Monthly Archives

January 2015

Good by from J-term 2015 – Pretty Fly For an Italian Guy

“You have five minutes to harvest all the organs.” I couldn’t have said it better, Dwight. But actually…

Welcome, one and all to what very well could be the last major installment of your favorite blog abroad! Or at least I assume it’s your favorite. It’s your favorite, right? You know it is, don’t lie. So let’s get down to business to summarize this trip. Did we spend it moving or just in Florence? It’s been busy days full of good stuff, but you can bet before we’re through, somehow I’ll make an Italian out of you. If any of you realized what I just did and managed to sing that last bit, you’re probably qualified to write this blog from now on.

Moving along the small streets of Sienna

Yesterday we took a trip to Sienna in the morning and then headed up to San Giomignano. Lucky for us the time of departure was taking a turn for the best since each day was starting progressively later. As you could have guessed, we drove a ways down to Sienna for what would be about 3 hours of touring and roaming. We met our guide by the entrance to St Dominic’s, the smaller of the churches of the city. By this point we were burnt out with all the tours we’ve been going on, so we weren’t too pleased to be given yet another headset to pin to our ear for the day. Nonetheless, we set forth for a relatively short trek. Our guide led us through the small, populated street which we discovered was the main road that led to Rome back in the day. Actually, Sienna is divided into 17 districts that all had their own horse racing teams. Each street had that district’s insignia above the street’s name so as to signify which zone people were in. The only zone that was completely neutral was the center of the city, otherwise referred to as the Campo. It’s in that square where the horse races are held, which really only lasts 75 seconds. All their rivalries depend on the outcome of that yearly race. A fun fact on top, for any of you who have seen Quantum of Solace (the James Bond movie), the horse race at the beginning is the one that occurs in the very same Campo.

Like a large zebra…

Anyways, we passed by the Campo to get straight to the Duomo. Duomo is the term Italians use for the main (and largest) church in the region. In the case of Sienna, it was positioned at the top of the hill so its dome was visible from everywhere in the city and from up there one could see practically everything. While it was a massive cathedral, it wasn’t quite St Peters massive. Still, it was pretty impressive. To save you time, I won’t go into detail about it, but rather you can admire the picture I took.

A large, spacious zebra

After perusing the cathedral, we took a route around the back to get a view of the valley. On the other side of the valley was St Dominic’s, so it was interesting to see where we had come from. Continuing around the back we came upon the baptistry of the cathedral. I’ve got to say, it seemed like a weird place to be, but oh well. That’s Italy summed up for you. Further down the hill we came back to the Campo. It was at that point the guide released us and as fast as hounds on the hunt, we ran off to find suitable meals and stores. You know how I mentioned the districts earlier? Well most of the stores in the area sold the flags of the teams and most of us bought one. The teams have flags with very strange animals on them, going from giraffes to porcupines and even to snails.

Once our time was up, we got back in the bus and journeyed north to San Giomignano (pronounced Gym – an – yano, referred to as San Jimmy John’s). It’s a terribly small city on the top of a well placed hill overlooking vast rolling fields and vineyards. As I was informed, the city used to have two powerful families that fought for dominance by building towers taller than the other’s. In its prime, it had 72 towers, but currently it has 14. Not only that, but it used to be an unknown city, but one day some guy put up an article on the internet and then tourists arrived in droves. Because of that, most of the shops lining the streets catered to tourists. Lucky for us, it was pretty much empty since this is low season, but during the summer it’s supposedly hard to move due to the packs of tourists.

A small city…

Well we spent 2 hours exploring on our own. Some people climbed the tower, others went off shopping, and others just enjoyed the view. It was a realllllllly nice view.

… with a grand view

Two hours passed by and we travelled to our nearby destination; a local vineyard where we would have a wine tasting. Our bus arrived at what looked like a gated villa, but inside the gate were vineyards and barrels upon barrels of what we could only assume was wine. We were led into the nearby house that was outfitted with a huge kitchen and large tables. I would guess they do this moderately often. But anyways we were greeted by our host, Luigi’s nephew. He explained the wines to us and instructed us in proper sniffing and drinking techniques that were quite effective. As we drank the wines they brought plate after plate of food that progressively got more amazing as time went on (not sure if because of the wine or just because it was good). Next to our plates they had a convenient note sheet where we could write down our thoughts. Even more conveniently, the other side of the note sheet was an order sheet for their wines. After that amazing tasting and meal, that order sheet was put to good use by everybody.

After tasting the wine, we all went straight to purchasing more

That wraps up yesterday, so let’s continue on to today. On this lovely Saturday we went through the Academia museum and then Florence’s Duomo. Like any other day, we met our guide in the morning and put on the headsets. We promptly set off for the Academia museum, which is the museum that houses Michelangelo’s famous David statue. There was a lot within the museum, but it was clear that the entire place revolved around that statue. David was completed when Michelangelo was 31 and it stands 17 feet tall. It’s fairly disproportionate since it was intended to be placed at the top of the building. You know how people make it out to be so super impressive? They’re right. It is.

Here we see the famous statue in its natural habitat

We spent a while admiring the statue and listening to our guide ramble, but then we got tired and left the museum. Proceeding down the street we came up to the Duomo. Like Sienna’s cathedral, Florence’s has a zebra striped pattern.

The zebra trend continues

Unlike Sienna’s, Florence’s has a supermassive, double dome made of brick. Until fairly recently, the secrets of its construction was unknown since the man behind it, Brunelleschi, was very secretive about his work. It was this very dome that we would ascend for the next hour. Its corridors and stairs were very narrow and, once at the dome’s actual bottom, forced people to share them with people traveling back down. It was a bit cramped to say the least.

A packed journey to the top

From the top, there was a spectacular view. We were lucky that the weather had cleared up after the last couple of rainy and downcast days, so we had a bright and sunny view of all of Florence. The top was fairly cramped with all sorts of people, but every now and then there was a clearing so we were able to snag some pics. All in all, we spent about 1.25 hours going up and down the dome at what seemed like a snail’s pace. It was fun but some people weren’t feeling good about those heights.

The bell tower doesn’t have anything on our height

You can see everything!

Well, that’s all folks! Tomorrow we head to the Galileo museum and then back to Rome for our flight. I might have a chance to update you all, but don’t hold your breath in case. We’re all pretty nervous about coming back because we’ll miss Italy but we’ll also be happy to return to the norm. I think most people’s list of “things to do” includes Chipotle, actually. In case this is the actual end, thank you all for following the blog! It’s been really fun all along the way. I also have to thank our professors Barbara Zell and John Walker for doing an excellent job, as well as the school and our coordinator Claudio. This trip has been an excellent time from every perspective. We’ll see you on the other side, folks!

– Chris Apfeld

January 24, 2015 by

Field Trips!

Marble. Marble Everywhere

“Expecting much gunfire in these caves?” Not exactly, but I couldn’t help but wish to see some classic dynamite mining.

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to crunch time in Italia! With very few days left, we’re packing it all in and getting oh so little sleep in the process. For example, today we took a trip to the marble quarry that Michelangelo got his materials from and then to Pisa for the famous tower.

Today started with another early expedition, and so we were all ecstatic about it. For around 1.5 hours we sat on the bus as the beautiful scenery of Tuscany flew by. It was then that we arrived at Cave Michelangelo, a massive and famous marble company. Our tour started with their cutting yards where they had massive multi-ton slabs all over the place waiting to be cut into perfect shapes. It was raining, as it often seems to do these days, so we rushed into their sculpting center.

A bit cluttered…

There were sculptures all over the place. Some of them were originals, others were replicas of famous works, but all of them were phenomenal. At the time there were a few workers happily working on their projects and packing up some to ship to customers. The building itself was fairly large and spacious, but they had art in every corner and covering every inch of the place, making it feel quite populated. Our guide led us around and explained some of the work and the processes they went through. I would repeat them to you but I’m afraid I’d mess them up and that I’ve forgotten some details since this morning. Promptly after that, the guide led us into the office where he showed us some of their sculptures locations across the world. These guys knew what they to say the least.

Since it was raining there was doubt that we would be allowed to head up into the quarry on the mountain, but we were given the go-ahead. We all expected to use some sort of off-road vehicle to get up there, but instead we discovered the bus would be our vehicle. If we thought the roads were a tight fit before, we were wrong. The mountain path was as tight as it could be, pushing our bus to the limit. At point we were doubtful the little bus could continue up the steep incline, but we were proven wrong time and again. That bus driver deserves an award for that display of skill.

So this is only one slice of their operations…

Finally we made it to the top and the view was impressive. Not only were we nearing the peak of the mountain range, but the marble cutting operations were a spectacle on their own. Layers upon layers of white marble with cutting machines and other vehicles all the way up. There’s not much I can do to express how impressive it all was. After a while of observation and some guidance, we hopped back on the bus for a bumpy ride down to get on the way to our next destination.

The main courtyard of Pisa and its tourist attractions

Some amount of time later we arrived at the outskirts of Pisa. From there we had to get on a bus that would take us right up to the main attractions. The moment we stepped off of the bus we were berated by salesmen trying to get us to buy watches, sunglasses, and handbags. We were happy to disappoint them all. Everyone made it onto the bus and over to the main square that contained a baptistry, a basilica, a graveyard, and the leaning tower itself. As per usual we received a guide who led us right to the graveyard. I must say that graveyard is probably the wrong term for what we were in. It was a spacious structure with a high ceiling and an inner courtyard. All over the walls were frescoes and in the ground were large, distinct rectangles of marble. It turns out that the Pisans were burying some of their dead in sarcophagi and others in the ground where they were marked by those large marble slabs. Each slab had some sort of inscription on it detailing who was there, and there were a ton of inscriptions all over the place. Pretty creepy…

Next came the baptistry. To be blunt, it was rather empty. It had two floors but we spent most of the time on the first floor. At one point an employee came along and gave us a demonstration of the acoustics. Every note she sung reverberated all over the building, so I’d rate it’s acoustics as super impressive. Outside the door and across some grass was the basilica. Its exterior looked like a large basilica and so did its interior. Compared to Rome’s basilicas, this was rather unimpressive to us, so it’s clear we’ve been spoiled. We took some time to meander and soon enough it was time to climb the tower.

It’s pretty impressive in person

From a distance the tilt doesn’t look like much, but up close it’s very noticeable. The tower was constructed in a couple of phases spread out by around one hundred years. It’s actually not completely straight because during the second phase the engineers tried to make it appear more straight by slanting the new floors slightly. To their dismay, the tower sank more and those efforts were all for naught. So now the tower has a banana shape to it if you look closely. For a banana tower, it was an awfully long way to the top, but we bolted up it nonetheless. Going up and down was a challenge because of the slant. Some of the steps were easier but most were more difficult to ascend. At the top there was a fantastic view of Pisa and the nearby mountains.

The view from the top of the tower was pretty impressive

We were only allowed to stay up there a short amount of time so we headed down after a half an hour. Retracing our steps we hopped back onto the bus and motored on back to Florence to prepare for tomorrow. Coming up we have our tour of Sienna and a wine tasting in the evening. It should be a particularly good day for all! Have a good one everybody!

– Chris Apfeld

January 22, 2015 by

Field Trips!

Maserati, Ducati, Lamborghini.. do Italians always end their companies with ‘I’?

Before I make this blog post, let me make a slight digression: internet has been so bad for me lately that I, and nearly everyone on this trip, has torn at least some part of their hair out and have already started the process of pre-mature balding. Don’t even ask me how Chris has been able to update the blog, I’m pretty sure he manifests internet out of thin air. Whenever we go to a hotel, us Americans like to do this thing that I call ‘hugging the router’. This, of course, sounds harmless at first, until the whole internet crashes in the entire hotel (sorry Naples). Anyway, on to what we did today!

We first got onto a bus ride that, by my standards, was driven by the best driver of all of Europe. If I stuck my hand out of my window as we passed the semi-trucks on the road, I could have easily taken whatever the other driver was eating right out of their mouth. Roads are very small, and I’ve never been so exhilarated riding a bus, it was like being at ValleyFair or Six Flags on a rollercoaster that you’ve never been on; dips and turns coming out of nowhere and you feel like you’re going to collide with an upcoming pole. Except this wasn’t a rollercoaster and we weren’t almost hitting poles, we were almost giving new paint jobs to trucks.

The exterior of their facility

Anyway, my inner engineer in me was so giddy with excitement that I made simliar noises to what I can only imagine a elementary school kid makes when he/she gets what they want for Christmas. As we pulled up to the showroom for Maserati, I hopped and skipped my way to the front door, to be greeted by very well dressed Italians who were more than happy to show me cars that I will probably never own.

Huddled around our favorite car

So here we are, in the show room! The show room contained four really cool vehicles, along with some weird off the wall paraphenelia that you probably wouldn’t guess would be in a show room. Such items consist of: Maserati headphones, Maserati belts, Maserati watches, Maserati shoes, and my favorite, the Maserati 400 Euro fountain pen. This is also where we would learn the history of Maserati and how it came to be today! After the show room, we headed to the assembly factory.

The factory produces only two models of cars: the Ghibli and the GranCabrio. Technically, this was the smaller of the two plants that Maserati actually has, but it was still a very large facility. Unfortunately we couldn’t take any pictures, but that isn’t much different than me taking the photos and not being able to upload them at all. But what we did see was really cool! We saw, basically, the beginning of the main chassis coming into the factory, the drive-train installation, electronic installation, and the final testing of the vehicles to make sure they are actually road worthy. It was especially awesome seeing so many Maserati cars driving around as well, because you knew exactly when one was coming down the road due to the sheer symphony that the car was playing with its engine (and to be honest, I feel like Mozart and Beethoven really have some competition). It literally stopped our tour guides from giving us tours so we could just stop and listen. Ferrari, who owns Maserati, really takes pride with what their vehicle actually sounds like, so this isn’t too surprise that the noise was able to halt 20+ engineers in their path.

As the tour came to an end, we all loaded our ways back onto the bus (slightly less exhilarating this time) and made our way over to the Lamborghini headquarters. A few of us actually got to drove Lamborghinis! I know, I know, that sounds really boring, but they looked like they had a blast and I only sort of envy them forever. After our stop at Lamborghini, we made our way to what was probably our largest lunch that we’ve had yet.

Those are what some of us drove

Unfortunately I sort of dozed off, so I don’t really know how we got there, but what I do know is that it was really delicious! The restaurant that we were at was actually a very special restaurant as well. It belonged to an organization that enables disabled people to be integrated into society better; through jobs, stipends, and education, they help integrate those who are disabled into society, which was a very cool thing to be in the middle of. The way this is possible is through the proceeds in which the organization gets money through. This includes: those who eat at the organization (us), the works that the disabled make and sell, and through the Italian government. It really was a cool little spot that served us great, and I really do mean great, food. The area that we were a part of is where lasagna originated from, and our courses consisted of: lasagna (go figure), some really different noodles that I’ve never seen before mixed with a really delicious combination of spices and pork, some of the best diced potatoes I’ve had here, fried meat of some kind (I’m really no food expert), and tiramisu to end it all!

Now after gorging ourselves into oblivion, we were off to Ducati next! If you have never heard of Ducati before, they are basically the sport bike brand in Europe. They win competitions, like a lot of them, and they take extreme pride in their bikes and in their drivers. They, however, didn’t have a showroom in the beginning of the tour like Maserati, but a really awesome museum afterward of all of the things that they have won ever (which is quite a lot, seriously).

Though Ducati makes a wide variety of sport bikes, which are definitely smaller than Maserati cars, their factory was actually significantly larger than Maserati’s. It also has a different demeanor as well: the workers looked intense, and seemed full with passion on what they were doing. There was also another huge key difference between the two factories too, and that was that there were significantly more women working in the factory. At Maserati, I don’t think I saw even one woman in the factory, where at Ducati, as our tour guide said, over 30% of the workers in the factory are women, which was really awesome to see!

Ducati, though known for their SuperBike and GP success sells a lot of crossover bikes as well. The way I would describe them is sort of hybrids between a lot of bikes, something that you cannot do with many cars. It’s pretty hard to make a super car like a Lamborghini also perform similar things as a SUV or pickup truck, but Ducati can make bikes that can be a roadster/cruiser/streetbike mixture. This is all done through the mechanics of the bike, along with electonic settings that the driver of the bike can tweek in order to fit to their personal needs. This is really the pull in most of Ducati’s sales, because they sell more of these ‘hybrid’ bikes than their street bike or sport bike models.

So many motorcycles

The museum that we visited afterward was obviously pretty self-absorbed, for Ducati’s sake. In their museum they had about 30+ bikes that had all won at least one race or one large event of some sort. The craziest part of this museum is to actually see Ducati’s roots, which, before World War 2, was in the market of electronic shaving apparatuses. It was amazing to see their timeline, in which their museum was built in a literal circle around, with bikes lined up on almost every year that was marked on the wall because they won at least one thing in said year. It’s truly merit to them how great engineering and a great driver can really pull together and make a company start from selling electronic racers to one that is one of the, if not the, staple in the motorcycle world.

So today was a busy day, and tomorrow will be just as busy as well! I’m sure Chris will have lots of things to say.

Also, this computer doesn’t have spell check so please don’t get chastise me if I spelled something wrong!

– Alex Manning

January 21, 2015 by

Field Trips!, Florence, Naples, Universities

From the North to the South

When I asked for a quote to start the blog like I’ve been doing recently, do you know what I got? I got, “Merry Christmas you filthy animal.” Thanks Claire. Tons of segues I can make out of that.

Well it’s been a couple of days since you’ve heard from us, and that can be explained. Sunday, as I mentioned last time, was a free day. Some people went back to Assisi, others to the soccer game, and others still to watch the Packers game. Nothing too special to dedicate a blog post to. Yesterday was filled with Naples activities, but unfortunately the hotel wifi couldn’t handle all 21 of us logging in at the same time, and so it broke. Our fault, for sure. Today we went from Naples to Pompeii, back to Naples, and then all the way up to Florence. I guess I’ll start from the beginning.

Early in the morning (by college standards), we gathered to say our goodbyes to Francesco, the best cook around. It was heartfelt and filled with handshakes and slaps on the face. We salute you Francesco. A couple of hours later we hopped on a bus and moved on over to termini station to board our train. The train ride only took about 1 hour, so it was pretty easy. Coming into the city we could see quite a lot of housing and small streets. While I may not have believed I could get a segue out of that quote at the beginning, it actually is a bit applicable to how I would describe Naples. Dirty. Normally the stereotype with Naples is that it’s full of crime, but if that’s the case then I couldn’t see any of that crime behind broken windows, graffiti coated walls, and all around dirty roads and buildings.

Long narrow streets seems to be their trademark

Once we had made it to the hotel, we were met by our local guide whose name I don’t believe anyone can recall, so in lieu of Gino, I shall dub her Gina. Gina was another college student studying restoration and was pretty quiet (probably because she didn’t know very much english). We embarked on what should have been a guided tour of the city with plenty of explanations along the way but it ended up being far more walking and very little talking. Along the way we stopped at a couple of churches with rather unimpressive architecture, but that’s most likely because we’re spoiled from being in Rome for so long. Gina took us through some back allies that were filled with wooden craft stores that had wooden figurines of the pope right alongside their favorite soccer players. Priorities, right? That took us pretty far out of the way and we eventually made our way back. Before we reached the hotel, we decided to stop at the local castle, which happened to be practically right across the street. From the outside, it looked like a typical castle with plenty of room for a moat. Inside, it also looked like a typical castle. There was a lane marked for entry and other for exiting, so of course we headed the way it lead us. Somehow it led us up into what looked like a court room but at the center was a small wooden box and a picture of some guy with a guitar. You’ve probably guessed by now that we did indeed walk in on a wake. People were crying over this guy and we awkwardly strolled through, not knowing who it was we had walking in on. It turns out the guy was a popular Italian musician who was from Naples. It was certainly an interesting experience…

You wouldn’t expect a wake in there, right?

After that aWAKEening experience, we skipped over to the hotel (some of us literally skipped due to losing a bet) and took a quick break. We didn’t have long before we had to head out for a local pizzeria on the other side of town. Since Naples is the birthplace of pizza, we of course had to learn how to make pizza. At the pizzeria, we were greeted by the staff and escorted to a few tables prepped for what was surely going to be a cooking disaster. Each of us received an apron and hat that read “Pizza school.” We knew right then we were destined to be professionals.

We all prep ourselves for an intense session

The owner of the establishment attempted to teach us how to make dough and some people caught on quickly. As for the rest of us, it was a bit more challenging than we had anticipated. A while and several attempts later, the employees gave us a premade dough and then we all began creating for real. We flattened the dough, added sauce, cheese, and veggies, and beheld our masterpieces. They soon began cooking pizzas for those that finished first, but for the rest of us we had to get by on the restaurant’s own pizza. When all had conceded or finished, we sat down for a full meal and wine. It was all great and probably made our work look completely foolish. Each and every one of us came out of that place with a diploma in pizza making, so it looks like we’re no longer engineers.

Ground zero of the pizza-tastrophe

One night of sleep later, we arrived at today. With another early start, we departed for the University of Naples in downcast and rainy weather. It was a ways out of our area and not particularly obvious. There was a point where the bus began circling the local stadium and we thought we were lost, but apparently the school was located directly next to the arena. The place was made up of a cluster of buildings and we headed straight to the back of them. Inside we were lead to a classroom that overlooked the architecture lab. In that room, we sat through 2 big lectures with the lengthier of the two lasting 1.75 hours. While the material was interesting, sitting there for so long was brutal. The professors explained their involvements in the restoration of places like Piza and local buildings too. After the lectures we headed into the labs to look at their equipment. They had huge machines that could crush with dizzyingly high forces and shake plates to simulate an earthquake. At the moment they had an arch set up for earthquake testing, but the test wasn’t scheduled for another 2 days so we didn’t get to see it in action. Instead, we headed underground to look at the supports for the lab, and that was just as impressive. The shake plates had their own suspended concrete floor that could move separately from the rest of the building so as not to affect the entire grounds by using the machinery. Let’s just say it must have cost a fortune to make all that.

The school’s entrance

Getting back on the bus, we headed south to our next destination, Pompeii.

We arrived around 3 and met up with our tour guide. It was at this point the rain started to come down more than it had been all day. She led us into the main entrance of the city where we had two stray dogs follow us in.

All in all, the city of Pompeii is fairly large, but only 70% of the city is excavated even though the excavation originated in the late 1700s. I could describe to you for pages what we saw, but I’ll give you a brief synopsis. The brickwork was old. Like real old. Like 79 AD old. Most of the main structures survived except for roofs and some walls, so it looks like a ghost town. The roads are made with large stones and have high sidewalks so that water could flow through the streets and people didn’t have to walk in it. Most of the roads were straight, but a few were curved. The general rule was that if you couldn’t see the end of your road, there was most likely a brothel somewhere on it. They had their own mini arena for fights and a theater for shows. The forum was large and open, like you would expect for politicians. Overall, it was an ancient dead city that was incredible to be able to walk through.

Our tour ended around 5 when the park closed, so we had to high tail it out of there. We said goodbye to our guide and hopped on the bus, headed back to the Naples train station for the next leg of our journey. The next ride would take us around 3 hours to reach our final destination: Florence. It was not more than an hour ago that we arrived, hopped on another bus, and headed over to our hotel that would accommodate us for all but one of our remaining nights. It’s got larger rooms than we’ve had so far but the wifi is spotty, so it’ll be a struggle to post to the blog or do anything electronic. Sorry.

A surprising amount of green

Well, that’s all for the past couple of days. Coming up tomorrow is our big day to tour some of the supercar factories, including Lamborghini. Did I mention a couple of us get to drive the Lamborghinis? Yeah. It’s going to be amazing. Stay tuned.

– Chris Apfeld

By the way, the internet isn’t working in my favor, so I’ll try and get the pictures to this and any upcoming posts up asap, but no guarantee it’ll work. It that’s the case, I’ll rectify that as soon as we’re within good wifi or back in the states. Sorry for the inconvenience.

January 20, 2015 by

Rome

Museums Galore

“Bold strategy Cotton. We’ll see if it pays off.” Our thoughts exactly 12 days ago when we first were put through the trials of Gino (similar to the labors of Hercules but with less physical requirements). Today marked the final day with our faithful guide as he led us through bits of the Diocletian Baths and the Roman National Museums. So here we go!

An early departure at around 9 in the morning, we all grabbed our headsets for what we hope was the last time. Those bulky tourist beacons have very annoying headsets. Our destination, the Diocletian Baths, were not far enough to justify a bus, so we headed off to the subway for a quick ride. It wasn’t long before some members of the group were left behind after not making it onto the tram in time. Eventually we reconnoitered at the appropriate stop and surfaced.

When the moon hits your eye like a big piazza pie…

Outside the subway station is the large, circular Piazza della Repubblica that had a fountain at the center around which traffic circled in the mad and unorganized fashion that is Roman driving. In front of us, the arching buildings. Behind us, a church. It wasn’t always that way, so let me explain. Way back in the days of Rome, that entire area was a part of the Diocletian Baths. The baths were a public area for Romans of all classes to clean themselves at any temperature they saw fit. The arching buildings I mentioned used to be walls at the entrance of the structure and the church was the tepidarium. As for the piazza, that, along with a massive square area on its sides, was a garden. Hard to believe, right? After the short explanation, Gino lead us into the church, properly named the Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri (let’s just call it the Santa Maria). As I mentioned before, it used to be the tepidarium, the room temperature baths of the complex. When the baths were in disrepair, Michelangelo redesigned the interior to be a large, highly decorative church which in later years was used by monks but is currently a regular church and tourist attraction.

The mouthful of a name for this church translates into the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs

But that’s not all. In 1702 a meridian line was placed in the floor and a hole drilled into the wall. That meridian line served the purpose of telling the date fairly accurately by having the sun hit the line at noon at varying degree marks corresponding to months and dates. At the end closest to the wall is an ellipse that was supposed to track and predict star movements, but unfortunately that one no longer works.

Some time later, we exited the building and walked around the block to the other side of the ruins to arrive at the entrance to one of the branches of the Roman National Museum. The first one we entered was the smallest. It had its own small security check but it was totally unnecessary. Inside were remains of statues, pieces of the original structure, and the frigidarium portion of the baths. There were two small squares that branched off but looked like they had received renovations. One had a well in the center and the other a fountain. The museum also had a strange modern photography exhibit for some odd reason. It didn’t exactly fit in with anything…

Around the corner was the frigidarium

We didn’t spend much time in there because there wasn’t a ton to see. About a block ahead of us was the next, larger branch of the museum. It had four floors with one of the four dedicated to coins. At that point, Gino took his leave and we all meandered through the museum at our own paces. There was a ton to see, but a lot of the same types of pieces like statue heads and mosaics. Some of the art stood out, but those pieces were few and far between.

Made by the quite impressive lost wax method

Impressive, no?

That pretty much wraps up our Saturday. Tomorrow is a free day, so nothing will be posted unless something extraordinary comes up. Monday marks a milestone in our journey. It will be on that day that we leave Rome, only to return on the night before coming back to the states. Now I don’t know how the wifi is going to turn out at our upcoming hotels, so I can’t guarantee posts will be regular, but we’ll do our best. Have a good one!

– Chris Apfeld

January 17, 2015 by

Rome

Villas and Aqueducts Abound!

Coo koo kachoo, what’s new with you? Why, thank you for asking! Yesterday we had been to the complete outskirts of Rome and back. First we went to a large, ancient Roman estate called the Villa Quintili and then followed it up with aqueducts and a massive food market. Sorry this is going up a tad bit late, I was one step away from completing the post last night and then the internet cut out on me. But anyways, let’s get to it.

The Villa Quintili is a large estate that contains everything a Roman could want like baths, personal water supplies, and their very own circus for racing. Sure, it may not sound like much to us today, but back then that was the top of the top and only the elite could own something like that. In fact, one of the emperors killed to obtain the property. Oh, what rascals those Romans were. So the villa sits right off of the main road, Via Appia, or at least the ancient portion of it. It’s on top of a small hill overlooking vast fields of wheat. From a distance, it doesn’t look any more impressive than, let’s say, everything else in Rome.

An interesting backdrop at least

Going up to the estate is a nice, brick and concrete pathway at a slant for small carriages and horses, which would be quite convenient to the wealthy. Up close inside the structure you can still see the mosaics and rooms that the main building of the estate covered. You could very easily get lost in it if you didn’t know where you were going. Since only a few rooms still existed somewhat in tact, there was little to no chance of actually getting lost since we could see across most of the area, but just humor my imagination, will you? I would have been able to paint a better picture for you if not for a certain photobomber *cough Cole cough*.

This would have been a great picture…

Anyways, the next portion of the villa was a distance aways since the estate was super spread out. The remains of the circus could no longer be seen, but the area set out for it was fairly clear. Trekking across the first large, open, grassy space we’ve encountered, we came upon the water storage. There were about 4 large stone “tanks” that an aqueduct poured into. They were each about 1.75 times the height of us and about as wide as jeep or so. Continuing further, there was a modern fence that guided us to Via Appia which was on the other side of a large set of bushes and a gate. Swerving to the right, the paths branched off, but in reality we could just see both directions to a loop that went through some building which for the life of me I cannot remember its purpose. I most likely can’t remember the purpose of that building because of a furry companion. While most of the group trekked ahead following Gino, another student and myself kept behind to get some attention from a local german shepherd. It was a shy dog, but eventually we got it to tag along with our group and play some fetch. I think sometime in the middle of our dog endeavors the tour ended and people started heading back.

Our furry companion in action

One brief bus ride and a coffee stop later, we arrived at a local park. It was relatively long, but short in depth with a strange concrete bump going through the middle. That bump happened to be one of the remaining working aqueducts and we promptly climbed it to discover the looming broken aqueduct in the distance. We had to reach it. Clambering down from the relatively small one, we hustled over to the massive one in hopes of scaling it. Alas, we could find no easy way to the top. But still, it was good looking.

Watery wonderland

Somehow in the midst of our adventure, Gino managed to find an ancient nail, mosaic piece, and some brick, or so he claimed. Good on you, Gino. We all marched on back to the bus and it was at that point Gino mentioned the affinity for drugs that park notoriously has. Some details are best left out my good man. Whatever, that couldn’t spoil our fun. The bus took us onward and upward to our next stop, Eatily! No, I didn’t spell that wrong. It’s really a play on Italy by using the english word for eat. It obviously catered to the english tourists. From a distance you would have thought it was a shopping mall because it was four stories tall and was more window than supporting structure. Well, it kind of was a mall, but everything inside was food! It was heavenly. On one floor they had breads and deserts, the next beers and pasta, the third fine drinks and spices, and at the top cooking schools and the fanciest of restaurants. In total, we spent an hour and a half exploring and eating our way through the building, but we could have easily spent far more time there.

Being done with the scheduled stuff, we trucked on back, had a small break, and then had our class. Mission accomplished. That’s all for yesterday my faithful readers! We’ll be back later today (or tomorrow depending on how late we’re out) with more chronicles on the adventures of our squad.

– Chris Apfeld

January 17, 2015 by

Field Trips!

Relaxing Thursday for the Crew!

Now that we’ve had basically every day walking miles and miles looking at the different wonders that Rome has to show to us, Thursday became a much needed lecture day. The lectures that we had were informative lectures by not only the students, but one of our much appreciated Italian friends on our trip, Claudio.

Claudio started his lecture at around 9 in the morning, and it consisted of a quick rundown of history of Ancient Rome to modern day Rome. This talk sort of mirrored our lecture that we received from the president of John Cabot University, but it swayed a little less from political issues and economic standings of modern day, and sort of put perspective on how Italy became what it is today. It was a very interesting lecture; learning the roots of a country different than your own is like opening a book that you’ve seen on the shelf, but haven’t read.

The latter part of the day, around 1 O’clock, the students got to present their own presentations as well. These presentations were based off of experiences had in Italy so far, and sort of comparing and contrasting the customs of the United States to those in Italy. Again, these lectures were very interesting because a lot of us agreed on the differences that we’ve all noticed. From dining etiquette to traffic laws, Italy is a slightly different country when you look at the big picture.

Overall, the day was more of a needed rest period. Our days in Rome are coming to an end in a couple of days, so the recuperation of body and mind is needed as we continue our trip to Naples and Florence. We’ll be traveling next Monday, so expect to hear some great things from both cities! Ciao!

– Alex Manning

January 17, 2015 by

Rome

A Quick Check-In

Well, I warned you folks that today would be short. Today was purely presentation after presentation. In the morning, a presentation on Rome’s history ala Claudio. The afternoon, group presentations from our entire class. Topics covered included police, beer, foods, and main culture differences. I don’t mean to brag, but our professors declared each and every presentation as “excellent.” Those ended around 3, so we had the entire afternoon to ourselves. Everybody went off their separate ways and the blog-worthy day pretty much ended there.

I’ll be sure to have more to say tomorrow!

– Chris Apfeld

January 15, 2015 by

Field Trips!, Rome, Universities

Moving and Grooving

For not having traveled a very long distance, we sure did a lot of walking and standing today. The subject of today was, as some of you may know, the Vatican Museum and the John Cabot University. Luckily, the museum was about 100 yards from the door of our hotel, but the university was a mile south.

Around 10:30 in the morning, we all stumbled into the hotel lobby to away our infamous guide, Gino. Unlike usually, we did not receive headsets because we were required to use the Vatican’s brand. Out the door and up some steps across the street, we arrived at our destination. Directly ahead is a large, white, decorated entrance to the museum, but that’s not for the public. To the left of that pearly entrance was a set of glass doors and tons of line separators. Usually, those lines are filled all the way around the corner and then some, but today they were barren. Good omens, right? Well the inside was still full of people. To enter, we had to pass through a small security station like when entering the other sections of the Vatican. We then got our headsets and set off for the museum. Actually, that’s sort of a lie. Rather than going straight up the stairs into the museum, Gino led us behind the information desk to two stray statues to explain how they used to all be painted. Surely nobody ever looks at those statues because we received strange looks from the workers at the info desk.

A great view from within the museum grounds

Finally we made it into the museum plaza which had a plethora of branches and directions to go that were filled with rich pieces of history. Guess which one we went into? None of them. Since we only had about 2 hours and Gino liked to talk a lot, we headed straight towards the Sistine Chapel. Along the way we stopped in one side room where Gino took his time to discuss the marble. Yeah, pretty much just the marble. The passage to the Sistine Chapel is long and a bit crazy. It begins with a large, arched hallway that stretches forward for what seems like forever. That corridor is divided into sections covering art like sculptures, maps, tapestries, and more. Do you remember how I mentioned there were a ton of people inside the museum? Well 99% of them were in this segment, all on their way to the chapel. Most of the time spent moving through that corridor is just getting funneled along with the crowd. If you’re lucky you can jump out of the stream to the side of a door. Gino relied on our ability to do so a little too much, so soon enough our group was divided and conquered. Eventually we regrouped and moved forward through the crowd. After the corridor were a handful of papal residence rooms which had paintings from top to bottom that were quite impressive. We were still a ways away from the chapel. Members of the group got caught in the undertow of the tourists and so had to press on and hope for the best. I was among those poor souls.

Trust me, the crowds I mentioned showed up a minute later

After the papal residence, tourists are forced into the modern art section which, all in all, is about 30 rooms of content. Our focus was the chapel so I powered through those rooms. Along the way I noticed strange works of art with obscured faces and others made of some simple shapes. I don’t understand modern art. Finally, I made it to the Sistine Chapel, and soon afterwards the rest of the group made it in. Inside the chapel, tourists aren’t supposed to talk or take photos so there’s a handful of guards going around enforcing the rules. Ironically, those guards are the main sources of noise as they constantly shout out “No photo!” The Sistine Chapel, while not humongous, is impressive for it’s masterpieces of art covering every inch of the walls and ceiling. While the walls were painted by a handful of unmentioned artists, the ceiling and altar wall were painted by Michelangelo himself. His altar wall depicts the end of the world and the ceiling has various scenes from the beginning of the bible. It’s very hard to describe, so below I’ve included a link to a virtual view of the chapel (copy and paste it into your browser address bar).

http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/index_sistina_en.htm

About a half an hour later, we exited the chapel and too the Vatican, broke off for lunch, and then reassembled in the square an hour later. Nearly one mile southwards along the Tiber in the Trastevere region was the John Cabot University, a small private college that caters to foreigners like ourselves. The entrance isn’t very recognizable among the surrounding buildings, but once inside it feels very college-like. It’s a multi-level, more or less modern school. Rather than it all being in one location, it has two campuses, the northern one (where we arrived) and a southern one not more than 1/4 mile away. Upon arrival we were led to a classroom where we were greeted by the president of the university. Previously we had been told he wouldn’t be able to make it because of some emergency, but apparently he had come back just in time. I don’t recall exactly what he said about where he had been, but I’m pretty sure he said the Italian president had just quit. Anyways, he gave us a riveting presentation on Italian politics. He covered politics from World War II up to present day, and it was all quite interesting. He even gave us an insider tip that around the 2oth, the Italians may be attempting an American strategy to boost their economy which may effect the value of the euro, bringing it down close to a 1:1 ratio with the US dollar. No guarantees though.

At the center behind the blinding light is the university’s president

Afterwards, we were split into three groups and given tours of the campuses by some students. Our tour was somewhat awkward since our guide began under the assumption we were incoming students and not just tourists. Whoops. That issue quickly became evident and we cleared the air. The two sites were nice buildings and the University looked like a great school, both sharing similar setups. We had arrived at a pretty fortunate time since they were setting up for the coming semester but had not yet begun class. Once all was said and done, the group split up and some students headed back while others visited the local microbrewery. The beer there was some of the best we’ve ever had, so we’ll be headed back.

That’s all for now! Tomorrow’s post will be short since we’re giving some class presentations after a lecture in the morning. Thanks for reading!

– Chris Apfeld

p.s. We’ve had t-shirt/light jacket weather here and after seeing weather reports for back home have no regrets about leaving the country.

January 14, 2015 by

Field Trips!

A quiet weekend for everyone!

Ciao! Long time no see. There were some technical difficulties yesterday with posting on the blog, so I didn’t really get a chance to blog about the engineer’s experiences in Venice over our free weekend! Nevertheless, I get to post it now!

So after our first week in Rome, the engineers got to decide if we wanted to travel to Assisi, Venice, or to just stay in Rome. I chose to ride with the crew who went to Venice, and if anyone actually gets a chance to go to Italy, I would highly recommend putting Venice on the top of your list.

Saturday morning, at 6 A.M. (which was a time I didn’t know actually existed), we began our trek to a train that would take us all the way from Rome to Venice! That in itself was a really cool experience because we got to actually enjoy some of the European public transportation that is available. The train system is a really slick and easy way to get around, even for those like us who can’t really read, write, speak, or understand Italian at all.

The trip itself took around 3.5 hours to get to our destination. Along the way there would be slight dozing, moderate increases in travel ‘selfies’, and a large increase on reading books of ‘Top 10 things to do whilst in Venice.’ As we arrived, what should have taken us no longer than a half hour to our hotel, took us about 2 hours to actually reach our destination. Of course, along the way, kebabs were an essential part to fuel our trek to our hotel.

So here we are (erm, were)! We found our hotel and now it was our obvious obligation to get lost within this small, quiet, and genuine city. The views were spectacular, the canals were winding, and the alleyways were very, very small. It really was what you imagine Venice would be like. Though I would personally would like to visit Venice in the future with probably a date of mine, visiting Venice with around 10 guys wasn’t really bad either.

What really surprised me was how tame the city was at night time. In Rome, at 7 O’clock, it seems like everyone is still hustling and bustling to get food, shop, visit sights, and so on. In Venice, at 7, it seemed like a ghost town. Like I probably could have dropped a pin and been able to hear it hit the ground. It truly added some charm to the city, and sort of gave it that genuine Italian feel to it. It was also a part of the day where I wasn’t getting bothered by street vendors trying to sell me ‘Selfie Sticks,’ so that was nice for a change.

Some of us also visited the island of Murano! Murano has a history for glassblowing, and none of us have actually really seen glassblowing in person before, so we kind of felt like it was a necessary thing to do while we had the chance. It was a charming little province, with shops staggered every couple of paces that were selling some sort of glass blowing memorabilia. I personally broke off with a couple of guys to go explore the as much of the island as we could. In doing so, we came up to a small, hidden shop where a man was sitting, almost like waiting, for us to come in so he could put on a small demonstration of glass blowing. To be completely honest, it was one of the coolest things that I had ever seen. He literally took a molten blob of an amalgam of different types of sands and, within 30 seconds, made a horse that I would probably pay 30 Euro for. It truly is a remarkable talent that these glassblowers have, and it was such a treat to see it up close.

I will be uploading pictures later! The WiFi isn’t really working the way I want it to now, so I’m unable to actually get the pictures from my phone and put them on our hotel’s computer. But they’ll come soon, I promise! Venice really was such a treat.

-Alex Manning

January 14, 2015 by

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