Moderate Success at Departure

Taxi: Success
I found an App so that I could request a taxi without calling anyone.  It showed up on time, I think I didn't forget to do anything when I left the apartment (I was nervous I'd forget to leave the keys), and there was no traffic getting to the airport.  I had just enough Euros to pay the cab, though I think I could have paid via credit card in the app.

Bag Check: Almost Success
I arrived so early so that I couldn't check my bags right away.  When I did go to check my bags, I succeeded in convincing (easily) the gate agent that I could check 2 bags for free because of my Elite status on Delta.  Awesome.  He even thought that I should pay a lower fee ($60) than the system was saying ($85).  Awesome.  But then I had to go to a different desk to pay... where they actually knew the rules and said that I had to pay $240 for the bag.  Ouch.  Note that while these conversations all started in Italian, I switched them into English so that I could be convincing as possible.  I failed.  I'm mostly bitter that they wouldn't accept American Express.

Now I am at my gate, charging my electronic devices and downloading some music on the WiFi.  The next challenge is a short layover in Paris, where I need to go through EU-exit border control.  If I miss my second flight and end up trapped in Paris, I'll have time to blog about it!

Summary of my Leave, as a list of lists

Scientific Progress

• One article submitted (project started during leave)
• One article in preparation (project started last summer)
• One article in preparation (project started during leave)
• Data collected for new simulation project
• Experiments planned for (another) new simulation project
• I've mastered an aspect of Geant4 I haven't used before
• I've read a lot of papers about two different topics, tangentially related to my past work and central to the current/future papers.  Basically, I've gone from knowing nothing to 'a lot' on two new topics.
• I've read a number of papers related to my past work/ongoing projects and gotten caught up on the literature of my specialty.

Cities/Towns I've visited

• Milan
• Lecco
• Genova
• Oxford, England
• Bologna
• Bergamo
• Prague, Czech Republic
• Varenna
• Bellagio
• Venice

(I should make a list about museums, churches, and art exhibits I've seen - but that will be too hard to do quickly off the top of my head!)

Cheeses I've eaten

• Valtellina Casera
• Piattone - Delebrio
• Rosa Camuno
• Bitto (I really liked this one)
• Robiola Bosina - Caseificio Dell'Alta Langa (my favorite)
• Toma
• Taleggio
• Some sort of goat cheese from a street market, but I didn't get its name
• A variety of unknown cheeses at restaurants and in the dining hall

Major Achievements, other than science

• Acquired a level of Italian that could be called 'conversational', in that I have had many conversations in Italian (a few lasting an hour or longer).
• Tried a variety of different regional foods and learned many aspects of Italian culture
• Learned to make two different pasta recipes
• Visited Eastern Europe
• Learned some history.  I think I actually understand why the churches in Milan look different than the churches in Venice, for instance!
• I am going home at the same level of debt (credit cards, student loans) that I started the trip with.

Goodbye San Raffaele

It has been sad to say goodbye to everyone at San Raffaele - and with the Easter holiday, there were goodbyes spread out all week as people left early.  The feeling of "leaving a place that feels like home and saying goodbye to everyone" is very familiar.  However, I am confident that I will return to Italy in the future - and hopefully see many people again!  There is a fall conference in October (in Naples) that I hope to attend, and I hope that I can return to San Raffaele next summer and during my post-tenure sabbatical.

Beyond the knowledge that I can come back, I've also cheered myself up by thinking about India and eating a mango.  I'm almost done with packing (at least, what I can do now), so I plan to walk around the city tonight and see the Duomo one last time.

San Raffaele has a small zoo, with monkeys.  I learned this on my penultimate day!

What I've learned about Italians

1. Italians really like dogs.  Dogs are everywhere.  There are a ton of dog-friendly parks in Milan, which is good, because I've seen what the sidewalks look like in cities without dog parks (Genova).  Dogs go in stores, dogs go in cafes, dogs go on the metro, some dogs appear to be living in bars/cafes.  They are most small dogs (for small apartments), but occasionally there are some big ones.  There is a dog clothing store closer to my apartment than a human clothing store, and I don't even live in a rich/yuppy part of town.
2. Italians care about San Remo, but not Eurovision.  This is perhaps on too small of a sample size... but some of my colleagues got the San Remo-winning song stuck in my head.  I found out it is the Italian representation at Eurovision this year and told my colleagues that I would watch and cheer for Italy.  However, they had no idea what Eurovision is.  Even after I explained it.  I might as well egregiously extrapolate: Italians care more about competition within Italy (and between Italian cities/regions) than between Italy and the rest of the world.
3. While many aspects of the driving are questionable, they are very respectful of pedestrian and cyclists.  I'm always careful about walking out in front of cars, even in crosswalks, but I find people always stop here.  Even when I'm not about to walk out into the street, cars stop.  I've seen others walk in front of cars that are going fairly fast, knowing the cars will stop.  People may drive way too fast on my tiny little residential road, but I've seen no issues with pedestrians or cyclists.  
4. Italians are (seemingly) not upset by people speaking their language badly.  Initially, everyone was very willing to speak to me in English at the hospital.  Once they found out I spoke some Italian, they spoke to me in Italian.  They don't seem to mind that my Italian is terrible.  I met up with my Airbnb host, and the same thing happened.  After I demonstrated an ability to hack my way through some Italian, we ended up speaking entirely in Italian.  Consistently, people have demonstrated patience with my poor Italian and occasional need to switch to English - not just people I know at the hospital, but in stores as well.  
5. They have a lot of rules, but few of them are taken very seriously.  It took months to sort out the legal paperwork for me to be at the hospital, but I never received a badge or e-mail or anything.  When using the Metro, one must scan the ticket both to enter and leave.  But, I've witnessed many people jump the turnstile (without any of the guards blinking an eye) and found that I could argue myself through the one time I made a mistake.  Recently they had us start signing the lunch tickets - I think to regulate the fact that many non-students are using them.  All of us non-students sign them... but nothing changed.  

What I've learned about myself in Italy

1. I can learn a language if I invest 3 hours a day.  A few weeks ago, I really felt like I was thinking in Italian and was happy with how quickly my language skills were progressing.  However, this past week has been much worse!  Before, I started my day with a 90 minute lesson and my brain started running in Italian.  I ended my day with (typically) 90 minutes or more of homework.  Now, the 10 minutes of review is nowhere enough!  It is like a part of my brain is no longer functioning.  At least I know what it takes for me to really get to a place where I can speak a language!
2. I'm a good scientist!  My graduate school experience was a bit unusual, and then I skipped the whole "post doc" step.  While it is no surprise that I have a bit of "imposter syndrome", I've lacked a certain confidence or exuberance for my research over the past few years.  The past 3 months have shown me that I have a strong skillset and I have good ideas.  I have read papers on a variety of new topics and even thought "well, since no one else has predicted/measured/calculated this value, perhaps I can calculate it from first principles".
3. I will never have free time.  This is my first attempt at "leave", and while I did the "go away" part correctly, I didn't quite nail my time management.  In particular, I really thought I would get much more done than I actually could!  On the bright side, I've been sleeping like a real human being.  One day I did the calculation, and my work schedule and Italian lessons (with homework) was justifiably taking up my entire day.  It isn't my fault my "side projects" weren't getting done, there are just not enough hours in the day.  
4. When I buy pastries for breakfast the next day, I eat them as soon as I get home.  Oops.

(I've leaving off the things I learned in the past, like my love of bitter Italian drinks, my love of Italian food, and my love of trashy Italian music)

Organizing Papers...

I really hate organizing papers.  I love Zotero, a program that manages references.  It syncs across multiple devices and interfaces very nicely with LaTeX.  I have used it for a long time, so I have a lot of references saved in it.

Unfortunately, I've never mastered organizing references beyond putting them in Zotero.  I made "collections", but not in a way that has been helpful or useful.  For instance, I made a subfolder in the collection (folder) that corresponds to my main research topic.  I called this folder "recent", because at one point those were new papers on the topic... a few years ago.

But beyond the references is the issue of the papers themselves.  In graduate school, I typically printed the most important papers.  This was especially useful for making notes by hand, my preferred method.  But, how do I organize those printed papers?  How do I remember if I printed it already?  And do I really want to take those big binders with me when I travel...

When I graduated I ran into a new problem: I could no longer access journals.  I didn't save many papers, because I could always go back to the online journal and access them there.  But I had that access through Stanford!  While Agnes Scott has access to some journals, I cannot directly access the majority of papers that I need for my research.  The library is able to get the papers for me, but there is a delay and a cost associated with it.

Now that I am at a major research institution, I have been able to access most papers that I need.  I've downloaded all of them, so that I could access them later.  But how do I organize them on my computer so that I can ever find them again?  The papers I already had typically ended up in many different places and I could rarely find what I needed.

The obvious solution is to create some sort of folder structure and then associate each file with the Zotero reference item.  This way I can use Zotero to search and organize, but then I still have a copy of the paper when I lose journal access.  Perfect!... except that at the hospital, my laptop cannot access the internet.  This means that I've been using other computers there.

While I've read (in many cases, skimmed) well-over 100 papers, I haven't saved any of them to Zotero.  Oops!  I have 5 days at the hospital left, so I really need to make good use of the journal access right now.  But it turns out, I hate this step.

I'm going through all of the PDFs that I have saved and am pulling up the journal website on my computer to save the reference to Zotero and then associate the file.  I have to do this at home, where I have internet.  But I'm also trying to look for the important references that I already have in Zotero that I don't have a file for and then getting the file.  But this has to happen at the hospital.  So while these two tasks are related, I can't do them in the same place.

I've sunk many hours of work into this already, and I am maybe not half-way done.  There are entire topics that I've forgone creating Zotero references for since the papers aren't associated with my current projects (but are important for a future project).  I really dislike this task and wish it wasn't needed.  Viva open access publishing!

Goodbye Venice

  My amazing trip to Venice has come to a close. 

Last night I went to the bookstore and found that it had been recommended to so many people, and it is considered one of the top 10 attractions in Venice.  I would have enjoyed it more had it not been quite so crowded.  There was almost an organizational structure, but it was mostly a pile of books on another pile of books... etc.  I didn't succeed in finding anything to buy, which is probably for the best.

After the bookshop I wandered into a section of Venice I hadn't been to yet.  There was one long road with many bars and small restaurants on the canal.  This seemed to be the place to drink beer as a 20-something year old, but I succeeded in finding a fairly quiet trattoria and had a nice dinner on the canal.  Of course, I was quite cold by the end and was a bit concerned about my cell phone battery lasting me long enough to find my way home.  I succeeded, of course, and was happy to have a good night's sleep after walking over 10 miles that day.

Today I had two goals: (1) see St Mark's Basilica and (2) to La Fenice.  Since it was Sunday, I couldn't get into St. Mark's until after 2 PM.  Hence, I started with La Fenice.  It is Venice's opera house, and therefore one of the most important opera houses in the world.  It was absolutely beautiful - and there was a nice audioguide walking us through the history.  While the opera house is well over 100 years old, it had a major fire in the 1800's and another in the 1990's.  Hence, it is newly refurbished - but a serious attempt was made to restore it to the original condition.  Maybe one shouldn't start off by naming a building after a creature that repeatedly catches fire (fenice=pheonix).

After the Opera House I still had a few hours to spare before St. Marks would open.  I hopped on the water bus with the intent to a stop or two past St. Marks to see a new part of Venice.  I didn't know what I would find, but I hoped to get a reasonably good lunch farther from the main tourist area. 

The first thing I found was the Maritime Museum, which appeared to be closed.  However, there was a "ship's pavilion" that was open - and that was amazing.  They had a range of boats on display, including Venician canal/lagoon boats, military boats, and fishing boats.  They had the steam room of a large freighter - reading the sign, I learned this was the ship where Marconi perfected his radio techniques!  Neat!  I love boats, as do the Venicians. 

After the big room-of-boats, I found a Sicilian restaurant for lunch.  It was good and took the right amount of time.  I got to St. Mark's square just as the church was opening.  The Basilica is big and the inside is covered in phenomenal mosaic work.  I think this is the style that the Stanford Church was trying to copy!  The treasury was filled with amazing Byzantine treasures and an incredible array of relics.  However, the main area of the church was very crowded - there was only a single path for tourists to snake through, so it was hard to stop and get a really good luck at things.

However, the Basilica has a huge museum upstairs that provides amazing views (close up!) of many of the mosaics.  It was fairly empty, including the loggia that overlooks the square.  I enjoyed having more space and time to enjoy the church, which is certainly on the same level as Milan's duomo, but in a very different style. 

Finally I wandered back to the hotel, getting back a bit earlier than necessary.  I headed down the Piazza and discovered a NASA/ESA-sponsored art exhibit!  Pictures from Hubble were mixed with space-inspired Italian artwork (made for the exhibition).  It felt like a very poetic way to end my trip to Venice, an appropriate symbol of the synthesis of my time in Italy: beautiful science and beautiful Italy.  

Venice! Che bella!

I've spent my day touring churches, as I typically do.  I woke up to church bells and was very thankful for the goodnight's sleep that I got.  After a shower and breakfast, I picked a church and headed on my way.  It was lovely, but I think I am starting to get "churched out" after 3 months of the world's most beautiful churches.  This church had a lot of really great art, including a work by Donatello, work by Titian, and Titian's tomb.  Obviously I don't know very much about art, so I don't fully appreciate the subtleties in the different Italian paintings of religious iconography.

I ended up eating lunch at a trattoria that had been recommended by the receptionist at my hotel.  I had lasagna with fish, mostly because I had no idea what to expect.  It was good!  The sauce was a creamy-bechamel that has seafood infused throughout (think creamy chowder), rather than big chunks.  From there, I walked past the Peggy Guggenheim collection and along the water.  At there end there was a beautiful view of a variety of islands, St Mark's square, and San Giorgio - a monastic compound taking up almost the entirely of an island. 

I hopped on the water bus and went to San Giorgio.  The church was ok, but there was a belltower with incredible views.  Unfortunately, it was required to take the elevator - I didn't get to climb the stairs like normal.  Next to the monastery is the Venice Sailing Club (I think) and I oggled the sailboats for awhile.  If I won a billion dollars, it would be very tempting to live on a sailboat here.

I left the tranquility of San Giorgio and took the water bus to St Marks Square: tourist central.  I did a bit of shopping, saw a minor church, and then went to the San Zachary church.  This place was quite interesting - while other churches have paintings on the walls, this church has huge oil paintings completely filling the walls.  They also have an old crypt, which is half-filled with water. 

Strangely, the highlight of my day was seeing a big jellyfish in a canal.  I feel quite bad for it - I'm not sure that jellyfish would want to be in the canals of Venice.  It was eye-opening for me to realize that these canals must be salt-water since the Adriatic Sea is right  there.  These aren't like the canals back in Milan...

With my time in Europe nearing an end, I am going into gift-purchasing mode.  Today, I bought a suitcase-worth of gifts (and they weren't all for me...).  Given that I was already worried about how I was getting things home, I also bought a suitcase.  I need it to just get things back to Milan, but I had planned for some time to buy a European-sized suitcase.  I may have some ridiculous baggage fees in my future, and I'm still not sure I will have enough space!

I'm back at the hotel, letting my cell phone charge and enjoying a pot of tea.  The breakfast room also doubles as a coffee/tea room in the afternoon.  While espresso isn't available, I can sit and have tea and pastries.  I will head back out soon to wander the city more.  Most churches are going be closed, so I don't know how many more I will see.  I do want to see St Marks, which is incredibly impressive from the outside.  Unfortunately, it is in an ocean of tourists.  If I can't get in today, I will make it a priority to go tomorrow.  Otherwise, I do just want to wander and let myself get lost.  It was a pain to navigate the alleys when I had a lot of shopping (and a suitcase...) but it is a pleasure when unburdened.  The challenge will not be to do much more shopping!  There are so many interesting shops here (masks, jewelry, art, glass, paper, leather goods...) and I haven't yet made it to the recommended bookstore.  I can't buy much more before I need a second suitcase just to get back to Milan!