Best for Last!

I am so glad that Venice is the last city I am seeing in Italy.  I've been here for about 4 hours, but my brain still hasn't accepted this place.  I've seen old and beautiful Italian cities, but this is certainly a different category.  I see why everyone talks about it the way they do - Bologna is beautiful, Genova is historic, Milan has a neat church... but Venice is Venice.

The train ride in was interesting.  The train was incredibly hot - I was so happy I had bought a bottle of water before boarding.  I was genuinely concerned that I was going to be ill from the heat.  I watched the mountains and tried to sleep a little.  I ended up feeling inspired to start the paper that I plan to write next week.  I was in the midst of typing as we left the penultimate station and started crossing the water.  Venice isn't a coastal city - it is islands.  So, the train passed sailboats on its way into the station.

The station itself is right on the grand canal.  I paid for a 2-day transit pass (which costs as much as a Monthly transit pass in Milan) and got on one of the water buses.  It was neat!  There were a few ways to get to my hotel - I chose the path that had the longest boat ride, which took me through the majority of the grand canal.  I felt a little pressed for time since the hotel reception desk was slated to close within 30 minutes of my expected arrival, so I couldn't explore on my way to the hotel.

The guidebooks warn about getting lost in Venice, and I took them seriously after my experience in Genova.  I thought I was doing ok, following the map provided by the hotel, until I realized that I had actually gone in a circle.  My cell phone struggles to know exactly where I am, but Google maps does an excellent job with street names and detailed walking directions.  Google got me the rest of the way to the hotel.

I'm staying at a very small, boutique-style hotel - I think there are about 8 rooms total.  Venice hotels have a reputation for being small, dirty, and expensive - but this one is amazing!  The location is good, the price was reasonable, and the room/hotel is very nice.  A couple were checking in before me - it was interesting to listen to the hotel employee tell them about places in Venice.  They spoke Spanish, so the employee was speaking 95% Italian with a few Spanish words thrown in.  When it was my turn I started the conversation in Italian, but he switched to English.  After a bit - my responses and questions were in Italian - he switched to Italian.   I knew I picked a good place when the receptionist told me (out of nowhere) about a great used bookstore and the hotel had left books (along with chocolates) on the bed!

My blood sugar was crashing from eating light today and the train ride, so I knew I needed to head out and find dinner.  The receptionist had recommended a few restaurants, but I knew that reservations were probably needed.  I opted for the easy thing and found an easy-to-get-to restaurant that I could reserve online. 

I again took a water bus (I only needed to get across the canal) and tried to find the restaurant... This time Google was no help.  Luckily, I had left very early and succeeded in wandering in circles until I found it.  I had an amazing fish dinner and succeeded in speaking in Italian the entire time.  The waiter even asked me where I am from, where I learned Italian, etc. 

After dinner I decided to take my time and wander through the city and the way back.  Multiple people have recommended to see the canal at night and to let myself get lost in the alleys.  However, maybe these two things weren't supposed to go together!  Many of the small alleys (there are no cars here, so everything is pedestrian-scale) dead end at canals.  And there are also many passageways under buildings - some are not well lit.  At one point I almost walked right into the canal!  I'm sure I wouldn't have been the first.

On top of all of the other amazing things here, the night sky is incredible.  The stars aren't quite at a "middle of nowhere" level, but I cannot even remember seeing stars in any of the cities I have visited so far.

I still haven't planned what I am going to see and do the next 2 days - there are more possibilities than I can possibly fit in.  So far, I do regret being so tired.  I only got about 5 hours of sleep last night - I had gone to dinner with some colleagues from the hospital.  It was fun, but I hadn't appreciated that Italian dinners could go to midnight.  It was a bit rough to get up for my 7:30 AM Italian lesson!  So, I need to get some sleep tonight, but I do wish that I could stay out late (wandering around) and get up bright and early. 

Venice has already brought me one heartache - my favorite artist (Damien Hirst) has a new major installation project here.  Unfortunately, it opens next weekend.  While I hadn't wanted to travel next weekend, I am tempted to come back to see it.  It opens on Sunday, which is more difficult.  I had looked to see if any of the galleries or museums in Milan had anything from Hirst - while not currently, he previously had a piece in the Fondazione Prada.  While his work was no longer there, I loved Fondazione Prada! 

Off to bed for me - I'm excited for what tomorrow will bring.   Probably more boat rides, some fancy churches, and lots of Italian-speaking!  

Finally, Venice!

I'm about to catch a train and head to Venice.  I have this evening in Venice and all of Saturday and Sunday.  Originally it looked like there would be rain this weekend, but it has fallen off the forecast now.  It has been an incredibly busy week, so I haven't succeeded in planning any aspect of the trip (other than hotel and train).  I have an hour before I head to the train station, so I now will "cram" from my guide book.

My trip to Italy is drawing to a close, which is a strange feeling (and which my mind sets to the song "Gethsemane (I only want to say)" from Jesus Christ Superstar).  2 weeks would be a long time for a vacation, but 2 weeks from a major move is not a long time!  This feels much more like the second situation: I need to eat the food stored up in the fridge and cabinets, figure out packing, and wrap up projects at work.  I had my last Italian lesson this morning, and this trip to Venice will be my last big trip.  I might do a day trip next weekend, but I think I will have too much to wrap up to attempt more.

Obviously I'm excited about Venice, but my mind is largely on work right now.  I made some great progress on my primary project over the past few days, but I am still a few simulations from seeing whether everything is working very well or only somewhat working.  My other collaboration has reached the point of a paper draft - I plan to work on my section on the train to Venice.   In addition to these two projects (near the end stages), there are 2 more simulation project for me to get started on!

My Italian collaborator is now back at the hospital and we had an incredibly productive conversation this week.  It turns out that he and I have both had an interest in the same (very specific) idea for some time.  It would be completely novel, and we both had some specific suggestions for different things to try.  I've written an (unsuccessful) grant application on it before, but in our conversation we ended up on a modified idea that I am fairly excited about.  I'm eager to get started on the simulations - the Monte Carlo data would serve as the initial data in a future grant application.

I won't be taking my laptop to Venice (in order to work on simulations...) since past trips have shown me that I do stop thinking about work once I get on the train to somewhere exciting.  But it is nice to have research going so well.  Not only do I think I can have a second paper submitted before I leave Italy, but we have 2 major collaborative projects going where my simulations will be paired with experiments done in Italy.  Along the way we've encountered some interesting questions that I'd like to explore in more detail.  One would be a stand-alone simulation project that would certainly yield a paper - and that could be really good for an undergraduate student to work on!

It is nice to have so much promising science to think about, but I better start planning my Venice trip... poor me! (-:

Back to Lake Como...

While I didn't feel up for traveling this weekend, the pope is visiting Milan.  I expected that this would bring crowds and chaos and that I wouldn't want to head into the city.  Faced with staying at home all weekend, I looked into heading into the mountains... after some recommendations from my Italian instructor, I decided to stay on Lake Como and booked a hotel from my cell phone.

I'm currently in Varenna, which is half-way up the lake.  I left work a little early and was able to see the scenery from the train (before the sun set).  After checking in to my hotel, I wandered the streets.  I love ancient mountainside towns - it is difficult to tell what paths are meant to be roads and what ones are sidwalks/alleys... all of which incorporate stairs!  My plan for tomorrow is to take a ferry to Bellagio.  There are villas with beautiful gardens both here in Varenna and in Bellagio - and the weather is supposed to be 70 degrees.  It is supposed to begin raining tomorrow evening, but I hope to have a nice day tomorrow. 

The last time I was on Lake Como, I was in Lecco in January and it was freezing!  Now there are flowers in bloom, even though I can stll see some snow on the more distant mountains.  Tourist season begins tomorrow - yet everything felt very empty here, which was a bit surprising for a Friday evening.  There are some tourists around - British, American, Russian.  Hopefully things will still be quiet and peaceful tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to a relaxing day tomorrow - I've been exhausted all week, but the magical combination of mountains, lake, and ancient streets should re-energize me!

I've earned a break!

I started my paper on Saturday and made good progress sitting in a wonderful cafe (that caters for foreigners who want to work in a cafe).  On Monday I sent the first draft to my collaborators and on Tuesday I sent the next draft... which was close to a "final" version.  I ended up staying until almost 8 PM in order to get it done, and there were a final few details I wasn't happy with.

With a few final e-mail exchanges yesterday and today (Thursday), the paper has been submitted!  We'll see what the reviewers say.  I'm very happy to have turned it around so fast and to have it be relatively "easy" compared to past papers.  It still might get rejected, but we'll have to see why, if that is the case.  We might need to expand the data and make it a bigger paper, for instance.

After submitting the paper, I tackled the core of the simulation that is supposed to be my primary project.  I've been struggling with a very specific aspect, but finally had a few breakthroughs yesterday and today.  My breakthroughs actually involved reading papers on chicken meat.  I have some strange Google Scholar searchers in my history now.  So while I told my colleague (yesterday) that it might take me a few weeks to run a certain simulation, I actually was able to run it today.  I have data - in a way, I'm done!

Part of me feels like I'm really on a role with this simulation work (which is why I'm still going at 9 PM...), but I'd also like to take a break.  Luckily, a friend is coming to visit for a few days!  This might actually be my favorite weekend of the whole trip.  I get to show someone around Milan like it is "my" city.  Having a friend here means that I can do a bunch of things that are super awkward for me to do on my own, like go in fancy stores or go out to dinner.

With a month left of my trip, I've submitted a paper and made great progress on a number of my research projects.  My Italian is vastly improved and I've done a bit of traveling.  I even had one of my Italian colleagues compliment my outfit today, so that might be my biggest achievement.  Now I get to have a fun few days and wait for the response on the paper!

Cimitero Monumentale: Pictures of one particular family grave

I spent a few hours back at Cimitero Monumentale today and managed to see just about all of it.  I even saw a cat and some lizards!  Most importantly though, I saw this:

I'm not entirely sure if this is information on how to contact the aliens, or a note for when the aliens land.  Either way, Dan Brown should stop making things up and just write all of his books about Cimitero Monumentale.

A Very Successful Saturday Morning...

My haircut went well.  I did feel bad for the stylist, who was excellent but didn't speak English.  I think I was able to communicate all of the important things and certainly waked out with better hair!

The internet is a magical thing.  When I search for things in Milan (or other cities when I am traveling) I use Italian or English based on what type of information I want.  If I want to know the mass schedule for a church, I search for that in Italian - it will take me to the official page fastest.  But when I want tourist-type info, I look in English.  So, it occured to me that I could search for "best cafes to work at in Milan" and that I could find American-style places.  There are many great places in Milan!  Many of them aren't like coffeeshops in the US, but some of them are much better.

I am currently in a place called "Coffice" where you pay an hourly rate that includes a pastry/snack buffett and unlimited coffee/water/tea.  The internet is great!  I've been having more and more problems with the internet at my apartment, so simply having good WiFi is worth the cost itself.  However, I think the rate that I drink coffee/tea and eat pastries also makes this a really good deal.  I would come back frequently, except it is on the other side of the city!  There is a cafe called Upcycle that is more convenient that I will check out next time.

Not only am I happy with the location I found,  but this is also the first time I've tried to do serious work on my tablet.  I bought the tablet for this trip but I haven't used it as much as I expected.  I am giving it a chance, and it is really shining!  Typically I write all of my documents/paper/presentations/etc in LaTeX, but the plan is to submit this paper to a journal that doesn't except LaTeX.  I'm typing the draft in a Google Doc.  Using Dropbox I can refer back to the papers and code that I have been working with on my "real" laptop.  I'm happy that this is working - and that I don't need to haul my gigantic laptop around to do a little work.

Of course, I am much more comfortable working in Linux than in Android.  Within an hours, I decided I needed emacs (a text editor).  It is what I use for everything, and the Dropbox text editor just wasn't good enough for looking at code.  So, I've installed a terminal program and emacs on my tablet.   Now I just need to figure out how to make the Dropbox App and the Terminal App talk to eachother...

Upcoming Adventures!

The longer I am here, the more tame my adventures are becoming.  Mopping my floor has become much more frequent, especially when I have a minor cooking failure and cover my kitchen in splattered oil.

Tomorrow I am taking the fast train to Verona, where I will meet with two collaborators.  We are discussing the project that was supposed to be my primary focus, but which has made the least progress.  Hopefully meeting with them in person will help!  I'm not sure if the lack of progress is because the project depended on me pushing it forward (and I've invested my time on other projects) or if it is a communication issue.

Obviously, it would be silly to take an hour-long trainride for a single meeting, so I'm spending most of the day sight-seeing in Verona.  I've also printed some papers out to read on the train.  I feel so much like an Italian Business-person: taking the Frecciarossa to another city for a meeting and working on the way.  I'm even sitting in one of the fancier cars!

Because of the Verona trip and a late-evening meeting on Friday, I don't have any exciting travel planned for the weekend.  However, my biggest adventure yet is scheduled: getting a haircut!  This has been a few days in the making, but I hadn't yet succeeded in entering a salon to make an appointment.  I asked a colleague for a salon recommendation today, and she even called and made the appointment for me.  First thing Saturday morning, I will get a haircut!  Yay!

Why is getting a haircut such an adventure?  Well, I have no idea if the stylist will speak English or not.  My colleague did not warn them about my poor Italian skills when making the appointment.  I know that I am not the easiest salon client in the US, given that I know very little about the terminology for things and I am fairly flexible about what I want.  Stylists never quite know what to do with me.  Am I really as flexible as I claim to be?  How adventurous should they be?  What do I actually mean by "short"?  I am not too worried for my haircut, as much as I feel bad for the stylist who will be communicating with me Saturday morning.

After the haircut, I don't quite have plans.  I could take a train to one of the nearby towns, spend the day in a museum in Milan... or work. I'm at the point where I can write up one of the projects I've been working on, and I am tempted to try to write the paper in one day (it is a short paper).  This would be more tempting if I had somewhere nice to go and work at, rather than sitting in my apartment.  The places where one drinks coffee in Italy are not Starbucks-esque, where one sits and works for hours by oneself.  

Cenacolo!

Yesterday I went and saw DaVinci's Last Supper (called Cenacolo in Italian).  Given that it is painted on a wall, it is in a stand-alone museum.  It is somewhat impossible to get tickets.  Groups of 25 people are let in for 15 minutes, so the number of tickets are exactly specified.  They release 3 months of tickets at a time, which are not that affordable, but immediately snatched up.

Given that I hadn't jumped on getting a ticket when they were released, my only option was to buy a ticket through one of the tour companies in Milan.  Either you can book a tour that includes the Last Supper, or you can buy a spare ticket to only the Last Supper.  The tour companies only release the tickets that haven't been bough for full tours at the last minute...

I bought a last-minute ticket (which has a bit of a markup) and took the afternoon off.  The picture was painted on the wall of what became the refractory of a monastery that was (is?) associated with Santa Maria delle Grazie.  The church itself, which I looked at beforehand, was very lovely.  (As far as I can tell, all churches in Europe are lovely)

The Last Supper has an interesting story.  Because of the experimental technique used, it degraded more quickly that normal frescoes.  The attempts at "fixing" it over the centuries were mostly bad, so the most recent restoration (lasting 22 years) mostly removed all of them.  The goal wasn't to make the image look "like new", but to return as much of it as possible to Da Vinci's original work.

In order to further preserve it, the room has been sealed off and carefully temperature and humidity controlled.  There are a series of airlocks to enter the room, which is why visits are so limited.  There is another amazing fresco in the same room, but that gets a lot less attention (and was not by Da Vinci).

The building itself was bombed - directly - during WWII.  Um, by Allied bombers... The building was destroyed, but the frescoed wall had been protected by scaffolding and sandbags.  Yay Italy, saving the art!  Booo, Americans, bombing the art!  In the picture below, the bright white is the plaster of the new building constructed around the wall.

Anyways, The Last Supper was incredible.  It is very big, which is part of why it makes such an impression.  It is a whole wall... and a big wall.  It really does look 500 years old, but it is also more clearly a masterpiece than other old frescoes that I've seen.

Like Jesus Chris Superstar, but with less singing.

For scale, the dark rectangle under Jesus is a door that the monks added.  It has been since bricked up, but the monks seriously cut a chunk out of the art to add a door.

A few pictures from Prague

The Spanish Synagogue - incredibly beautiful.  In the Jewish Quarter of Prague.

Detail of Spanish Synagogue.

At the Old-New Synagogue, which was built in 1270.  It is the oldest Syanagogue in Eastern Europe (and possibly all of Europe).

Old Town Square and Tyn Church.

St Vitus Cathedral, surrounded by the Prague Castle.

Wenceslas Chapel in St. Vitus.  The walls are made of precious stone.

The stained glass in this cathedral was especially stunning, and my camera cannot do it justice.

Nice window, but also check out the ceiling!

One outside view of the St. Vitus Cathedral.

View from the castle.  Note the communist TV tower in the background.  The green dome is at the Church of St. Nicholas - where I later climbed the belltower.

Strahovsky Library, at an old monastery (near the castle).  

Picture of the Charles Bridge, from the belltower at the Church of St. Nicholas.

Random building in Prague.  This is how fancy random building are - people probably live here.  Perhaps insurance is sold of out it.

The church shown here isn't anything special - just the random small church you find throughout the city that isn't in the guidebooks.  Check out the fancy-looking building on the right: again, some random un-notable building.

Hardest thing so far: Cleaning

There have been a number of things I have done this trip that make it clear I'm "living" here, and not simply on vacation.  First, I got an Italian SIM card and a monthly pass to the Metro.  I've never had a monthly Metro pass anywhere before!  I've listed my address (here) on a few forms.  I've done lots of laundry in the apartment, and even got dry cleaning done.

Finally, today, I cleaned the apartment.  Well, I tried.  The entire apartment is in tile, which means I needed to mop.  I knew where the mop was, but I couldn't figure out what to add to the water.  There are a variety of cleaning products, but none of them seemed mop-appropriate.  I went with dish detergent... which seems to have worked ok. 

I know mopping shouldn't be ridiculously hard, but this was.  I'm used to only mopping small areas, and I typically use a swiffer.  So easy.  The last time I needed to mop a large area, it was when I worked in retail in High School!  Mopping the entire apartment meant I had to be clever about moving furniture from one room to another and doing parts at a time.  It took hours, which is part of why I've lived here for 6 weeks without mopping yet.  In Atlanta, I typically vacuum at least once a week.

Without cats, perhaps I wouldn't need to clean frequently here, right?  Oh my gosh, no.  I couldn't understand why dust built up so quickly here and why there was so much of it.  But... the heating here is from radiators.  In the US, I've always had central heating - so as air circulates, the filters on the HVAC system grab a lot of the particles in the air.  Here, it all settles to the ground.  Dust bunnies appear overnight.

I clearly need to mop more frequently, but it is hard to find the time.  I decided to stay in Milan this weekend since it is Carnevale here - but it is pouring down rain, so I might not actually leave the apartment tody.  I felt exhausted yesterday, and actually went to bed around 7:30 PM (!?).  This meant I could sleep as much as I wanted, set no alarm... and still get up before 9 AM.  I'm happy that I have enough time to both do a massive amount of cleaning and to get some work done.

At least I know myself...

A few people teased me for bringing small baggies of spices with me to Italy.  Interestingly, there has been a spice (mustard seeds) that I didn't bring with me and that the local supermarket doesn't have.  Many of the spices I brought I used commonly (whole cumin, fennel), but I also brought fenugreek leaves.

My movitation was thus: one day I will be hungry and not know what to cook, but I will have fenugreek leaves.  I will look up a recipe that uses fenugreek and I will make it.

That day was two days ago.  My fenugreek leaves are gone and I made a very tasty Indian bean dish.  Of course, the fenugreek leaves (purchased at an Indian market in Georgia) and other seasonings were the only legitimate "Indian" part of it.  I used canellini beans and an Italian type of flatbread (piadina).

I'm terrified of volcanos

Apparently Mt. Etna, in Sicily, is erupting.  It is an active volcano, so this isn't particularly noteworthy.  The headline is that this is the "first time this year" it has erupted - but we aren't yet 25% through the year.

Let it be said that I am nowhere near the volcano, nor will I go anywhere close to it.  There is water between Sicily and me (ie, the rest of Italy) and I plan to keep it that way.  I had been thinking of flying to the South of Italy (but still on the right side of that protective water...) but I might not, if Etna is still erupting.

I may climb up bell/church/castle towers, despite my fear of heights.  However, that is only because I can rationalize that if the tower has survived however many hundreds of years, it is not going to suddenly collapse.  Rationally, volcanos are terrifying.  Liquid rock travels in the direction opposite of gravity - clearly all rules have been broken and I should stay very far away.  Hence: no need to worry about me, I've taken care of it!