19 February, 2011

residents of venezia

Waking around the Venezia, I found lots of shops, restaurants, and hotels. Especially, each ancient building definitely had a shop, like sun-glass shops where visitors looked for Gucci, D&G, Giorgio Armani in here. I also went into United Colors of Benetton, looking for a reasonable T shirt, in order to change my shirt 'cause I was in a sweat because of long walking under sun-shinning.

While putting on a shirt, I realized that I had not seen any "real" residents yet. Usually, when waking in a town, soon I encounter town-residents, like kids playing football in a small empty lot or housewives carrying supermarket plastic bags with full of foods. In here, in case I encountered them, it seemed to be a rare occasion. All people I saw seemed to be visitors, tourists, staffs of shops, restaurants, and hotels. At the supermarket, visitors bought dozens of beers and chips for night party.

So, current Venezia is not same as ancient Venezia, where notorious merchants were busy around Pont di Rialto.

Here was Venezia, still I could see the same colors of roofs and sea as what people saw in hundreds years ago.

12 February, 2011

a narrow sky in venezia

Looking up the Venetian sky from a small alley, I just found the blue and white sky-line over my head. And a moment, the sea gulls were mewing and flying across the line. On the ground, a few people were walking and wandering and going nowhere. Actually, visitors faced a certain difficulty to find a right alley to go. I heard once that if a visitor wanted to get out of here, a dead end of the alley, the best way was to follow a local venetian who knew well where to go.

I was just standing still at the middle of a small bridge over a small canal. Sometimes, some gondolas went through the canal, and I looked down at them while thinking nothing. At the time, I was with my wife and son there, and all three were waiting for the restaurant near the bridge opening in the evening. Actually, the restaurant literally opened at the time, but when looking inside, I could not find any people there. So, we were waiting for people of the restaurant, in shorts, chefs, waiters, maybe an owner, and a bartender coming back soon.

It was about 10 min before the opening hour of the restaurant, 18:00, I remember. Some visitors came and looked inside like us, and then gave up to wait for a while and went away. Finally, restaurant staffs came back on time and we went inside the restaurant. The bartender firstly asked us if we made a reservation. Immediately, I said "No" . He nodded with smile and offered us a table for 3, but said we had to finish our dinner by 19:30, because the reservations were full after the time. No problem, of course. Quite speedy, we had a nice bongole and squid ink spaghetti, which were better than what we've ever had somewhere.


Here was Venezia.

10 February, 2011

man from luxembourg in amsterdam

The first time when I visited Amsterdam was November 2005, more than 5 years ago. And since then, I had countless visits. But, whenever I was here, it was in winter or almost winter.

Always, the sea gulls were flying high and low, and cutting through the chilly winds over the canals. Sometimes, the sky was so blue and brought the frozen air from the broad empty blue to the ground, and of course, on the surface of the canals. Many times, the sky was with full of thick clouds, and was so gray. But the canals in winter were deeply dark, so the sky gray looked like quasi-bright white line on them.

Still I remember what I saw on the occasion of my first visit in here. I certainly remembered the man in his late 30's or mid-40's from Luxembourg whom I met in a business conference. This is not because we had a difficult business between us, or he was so brilliant and impressive on the conference. This is because after the day of the conference, I happened to met him again in a hotel restaurant in the morning, and took the same table for breakfast. When I saw him, quite naturally I said to him, hey, good morning, and he replied with smile.

Our conversation was mostly about our common business, but at a certain point, I happened to ask him when he came here last time. He said, that was in 1980's. That's quite long time ago, I said with a surprise. He told that he was in his late teen or 20's, and he drove his old VW with then-his girl friend, now-his wife, and came all the way to Amsterdam. That was the first time and he thought at the time that it was the last time to came here, because he had no reason to come again.
Then in winter 2005, he had a reason, a business.

Here was Amsterdam, without reasons, I was/am/will be here, maybe in winter.

07 February, 2011

juveniles on a beach at night

I saw a few bats flying under cover of night in Nice. The night breeze was basically warm in April here, sometimes I felt a little bit cold flow of the air, which certainly contained the smell of the sea, a part of the Mediterranean Sea.
But with this flow, the breeze was nice, so nice.

I heard the sounds of waves, cars on the roads, and rustling leaves of palms. Moreover, the breeze brought me whispering of several juveniles on a beach. They were just in front of the shoreline, and talking, laughing, throwing a stone into white waves, and even running with each other like 100m sprint.


Here was Nice, I just kept walking on the Promenade des Anglais.

05 February, 2011

on a summer day at schloss schönbrunn

The sky was blue like water color, and always high. The light clouds gathered like a wide thin layer of a haze, just try to cover the blue, but still fail to climb up. The breeze was not enough for me to be nice, but I understood that it was part of a good summer day here.

It was in the summer 2008. I was on the top of the hill and looking down at Schloss Schönbrunn, where I was on the heavy, white snow day, 8 years ago. Same place, but for me, it's different. Totally, different.
Different? I understood what I felt different did not come from the summer blue sky and strong sun shinning, or winter white snow and chilly north wind of 8 years ago.

To say honestly, I felt that the difference came from Schloss Schönbrunn, which maybe had been there for more than two or three hundred years, I guess. Schloss Schönbrunn in my memory on the winter day was, actually, bigger and brighter than what I saw on the summer day.
I remembered that the ceders with full snow on its each branch and twig in the garden were so tall that I thought they were a quasi-snow wall for the solemn place in here. On a summer day, I looked up the blue sky between the branches of the ceders, and the birds in there sang a song like chatting.


Here was Wien, Austria.