Country: Italy Capital: Rome Main Language Spoken: Italian Currency: Euro We visited the floating city of Venice (Venezia) which has no roadways, only waterways!! Therefore you can only travel by boat as a method of transportation. Can you beat that experience? The city of Venice begins at about 400 A.D. when people fled to the Venetian Lagoon from the Barbarians who had come to conquer mainland Italy. At that time Venice hadn’t been built so the refugees crowded on to fisherman villages (like Burano). Everybody kept trying to go back to resume their normal lives but soon realised that it was impossible to live there. So only then was the decision to build Venice, a city safe from Barbarians, made. But after that they had to put wood brought from Croatia on 118 mud islands, and then join those islands together with canals and bridges! Thus was the magnificent and floating city of Venice built. It is amazing that a ‘city built in fear’ turned out to be one of the most glamorous cities ever to be built. Did you know, Venice has been sinking since it was built. Not only has sea level been rising but as Venice was constructed on mud islands the weight of the city has been pushing the mud down causing the city to sink even more. Till now Venice has sunk nine inches. The central square, St Marks Square, has an ornately decorated church which adorns the main square and there is usually always a long line to get inside. On the facade there are pictures depicting Jesus’s life. There is also a 99m tall red bell tower ( St Marks Campinile) in this square that had been destroyed in 1912 and then been rebuilt again. In the middle of the square are loads of crows and I can’t tell you how much me and my brother enjoyed chasing them. Another point of interest is the Bridge of Sighs, which was made to connect the Old Prison and the interrogation rooms in the Doge’s Palace to the New Prison, which was across the canal. Legend says that prisoners used to sigh when they saw the bridge because it was their last sight of the outside world before being taken into the dungeons. Below the bridge the small and elegant gondolas were rowing slowly down the canal. Unfortunately we couldn’t go in a gondola but just seeing them is a pleasurable sight. There is an old saying that if it is the exact moment of sunset, the bells of St Marks Campinile are ringing, you are in a gondola and you manage to kiss the Bridge of Sighs you will be granted infinite love. Did you know that the Bridge of Sighs is built by Antoni Contino whose uncle, Antonio da Ponte built the Rialto Bridge? Another lovely piece of architecture is the Rialto Bridge. It was the first bridge to be built cross the Grand Canal. Locals thought the current bridge would not last long. The bridge crosses over the narrowest point of the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal is the main canal of Venice and it divides the city in two parts. The bridge is jam packed with people trying to get their pictures taken. The whole route of the Grand Canal crosses only 4 bridges and it eventually leads into the Adriatic Sea. The grand canal is the most craved place to stay on. The next day we visited the islands around Venice. The first one was the colourful Fishermans village Burano. Burano is well known in Venice for its colourful houses of every imaginable colour which is what the tourists make a beeline for. The island also has a tall leaning bell tower that is leaning 1.83 metres (which makes at least 2 leaning towers in Italy. Murano, the second island we visited, is renowned for Murano Glass. For a long time it was the only glass made in the world. Italians were so possessive about their art they confined workers to the island giving the false reason that it was dangerous to work with a furnace in the city. The Italians threatened that if a worker would escape they would kill his or her family. On the island we visited a furnace that explained the process of producing Murano Glass. First silica and soda are mixed together and then put in a furnace. Then you add different substances depending on what colour glass you wanted. When the glass comes out it is molten and you must shape the glass when it is still in that form. After that you blow through a blowpipe ( with the glass at the other end) and carve with tweezers to get the desired shape. This is the part which requires extreme skill and one could see the masters at the work quickly moulding the glass into various intricate shapes. Finally you cool it down. If you cool it down too quickly the glass will shatter. Another lovely experience added to my diary. My best experience though was none of the above, it was travelling in boats everywhere. We had gone in the Vaporetti (boats – and the public transport in Venice) or a floating bus! There were floating stops tied to the floating city! Every time a boat would pass, the boat stop would bob up and down. Instead of bus numbers you had a boat number. Of course, Venice is a bit derelict in some parts, does have a humid smell in some lanes as you walk and it’s easy to see why – the lower part of building always in contact with water have blackened over time and gathers moss constantly. Its definitely easier to clean up the land than water. During rains, flooding is also a regular problem. With so many tourists flocking in every year, it’s indeed a challenge for the denizens to maintain their city. While I was reading about Venice’s history I found a quote that I
Dubrovnik Travelogue
Country: Croatia Capital: Zagreb Main Language Spoken: Croatian Currency: Kuna Dubrovnik, aptly termed the ‘the pearl of the Adriatic’ and a UNESCO world heritage site used to be called Ragusa and is a must-see town. It’s a city in Croatia on the Dalmatian coast and was founded in the 7th century. Croatia used to be part of former Yugoslavia and gained independence in 1991. Dubrovnik’s old town is a fortified city with its 10th century wall. The wall is the longest intact city wall in Europe. Old town has 4 gates: Pile, Ploce, Buza and Ponte. We entered from the Pile gate, a wide arch that leads to the Stradun, Dubrovnik old town’s main street. The Pile gate has a drawbridge that used to be closed every night. The walls are 1,940 metres long and you can walk all the way around them but you need to get tickets first. If you don’t want to walk the the whole wall you can get off at the many exits along the way. The Minceta tower is the highest point in Dubrovnik old town and I climbed it. The views were unforgettable with the red roofed old town on one side and the sparkling blue sea down on the other. The walk around the wall has quite a few steps can be quite narrow in places. Most of the time I was bouncing ahead of my parents in my excitement. There were canons on the way overlooking the sea. The experience was amazing. The Stradun, the old town main street, is lined with shops and cafes and is paved with limestone and runs from Pile to Ploce gate. It’s 300 meters long and 30 meters wide. It used to be a marshy channel of water and that’s why it is wider compared to the the other streets in Old Town. The other lanes of the old town have long flights of stairs and are like narrow alleys. You can also see a lot of washing hanging outside the houses. The Old Town has around 800 inhabitants. Something unique about the Stradun is that it has main doors and windows under the same arch. The two 15th century Onoforio Fountains in the Old Town are the only operational drinking fountains left in old town and were built because in the old days they didn’t have much water as the summers were long and dry. The original fountain was decorated majestically but was damaged in the earthquake of 1667. It was replaced with a new one that you see now. The Pile gate is marked with big Onoforio fountain while the Ploce gate is marked with the small Onoforio fountain. The big Onoforio fountain has 16 taps that you can drink from. During the Yugoslavian wars, parts of the old town was destroyed and in the places where the bricks are lighter are where the bombs hit and those were reconstructed. One must also go up mount Srd from where you can see incredibly beautiful views of the city. You can get to Srd are by gondola or by car. Most people go to Dubrovnik to see the Old Town and walk around the walls. UNESCO has threatened to revoke the city’s status as a world heritage site if more than 8000 people enter the old town per day as it is now getting difficult to maintain the site. Isn’t it amazing to learn that the concept of ‘quarantine’ was a Dubrovnik invention. In 1377 Dubrovnik decreed that any foreign merchant, sailor or goods went to an island for 40 days to see if they carried any disease. Only if it was proven that a person was healthy would they be released into the city. Dubrovnik is also interestingly home to one of the world’s first orphanages. I saw many new things in Dubrovnik and the trip was replete with memorable moments. It was fascinating to learn about the city’s history and even better to gaze at its beauty.
Hidden Figures, Reviewed by Vivaan, 10
The story of Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly is a true story at the time of the World War II about four African American women (Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden) who were mathematical geniuses and lived in America when most jobs were dominated by white men. But these four, unfairly hidden in history, contributed to the USA behind the scenes during the war and in their space race. The book and their characters are very inspiring. What the four women had accomplished was outstanding but it was even more remarkable because they lived in the south of USA at a time where racial and gender discrimination was rampant. The black population was segregated from the whites – they were not allowed to go to the same toilets, the same restaurants or live in the same neighbourhoods. Also, at that time a woman working was rare, the only thing that the women could apply for was teaching at a school of their race (black/white) or they would stay home and do housework. It beggars belief that opportunity only knocked on their door during the World War II, a time of total disaster for the rest of the country. Men were leaving to fight and for the first time there were job vacancies, for the first time women were needed. The WWII opened up an abundance of pathways for women and blacks and these four exceptional ladies found themselves at the threshold of greatness. The NACA ( National Advisory Committee of Aeronautics – former NASA) started to hire white women to come and work as ‘computers’ – mathematicians at their laboratory. But they couldn’t fulfil their needs with only white women, so soon they started hiring black women for math and some black men as engineers. Other black men started enlisting themselves in the army. The key takeaway from this book is that instead of discriminating on the basis of race or sex we should give prime significance to the inner talent of the individual. In today’s world, although a different era, and despite it being legally and constitutionally abolished, unfortunately discrimination still exists in people’s hearts. People still struggle for jobs or promotions just because of their race or gender. There are many examples of this gross injustice – many women are still sometimes not paid as much as men, the prize money in various sports tournaments for men is higher than for women, in some countries women are not even allowed to work or go out without a male member accompanying her! Though this book predominantly mentions racial and sexual discrimination, there is a lot of intolerance on the basis of what you do for a living, your religion, your nationality. The world’s history is replete with examples of people, organisations and countries rising above discrimination and doing wonders and a recent example of this is the 2018 Football World Cup which France clinched. They gave priority to pure talent rather than being bogged down by trivial issues like race, nationality or religion. Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. HarperCollins, 2016. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process! Have you read this book? Or do you plan on reading it? Let us know in the comments below!
