Category: Italy

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Physical fitness

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Before spending three weeks traveling around Italy with my parents, I read somewhere online that the key aspect of sightseeing with seniors is adjusting the itinerary so that they are not exceedingly stressed physically. I can now confidently say that this goes beyond taking an elevator instead of stairs or a taxi instead of public transport whenever there is a choice. Accommodating the entire family, from five- to seventy-years old meant taking things much slower and doing fewer activities in any given day than I could imagine, even though I thought I was making adjustments for age in my mind.

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Fitness is a huge part of it, and here our daughter had a clear edge in terms of physical toughness and mental resilience. Every day, I am amazed by her cheerful attitude at whatever the traveling lifestyle throws at her – different weather, food, entertainment, etc. Sadly, my parents can no longer keep up with our and their own image of themselves and what they can physically accomplish in any given day.

Throughout the trip, I saw images of divinity represented by human body by the Renessanse masters. They were definitely onto an important message – our body, this machine, as Dorian Yates puts it, is the only vehicle we have to go through life. If it doesn’t function properly, the best intentions and aspirations don’t mean much.

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Thankfully, my parents are doing alright for they age in terms of health. But when the world is so big, and there is so much do and see alongside one’s children and grandchildren, ‘alright’ seems not to be enough. So I will remember this next time a need a bit of motivation to exercise, the all-important ‘Why?’ question – I hope to be able to do more with my daughter as I get older. I also hope that I will be content with what my abilities will be in reality. In this, both my daughter and my parents are great examples.

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Janus, Carmenta, past and future

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In the gift shop of the Coloseo, we bought a children’s book called “Roman Myths”, which I started reading to my daughter on our way back to Milan. It is difficult to say how much of what we are reading sinks in for a five-years-old, but I am enjoying the stories and the references to the ancient Roman civilization that we still encounter in modern life.

The story starts with Janus, who transformed Chaos into order and created the world. I find it insightful that even at the time when these stories were created, people were greatly concerned with the past and the future (Janus had two faces – one looking forward, to the future, and one looking back, to the past), while not really dwelling the present. In the book, there is even a reference to Carmenta, a far-sighted goddess, who protected childbirth and had the power to look forward and backward in time. According to the myth, her special ability was writing, and it was her, who gave people the Latin alphabet. “Yes, this alphabet, the one I’m using, the one we use even now.”

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It is curious and somewhat discouraging that we, humans, still largely fail to comfortably live in the present moment, even now, thousands of years after the myths of Janus and Carmenta were created. When our daughter became upset that her grandparents were leaving home after travelling with us for three weeks, we consoled her by recalling the nice moments that we had together with them and planning how we would get together again soon. For our daughter, as the world that she became used to over the fast three weeks started to crumble, the emerging chaos transformed back to order when she connected the past and the future.

Even at my age, the sadness of saying ‘goodbye’ to parents, even for a few months, is still very real. My remedy is this writing. It makes me think about the past and hope that someone, perhaps myself, would find it somehow insightful in the future. Quite fitting the context of Roman mythology.

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Florence second time around

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Rick Steves says that visiting a foreign city is like reading a novel – it is more enjoyable the second time. This time, we are travelling with my parents, for whom it is the first visit to Italy. For my wife and me, this is a second visit to Florence, but the first time we were here, we didn’t have our daughter. For her, it is the first time, naturally.

Traveling with two seniors and a child has its specifics. They physically cannot absorb the sights at the rate that I am used to, even considering that I stop at every corner to take pictures (because I never really turn off the “photographer mode.”) I remind myself to adjust my expectations regarding the sightseeing and focus on the interactions with the family, particularly how they unfold in the context of travelling.

In terms of Rick Steves’ analogy, I feel like I am not quite reading a novel for the second time, but flipping it to the pages I liked the best earlier and hope that the others would like them as much as I did.

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Leaving Venice

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When I travel to a new place, on the back of my mind, I always have a question whether I would prefer living there permanently. I am not sure why I do this, because I do like living in Victoria very much. Still, I have this ongoing process of weighing pros and cons of different towns, and the outcome is rarely clear-cut. Every city has something particular that would make it an attractive home base.

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Venice is an exception. It is a fantastic place to visit as a tourist, but living there permanently would be so impractical that it is not even worth considering seriously. So as we are leaving Venice after a short stay there, there is no aftertaste of regret. Perhaps, this is a part of the Venetian charm – almost everyone there is a visitor, so nobody associates strongly with the environment, and the permanent state of decay of the buildings only adds to the atmosphere without creating any stress.

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Rainbow over Venice

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Venice greeted us with rain and cool (compared to Milan) weather. Taking advantage of the short line for the campanile at San Marco, we decided to wait over the rain at the observation deck.

Last time we were in Venice with my wife, we also went up the campanile on the first day of our trip, which, in fact, was our first-ever day in Italy. It was the middle of a summer, the air was brutally hot and humid, and there was not a cloud in the sky. That is how I remember it now – I should revisit my pictures, because they tend to help me keep, if not form, better memories of past events.

Today, my expectations of the photo opportunities were low. In fact, a sign at the entrance to the campanile warned, in several languages, that the conditions were foggy, rainy, windy, and the visibility was poor. So, we basically went up there to wait over the rain.

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But it tuned out that the weather and the lighting conditions were changing every minutes. The wind scattered the clouds, the rain stopped, and we even saw a beautiful rainbow on the background of the lively sky with tremendous clouds. I couldn’t wish for a better lighting and scenery. Unexpectedly, it turned out that the timing of our visit to the campanile was perfect.

And of course this time I had a much more capable camera – a Sony a7RII, which has a sensor that blows my old Canon 5D Mark II out of the water both in terms of resolution and dynamic range – perfect for the contrasty cityscape. I still carry the very same two lenses that I brought to the campanile nearly eight years ago – Canon’s 70-200 f/2.8L IS and 16-35 f/2.8L. They are still doing a good job, although the wide lens is showing its limitations in terms of sharpness on the Sony’s high-resolution sensor. This shows that optics doesn’t age nearly fast as electronics. Sadly, this also shows that we age pretty fast – just to think of it: eight years have past since I was shooting the very same scenery, and it seems just like yesterday!

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A day at Lago Maggiore

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With my parents, who are visiting us for a few weeks during our sabbatical stay, we are taking every opportunity to spend time with them. Our daughter’s school holiday starts tomorrow, but we decided to go into the sightseeing mode early and took advantage of a beautiful Spring day.

My wife, daughter and I already visited Lago di Garda a month or so earlier, so we wanted to explore another lake. Last night, we were deciding between lakes Como and Maggiore. We didn’t want to rent a car, and the five of us do not move very fast on foot, so island hopping at Lago Maggiore was a perfect agenda – maximum of sightseeing with minimum of exercise. Still, it turned out to be a long day.

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After wondering through the palaces and the gardens at the islands of Madre and Bella and having lunch at Pescatore in between, we were just in time to catch the second-to-last boat to the mainland. If this sounds like a rushed day, though, this was not the case. Full of impression – yes, but not rushed. I even had a chance to sketch the terraces at Isola Bella sitting on a bench next to my daughter, who was drawing a mermaid (she was inspired by one of the statues).

Perhaps, we were able to go through the entire three-island route because it was a workday. There were no crowds or lines, even though Spring is the prime time for visiting the gardens.

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Duomo terraces by elevator

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Yesterday, I went up the roof of the Milano’s Duomo for the third time in my life, and this time, I did it by the elevator. The first time, I was travelling alone, so I took the stair’s option. The second time, it was myself, my wife, and our five-year-old daughter. They are both seasoned travellers, so again, we took the stairs. This time, we went together with my parents, and although I think that they are still young, we decided to take the elevator (or the lift, as we say in Europe).

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First of all, the visit to the Duomo’s terraces is the most spectacular part of the cathedral tour in my opinion. Going up there three times is certainly not too many. The atmosphere at the top, the city views are just magical, especially if you catch a sunset on a warm Spring evening.

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Another note is that ascending by lift is a very nice option, even if you are reasonably fit and do not mind climbing some stairs. The lift option offer some unique views from the top, in addition to the ones you would see if you climb on foot. The reason is that the lift is located at the back of the cathedral, and after you take it to the lowest terrace level, you walk along the roof to the place where you climb to the very top together with those people, who climbed the stairs. You get more views of the Corso Vittorio Emmanuelle II and Eastward city views (which are in good light during evening hours).

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Working from home (or not)

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Sabbatical travel gives a unique freedom of choosing how I work every day. Since I have no teaching and administrative obligations, technically, I don’t have to come to the office. I could do nearly all my work, which mostly involves academic writing, from our apartment here in Milan.

However, there is a unique challenge in staying focussed on work, which comes with working from home, even a temporary one. I think there are just too many distractions at home, because I associate too closely with the environment and therefore feel more responsibility for it than, say, an office or a cafe. Hence, the impulse to do “home things” like tidying up, for example, instead of working. Basically, it is easier to procrastinate if I am surrounded by potential tasks that I can rationalize as having a high priority at the moment.

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Regarding the cafes, before coming to Milan, I imagined myself sometimes working at a cafe, in the spirit of varying the working environment. Visualizing this scenario back in Victoria, I thought that it would be very extremely easy to find a cafe do work at in Milan. After all, wouldn’t it be a genuine European experience? As it turns out, this is not such a popular way to work here. At least, it is not as popular as it is in North America, where the image of a writer working away in a corner of a crowded cafe it is a bit over-romanticized.

Indeed, there are cafes here on every corner, but the locals mostly come in to quickly chug a tiny cup of espresso, sometimes without even sitting down. This custom reminds me of Japan, where in front of major train stations, I often saw salarymen devouring ramen while standing around a food stand, sticking their heads through the curtains that separate its interior from the busy street. They quickly empty their bowls, thank the cook, extract their heads from behind the curtain back into the world and go off on their way. It’s efficiency of delivering food to the body taken to a very high level.

Having said this, there are excellent places to sit, eat and relax here in Milan and, of course, in Japan. In fact, I am already looking forward going to Tokyo later this year. And by the way, the ramen that is served in those food stands is excellent!

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Modern art

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My wife and I are getting exposed to some weird modern art through our five-year-old daughter’s interests. Back in Victoria, one of her first lessons at the 4Cats art studio was based on the works of Andy Warhol. I should mention that my wife is not a fan of Warhol, to put in gently, and at some point we used to have heated discussions about whether the world had collectively gone mad in regarding him as a great artist (of course, recent developments in American politics have re-defined the notion of collective delusion and put arguments about art into perspective). Then, our daughter had another series of lessons based on the art of Roy Lichtenstein and Gustav Klimt. To be fair, the curriculum at 4Cats was balanced in that it also had a session on Leonardo da Vinci, Claude Monet and Mary Cassatt.

Another favourite artist of our daughter’s is Wassily Kandinsky. In her school back in Canada, they used to paint ‘Kandinsky’s circles’ in the art class, so she was delighted to see a reproduction of the ‘Squares with Concentric Circles’ on the wall in our rental apartment here in Milan. When we saw an advertisement that a Kandinsky’s exhibit was coming up at Museo delle Culture, she was really looking forward to it.

It is fascinating, how some information about the artists and their styles of work trickles down into a five-year-old’s mind. To go to the Kandisky’s exhibit, our daughter wanted to wear her brightest-coloured dress. Quite appropriate.

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I studied art history when I was in school, but Kandinsky’s art has never been my interest. Now, because of my daughter’s fascination with his bright colours and stylized figures, I am re-acuanting myself with his work. It is also insightful to learn about the strong influence of Kandinsky’s Russian roots on his art through the prism of our own Russian heritage. Although my daughter and I look at it from two very different perspectives, both in terms of our age and our exposure to the culture, it is something that binds us. I hope that she sees it when she grows up, as I see it now.

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Kandinsky’s late work is sometimes jokingly described as child-like. I remember a scene from “Double Jeopardy”, where Tommy Lee Jone’s character, Travis Lehman, asks, pointing at a Kandinsky’s painting: “Those are nice pictures there. Did your kids do them?” When I look at my daughter’s drawings inspired by it, I can see why this is a cliche. The apparent similarity is a perfect illustration of the process of deliberate simplification that great artists like Kandinsky or Picasso go through. They converged on “child-like’ expressions not because they lack technical prowess, but because they eliminated all unnecessary elements in their art. In the case of a child, the process is very different, even if the results appears similar. She lacks the ability to include everything that she would like in her drawings and therefore settles only on the essentials. In other words, a five-year-old is limited by her technique, while the masters have come full circle to transcend the technique.

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Hedonic adaptation to sabbatical

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The human ability to quickly become used to dynamically changing surrounding conditions, which is known as Hedonic adaptation, is extremely useful in the evolutionary sense. It makes us resilient to adversity. On the other hand, it can easily rob us of enjoying the positive experiences.

Here is how Hedonic adaptation works, step-by-step, in the case of enjoying (or not) an academic sabbatical:

  1. My last class is over. I have no teaching or administrative commitments for the entire year. I can chose exactly what I will work on every day. It’s positively fantastic!
  2.  Things get even better: I travel to Milan, together with my family, for the second half of the sabbatical. “Wow, six-months in Italy! Sounds like something straight out of a romantic novel!”, says an acquaintance, and I agree. Milan is a beautiful city. There is a lot see and do in addition to all the exciting work I get to do with my Italian colleagues.
  3. After a couple of months, things get better still: We discover more places to see and things to do, as we explore Milan and its surroundings.
  4. And here comes the catch: the sabbatical itself, the freedom to do whatever I wanted every day that initially excited me so much, is not so exciting anymore. It becomes an expectation, something that is taken for granted. What is enjoyable now are all the things that are bundled on top of the sabbatical: delicious Italian food, museums, La Scala, the lakes, the mountains,..

I notice that Hedonic adaptation happens with nearly everything that we do. It is particularly devastating when accomplishment comes into play, when achieving a certain result becomes the expectation.

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I watch my five-years-old daughter learning to draw, and I see the tremendous excitement of just being able to express herself on paper: “I can draw anything I want! And I can use whatever colours I want, because it is my drawing!” Then, at some point as we mature, we learn too draw better: “Great! Now, not only I can draw whatever I want, but I can draw it in a way that it actually looks like the object I wanted to draw!” Then, things get better yet: “I can draw things in a way that other people like them! (I must really be an artist now!!)” And here is the trap: it’s no longer the drawing itself that is enjoyable, but the external approval that comes with it…

So, what do we do? Is the trap of Hedonic adaptation unavoidable?

Perhaps, some people are in more danger of falling into it than others. It is easy to become used to a nice environment, develop expensive or extravagant tastes, become addicted to approval… I think that our ability to resist Hedonic adaptation comes down to awareness. In any case, appreciating our current life situation, whatever it happens to be on the absolute scale of “niceness”, and being conscious about the effects of Hedonic adaptation is a healthy practice.

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