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Published: March 10th 2009
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Last weekend i spent a lovely couple of days in Padova (Padua) and Venice for the world famous carnival. Fortunately we departed from Bologna at a very cilvised midday on Saturday, and arrived in Padova with plenty of time to have a tour of the city, lavish dinner and to prepare ourselves for the carnival party that evening. To which over 1000 erasmus students from all over Italy where invited.
At the mention of "parties" i feel it my duty to digress a moment and add that I had actually done an exam that Friday, and I do do some work as well as play, and the exam went really well and was completely and utterly different to my last horrible one (where after waiting seven hours the teacher spoke to her colleague while i was attempting to translate latin into italian on the spot.) This time it lasted almost half an hour, and I had the opportunity to say some slightly intelligent things about Aeschylus and Plato.
Anyway. I was very pleasantly suprised at how lovely Padova was. It is home of Italy's second oldest University (after Bologna, obv.) And although its quite small, the town has the
largest piazza (Prato della Valle) of any in Italy which is surrounded by a really beautiful moat bordered by marble statues and crossed by little bridges. Possibly my favourite Italian Piazza so far. And thats including San Marco in Venice and Piazza del Campo in Siena. The architecture of the city itself is quite venetian and very pretty. The duomo in the centre is home to the tongue of Saint Antonio (he's very important and apparently all the Tonys in Italy are named after him) and some stunning frescoes.
After the tour we had a chance to get settled into our youth hostel which was actually far more like a hotel and really lovely with heart-shaped cushions in ever room and ensuite bathrooms. Everyone dressed up for the dinner and the party that followed and the costumes ranged from Pocohontas to the grim reaper. The dinner was nice although the chefs seemed to be putting on some sort of protest about the vegetarian dishes which were served long after everyone elses and were not that great. I felt a bit like, come on, you are chefs, you are italian, you know what vegetables are.... i'm sure you can come
up with better pasta than this, which i could make even if i was limbless and blind.
Then we went to the party. Which isn't quite as simple as it sounds, as it was a 3km walk outside the centre, and its still quite cold in Italy and we were all dressed up so we were very relieved when we finally arrived. But oh oh oh, we saw an Otter!! Really seriously swimming in the stream which goes around the city walls. Right in the middle of the city though. It was very exciting. Arriving in what felt like the middle of nowhere at a building that resembled more an abbatoir than a discoteca was a little disconcerting but inside it was nice and we had a fun evening. Interestingly one of the rooms played almost exclusively British music the entire night, which i haven't heard much of while being in Italy. The Italian songs towards the end of the evening were definitely the highlght however.
We had to get up quite early the next morning to catch the train to Venice. The train journey was slightly nightmarish, as once again it was over crowded and much to
hot and airless and there was more fainting. I will be lucky i think if anyone ever agrees to take a train with me to venice again, as i seem to induce fainting all around and general bad luck. We arrived in one piece however, and the day was really lovely from then on. The weather was great, bright blue sky and sunshine, if a little chilly. And wandering around a city which now feels quite familiar yet coming across many people in extremely elaborate costumes was great fun. Piazza san marco of course was packed full of people, but in the afternoon we explored the little streets behind at the far end of the Castello area and it was absolutely deserted. We found some lovely little residential square packed full with blooming plants and drying laundry. We also found a mini cat palazzo in front of a church. A complex of cat-kennels which was very sweet. In aid of some sort of cat charity i think. And venetian children playing football and skateboarding.
We arrived at the trainstation to return home a good hour and half before our train was due to leave. The police however weren't letting
anyone into the station, and the trains were all packed to the gunnels while several thousand people stood wedged on the platform waiting. We sat around for about an hour and then wonderful Chiara from ESN managed to persuade some of the staff to let us on the next train as we had prebooked over a month before and had a group of over 60. It was still an hour later than we were meant to leave. Fortunately that worked out, but I was shocked that on the busiest day of the Carnival, to which people come from all over the world, the Italians were unable to run ANY extra trains than usual, and even on a good day getting a train out of Venice on Sunday evening can be busy.
It was a wonderful traip though, and arriving back in Bologna a little after midnight utterly exhausted I was sure it was all worth it.
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