The Dolomites and Verona

On Thursday morning I set off for the Dolomites, the mountain range between Venice and the Swiss Alps (and which, as I learned, are sometimes called the Venetian Alps).  It was a fairly long train ride on the oldest and slowest regional train, which was unairconditioned, or so I thought--ten minutes before we rolled into Calalzo, the last stop on the Belluno train line, an old man started closing the windows in the train car.  I thought he was just another Italian being crazy about the infamous colpo d'aria until he pointed to the ceiling and told me the AC had come on.  Oh, this country.

The Dolomites are, in a worth, breathtaking.  Although they're enormous mountains, they're still not quite high enough to have snow on them in the summertime, but the tops are pure gray rock (the mineral dolomite that gives them their name), and that provides a similar kind of color contrast to the trees blanketing the slopes.  The sight of pine trees and evergreen gave me the first sensation of the region being quite different from the parts of Italy I've been familiar with. Then as we neared Calalzo, from the train you could glimpse the green hillsides racing downward to a peaceful blue lake, which was really spectacular.  Walking up the hill from the train station, I was pretty awestruck by the scenery, by the sheer size of the mountains, which surround Calalzo on every side.  The feeling was only heightened when I got into our hotel room and opened the door to the balcony, which gave a lovely vista of the hills.

The hotel room was lovely, but when I first arrived, tired and sweaty from the train ride and then from hauling my suitcase uphill, I was pissed to discover the lack of air conditioning.  However, I quickly discovered that the reason the otherwise-nice hotel didn't have it is because you really just don't need it in the mountains, even in July.  The temperature was easily ten degrees lower than Venice, and there was zero humidity.  In fact, the following morning the weather was completely opposed to what I've been used to recently--an ominous storm front swept in, bringing with it not only a chilled rain, but even sleet!  And yet a couple of hours later it was brilliantly sunny and 75 degrees.  I can hardly imagine what it's like there in the winter, though.

Ostensibly I came to Calalzo because of its proximity to Pieve di Cadore, hometown of Titian and location of the Centro di Studi, housed in a building belonging to a related Tiziano, called L'Oratore.  My visit there, however, was less than successful.  I had scribbled down a handful of call numbers before going, only to discover that the library is split in two parts, with one part accessible only by appointment what was basically the regional president's office.  Thankfully, the very nice woman at the Centro, Letizia, called over and made sure that I could go without an appointment.  But this wasn't really a library, per se, just a collection of books donated by a deceased Titian scholar.  There was no reading room (I read at a table in the secretary's office, while she made phone calls behind me saying, rather loudly, "I'm spekaing quietly because there is a scholar here working!"), there was no catalog, so basically the few book I'd looked up that morning were the only ones I was going to get.  Also, Lionello Puppi was not at the Centro.  There too there was no reading room, and I sat at the desk next to Letizia to read the article she procured for me.  In other words, it really didn't seem like they were at all prepared to have people come and actually consult the books, which is a little ridiculous.

Pieve, like all the other little towns in Cadore, is adorable and really freaking small.  Ten minutes about suffices to get the lay of the land.  Friday afternoon Carla and I went to the Casa di Tiziano, notable for its small collection of drawings by the master; I also stopped in at Santa Maria Nascente, where Titian contributed an altarpiece for a family chapel in which his self portrait (and maybe his children's) appears (which, side note to myself, interesting that this of all altarpieces lacks any landscape references).  For some ungodly reason they'd put the damned thing behind what looked like Plexiglass, giving it a horrible glare. One of the real attractions of being in the north, beyond the natural scenery, is how different the man-made scenery is than the rest of Italy.  The houses are mostly made with wood from the plentiful forests, not plaster-covered brick, against the green hills it really felt like we were in Switzerland.  Even the church architecture was frequently different--we even saw what looked like an onion dome at one point.  (Also, the people are so much friendlier than in the rest of Italy--they say hi to you on the street!)


I really couldn't get enough of the scenery.  Carla, with her typically Protestant practicality, laughed at the way I kept having to stop and just say "wow, this amazing!!"  Friday afternoon we hiked around the lake, disappointed to discover there was no beach whatsoever, although the vistas were incredible.  Then on Saturday we rented mountain bikes and rode about 15 miles, which was incredible.  There's a piste ciclabili running from Calalzo (796m above sea level) to Cortina d'Ampezzo (1221m); a smooth asphalt bike path that follows, at least for the first few towns, the path of old train tracks.  That means you're winding around the mountains and going through the train tunnels (which were freezing) or over bridges.  At one point, you're sailing downhill so fast the wind is literally roaring in your ears; at the base of the hill a bridge carries you over a little waterfall.  All in the shadow of the mountains.  It was fucking awesome.  (However, as the sea levels indicate, we were effectively going uphill the whole way; the place where we stopped, San Vito, is 1103m above sea level.  Had we planned this better, we should have taken the bus to San Vito, rented bikes, and rode down to Calalzo, but, oh well.)


This represented the first time I've been on a bike since easily 15 years of age (and that was a three-speed road bike with a very comfy seat). When we got on the bikes at the rental place, I had a few moments of "oh shit, what if I DON'T remember how to do this?? I'm going to dieeeeee!"  Helmets were not available (and I was kind of leery once we got on the trail and realized that everybody else was definitely wearing them), which was not helping my fears of imminent doom.  Also, I was not used to the whole switching gears business (see three-speed bike, above); there was a different gearshift on each handle, and the two controls to move them up and down worked on opposite ways on each one, so I kept accidentally throwing myself into high gear right at the base of a hill, completely squandering any and all momentum. My lack of confidence also prevented me from doing the standing-up pedaling that I remember was once second nature when bike riding; I tried it, wobbled precipitously, and thought "oh hell no, I will walk this bike if I have to."  And I did have to walk it a couple of times, as Carla can attest.  Still, I made pretty good progress; in the morning I was scared to even take a hand off one handlebar to scratch my nose, and in the afternoon I was riding with one hand so I could sit up a little straighter (my back was killing me by then).  Still, I was nowhere near the level of comfort I remember having--I used to ride my back downhill on the street next to ours without hands.  Oh, those were the days.

I really kicked myself for forgetting two things in Venice, my sports bra and my light backpack, which would have allowed me to bring my camera on the ride.  Carla thus had to step in to record our journey on her cell phone, which she was carrying along with money and my credit card in the tiny pocket on her running shorts.  The scenery was so damned incredible.  Here too I kept stopping to marvel and demand she take pictures, which required her to fish her phone out of her shorts (she was a very good sport about this).  Finally she was hungry, so we stopped in what was basically a hamlet and asked a man if there was somewhere we could eat.  First he said "no," in a surprised tone (we were surprised too-really? no food?), then called to someone in his house, asking, in dialect, "Eh, Natalia fa mangi' ogg'?"  It turned out that yes, Natalie was cooking today, so we proceeded to her restaurant and had a quick, very basic lunch--bread, sliced prosciutto, a cheese plate, and some spinach.

Then we set out again--and discovered something horrible.  Giving your butt a break from the uncomfortable bike seat long enough to eat is apparently just enough time for your butt to decide "fuck no" when you try to get back on.  It hurt like a bitch!  We were hoping we'd sort of warm back up to it as we went, but not really--anytime we had to go over bumpy ground there was a lot of "owww oh shit owww" (mostly me, Carla toughed it out).  That, more than anything, began to spell the end of my original determination to make it all the way to Cortina (and who'd have thought that I'd be the one exhorting Carla that we could totally make it the whole way?).  Ultimately we found ourselves in San Vito, where there was a rental return point, and gave up the ghost, just 9km from Cortina.  I'm still pretty damned proud of myself for making it that far. Shockingly enough, my leg muscles barely protested that night, but oh dear god, my ass. Sitting down was a ginger business, to say the least.

Yesterday morning we headed to the train station to catch the 10am train to Venice, and thence onward to Verona, only to discover that there was a train strike. The 10am train was cancelled, the 12:30 might run, or it might not, no one could say.  Suddenly we realized the downsides of being in a remote part of Italy with limited transportation options.  We could take a bus to Cortina and try to catch a bus to Venice from there, but we had no idea about the schedule or anything (worse still, it was a Sunday).  A couple of non-Italian guys with whom we'd been discussing the situation offered us a ride to Mestre, where they were headed, and said they'd come back to the station shortly to pick us up.  I was feeling kind of panicky and almost ready to take them up on it, but we decided to first run our options by Joanne Maddox, Carla's old boss at the Fairfield program.  She told us, sagely, not to take the ride, even though it would probably be OK. Instead we hopped on a bus for the hour-long ride to Cortina, where we secured tickets on the 'Cortina Express' to Mestre.  Of course it didn't leave for three hours, and there was no left-luggage on Sunday, so we had to park it at a restaurant. I went down to the town briefly to look around, and bought some deliciously tart wild blueberries from a vendor.  In the end, we discovered that the express we'd gone all the way to Cortina to take would have picked us up two towns over from Calalzo anyway *facepalm*.  Oh well.  


Once we made it to Mestre, however, we faced another problem--were the trains to Verona actually running?  We'd been assured by Italians that the main routes, like Venice-Verona, had connections, and that it was just the out of the way places with only regional service, like Calalzo, that were totally SOL.  We spent a very hot, very stressful 45 minutes waiting for an incredibly crowded and un-air conditioned train, but  at least one came!  In the end we got to our hotel in Verona at 7--nine hours of travel!  Here we had a stroke of luck, though, since our hotel ran a free shuttle into and out of town for those attending the opera.  The shuttle left at 7:30, so we had just enough time to freshen up.  In Verona, we grabbed a quick bite to eat, bought a libretto and inflatable cushions, on the sage advice of someone who'd done this before, and went into the Arena to find seats.  


It was basically like being at a baseball game, sitting in the cheap seats, complete with wandering drink and souvenir vendors (with prices comparable to Yankee Stadium, too).  The opera itself was good (there was some pretty spectacular staging, including ballet scenes and four live horses onstage during a procession, plus a cast of at least a hundred) but despite the powerful acoustics of Roman engineering, it was difficult to make out some of the singers, particular the alto (who, according to Carla, wasn't projecting her voice in the right way).   Hearing an opera in an enclosed theater vs a 20k-person amphitheater is just going to be a different experience. Also, it was LONG.  Four hours long, in fact.  I would have been happy to follow the example of the German family next to us and hit the road after the second act, but of course Carla wanted to stay through the end (at 1am).  I was able to convince her to leave as soon as the last note sounded, however, so we could make it back to the hotel shuttle before it filled, so we woundn't have to wait another 45 minutes for the next one.


 I learned that in opera, you clap for the performers every five minutes.  Every aria, every scene, every act got applause.  The conductor was applauded when he walked in at the opening of each act.  The girl who rang the gong letting you know the pauses were about to be over got applauded, every time she came out!!  It was too much for me, this diva culture.  Yes, what they're doing takes intense training, but hey, that's why you applaud at the end.  As fitting my longstanding preference for male voices, I recognized that the lead soprano had a lovely voice, but I much preferred the guy singing Ramades, the male lead.  By the end, I was so tired I just wanted them all to shut up and stop singing the same two lines over and over, more and more slowly.  Die already, Aida.