God Bless Us Shawl, Each and Every One!
Since I “finished” my last exam on Thursday, I decided to take advantage of my newfound freedom to take a day trip on Friday. After Eleonora and I discussed the options and narrowed it down, we settled on Brescia, a small city located east of Milan, about halfway to Verona. Brescia has been around since pre-Roman times and the evidence of the different periods of existence can be seen throughout the city.
Upon our arrival, we had to walk from the train station through the modern part of the city for a while to get to the center. Along the way we passed through Piazza della Vittoria, which would’ve been nice if it wasn’t under major construction.
After a little more walking, we got to Piazza Loggia, the square containing the town hall (or loggia), built during Renaissance times.
Luckily, only one person’s ID was required as collateral for entry to the loggia since I hadn’t brought my passport with me. While the building is generally still functional as an administrative center for the city, it’s also pretty interesting to look around. One of the rooms even has a flag used during the period of Italian unification during the 1800s (probably from the Third War of Italian Independence).
After leaving the loggia, we walked to Piazza Paolo VI, which contains the Duomos. Yes, that’s right, I said Duomos. Not one duomo. Two, count ‘em, two duomos! There’s the smaller, rounder, older Romanesque cathedral built in the 11th century as well as the huge newer one built between 1600 and 1800. We gave the middle finger to chronological order (see further below) and visited the new one first.
Then we visited the Duomo Vecchio. Upon entering, we were accosted (okay, more like politely hailed) by church steward who insisted that Eleonora wear a shawl. Because, you know, bare shoulders, man. Sinful stuff. We got the last laugh, however, once we were out of his earshot by having an irreverent conversation with an elderly Belgian couple who seemed to share our opinion on God’s dress code.
After politely (but with an underlying tone of fiery defiance) folding and returning the shawl to the steward and receiving a short lecture on the importance of church dress regulations, we continued walking through the city until we reached another church, Chiesa di Santa Maria della Carità, built starting in the 1600s. While nothing special on the outside (hence I forgot to take a picture), the inside was extremely ornate and colorful, particularly the floor. In contrast to our previous experience, the steward of this church was really nice. After visiting tens of churches during my time here, I’m starting to develop (or at least trying to) a sort of sixth sense for detecting whether pictures are allowed or not in a church. And my gut feeling for this church was a big “no.” But when I asked, he smiled and said it was okay, and when he realized I was American he even rushed off to find me some English literature on the church.
From there we moved to Piazza del Foro, which contains the Roman Capitolium, the most important Roman ruins in the Lombardy region of Italy. Built around 74 AD under the emperor Vespasian (yeah Flavian dynasty!), the Capitolium served as a temple until it was eventually partially destroyed in fires. It looked really interesting from the outside, and I thought it might be even more interesting on the inside. And that was where I made my big mistake of the day.
After buying our tickets and going inside, we found…nothing. The entire inside had been renovated into modern rooms with projectors for a lengthy presentation. And, Brescia not being a very touristy place, the guide spoke no English and the presentation was also mostly in Italian. Eleonora came to the rescue, keeping me and the nice Japanese couple watching with us up to speed on the history of the temple by translating it for us. There were also a few epigraphs and heads on sticks, but nothing too special.
After wasting around an hour due to my poor judgment and/or attraction to ancient Roman stuff, we suddenly found ourselves in a rush to visit the castle before it closed, so we hurried up the paths to the park the castle resides in, passing some nice views along the way.
The castle, called “The Falcon of Italy” because of its position on top of the hill, was built during the time of Venetian domination during the 16th century. It’s big and cool and castley.
Given it’s position up on the hill, the views of Brescia and the surrounding areas were also quite nice.
We were tired, and it was time to head home, so we made one last stop-off at at the church and monastery where Elenora’s brother had formerly worked (notable for some sweet metamorphic tiling).
Then we took a well-deserved post-exams-and-trip nap on the train home.
I’ve Got A Bone To Pick With You
Over the last week and a half I’ve been pretty busy studying for and taking two of my three exams (Hazard Evaluation and Volcanology). My hard work actually paid off and I did really well on both. Hard to believe, I know! This week I’ve been at the university every day working on my 3D modeling project which counts as my exam for that course. I was able to more or less finish it today, so aside from actually showing it to the professor, I should have a whole week to relax and have fun before I depart.
Still, since I could only work on my model at the university, I’ve been free in the evenings to do whatever I want, and I’ve been able to do a couple small things this week that are worth describing.
Tuesday, after meeting my friend Eleonora for gelato in Duomo, we were going to go visit a unique church I had been told about recently that I had somehow failed to see up till now. Unfortunately, we arrived too late—the church was closed for the day. But as long as we were in the area, Eleonora decided to show me the main campus of Statale, Milan’s other, older university. Unlike Bicocca, whose buildings are very new, modern, and blocky looking (put as generously as I can), this part of Statale is in a massive complex of old buildings located near the city center. There are lots of nice courtyards with columns and stuff. You could say it’s sort of closer to an American style university in the sense of having “quad”-like areas for students to hang out between classes (even though I’m sure these buildings were built before the first American college ever existed).
Wednesday, we took a trip to the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale, because you don’t truly know a city until you’ve seen its natural history museum. After braving an absurd flash torrential downpour/hailstorm (seriously, it was painful! The pieces of ice were this big!), we arrived late enough to take advantage of the free admission for the final hour. Like the geology nerds we are, we took our sweet time looking at (and discussing) all the mineral and fossil exhibits, then barely even looked around as we blew through the part of the museum about humans. We were able to get a look at most of the nice dead animals exhibit just before the curators started prodding us to leave (but at least we got to walk through the entire rest of the museum on our way out). Fun fact: Did you know that after a jaguar kills a zebra, it carries it up a tree to eat? NOW YOU KNOW!
When we left the museum (thankfully the rain/hail had stopped by then), we realized we had enough time and were close enough to take a second shot at seeing the church. After a quick trip on the red line and a short walk, we got there in plenty of time to take a look.
From the outside (and most of the inside) San Bernardino alle Ossa appears to be a mid-sized church that is pretty nice, if not particularly spectacular (at least by Italian church standards).
The same goes for the neighboring church, San Bernadino da Siena–fairly large, nice interior, but nothing special compared to some of the churches I’ve seen in Italy.
However, if you step into the ossario of San Bernardino alle Ossa, things start to get a little weird (if you know a bit of Italian or Latin, maybe you already know where this is going, or if you’ve noticed that my titles are usually attempts to cryptically or not so cryptically foreshadow subsequent content).
An interesting design, you say. But so what? C’mon, look a little closer.
All the patterns on the walls of the ossario are made of human bones. Lots of skulls everywhere. Very interesting and unlike anything I’ve seen before. But also a little creepy.
Hopefully with my newfound freedom I can do some fun stuff and maybe visit a new place or two.
Eleven days. Yikes!
Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life
I know I keep saying it, but time is going really fast. Only three weeks left from today. Just for fun, along with my normal posts for the next few weeks, I’ll try to do a few extras recapping my favorite things or dispensing valuable wisdom I’ve obtained (because I’m a wise guy, you know?). And it will likely be in list form, because who doesn’t love lists?
Even though not all my friends here believe me when I say it, I’m going to be genuinely sad to leave. So how about I try to remind myself about all the reasons I’m going to be happy to return home with a list (in no particular order) of the things I’m looking forward to most about being back in the USA?
Good beer
There are lots of things that are great about Italy. Beer is not really one of them. At least not commonly accessible beer. I look forward to being able to go to any liquor store and have a good selection to choose from (especially darker varieties, which are really a nonentity here).
Cheez-Its
Because I miss that “real cheese” flavor. Include also in this category the many other varieties of junk food that aren’t as available in Europe. Also, fresh bagels from a bagel store.
Food Diversity
Don’t get me wrong, I could eat Italian food every night forever, and I would be perfectly happy. But the biggest thing America has going for it food-wise is the offerings from so many different cultures, and I can’t wait to take advantage.
Family and Friends
Obviously the hardest part of being in another country for a year was having to go a year without seeing so many of my favorite people. Hopefully I can remedy this soon upon returning.
American Sports on TV and during waking hours
I know it’s poor form to complain when your team won the World Series, but I would’ve enjoyed it more if I could have actually seen any of the games. It was a pain having to stay up till 3 or 4 in the morning to follow the whole game and only be able to see the online play-by-play or occasionally find a radio feed. And I didn’t see a single football game from last season.
Playing Tennis
It’s not so much that they don’t do it in Italy. There were probably courts near my apartment; I just never looked that hard. The problem was that I had no one to play with. Watching the French Open and Wimbledon only made my itch to play even greater. I hope it doesn’t take too long to get back in form.
Okay…maybe more like this:
Paper Books
Since I knew English language books would be more difficult to obtain here (and I didn’t want to build up a big collection I would have to leave behind), I got a Kindle toward the beginning of my stay. While reading on an e-reader was much more pleasant than I expected, I still prefer real books, so I’ll be making a trip to the library or Barnes and Noble not long after I return.
Dryers
I know it’s pretty standard in a lot of Europe to not have a dryer, and it’s definitely a luxury I can deal with not having. But it can be a real pain waiting a day or two for clothes to dry (sometimes longer in the winter when it was cold and I didn’t want to leave the window open all the time), especially if you forget to do the laundry a couple days in advance of when you will need it. And it’s no fun coming home to a bedroom full of wet-clothes smell. Also, there’s nothing in the winter like putting on an entire outfit that just came out of the dryer and just basking in the wonderful heat.
A Good Internet Connection
The only way to get internet in my house here was to use what’s called an “internet key”. You plug it into your computer and it picks up a 3G-like signal for you to use wherever (read: in my house). Unfortunately, there’s a monthly cap on your data usage, and the signal cuts in and out a lot. Basically, it’s good for your basic needs, but not good enough to watch all the funny youtube videos and awesome new music your friends send you, and don’t even think about trying to Skype with the video turned on. After this experience, I won’t ever take regular internet for granted again.
Now, before you lay into me about my messed-up priorities, remember: NOT IN ORDER! If I did have to put them in order…I’ll leave it to you to guess at what that order would be.
The Night Is Dark and Full of Terrors…but Also Fun and Full of Friends and Dancing
Settling into exams mode, where I mostly just go to university and study every day, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t found time for smaller daily events.
Okay, so maybe rugby actually is a real sport
First, on Thursday, I played rugby for the first time. Well, touch rugby, really…my rugby player friends would probably yell at me for not making the distinction—and they’d be right. It is to rugby what touch football is to football. As I’ve discussed with my European friends, there isn’t really much of a following for rugby in the US (especially professionally), so if you don’t play in college, you could be forgiven for having no idea how it works. Loaded up with knowledge of my two matches watched in France and hopes not to get driven into the ground, I joined a relatively informal game.
Basically, you make your way up the field, lateralling the ball to each other, and if you get touched, you have to stop, put the ball down, and someone else starts where you left off. If this happens a few times without scoring, the other team gets the ball (or if your team drops a pass). For football fans, it’s sort of like a Music City Miracle-type kickoff return where you keep passing backwards to avoid getting tackled, except that sometimes it’s okay to get “tackled.” I don’t know if I’ll graduate to big boy/big girl rugby by the time I leave, but I hope to get another shot at the wuss version while I’m still here.
You can’t start a fire, you can’t start a fire without a spark
The next night I went with my friend Ele to Castello Sforzesco, ostensibly to watch her friend take part in some sort of saxophone-playing-dancing performance. When we arrived, there were no saxophones in sight, only a huge speaker and lots of people taking part in traditional Italian dancing.
We were convinced (rather easily) to participate, and the participants (ranging in age, but mostly older) were really nice about teaching us the steps, though each time I felt like I was finally getting the hang of it the music changed. The dances were of a wide variety, some in couples, some in large groups, winding in circles or lines. Later on, there were even some Irish numbers and possibly even southern US line dancing. And at 2 am, just when it seemed like everyone was tired out and ready to go home…they didn’t. Instead, we moved to deserted Galleria in Piazza del Duomo, where things continued for around another hour.
Night gathers, and now my watch begins
But one late night? Pfft! Why not make it two? Saturday, I went with some of my friends to Vernasca and Vigoleno, two small towns in the Piacenza region of Italy, not too far from where I did the wine thing a couple weeks ago. We were there for Notte dei Briganti (Night of the Brigands), a night hike along a path through the hills historically populated by thieves (the Kingsroad!). The ticket included the organization of transportation and some food before and after.
Michele came prepared. It made us all feel safer being under the protection of a real member of the Night’s Watch.
Before setting off, we had our snack, and walked around the castle town for a bit.
We began our hike around sunset, heading through the hills. As night fell, the full moon rose (I think the event was scheduled like this intentionally, but I’m not sure), resulting in beautiful lighting of the hilly landscape. Unfortunately, my iPhone doesn’t have a night setting or shutter speed adjustment, so I can’t really show what it looked like, but, trust me, it was quite pretty. Once you got far enough you could even look back and see many flashlights moving through the darkness. And at many points there were lots of fireflies, adding to the magic.
Finally after a solid 8 kilometers, we got to the end, where we were served our dinner and waited for some of our comrades, who had fallen a ways behind us. It was around 3 am, and we were pretty tired.
Going medieval on your asses
The following day we decided to do a few more things before going home. First, we went to Grazzano Visconti, a well preserved medieval town with lots of little shops selling medievaly things. There was one shop with really cool weapons and armor replicas from movies. A lot of Lord of the Rings stuff, but my favorites were the sword from Braveheart and the mask from Gladiator (which I wasn’t allowed to take a picture of).
A short prehistory lesson
Next, we went to an archaeological site of a prehistoric settlement. It was the one day of the year when re-enactors make the village come alive and show how stuff was done then.
There was an archery practice range for kids, but at the end when they were packing up to go we convinced the really nice experts to let us practice with the real-person bows.
After that, before we caught the train home, we stopped to dip our feet in the river for a few minutes.
And so, another week in the books. I officially have less than a month left as of a couple days ago, so I’d better use my time wisely!
Cibo, Letto, Doccia, Pelliccia
This post is dedicated to the memory of my first rock hammer, Sam Rockwell, tragically lost in action on the scoria-covered slopes of Mount Etna on Wednesday, June 12, 2013. May another geologist come across Sam and take him as his or her own, allowing Sam to once again gracefully smash things into tiny bits.
Basically, cibo, letto, doccia, pelliccia was our motto while out all day hiking around, because all we wanted to do was come home and eat, sleep, shower, and curl up under a fur coat (or one of those awesome Night’s Watch cloaks). The other title of this post was going to be When in Sicily, Don’t Necessarily Do as the Sicilians Do. You will see why soon enough.
As part of my Volcanology course this semester, I was required to do six days of field work in Sicily on and around Mount Etna, an active stratovolcano. I caught a flight from the Bergamo airport (my first Ryanair flight!) to Catania, where I met some of my classmates and we rented a car to get around for the week. Etna dominates the landscape and can be seen from pretty much everywhere.
One thing I really worried about for this trip was the extent to which it would be mostly in Italian. None of my classmates who speak to me frequently in English were coming on the trip and the professor tends to prefer speaking in Italian. I was pretty worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the geology nor communicate well with my classmates. It turned out to be a great opportunity for all of us, because I got to practice a lot of Italian, and my classmates got to practice their English. I think we all improved over the course of the trip. Additionally, the trip combined my class and a class from another university, and in that class were a few really nice students who spoke English well and helped translate things for me anytime I had trouble.
The first three days of the course were instructional, with the professors showing us various stuff around Etna. The first day we stayed fairly low on the volcano, looking at lava flows and tubes (a really cool one that went under the highway).
The thing that I love about active volcanoes is seeing stuff that’s new. Most parts of geology involve looking at rocks that are millions of years old. It’s a largely unfathomable length of time. But many of the structures we looked at on Etna were really recent, like from the 2000s. Some of these structures are big, and just ten years ago, they weren’t there at all. I think that’s amazing!
We spent the later part of the day looking at Monti Silvestre Inferiore, a scoria cone whose formation involved some phreatomagmatic activity (I have to include some technical jargon for my geo-nerd friends!). I like that some people arranged the rocks in the crater into a : P face.
So, the working title…Normally, whenever I’ve gone anywhere here in Europe, I’ve done everything possible to fit in. Eat what everyone is eating, do what they’re doing, etc. Here I hit a wall. Don’t do what the Sicilians do when doing what the Sicilians do involves eating about 3-5 times your normal dinner portions every day for a week. I think I’ve already discussed the multi-tiered dinner structure in Italy, but in Sicily it’s taken to the extreme. Everyone eats two or three servings of pasta first. And not sissy, “maybe I’ll take some more later” portions. We’re talking full-on “my eyes must be bigger than my stomach” portions. And after that you actually eat dinner. As you might guess, I tried to keep up, and ended up pretty sick for a portion of the trip. Moral of the story: Everyone else has been training for this their entire lives, not you. Don’t be a hero. It is possible to have too much of a good thing.
Anyway, back to geology. The second day was largely (in my opinion) wasted on doing a hazard assessment of a seismically damaged house. An interesting activity, but one that could’ve been done in a few hours and was instead dragged out for the entire day. Basically, we looked at a house that was collapsing due to fault activity and had to decide who was to blame, the geologist for not noticing the evidence of danger or the engineer for building a crappy house. In this case, the geologist was the culprit.
The third day of the trip was definitely the highlight for me. First thing in the morning, we took a gondola much of the way up the volcano and walked around up high for most of the day before hiking back down. We also encountered ridiculous amounts of ladybugs. Apparently they hibernate on volcanoes because of the heat or something like that, but it was quite strange.
We hiked to the east where we looked out into the collapse heading into the sea. It was like looking off the edge of the world!
From there, we hiked back around the southern side of the crater, with the fog rolling in, and looked at some steep scoria-covered slopes. To get back to the parking lot, we had to run down said slopes. It was a lot of fun, but, alas, this was where Sam bounced out of my holster, and by the time I noticed, it was far too late to turn back.
At the end of the day, we made a quick stop at Aci Castello, a sea town with a castle perched on some cool lava rocks. And also, you know, the sea, relaxation, and granita (a frozen Scilian treat sort of like what Americans would call Italian Ice—not the rock!).
Finally, the second half of the trip was dedicated to the real reason we were there: mapping lava flows and pyroclastic deposits. We broke into groups and each mapped an area of land downslope from the volcano. This involved a lot of walking down roads looking for small outcrops. And of course, what would a mapping trip be without trespassing in the name of science? We did our fair share of fence hopping, sneaking through cherry orchards, and running from angry dogs (sometimes they were behind fences, sometimes not).
We also had to stop to ask people if we could look at outcrops on their property or if they knew of anything interesting around. We encountered a problem common when geologists interact with laypeople, a non-understanding of some geologic concepts, like geologic time and the importance of finding outcrops (as opposed to just loose rocks). For example, one woman told us, “I haven’t seen lava here and neither did my grandfather, so there has never been lava here.” Another man spent a long time showing us the basalt blocks in the walls on his property.
When we asked one couple for help, they invited us onto their patio to have coffee with them. The man even picked us some cherries from his orchard to eat. And if I understood their Italian correctly, they even apologized for not being able to offer us lunch! How’s that for Italian hospitality?
One thing that bummed me out was not seeing any real signs of activity during the trip. Luckily, at the end of the last day, we noticed some smoke rising from Etna. Not much, but it’s something.
And that was it. Or was it? Bum bum bum! Actually, the plane flight home was probably the coolest flight I’ve ever taken. We flew over the Tyrrhenian Sea just off the western coast of Italy. We sat on the right side of the plane and got a great view of Italy the whole way back. A lot of Italy’s geography is really recognizable, even from high up, so we were able to identify the Strait of Messina (with the eastern collapse zone of Etna in the bottom right corner), Stromboli (I thought I saw an orange glow from erupting lava, but it was probably my volcano-crazed imagination), and the Bay of Napoli with Capri, Vesuvius, and Ischia.
While I was a little disappointed that we didn’t spend more days actually on the summit of the volcano, it’s always a good exercise to practice geologic mapping, and anything involving an active volcano can’t help but be awesome.
Now that I’m back in Milan, I’ve got five weeks left. In that time, I have to finish all my exams and hopefully find time for at least another short trip or two–I haven’t been to Venice or Rome yet!
The Highway’s Jammed With Broken Heroes on a Last Chance Power Drive
Everybody’s on the run tonight but there’s nowhere left to hide…
But more on that later.
The last couple weeks have been a mix of busy and not. I had one exam that I had to study for, which went pretty well (I think/hope), but other than that, it’s just been a period of doing fun things with friends around Milan at a leisurely pace.
A while ago, we spent the day in Parco Sempione, the park located behind Castello Sforzesco. The weather’s finally been improving, and it was a beautiful day to relax and picnic on the grass.
A couple days later, there was a big free concert in Piazza del Duomo. The place was packed, much like when I saw the Rugby match in France a couple weeks earlier. Though the band, Kasabian, is pretty well known, I’d never heard of them before. I wasn’t the biggest fan of their music, but it was still fun being there with so many people. One thing that I thought dampened the experience was that the band made no attempt to interact with the crowd in Italian. Rather, they yelled various (sometimes complicated) things in English, which the crowd didn’t seem to understand.
This past weekend, I went with some friends to Ent la Bora, a wine “festival” of sorts. The event takes place in Donceto, a tiny village outside of Piacenza. And I mean tiny—there are only 31 inhabitants, most of whom own vineyards.
One day a year they open their houses and invite anyone to come in and try their wine and food. You get yourself a cup and some tickets and wander around the village, trading the tickets for wine. Any food you come across is yours for the taking.
Also, there was (what I assume to be) traditional Italian music and spontaneous dancing to said music.
I’m not particularly competent at assessing the quality of wine (I do it mostly on a scale of “I like it” to “I don’t like it” to “It tastes like vinegar”). Additionally, since most of the descriptions from those managing the casks/bottles were in Italian, mostly I could only discern whether the wine was rosso or bianco (red or white), secco or dolce (dry or sweet), and frizzante (sparkling) or not. Still, it was fun to try the different kinds.
Once it got dark, the event sort of transitioned into a street dance party and then a barbecue.
Of course, one of the highlights of the last couple weeks had to be seeing The Boss at San Siro stadium (where Milan and Inter play soccer/football) with my friends Alessandro, Giulia, and Michele. The concert was sold out at somewhere between 60 and 80,000 people, and boy were they excited for Bruce. Milano apparently has a history of exciting Springsteen concerts, and though we in NJ like to claim we’re his biggest fans, I think the Milanese definitely give us a run for our money. In sharp contrast to the concert I described earlier, Bruce made a really big effort to speak a lot of Italian during the night, and the audience clearly appreciated it.
San Siro’s acoustics aren’t the best, but it sure is a pretty view, with the Milan skyline hovering above the stage in varying degrees of light (the Duomo is even visible if you look hard enough, though it may be too hard to see in my pictures). Great fun was had by all, with Bruce playing for around three and a half hours, including a full run though of the Born in the USA album, and an encore that had the audience dancing and shouting and clapping to an Otis Day and the Knights classic and singing along to Thunder Road.
Maybe it wasn’t something I can only do in Italy, but it was probably a better experience for having done it here. If you check out this folder on dropbox, you can see some of the videos I shot (more for giving an idea of the experience than for the quality or completeness of the videos): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zsymt7ce5a9olzb/UXfKfCzvrE
Classes end this week. This weekend I fly to Sicily to spend the week doing a class mapping project on Mount Etna. Fingers crossed for some activity!
Ici! Ici! C’est Mont-fer-rand!
Last week I had the opportunity to go back to Clermont-Ferrand in France, the place I was for about a month late last summer, to do some research for the thesis I’m going to work on next year in Michigan. While it’s a relatively simple six or seven hour trip by car, it’s quite a bit more complicated by public transportation, requiring a bus to Lyon and then a combination of trains and buses the rest of the way. All told, I left my house at 6am on Friday and didn’t arrive until 9:30pm. Luckily, the route through the Alps was incredibly scenic.
My first day in CF was what is apparently called a “field jolly day”. Basically, it means you go out in the field and hike around but just to look around for fun—you don’t do any actual work. In the morning I met Ben, my sort-of-adviser, at least for the French part of my work, as well as two guys from New Mexico Highlands University who would be working with us for the week, a professor, Mike, and a master’s student, Adam. We visited the three sites we’d be working at during the week, Lemptegy (the site for my thesis research; first 3), Puy de Dome (next 3), and Puy de Gravenoire (last 2), all volcanoes in the Chaine de Puys.
After all the hard work, I had Sunday off, so I spent the day with some of my friends (who I met last time I was in CF). We drove a ways outside of Clermont to Lac Chambon, near Saint Nectaire (where we did in fact stop for cheese). We had set out with thoughts of beaches and swimming, but when we arrived, it was freezing, windy, and raining. We decided to hike around the lake first and put off the difficult decisions till later.
When we made it all the way around the lake, the weather had improved slightly, though it was still pretty cold. After a tiny bit of discussion, we all agreed that it was time for a swim. It turned out the water wasn’t nearly as deep as we thought it was, and also pretty freaking cold! Nonetheless, a good time was had by all.
But then it was Monday and time for “work” to begin. We spent the first day and a half working at my area, Lemptegy. You may look at my pictures from the site and think, “that doesn’t look very much like a volcano. It looks more like a mine or a quarry!” And you’d be forgiven for that thought, because Lemptegy was turned into a quarry, which was active until just a few years ago. The result is that when you walk around the site, you can actually see everything that was on the inside of the volcano, which is pretty rare. It makes it much easier to understand what went on under the surface, and much easier to study both the rocks that cooled underground and the ones that were erupted.
For my research, we basically needed to collect samples of both lava flows (erupted igneous rocks) and dikes (igneous rocks that didn’t reach the surface). We did this for some of the flows by just breaking off large pieces, but mostly we drilled a whole bunch of cylindrical cores in the rock, and (after taking some measurements) collected them in little fabric sample bags.
Granted, this being France, every day was sort of a field jolly day! For example, one day we took a particularly long lunch break to search for a mysterious lava lake and “ice holes” Ben had heard rumors about. We hiked around in the woods for a while until we found them. The ice holes didn’t have any ice in them, but they were still pretty cool lava tubes.
We also bought our lunch every day from what Ben hyped as the “best bakery in Clermont-Ferrand”, and I’m willing to hype as “the best bakery ever.” Generally, I’d say I prefer the food in Italy, but when it comes to bread, the French are the masters. We Americans like to think of ourselves as the kings of bacon and similar meats, but do we bake lardons and chorizo into our loaves of bread? I don’t think so! I think it’s high time we started!
From there, it was time to work on the Puy de Gravenoire, another volcano with a particularly awesome dike that interested us.
Our final working site was the Puy de Dome, a large lava dome right near CF, for which this entire region of Auvergne is named. The weather wasn’t very cooperative here, with a mix of cold, rain, and even hail making our work more difficult. But we persevered and got everything done.
With all our work done, I had my final day in Clermont free to do whatever I wanted. And, as it happened, that Saturday was the day of the Heineken Cup, the European rugby final, in which the local team, ASM, was playing. While the match was played in Dublin, the city set up a huge screen in Centre Jaude and (supposedly) 40,000 people gathered there to watch. It was a lot of fun, even though it ended in disappointment when Toulon staged a second-half comeback and ASM couldn’t capitalize on a last-minute scoring opportunity.
And that was it! I was surprised at how productive my trip was despite not working particularly hard, but I was able to collect all the samples I needed and now have a much better understanding of my project. I should be in good shape to start the lab work in the fall at MTU.
As of yesterday, I’ve officially reached the two-month mark in terms of time left in Italy. It’s amazing that things have gone so fast, but I’m not done doing things by a long shot! I’ve got a lot of stuff to do before I come home, including finishing classes, exams, my class trip to Etna volcano, and hopefully a trip or two to other places I haven’t been. Time to redouble my stuff-doing efforts!
Stairways to Heaven
As I get closer to the end of my time in Europe, I’ve noticed that a great deal of my free time the rest of the way is going to be occupied by France, Etna, and exams. This adds a little bit of a sense of urgency to my attempts to travel, as I’d like to get to a few more places while I can. Luckily, a rare day of nice weather coincided with Labor Day (at least, the labor day that basically the whole world celebrates except the US.), so I took advantage, got up nice and early and caught a train to Cinque Terre, an area of Liguria famous for its hiking paths and seaside villages.
Cinque Terre is really a series of five seaside villages on the western coast of Italy that are connected by numerous scenic footpaths. Ideally, you could hike south along the sea through all five villages in one day (well, ideally you’d have more than one day), but unfortunately due to a series of major landslides in 2011, many of the footpaths are still closed. Luckily, the national park pass included a train pass that let me take a five minute train ride between any of the villages whenever I wanted.
Monterosso al Mare
I arrived in Monterosso a little before lunch. After buying my park pass, I looked around the town for just a few minutes and then set off on the path to the next town along the line, Vernazza. Structurally, Monterosso is the most normal town of the five, built on flat ground with nice beaches running along the coast and with a more modern section. At this point in my travels, I basically take it for granted that even in the smallest of towns there will be a nice church, and none of the towns in Cinque Terre disappointed.
Path to Vernazza
The path to Vernazza, the only one open, luckily was the longest of the trails between the town, a fairly strenuous 1.5-2 hour hike high up along the rocky coast. Most of the time traveling with friends is more fun, however, on this particular trip I didn’t mind being on my own because it allowed me to move very fast and never stop for breaks. I can’t say most people enjoy the rapid pace at which I do my tourism. Still, the path was narrow and I spent a lot of time stuck behind tours of old people and German students. But the views were really incredible.
Vernazza
Vernazza was my favorite of the five towns. Built on a tiny peninsula sticking out into the sea, it had a pretty harbor and cozy, narrow streets. There’s also a castle I was able to go to the top of to get a look out in both directions along the coast.
Corniglia
At this point, I could no longer take the footpaths between the towns (at least, not the quicker seaside ones), so I grabbed a train to the third town Corniglia. I feel kind of cheated in this regard, because looking at pictures of the town on google I see that the view hiking into town from the north is pretty spectacular. The town is perched high on a cliff, but isn’t so visible from a distance from the south, so I found this town the least impressive of the five. There really wasn’t anything to see, so I didn’t stick around long before I caught another train.
Manarola
Manarola was probably the second nicest town in terms of the views I got and had a really nice harbor. After walking through town, I found a path that I thought led to an overlook, but was actually the start of one of the higher-elevation trails that led back around to Corniglia. I didn’t realize this for quite a while, and the path just kept going, but finally the law of diminishing returns started to apply to the increase in view quality relative to amount of elevation I was gaining, so I decided to turn around and go back into town.
Riomaggiore
The southernmost town in Cinque Terre was the last one I visited, and I was greeted by a mural that was pretty appropriate for Labor Day. I was pretty tired by this point. I know the one hike I did itself wasn’t too long, but I had to cover quite a bit of vertical ground in every town, especially on the long climb I did in Manerola, and all those staircases really start to get to you after a while. Riomaggiore was no different, and I climbed the road and stairs all the way to the top to get a view before coming down to check out the harbor, where I climbed out on the jetty to get a good shot of the town.
Back to Monterosso
With that, all that was left to do was head home. To do this, I had to stop in Monterosso to switch from the local to the regional train to get back to Milan. I had a tiny bit of downtime to head to the beach and walk around a little more.
All told, it was a really fun trip, and if you only have a day, you can definitely do it the way I did and have a great time. Ideally, though, I would love to spend two or three (or even four) days in Cinque Terre. In the end, I did about 7 hours of traveling for 6 hours actually doing stuff, and it was a little stressful to worry about getting it all done in time to catch a train home. I imagine many of the towns look beautiful in the fading light, and it smelled like delicious fresh seafood everywhere, so I’m sure it would be great to have dinner on the water. There are also quite a few of the trails above the towns that I would have enjoyed hiking if I had time (plus the seaside trails if and when they reopen them).
Fascism Sucks! Boo Fascism!
In Italy, April 25 each year is Festa della Liberazione, a commemoration of the liberation of the country from fascism/Nazi Germany (you’re welcome.). It’s a public holiday, so most people had off from university/work. April 25 also happens to be my friend Alessandro’s birthday, so he organized a hike/picnic with a bunch of our friends in Varese, a region of Italy to the northwest of Milan, near the Swiss border.
Our destination was Parco Regionale Campo dei Fiori, which is a low mountain in the Alps surrounded by lots of nice lakes. In order to get there, we took a train to Varese, and then two buses and a funicular to get to the start of our hiking trail. Along the way, we stopped for lunch. We all brought our own food. This being an Italian picnic, however, there was an abundance of food to share around as well.
Once we were done using public transportation, we hiked a relatively easy, incredibly scenic path winding around to the top of the mountain. Despite the fact that the weather had been pretty horrible the week leading up to the 25th (and has been horrible since), it was a beautiful sunny day without a cloud in the sky.
Once we got to the top, we set up blankets again and did the birthday celebration part. And what would a birthday celebration be without carrying several cakes to the top of a mountain?
Little did we know that the real adventure was ahead of us. To get down, we took a different trail meant to bypass all the buses and funicular and lead straight to the train station in a different town. The trail was significantly more strenuous than the one we had taken up. It was steeper and pretty rocky and uneven, leading down through the woods.
I’m all for a good hike, the only problem was that none of us really knew how long the trail was or exactly where we were going, so there were many times we thought we were almost there when we weren’t even close. We also had a large group and got pretty spread out since everyone was walking at different paces. It was like the beginning of a horror movie—lonely path through the woods, encroaching darkness, splitting into smaller and smaller groups—all that was left to happen was for the bears/mutant squirrels/velociraptors to close in.
Luckily, we all made it to the end mostly no worse for wear and in the waning light we caught a train back to Milan. Quite a long and fun day!
As I mentioned, the weather has been absolutely terrible here lately (and will continue to be, according to the forecast). I’ve been trying to plan a day/two day trip to various places, but most of the trips I’d take would involve walking around outside all day and wouldn’t be too much fun in the rain. Hopefully I’ll be able to get something in one of these days. In the meantime, only two weeks till France!
Bonus Round! Naples (sort of)
After getting back to Napoli Garibaldi train station, I had some time to kill before my train back to Milan, so I decided, against the advice of several friends, to walk around the city for a little while.
I didn’t have a map, and my phone internet wasn’t working, so I didn’t go too far for fear of getting lost (it’s a lot harder to keep a good feeling of where you are in a lot of these European cities because they’re not on a grid). Basically, I saw a big church off in the distance and decided to head for that.
First thing I noticed: crossing the street is dicey business. There aren’t many crosswalks, and those that are there aren’t very reliable in terms of cars stopping when you have the green light. Hence, I saw people crossing the street all over the place. Basically, the best strategy is to wait, wait, wait, and then sprint across as soon as there’s any opening. In the end, for safety, I decided to just follow Neapolitans when they crossed the street.
Eventually (though it was more difficult than I expected), I found the church I was looking for, revealed to be Chiesa Santa Caterina e Formiello. I’m not sure of the importance of the church in terms of history or usage (I know it isn’t the Duomo, which I’ve seen pictures of and is very nice), but it was a little dull and dreary compared to the secondary churches of other big cities I’ve been to like Milan and Florence.
But all the same, it was open, so I went inside.
The inside of the church was also very dark and a little dull.
After that, I walked around outside the church where I found a big archway that is Porta Capuana. As you can see the people in the picture, the arch was pretty damn big.
After that, I spent most of the rest of my walk trying to find my way back to the train station. I was willing to detour along the way if I saw anything noteworthy, but I didn’t pass anything, so eventually I made my way back to the station.
I know it isn’t fair at all to judge a city based on the area around the train station (like you’d never really spend any time showing someone the area around Stazione Centrale if they came to Milan), but overall I wasn’t too impressed by what I saw in Napoli. In contrast to Milan where I feel like the street is always being cleaned, the sidewalks in Naples were littered with trash and cigarette butts and there were piles of garbage in all the piazzas. The architecture was nothing special to speak of, and the city was pretty hard to navigate.
Again, probably not a fair assessment, but that’s what I’ve got for now. I should probably go back and see the nice things there one day, but I don’t think I’ll have time to do it this time around. Maybe on a return trip to Italy.
Va Con Carne 