I can’t believe that my first week in Milan has already come to an end! I arrived in Milan at 11:45 Pm on May 30th and took a cab to my new apartment. I was so shocked that the streets of Milan were so empty. I always pictured Milan to be just like New York, a city that never sleeps. However, the forty minute cab ride to my new apartment seemed so quite, the only people out on the streets were street cleaners and one or two cars. When I got into central Milan I was pleasantly confronted by beautiful architecture everywhere I looked. As I later found out in the morning, Milan can get very crowded during the days and sometimes it is very hard to stop and appreciate all the beautiful architecture that Milan has to offer. It was so nice to be able to get the feel of the city that late at night; it was peaceful and eerie all at the same time. The next morning I met all of the girls and they were so welcoming, I was not able to make it to any of the study abroad orientations back in Texas so it was so nice to meet all of them. We are sixteen girls that are design and non-design majors, but hopefully by the end of this month we will all consider ourselves designers ;). During our welcome orientation in Milan I finally understood why the streets of Milan were so empty when I arrived the night before. We learned that Italian people love their rest and they go to bed much earlier then what we are used to, especially in areas such as downtown Austin and New York City. During orientation we also learned about different ways to order coffee, which seemed strange at the time, but as I found out this week Italians take their coffee very seriously! (It has only been a week and I think I might be addicted to Italian coffee. Ps. Never order a sprits at a coffee shop before 6pm, Anissa and I learned the hard way). During orientation we also learned to never dip bread in oil and vinegar like we usually do back in the states, we also learned to never wear white socks. I still don’t understand why white socks are a no no but I will get to the bottom of it before this month is over!
During this month we have a project in which we choose a topic and we fill our sketchbook with observations about that topic. We have to be able to compare and contrast the topic found in Italy to a similar topic in the United States. Originally, walking around in Milan I had a million ideas to fill up my sketchbook with, but towards the end of this week I was able to narrow down my sketchbook topics to three. I hope by the end of this weekend I will be able to pick one topic and stick with it. My first topic is balconies around Milan and any other places in Europe I plan to visit during these five weeks. Balconies were the first things I noticed walking around Milan, every building has such beautiful and unique balconies with different types of flowers. The second topic that I am looking into for my sketchbook is different types of cars that I see in Milan. In general cars here are much smaller, but what is most shocking to me is that car brands such as Toyota look so different here then they do in the states. I expected to see much more Ferraris here but I haven’t seen a single one yet L I also noticed many different car brands that I have never seen before that I would like to do more research on. The third topic that I am considering for my sketchbook is graffiti in Milan. This is the topic that I am leaning towards for my sketchbook. I have noticed that World War II had a huge impact in Italy, and although graffiti is considered to be one of the first forms of art to ever exist, I am interested in looking at graffiti that emerged after World War II in Italy. I want to look at the relationship between graffiti and the building that it occupies. Does it matter what part of town the graffiti is displayed in? Do nicer neighborhoods in Milan have less graffiti? What are the consequences of getting caught tagging a building? While going a bit of research on graffiti in Milan, I found out that graffiti here is kind of a big deal, there is a tour dedicated to showing people around famous graffiti tags in Milan. I hope that while I am here I get to go on the tour, or at least find some of the well-known ones on my own!
It is 6/6/2016 and I just got back from my first weekend trip. A group of us girls decided to go visit Venice for the weekend and it turned out to be an adventure that I will never forget. Not knowing that Venice has 117 small Islands we booked an Airbnb Friday night and headed to what we thought was the “famous Venice” with gondolas and houses on top of water. Where we ended up however was completely different. After a train ride to Venice, two boat rides, a two mile walk and a forty-five minute bus ride we arrived to our Airbnb in the middle of what I consider a countryside, far far away from any gondolas or houses on top of the water. Long story short we failed to book our Airbnb in central Venice were most tourists go, but we did manage to book an Airbnb on a small island that was extremely beautiful. We decided to take a stroll through the small town and found a local restaurant by the lake to eat at. The chef and owner of the restaurant came to out table and personally took our order because he was so carious as to see how five American girls ended up on this Island and in his restaurant. After a lovely authentic Italian dinner we continued to explore the beautiful town that ill forever be in love with!