Romeo and Juliet 1.v
It’s at the one week stage of the tour that I go a little off-piste and don’t follow my itinerary to the letter. It’s a Friday and the full weekend beckons so, with a couple of friends in Milan, I get the first train I can out of Rovigo and head to the northern Metropolis. The only problem is that the first train is the [very] slow train and after four hours of journeying, I’m there. Had I not got the first train out I’d have been there
significantly earlier, but that’ll learn me to study the timetables a little more closely.
Being met off the train by these couple of friends at Milan’s magnificent yet Mussolino-esque railway station and whisked off for a beer and ‘spritz’ certainly made up for any arduous travelling, as did the subsequent drinks, food and chat. So enjoyable they were that they continued well into the evening, rendering the main part of Saturday a write-off. However, write-
off or not, in the fine company I was in I couldn’t fail to be in good humour. Fast forward some lunch and an ice-cream (yoghurt and strawberry) later and I’m on a speeding train east to Verona (we do get about on these tours), known as ‘little Rome’.
So it’s Little Venice to begin with (see Blog Entry 1) and over to Little Rome. Makes me wonder why we don’t have any ‘little Londons’ or ‘little Newcastles’ in the UK. Perhaps, as we have in London with little Venice, there are parts of the world with a ‘little [insert UK city]’. Would be quite the surprise to be in the deepest, darkest and farthest reaches of the world only to come across a ‘little Slough’, don’t you think? Would it have smaller roundabouts and a little less concrete maybe? Do write and tell me if you know of such things.
Anyway, Verona is a very pleasant place with wall-to-wall classic renaissance buildings in some parts and plentiful medieval ones in others: British 1960s town planners had obviously never visited the place for inspiration. Pot loads of pedestrianisation in the centre as well. As well as taking in the fine architecture and cobbled streets, I’d got myself a ticket for a Liszt gala at the local concert hall (pictured - aren’t I cultured!). I thought I was in for some piano plinkerty-plonkerty but it turns out it was an orchestral evening, including some of Liszt’s ‘poems’:
No.2: Tasso. Lamenta e Trionfo
No. 3: Les Preludes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fussEgy_j5M&feature=related
Faust Symphony: Pieces 1 and 2
Hungarian Rhapsody
Although not exactly the same, because of their similarity (being based on Hungarian folk songs), while listening to the Hungarian Rhapsody, I kept thinking of the Charlie Chaplin scene from the Great Dictator where he’s shaving someone to the speed and rhythm of Brahms’ Hungarian Dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vaZtPNOTbM. Classic bit of comic cinema! Certainly won't be trying it that way myself in the morning, all a bit bleary-eyed; I'd end up without a nose...
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