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!