Goodbye Wien, Hello Gravina!

I had so much more I wanted to write about Wien: the Fujimo hip hop concert I went to in a room packed with 5000 people; all the museums, plays, concerts, operas (I saw Mozart's "Die Zauberfloete" (The Magic Flute) in the Statsoper (National Opera)!!!!!!), and art exhibits I saw, and how the portrayal of white and coloured people in them might affect the culture there; the interplay between modern and traditional culture as manifested in places like the Museumsquatier; different attitudes towards nudity; and the effect having such a long history (compared to Canada) may have on the culture. Still, having been in Gravina in Puglia for almost 2 weeks, without letting you know anything about this place and my experience here, I feel like that should come first. If any of the aforementioned topics about Wien are of particular interest to you, please let me know, because chances are I won't get around to writing about them otherwise.

So... after my 2 weeks in the wudershoene city of Wien, I hopped on a train on a Thurday afternoon, en route to Venezia. I was so glad I decided to travel during the day instead of overnight, because the trip through the Alps was breathtaking! When I wasn't looking out the window, I spent most of my time going through the Italian phrasebook of my electronic English-French-Spanish-Italian-Portuguese-German dictionary and I asked some British tourists in my wagon to teach me a few basic verb conjugations.

I arrived after 11pm in Venezia and I took me a little while to find my hostel. Around midnight, I settled down in a packed restaurant for an apparently not-so-late dinner. The following day, I saw a bit of the city but spent most of my time at the Biennale world-renowned international modern art exhibition. Aside from the stunning (and surprisingly easy to appreciate) art, it was fascinating to see the variations between the pavillons of the different countries. At one point, I found a fine arts class from the University of Prague that was having some great discussions (in German) about the art. I followed them around, discretely listening in on their engaging conversations for close to an hour.

In the evening, I saw some modern dance performances put on by the Biennale's 5-year-old international modern dance festival, which, together with the art exhibition, really opened my mind to the unlimited possibilities of modern art. In fact, I now have a little modern art project of my own I can't wait to try out...

The next day, after 10 more hours on the train learning the present, past, imperfect, future, and conditional of a dozen Italian verbs and "conversing" in Italalian for a couple of hours with an old Italian couple and some Armenians, I arrived in Gravina in Puglia, a town of about 40,000 in the South of Italy (if you search "Gravina in Puglia" on maps.google.com, you can see where it is, and if you search it on images.google.com, you'll find some pictures of it and its famous ravine).

Here, I'm living and working with 15 other students and 2 profs on an archaeological dig. The others are from Mount Allison University; Acadia University; and University of Nevada, Reno. There's also a group about the same size living in a different appartment and working on different nearby sites whom we travel and have dinner with. The site I'm working on is believed to be some sort of Roman Villa from the 1st to 2nd century A.D. and the other projects include a survey of the area (to find other good places to excavate) and the excavation of a cemetery a few centuries older than our site.

Every morning, we get up at 5:30 to be out the door at 6. It's about a 20 minute drive to the site and there we work pick-axing, shovelling, trauling, sweeping, etc. until 10 am when we break for a little snack. Around 12:30, we head home for lunch and a siesta (since people know better than to do anything but sleep in weather hotter than the morning and late-afternoon 23- to 33-ish degrees Celcius) and then go back to the field at 3:30 pm for another 2 and a half hours of work.

Upon our arrival back home in the evening, we all rush to be first into one of the 2 showers and to get in a hour of internet, reading, postcard writing, relaxing, etc. before our communal dinner at one of the town's best restaurants (which I'm going to be late for!!...). After finishing dinner around 10:30, it's straight to bed (sometimes after a quick stop at a gelatto shop).

On weekends, we're off work. Last weekend, we all went on a trip to the beach at Metaponto, this weekend, we're off to Naples and Pompei, and the following weekend - my last one here - we can either stay in Gravina or travel on our own.