World Chump - Wanderlust

Walking through Venice with a couple of small children can be hit or miss, depending on the kids' interests.

Obviously, playgrounds are going to be scarce in Venice, as either water or concrete dominates the landscape. Here, one needs to apply to their more creative instincts. We got lucky with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, as kids have more of an eye for art than you might think. Riding on boats or gondolas gets stale after a while, the same way riding in cars on streets would be. You need to use the labyrinthine streets of the city to your advantage, I've noticed, and do so in a way that you don't jeopardize the tourist body as a whole.

Project one: one kid alternately takes the lead and must follow the GPS. Liebi took us to the Guggenheim, after that it would be time to for the kids to take the wheel. Axl, take us to this restaurant. Wonderful, nothing like lunch in a real Italian restaurant. Worth the overpriced check we eventually receive. A tip for visitors: the cheap house wine you order at a restaurant is as good as any Italian import you might be drinking wherever you are now. Unfortunately, we also noticed that restaurants resort to other cost cutting measures, like wrapped bread sticks. Luckily, you don't live on bread alone. The food itself is as good as advertised. The kids don't care for Italian food (note that spaghetti and meatballs is an American invention and thus not an option in the old country), so we end up ordering them boneless cutlets. I have a pasta dish that I am still dreaming about as I am writing this.

We continue to mix childlike activities that can be reconciled somewhat with the adult agenda, like looking at shop displays. There is a baker, for instance, whose specialty is making faces and other figures out of dough.

The objective is to make it to San Marco. When we reach the place, the line at the basilica is too long, and I know as sure as there are pigeons and sea gulls on the piazza that we won't be in that line and, by default, not in the basilica. Venice might just be one of the top ten least desirable places for kids, unless they are heavily into boats. For kids, it still comes down to playgrounds or, alternately, what internet connection is available.

We stop into another church near San Marco, which piques their interest. Churches are always a good bet, for the same reason you may be surprised by museums. The Chiesa di San Moise, for example, is a gorgeous little church by anybody's standard and not your average building back home, something the kids can even appreciate. Add to it the stories in the bible, and you have the audience's attention. Never underestimate the power of a good story, and that goes double for the bible. Talk and read about it long enough, and you might have just created twelve superheroes out of the twelve apostles, who otherwise would just be remembered as a group of boring fishermen and tradesmen.

Also, there's the physical exercise we are quite grateful for. Let kids sit around, and they will become aware of the fact that they have nothing to do and repeat the word 'boring' ad nauseum, backwards and in the language of your choice. With a little finagling, you will get enough done that you were glad you came. All right, so in the end we missed the basilica and the duke's palace, although I still claim we came out on top...and that the kids will remember the place as well. 

Let's do a quick word association game involving world cities. What comes to mind whenever you think of New York? The Empire State Building? The Brooklyn Bridge? Central Park? Next, how about Paris? The Eiffel Tower? The Louvre? How about London? Sidney? Hong Kong?

For Venice, there are the gondolas, the Grand Canal, and San Marco, although Liebi, bless her art history student heart, doesn't think that way at all, having never been to Venice. For Venice, it's the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which she was going to visit, come hazy heavens or high waters in the city of Marco Polo. We decided we would make a family outing of it.

Peggy Guggenheim, of course, was born to the wealthy Guggenheim family in New York at the end of the 19th century. A socialite in the days of non reality TV shows, she lived fast and hard, as her association with The Lost Generation of the Paris expats in the 1920's suggests. Having fled the Nazis on the eve of war in 1940, she eventually made her way back to New York, and from there to Venice, once the war had ended. Her numerous male conquests and her bohemian lifestyle aside, Peggy became an avid art collector, which she would eventually parlay into her own exhibitions throughout the city. Mostly, her paintings featured modern art, usually the first half of the 20th century. Upon her death in 1979, the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation (which, spoiler alert, also operates the Guggenheim museums in both New York and Bilbao) decided to operate Peggy's collection year round, from the place she called home for so many years along the Grand Canal.

Few art collections are as impressive, I have to admit. There are works of cubism (Picasso, including an exhibition dedicated to his famous beach paintings in the 1930's), surrealism (Dali, Magritte), or European abstraction (Kandinsky, Max Ernst). In addition, there's a fine Sculpture Garden with works by Giacometti or Henry Moore.

On the day we arrive there, it is revealed that the Guggenheim Foundation is celebrating an anniversary of some sort, and guests are asked to sketch, with paper and pencil, the one thing that comes to mind at the museum, later to be posted on the foundation's social network pages. We leave this endeavor to the ever eager kids, Axl and Bash, who choose one of the works in the Sculpture Garden (something by Jean Arp, as I recall). Unlike their papa, the kids have the eye and talent for art, which they are never afraid to display.

The entire collection can be viewed in a few hours, although you can't resist the occasional peek at the Grand Canal lingering outside. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection, is painting for painting, quite possibly the most impressive accumulation of modern art in Europe, besides its tasteful arrangement in Peggy's former residence. In particular, I remember the oversized Jackson Pollock paintings, in addition to the Sculpture Garden. We will even forgive the museum the occasional schmuck working the grounds at the Schulhof Collection. (That's you, tall bearded guy with the glasses and the high pitched voice who deserves to be punted into the Grand Canal. Even with your worst efforts, you couldn't ruin a great day at the museum.)

In between the gondolas and San Marco, make sure to include the Peggy Guggenheim Collection during your Venice visit. You'll be happy you did.

The one thing I remember about Venice this time around is this:

Without a GPS, a compass, or even the sun, I venture outside of the apartment near Rialto Bridge on a Sunday morning. Let's try a little exercise in futility here. From the house door I start slowly and head one block toward this piazza I remember as San Benedetto. Having been to a school run by Benedictine monks, I can remember that, it stands to reason. So far, so good. From there, I scramble over a little bridge that is being used by amateur musicians, who take their sweet time in setting up their instruments. From the quizzical expressions on their faces, I'd say they are about as lost as I am. 

Now, let's retrace those steps, I am thinking with a grim laugh. Over the bridge, around the corner, to San Benedetto. Wait a minute, that doesn't check out, as there is a supermarket (actually open on a Sunday in Über-Catholic Italy!) now standing where the church is supposed to be. So it's back to the bridge and to one of the other three directions. Number one leads to a more minor canal. Number two zig zags through a narrow alleyway until I am heading toward San Marco. Number three takes me back to San Benedetto, where I now have my standard four (actually seven) choices over where to go from there. I laugh all the way back to the front door while the Venetians carry on with their Sunday routines. And so we're back in the world's largest labyrinth. 

But back to the beginning: for our trip, we decide to wing it overnight with Hambone, the name we chose for our white car when we purchased it months ago. Until the Austrian borders, everything is fairly routine. In Austria, then, Liebi is introduced to something that induces a head shaking incomprehension she has not known since learning Nepali years ago: toll roads. That's right, the privilege of paying for the use of roads that have already been built. Liebi quickly gets over this, however, and instead decides to focus on the sheer panoramic beauty of the Austrian Alps, although I need to remind her every now and then to keep her eye on the road and her hand on the wheel. 

Before the gondolas and San Marco, we still have to navigate our way through Northern Italy, its ever increasing network of roads, and yet more toll roads. Funny, how the traveler will appreciate Germany once every other European country has relieved you of dozens of dollars for using their streets. 

The heavy pollution is thrown in for free. We seriously begin to second guess our decision to drive down there, as Northern Italy is concealed in a heavy cloak of smog, topped off by hazy Venice itself. The main reason for this, one of the locals tells me, is the pollution from the cruise ships docking in their harbors daily. Years ago, it used to be one cruise a week or thereabouts. Now it's five to six per day. Supply and demand, I guess. A cruise ship is a little town on the water that, it goes without saying, has plenty of its own energy to burn. I don't handle it very well, at first, and neither do the kids, and we cough up half a lung before reaching Venice.

Finally, we park at Tronchetto (twenty bucks a day) near the train station, board a monorail ($1.50 per person) and a water bus ($7.50 per head) before the realtor takes us to our apartment near Rialto Station. Relief, and a few days off for Hambone, our trusted vehicle back at Tronchetto. Ciao, bello! We are in Venezia.   

Detonating bombs, the latest Bayern Munich manager fired, storms ravaging the north...even I must admit that people can forget about more minor stories in Germany, like Election Day. 

The fact is, the elections themselves were as predictable as what happens to a seal swimming with sharks...except that the sharks might also end up biting each other, from the looks of things. 

A quick summary of the results, then: 32.9% for the CDU, or the Christian Democrats (party color black), still the ruling party under Chancellor Angela Merkel. This is still an almost nine percent drop from the elections of four years ago. Perennial runners up are the Social Democrats or the SPD (party color red) with 20.5% of the vote, or more than five percent less than four years ago. See a pattern here? That's a whopping fourteen percent that went to the minor parties, with SPD already refusing to enter a coalition with the conservatives. 

Stepping on the podium for the first time is the notorious AfD (party color blue), the Alternative for Germany, the new right wing party that has Germany emitting a collective gasp. AfD collected 12.9% (almost eight percent higher than 2013) of the vote, and will take their seats in the Bundestag on the opposition's side, since parties both left and right steadfastly refuse to enter any coalition with AfD. In fourth place is the libertarian FDP (party color yellow) with 10.7% of the vote, a gain of over six percent when compared to 2013.  

Rounding out the political parties that will claim their seats in Berlin are Die Linke (The Left; party color red-purple) with 9.2% and the Green Party (party color predictably green) with 8.6% of the vote, both slightly higher than four years ago. 

The winners of the election are the libertarians and the right wing AfD, while both major political parties, each centrist in outlook, took a beating. Oddly enough, this is where things get interesting, when it comes time to form a coalition. If you do the math, the choices are what you would find at a gas station: super, or super plus.

If the Social Democrats refuse to enter a grand coalition with the conservatives, and the CDU will expel the ranks of Christians from their party before even considering a union with the right wing AfD, what remains? The CDU and the Left (Die Linke) are not compatible, so that's off the table. The only viable option that remains is black-green-yellow, better known as the Jamaica coalition. Black and yellow is nothing unusual, green-yellow, on the other hand, is a combination that is as sour as it looks. 

Libertarians and Greens...yikes. On the cover of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Woche journal of the past week, an illustration depicts Merkel, Horst Seehofer (chief of the CDU's sister party, the Bavarian CSU), Chairman Christian Lindner of the FDP, and Cem Özdemir, chairman of the Greens, each sporting dreadlocks and passing a fat joint around, an amusing allusion to the upcoming Jamaica coalition. As funny as that looks, it doesn't nearly match how funny such a coalition might turn out to be once they all take their seats in Berlin.

Not to be outdone for overall drama, Frauke Petry, the face of the right wing AfD, announced her resignation from the party only a few days after the elections. Not to worry, Germans: there is plenty of slapstick guaranteed in the upcoming months and years.

And people always say Germans don't do comedy.