A trip to Venezia

And this is a log of my trip to (the beautiful) Venezia. Though I was a bit under pressure of the seamlessly unending incoming streams of project milestone deadlines, I managed to have some times off of the crazy days with a wonderful trip to Venezia It was on Saturday, 12th April 2008, around 7 a.m. when I, Wenjing, and mr. Liu left Borino to Piazza Dante (Trento’s train station). There we met with Mu and departed to Venezia by the Regionale train (which cost us only around €5 each ). I can’t quite remember, but the journey was approximately 3 hours.

Venezia – in front of basilica di San Marco

I found Venezia very beautiful even from the first steps out of the train station. Water everywhere! Even the taxis are boats So we went to Piazza San Marco and there Mu bought a €1 corn package to feed the pigeons. So many pigeons in the square, and I tried feeding them too

Venezia – feeding pigeons is not a crime

Venezia – the taxis of Venezia

Then we went to the tower at Piazza San Marco and enjoyed the beautiful scenery of Venezia.

Venezia – Campanile, Piazza San Marco

Venezia – a view from the tower

And the next enjoying event was: the gondola ride At first I asked the tourist information center somewhere near Piazza San Marco about the price of gondola ride. They said the normal price was €80. But when I asked several gondolianers, they offered the prices varying from €100 to €120. I told them I would pay only for €70 (tried to bargain a bit ), and they said no. OK, I left them. Then after walking about 30 meters, one of them came and asked for €80 and no less. So, we took the offer (since I knew the standard price was €80 from the information office ).

Venezia – about to start a gondola ride

Venezia – O sole mio…..

In the evening of the same day, we went back to Trento using another Regionale train. All in all, I might say Venezia is a romantic city. Highly recommended for couples especially for the gondola ride But there will be another trip chapter there (I hope) since we didn’t go to the glass island. At the same day later in the evening I got a bad news: my Gramma passed away (which I posted several posts before this).

Venezia – from Venezia with love

EuMI workshop 2008

An EuMI workshop was held on 4-6 April 2008 in Trento. A bunch of guys came from Aachen/Bonn and Edinburgh (apart from the ones living currently in Trento) including the ‘big guys’ The event itself I saw it as a means for communication among alumni and students of the EuMI programme. This is the first time I made a full use of my handycam for a documentation

Trento – the crowd of EuMI students and alumni

The first day was started with some introductions to the programme by the ‘big guys’ including the rector of the University of Trento, Prof. Davide Bassi. In the afternoon there were 2 sessions of discussions held concurrently, the first one dealing with education, curriculum, and degree issues, and the second one dealing mainly with mobility and services. I attended the first discussion since it attracted me so much, especially with the Net-centric/Media Informatics of Aachen/Bonn-Trento mobility issues The conclusion didn’t satisfy me, so I won’t reveal it here

Trento – several guys with Aachen/Bonn mobility

The second day was more interesting to me. We went together for an excursion to the Buonconsiglio castle located near the city center of Trento. Well, I love castles and traveling. So no arguments In the evening of the second day (well, it was night to be more precise ) a party was held at the meeting venue. But I decided not to attend it since it was very late at night and no more cable car going down to the city center from the meeting venue.

Trento – excursion to Buonconsiglio castle

The third day? I didn’t attend it. I couldn’t get up But I heard from some guys there was nothing on the third day.

The funny thing about this meeting was that I always had lunch together in 1 table with some of the big guys of EuMI. The advantage of this was that I could ask many questions concerning the programme in a more casual way. And the disadvantage was (of course) I couldn’t really express my eating style after being starved during the sessions haha….

Trento – lunch with some of the ‘big guys’ of EuMI

And I still owe a promise of giving my videocam recording to Mr. Luca Valenzin, the officer of the EuMI programme form the Univ. of Trento, since I was the only one making a video documentation. I’ll do it soon (I hope ).

Introducing my new travel companion: Dafferianus [HANDYCAMus]

This post is just to document that I bought a new video camera which will play the role of my travel companion. As usual, due to the packed schedule for project deadlines, I make a log of this a bit late. It’s a Sony Handycam DCR-HC51E, (another) low-end video camera from Sony, and it uses a miniDV tape as the recording medium. I bought it in MediaWorld Trento on 20th March 2008. In fact I’m not really satisfied with miniDV tapes, especially concerning the transferring-to-PC method that consumes quite a lot of time. But since the price was fairly cheap, I shouldn’t really complain about it In addition, it’s a Sony Handycam

the Dafferianus [HANDYCAMus]

Since I bought this video camera using the monthly stipend of the Erasmus Mundus scholarship just like its predecessor, I decided to name it Dafferianus [HANDYCAMus] The idea behind the purchase of this product is that I would like to make dynamic documentations of events I’m going through. Of course my digital camera is still used for taking pictures, but additional documentations that incorporate motions will give a better ‘look & feel’ of the events. Prior to this purchase, one of my Chinese friend, Mu (another EuMI guy), purchased a video camera as well. But his main purpose was to record a Milan match in San Siro (which we will do it this Sunday). I’m not that specific, I just wanna create live documentations of anything