A couple of days ago me and my mom went to Venice for a weekend. It was really awesome, we’ve made a lot of pictures, ate a lot of tasty food and etc, but this time I want to write less words but show you something special. We’ve visited two churches that hold exhibitions of music instruments. One exhibition is tiny and cute, second is huge and awesome and even has a reproduction of a violin workshop, basically now I know how violins are being made.  Both collections belong to some Artemio Versari, I really don’t know who he is, but it’s truly beautiful.

So, my mother visited. If you know what’s a Jewish mum like, you know what I’ve been through! Just kidding, my mum is awesome :)

So anyway, we decided that since she’s in Italy for the first time and I’m in Italy for the first time, we might as well travel around a bit, and as one of the destinations we’ve chosen Napoli, the birth city of pizza Margherita and a city controlled by Vesuvius.

Napoli surprised me. I was expecting something I can’t tell exactly what, but what I’ve seen has impressed me a lot, and not always in a good way. First of all, I hadn’t made my research and knew nothing about the city except for the fact that there are hundreds of pickpockets waiting to hunt me down and take all my money, because my landlord said so.  Everything went down smoothly, my money’s safe, my life unharmed if anyone cares. We went to Napoli with a train and it was a super-duper drive, 300 km/h! Took us only 1 hour to cross 250km, like WOW! As soon as we arrived we decided that since we have only one day we can try out this popular thing – hop on – hop off sightseeing busses, where you are given some headphones, you drive by some historically important places and listen to a recorded version of a city tour. That turned out to be a very nice ride, unfortunately it’s not a season, so we’ve missed out one important thing about this trip – there are two lines of this bus, each line has 12 stops and the bus takes off every 30 minutes, so basically you can hop off at every stop you want, take a tiny tour around that certain sightseeing and hop on to another bus that will take you to the next stop. The ticket is valid for 24 hours, so you can enjoy this tour like forever and that makes your tourist life much easier, because you don’t have to think about the navigation, maps, always low battery on your phone etc.

Anyway, we took the tour and drove around Napoli for 2.5 hours and I noticed a couple of things:

1. People are awesome, everybody sings (more than in Venice or in Rome), smiles, tells you how beautiful you are, tells you stories etc.

2. The panoramic view of the city is breathtaking.  Vesuvius is so mighty thatit makes you think that you are going to die if you don’t admit its mightiness.

3. Architecture is and colors are so inspiring, the design (I think it would be better to put it in to quotes) is so bright? Contrasting, joyful and depressing at the same time, simple houses are mixed with middle-aged sculptures, like Oh My God…

4. The city is dirty. I mean like really dirty. That was the thing that disappointed me a bit/a lot. If you see a statue, a monument or something – look closely, it will be painted with spray. And a lot of garbage. I’ve seen a pile of old clothes and shoes under the statue of Garibaldi (wiki will help you to find out who he is), a hobo (homeless person) sleeping right at the entrance of a grand gallery with Gucci-Versace-Dolce stuff stores. And emigrants or just poor people sell some magnets and scarves walking around the square with a baby buggy. Weird, just weird.

Anyway, pictures will show you more, behold – panoramas, Vesuvius and etc.

31th of December is a day when we, musicians, work. From one point it makes our life easier because it automatically resolves THE question “where to celebrate”, from another – well, we don’t have the kind of a fest that ordinary people do (No offence, ordinary is not bad, I meant those who’s not working on NY). Fortunately this year turned out to be quite interesting and in the end even fun. This year I was working in two places with a band named Continent and a special program that included a special guest from UK/US – Fil Straughan. His energy is endless! Less words more pictures this time, enjoy!
Photos by Vadim Kozhin

Sometime ago I have decided to participate in a project, that describes one day of my ordinary life. It was my third week in Italy and I was pretty stressed, cause I was expecting a package and it was a bit late – I have sent myself a piano from Riga so that I could practice at home and not wait 60000000 hours in the academy for a free room. So, this day describes how I was running around Rome in search of a piano.

So, my day starts at 8am. Allthough my alarm says “Academy” I’m not going there, I’m going to the post office, that’s just one stop from me by metro.

Since it’s Christmas time, i think it would be appropriate to write about it. I knew that Romans were Catholics, and i thought that Christmas here would be beautiful and full of “offertas” (special offer, buy it right now or you’ll miss your chance to get something you don’t need), and I was right. They started decorating the city in November, that’s nothing new, cause everybody does that (well, in Cyprus they start in October, but that’s an exception:) ), and I was amazed how beautiful it is here. Some streets have red carpets, and I mean, REAL red carpets, lights are lit all over the city, so you can’t see the wires, and they don’t save on electricity, everything shines! Christmas trees are everywhere, my Conservatorio has one on each floor and a couple more in some unexpected corners, every shop has one, streets are full of them, even the guys that sell roasted chestnuts have decorated their little selling spits with cute pine branches. Haven’t seen any decorations on my train station, but I’m leaving Rome for Christmas, probably I’ll miss their decorations, even though they are a bit late with that, comparing to other spots.

There is more that has nothing to do with the streets. My landlord here is a very old schoolish lady, catholic in all her mysterious ways, goes to church almost every day, prepares speeches for some events there, regularly attends some catholic retreats in some clusters in the middle of nowhere (no sarcasm, nothing like that, respect to her and merry Christmas), so she started her preparations as Cypriots do – in October. She changed a tablecloth to a Christmassy one, hang little bells all around the apartment and made a base for Christmas treats (dolce per natale) – like 5 kilos of minced cookies, blah blah blah. Most importantly, she changed the set of her shelf with 15 family pictures to one more appropriate for the event – left only a few pictures but made a whole setup of some very interesting items. These items are christmas attributes of course. She has a statue kept under a glass top that is actually 200 years old – it belonged to her grand grand grand mum. And around that one she has some other little statuettes bought in different countries. But the grandest masterpiece of art in this collection is a holographic luminous picture of Virgin Mary. At first, when there’s not enough light, it looks like a peace of paper, but suddenly when the light shines – Virgin Mary appears there as a ghost (a print that is). Even though I’m jewish and have nothing to do with Christmas, I like it, I find it very cheerful and a bit inspiring. This is the time when you get together with your friends and loved ones, doesn’t matter why, you just do, you find the time, that is very important. So Merry Christmas everybody, let your hearts be light!

(Actually i like Christmas because it’s a legitimate reason to sing all this beautiful jazz standards, that are not “in time” when it’s not winter :) )