share a land-taxi to Maestre, a suburb from which I could catch a train into the main train station in Venice. The train station was as close as motorized transport would get me to my destination tonight. The land-taxi cost the four of us thirty-two Euros, about $46.00; my share was eight Euros. The train ticket from Maestre to Venice cost one Euro. Then, at night, with my trusty map, I had to find my way over Venice’s arched bridges to my bed and breakfast. It took about forty-five minutes to walk from the Venice train station to the bed and breakfast, and I must admit navigating through a new city with many bridges at night was a challenge. My guidebook says Venice is built on 117 small islands with 150 canals and 409 bridges. That’s why it was a challenge to find my B&B at night.

However, I did find the bed and breakfast, a place called Santa Sophia, and Alexandra, the Russian woman who owns the place with her husband, was looking out the second story window as I approached. Her home has three nice large bedrooms that rent as the bed and breakfast. I checked in, and then walked down to the Grand Canal, about two blocks from the B&B. Within sight of the Rialto Bridge, I had a nice dinner in one of the many restaurants that line the waterway. All of the restaurants are decorated in an old ornate style that includes Venetian glass chandeliers and Venetian glass wall sconces.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

My tale continues. This morning, I met Alexandra’s Italian husband at breakfast. He saw on my passport that I had been born in New York, and that seemed to intrigue him. He dreams of visiting New York someday, and I told him it was my favorite city. As an aside, that has not always been my opinion. New York and other American cities went pretty far downhill between the 1960’s and 1980’s. Our urban infrastructure decayed rapidly, and visiting the New York could be ugly. I recall that young hoodlums would “wash” car windows when the cars stopped for a red light at intersections. Usually the dirty rags they used left the windows streaked and filthy, but that didn’t stop them from demanding $5.00. It was dangerous to not pay.

Ruddy Giuliani as mayor of New York can be credited for cleaning up the city. He got tough on petty crime, and put in place the revitalization of the Times Square area. I give him a lot of credit for what he did. Also, I think people in New York just got sick and tired of the filth, and a sense of pride took over. Graffiti on the subways and buildings was cleaned up, the urban blight of burned out buildings gave way to an incredible real estate boom, and welfare rolls dropped. To make a long story short, New York is now a great place to visit.

Anyway, back to breakfast at the B&B. Alexandra’s husband ended our conversation by explaining they did not have room for me tonight! Evidently they had another reservation, and Alexandra had overlooked it when I spoke to her from the airport. So now my task was to find another place to stay. Fortunately, from the Internet, I had printed out several possible places to stay, and, in daylight, I took the now operating water bus to find a little hotel called the Laconda CaFoscari. It’s one water-bus stop from the Rialto bridge. The Locanda had a nice room and I booked it for the next three nights. Then I went back to the B&B, got my stuff, and returned to check-in at the Locanda. Hopefully that ends the tale of lodging in Venice.

This evening, I wandered down to Piazza San Marco, the great plaza of Venice. It was lit up with Christmas decorations, and at one end of the plaza was a huge, unusual Christmas tree made out of glass tubes. I got to hear and see the bells clang atop the church as two bronze figures with large sledgehammers banged away at the great bronze bell on the hour. The weather has been clear all day, sunny during the day. Temperatures are mild, somewhat like a brisk Fall back home.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Set out early this morning for the Ghetto, the Jewish Ghetto of Venice. The word ghetto in the context of a closed off area for people of a certain race or religion was invented here. The Italian word, “getto” refers to a foundry, and the island that had a “new” foundry became the site for the oldest Jewish Ghetto in Venice. Later when Jews arrived from Spain and Portugal, and a second ghetto was established at the site of the “old” foundry. So the “new” ghetto is the older, and the “old” ghetto is the newer. Their names in Italian are of course, “Ghetto Nuovo” and “Ghetto Vecchio.” Unlike other places in Europe, these very old buildings in the Jewish ghettos of Venice were not destroyed during the Second World War, but, of course, the people of the Jewish community in Venice suffered great losses.

Jews settled in Venice in the 13th century, but had visited and worked in the city since the 10th century. In 1516, Venice established the Ghetto Nuovo, and instituted many restrictive laws. Jews had to wear identifying clothing, like a yellow scarf or cap when they left the ghetto. Many Jewish merchants, doctors, moneylenders, and printers made their living in the Christian parts of Venice. The ghetto had only one entrance, and it was locked at night. Jews were allowed to practice their religion, but had to use the upper floors of existing buildings as synagogues.

The Jews living Ghetto Nuovo were from Germany, Italy and France. Each group built its own synagogue. I visited the German and French synagogues. These communities practiced Ashkenazi customs, and they were very poor.

The Spanish and Portuguese Jews were Marranos Jews who had been forced to convert to Catholicism. When they arrived in 1492, they were not accepted into the existing Jewish communities. Forced to settle in Ghetto Vecchio, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews soon relearned their original Sephardi Jewish customs, and because they were wealthier, they built a large, more elaborate synagogue in the Ghetto Vecchio. I visited their synagogue today as well.

A third group of Jews from Greece and Turkey, also Shepardi, also established themselves in the Ghetto Vecchio. These Jews are known as people who came from the Levant. Both the Spanish Synagogue and the Levant Synagogue are still used by the small Jewish community of Venice, despite the fact that Jews no longer live in the Ghetto areas.

So today, I visited three of the five synagogues in Venice. I met a young woman from Uruguay who is living and working in London. We toured the ghetto together. She told me a joke that sort of encapsulates the story of why each community had its own synagogue. It seems two Jews were shipwrecked on an island. After many years, a rescue party arrived to bring the two men back to civilization. The rescue party was astounded to see that the two men had built three synagogues. One of the men explained that he prayed in one of the synagogues, the other man prayed in the second synagogues, but neither of them would step a foot in the third synagogue!

After visiting the ghetto, and having lunch in a kosher restaurant, I went to see the Peggy Guggenheim museum of modern art. Her collection includes the works of many famous artists whom she knew personally, and supported by buying their paintings and sculptures. She lived in Venice for about thirty years and her home is the now the museum. She is buried in the garden alongside her many pet dogs that had been buried there during her lifetime.

Philip Sternberg
Scoutmaster, Troop 1131