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I took a train from Berlin to Dessau on Friday 13 to visit the Bauhaus.
The train ride was the most beautiful I've ever experienced, and I met a nice couple who spoke about 20 words of English between the two of them and offered me bananas and crackers (must've thought I had the stomach flu).
The Bauhaus is a very short walk from the train station (on Gropiusstrasse, appropriately), and I got and understood directions, leaving me feeling nothing short of world traveler extraordinaire. A fair amount of these are already up on my Flickr gallery, but some I will repeat because I like them that much.
Student dormitories.
The dorms reflected in the buildings across the street.
Everything, down to the light fixtures and door handles, was designed for the school.
The building after WWII bombings.
Gropius also designed houses for some of the professors, a few blocks down the road.
A model of one of the houses, which were, I suppose, technically duplexes.
No kitchen cabinets -- I don't think Walter Gropius cooked much.
In Venice, I took the vaporetto (water bus) to the island of Murano, to check out all the glass. A fair amount of the glass studios were open, and almost all of them were free, in the hopes that after you had watched the artists do their thing, you would go next door and purchase their wares. The first guys we saw were making vases. Apparently red glass is expensive because one of the things they use to make the glass red is gold. There was a line of well-dressed guys who worked there standing outside the door (cheap advertising!), and as we passed by them, one of them said, "Will you blush for me?" He knew not what stout stock I was made of; no, I will not. :)
All of the studios had cool detail work on the gates and doors, too, as would be expected.
Glass roses. It was fun watching all the big, burly Italian men sweating away to create these delicate little glass flowers.
Doorknobs on one of the shops.
Glass rubble outside a studio.
Last night being the professor's birthday, her husband organized a party, complete with hors d'oeuvres and a sommelier to try and learn us some class. Everyone got all dressed up, I wore makeup, we had tablecloths, and someone set up their Ipod over the speakers with Mozart. Which segwayed into Li'l John, because it was on shuffle.
Irises and snapdragons
Setting up the spread.
Delicious vegan food. Like prosciutto, salami, and fresh mozzarella.
The sommalier imparted upon us all sorts of wonderful knowledge, from how to properly smell and taste wine to colors. The three colors of red she told us about were purple (youngest), ruby, and orange (most mature). She was a little irritated that we'd started eating before we started tasting the wine, though she didn't stress the "don't brush your teeth, don't wear cologne, don't wear deodorant" that the hardcore wine tasters do. And while I usually consider myself good at picking out flavors in wine, I got none of them last night (raspberries, violets, and wood smoke). I could've said pencil erasers and petrol gas and wouldn't've been any further from right.
Peter Zumthor's Therme in Vals, Switzerland is the most worthwhile thing I've done in Europe. It was an experience almost beyond words, so I snuck my camera in during "Hotel only" swim and took some photos. Brief intro: Peter Zumthor built the baths in 1996, in Vals, a town that might not even be on a map without them. It's beautiful and in a valley in the Alps. The baths are open to hotel guests most hours, and open for free to residents of the town after 11 am. We arrived Thursday night, in time for the thrice-weekly night swim, completely in silence.
The baths are set up so that there are different rooms with different "experiences." Everything is in grey slate, arranged in thin horizontal bands. 
Rather than a room with a pool, the rooms are the pools. The above picture is the only interior "pool" in the traditional sense; it was the largest one, in the center of the baths. For the rest, you walk down stairs and wade through chest-high water to enter the rooms,
which have no windows and are only lit from under the water. One bath has yellow rose petals in the water, one is extremely hot, one extremely cold (14 degrees Celsius - I didn't make it in above my knees), one really creepy that I didn't stay in very long,
and one that was actually a water corridor to a heated outdoor pool. It is so surreal to swim outside in Switzerland in February. Note the mountains in the background.
This morning, before public swim opened, I swam laps in the outside pool, and it was wonderful.
We got gas around the Swiss border on the way home today, and saw these two guys hitching:
(Ein foto, bitte? Sprechen sie English?)
They were Danish carpenters, hitching to Italy (our van was full or we would've offered) in what they said was "traditional clothing," though we couldn't figure out if it was traditionally Danish or traditionally carpenter. Either way it was a pretty sweet outfit.
11 days of running through central Italy at breakneck speed, and I am glad to be back in Genova, even if it means picking up studio work where we left off. The first few days, we were in Rome, and I have decided that aside from the Coliseum:
and the Jubilee Church, 
I hate Rome. Mostly because I got lost around midnight as a result of misguided decisions (I won't bring a phone or a list of numbers out to dinner with me, and I won't remember the name of the hotel, and I'll decide to leave the group and go home early. Yay me!). But after a fairly stressful evening, I ended up safely collapsed back at the hotel. Next stop was Siena, which I really enjoyed. The weather was like walking through a 35-degree sneeze, but it was a neat, small, easily navigated medieval city, and I enjoyed doing my sketches even in the yuck weather. After a day in Siena, we went to Firenze (Florence), and I really enjoyed it. Our hotel was right across from Brunelleschi's dome and its accompanying churches, baptistries, and so forth, so not only was it a lovely walk to get to, but it was hard to get lost. :) We walked up to the top of the dome (463 stairs; a piece of cake compared to living in Genova) and the view was beautiful, even when I stood in the way:
I really liked Florence, and spent a fair amount of time just wandering around and absorbing my surroundings. We went to the Uffizi museum, which houses a LOT of famous antiquities, and I got my fill of Catholic iconography for a good long while. The hotel was really cool, too -- tile floor, big windows with quaint lace curtains, high ceilings, and good and warm. The best part of Florence, however, was taking a bus with a couple kids up to San Miniato al Monte around sunset and walking around. Construction began in 1013, and it's got a patterned facade that's different from the other ones that we saw.
There were neatly planted firs growing all around the exterior wall that we walked through, and it was just beautiful. It was high up the mountain, hence the "monte," and had a beautiful view of the city, despite the haze.
The last place we went was Bologna, and I would be lying if I claimed not to have called it Baloney the whole time we were there, though not to anyone Italian, because I am trying my very hardest to represent the US well. The best part about the last few days was actually not in Baloney proper, but when we took a bus to a winery in Modena: 
There were tables with lovely food that was supposed to go well with the wines they put out (a sparkling white and a red), and sure enough, it was amazing. 
They also took us up the hill to the big steel vats where they ferment the wine, which reminded me of the tour of the Flying Dog brewery. 
Everyone wanted to stay longer, but we had to scurry off to Parma and hit up some museums.
We're now all back in Genova, and there is a long line for the washing machine, but it's good to be back at a home base.
Photos uploaded to Flickr.
So for studio, rather than just a normal studio this semester, we are preparing for a HUGE deal. April 18 is the start of Salone Satellite, a several-day-long design exhibit. It is a design expo held in Milan, and (mostly) product designers from all over the world come and show their wares. Twenty schools, also from all over the world, are invited to participate as well, and show off their best studio projects. We have one of those twenty slots. So we are working on a product-centered housing project, and we've got to have really fancy digital renderings, since we don't have access to the laser cutter or 3d printer. It's exciting, and I'm not going to stress about it, merely do the best I can, go there, and goggle at all the lovelies. If I thought the interiors expo in Greenville was cool, I'm going to be absolutely beside myself at a worldwide one in Milan.
Tuesdays are travel-around-Italy days. Yesterday we took the train to Milan, 1.5-hour ride, which is truly not bad. We'd been told that it would be colder there, and MAN what an understatement. It was FREEZING. No sun, either. Apparently Milan is as such from September to April, then it turns to Sahara-like heat. Delightful. We looked at the modern architecture, which was stark and cold (and soon to be uploaded to my flickr account), and then took a running tour of the city (like a walking tour, but faster, and less enjoyable). WI went with a few kids to a cafe a few blocks away from Il Duomo (to avoid the touristy prices) for lunch, which was a pizza (everyone was eating pizza, to the exclusion of anything else on the menu) and a San Pelligrino -- I'm so Italian.
There was a huge crowd across from Il Duomo, screaming and waving signs and pompoms. I noticed a lot of 14-year-old girls dressed to the hilt, in all their faux Dolce & Gabbana (it's everywhere) finery. After asking around, I found out that it was the studio for Italy's TRL, and Take That (Robbie Williams's boy band) was there today. Hence the screaming.
Screaming girls.
Camera crew filming screaming girls.
I'm considering going with a group of kids back to Milan this weekend, just for a day, to check out the shopping. I've gotta check and make sure it's doable, but Italy has sales only twice a year, January and August, and while I'm here, might as well check out the fashion capital of the world for some cheap fancies.
I love you all!
Here's to hippies who like good design, and for lovely substitutes for petroleum derivatives! Monacca has created a line of lovelies, including furniture and bags, that use well crafted wood instead of plastic. This aligns with what I've been thinking about a lot lately -- purchasing fewer, nicer, more durable things, as opposed to throwaways. You'd be surprised at how far you can take it if you just think a bit.
