Benvenuto a Ospedale San Raffale

This afternoon I headed to Ospedale San Raffaele (OSR) where I will be working.  My collaborator was going to meet me "at the station" of the light rail at OSR, so I figured getting there would be easy.  I took the metro one stop, then looked for the light rail to OSR.  However, I didn't realize that one didn't "exit" the metro to take the light rail - but then I saw the signs and headed back in.  At the lightrail my ticket was refused a few times and I came to the conclusion that I had to buy a different ticket to get on the lightrail.  Ok, no problem.

I successfully met my collaborator who showed me around the labs and then to the office area.  We chatted about the ongoing research projects, I met many people whose names I will not remember tomorrow, and then I started exploring the software installed on the simulation computer.  I feel like I made some progress today, in only a few hours!

Then it was time to head back to the light rail... I managed to get off the elevator on the correct floor and backtrack my steps.  I was in some underground tunnels for awhile, then into the main hospital area.  I actually made it to the rail station on my first try - there are painted colored stripes on the floor, so all I had to do was follow a line, really.

OSR is very large - it is a hospital and a medical school/research institute.  In many ways it reminded me of the Stanford Medical School, where I worked for 3 years.  There is one atrium area that is effectively a church, which Stanford didn't have.  I'll get a better picture of the stained glass when the sun is shining.

Tomorrow morning I get to see if I can backtrack my steps to the office.  At least I now know (I think) the right way to get from the metro to the light rail.  In my confusion today I had left and then gone back in - apparently this was a problem!  I assumed that it would be fine since it was at the same station and in such a short period of time.  But when I went to leave the station on my way home, my ticket wouldn't let me out.  My ticket is a "one round trip" ticket per day, so the system was fairly sure I had already taken my round trip.  I got to have another conversation with my terrible Italian, attempting to explain to the metro employee what happened.  I couldn't really explain the details of what happened, or understand the details of what he was saying.  He finally gave up and just let me through.  Hopefully I do better tomorrow!