Post date: Oct 01, 2012 9:49:4 PM
Cultural Blog Post - Amanda Olm
La Vita Veneziana
For the past two months we, a group of WPI students, have been working on the proposal for our projects, exploring resources available and preparing for what we might encounter when we arrive in Venice, both related to the projects and to living there. This preparation is one we are all relying on and hoping it will cover what we need. Personally, at first I was overwhelmed at the prospect of learning enough Italian to get around and to learn enough of the Italian culture to be able to respect it, blend in, and enjoy my stay in Venice to the fullest. My team will be collecting data and studying the stores and accommodations of the city and how they reflect what has been happening there for the past forty years. Although we won’t have much interaction with the locals, that is definitely what I am looking forward to the most. We will be studying some of the effects of the rise of tourism in the dynamics of life in Venice, but I am determined to not be perceived as a tourist as much as I can.
The fieldwork will consist of covering the six sestieri of the historic center and gathering data of every storefront, including each establishment’s name, coordinates, type of merchandize or service offered, and picture. Our goal is to use this data to create a descrizione sintetica, a “snapshot”, of the current state of the city, and to relate the number and types of stores and accommodations to trends in the population and tourism. We are using the stores and accommodations as the lenti, or lens, to see how they, by showing the demands of an area, provide insight into social and economic issues. Our hope is that this project can be done again in the future and that we can map how the city is evolving. Since we are going through the entire main sections of the city, we will be able to observe how the locals interact with other locals and with tourists and the general daily routine of city. The environment will influence our project and the data collection since it will be the acqua alta, the rainy and flood season in Venice, so it might present some difficulty in getting around the streets. Also, the business hours for stores in Venice are very different from those in the US so we will have to plan accordingly in order to schedule the data gathering for when the stores are open.
It is interesting to me that the more I study about the Italian culture and etiquette, the more I can relate to it because there is a lot of similarities to that of Brazil. The warm and personal relationships, the importance of openness and trust, and that of the manner one carries oneself are all things that are of value to both Italians and Brazilians. I look forward to living in this beautiful city for nearly two months and, like the Italian proverb, say “a ogni uccello il suo nido è bello” (there is no place like home).