Venice Realized

It has already been 3 weeks since I came back from the trip. I still feel like it happened only a few days ago, but time does fly. Thinking back to the time before departure, the quote I used in Second Story: Venice Imagined – Before Departure post was a good starting point for me to prepare myself for the trip.

"The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to." (De Botton, 246)

I can’t even explain how excited I was to just leave the campus for a break, and the fact that the destination was Venice, Italy only made it better. One of the best things about this study abroad program was that the main theme of the trip was something entirely different from my major – electrical engineering. I appreciated the opportunity to leave my engineer soul at school and bring out my artistic and sensitive side (it was just very well-hidden… trust me).  

Before the trip, I wondered about the architectural background as well as the culture of the city with the underwater foundation of houses. I learned that the wood pilings are the initial foundation of the buildings, and the houses have separate entrances near the canal so that people can get off the boat and enter the house directly.

Another question about Italian cuisine was answered right after my first meal in Venice – one word: Authentic! From the fresh and warm croissant and café macchiato in the morning, to the countless gelatos, the seafood risotto and pasta, the food was beyond my expectation. After coming back to the States, all of us could not stop talking about how much we miss the food we had in Venice and how none of the food we used to eat here meets our standard that got higher after the trip.

My skepticism about the absence of car was gone by the time I got used to taking vaporetto and seeing different types of work done with boats – including police, ambulance, fruit vendor, and delivery. It was a unique experience of observing different scenes and being able to find connections among them, especially the Venetian’s attitude towards life through the observation of their behavior dealing with food and transportation (described in Sixth Story: Thick Description – The Venetian’s Attitude Towards Life).

I feel as if I travelled back in time. Venice was such a beautiful and well-preserved historical city that allows visitors to take part in the rich historical accounts of the world. It was the best way to learn about the topics of art, architecture, and history that we dealt with throughout the trip – for example, by seeing different architectural styles applied to buildings standing right by each other or listening to the background of certain sculptures being taken away and brought back to the same place. Venice, indeed, was a living museum.

I am grateful to have participated in this study abroad program. I made a lot of amazing friends who I still keep in touch with, learned a lot about the art, architecture, and history of the world represented in Venice, and gained a different perspective to observe the world. It was definitely a good idea to travel in the spring break as I did to the Netherlands during the last spring break through a different study abroad program.

“No sooner had he returned to Paris from his Mauritian trip than he began to dream once again of going somewhere else. … The destination was not really the point. The true desire was to get away—to go, as he concluded, ‘anywhere! anywhere! so long as it is out of the world!'” (De Botton, 29)

As de Botton says in The Art of Travel, I already feel the urge to travel around the world soon again. It also encourages my desire to learn to speak as many languages as possible, after Korean, English, and Chinese. I hope to be able to join another study abroad program in the next spring and travel with the receptive mind-set as de Botton suggests.