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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

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!, Rome, Universities

A University, a Scavi, and a Basilica Enter a Bar…

So about getting back to you soon…

We’ve done quite a bit the past two days, so let me start with the shorter of the two, which incidentally happens to be yesterday.

Yesterday our class had our lectures at the University of La Sapienza, which as we were told is the best university in Rome. The school is located about halfway between Rome’s major bus and train terminal “Termini” and the colosseum, so we did some subway riding and some walking to get there. Some of you may understand the basics of the subway if you’ve used it in the states, but let me tell you, this is different. You thought the ones back home were crowded? Italians have no sense of personal space, and so these were crowded beyond belief. There’s no way the subway was rated for having so many people per vehicle safely. Getting on with that type of crowd is another thing since nobody seems willing to move, so a designated leader of the group has to literally create a wedge with themselves and lead the train of boarders through the sea of people. I would say it’s like the parting of the red sea, but there was no parting that happens. As for cleanliness, the stations have a fair amount of trash all over the place, but the highlights are the trains themselves. They are absolutely covered in graffiti to the point where one of the trains had no original metal visible. I noticed another train had its graffiti half finished as if it rode off while somebody was working on it.

So after a stressful ten minutes or so of riding the subway we came to termini, the busiest of the subway stops. It’s at that point where 99% of the subway passengers disembark so traversing the crowds is another fun aspect. Once we made it out, we had a fair distance to walk to the campus. Along the way there were a fair amount of small restaurants and tourist shops and, as I’ve been informed, a craft beer store which will most likely be frequented in the future. Fifteen minutes of stumbling on cobblestone later we arrived at a somewhat dark, steep tunnel. It was probably 100 feet of escalation which we all got up without a problem, but we all shared the same thoughts of “Who would want to do this every day??” That dark tunnel opened onto a small grotto in which was the Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli, which translates to Saint Peter in Chains. Going a bit past that grotto was the actual university. Going up a few more stains was a main lobby which had a small courtyard to the left with a well in the center. Just a bit past that was our classroom where we spent the next 3 hours listening to Italian professors and students making a good effort at presenting Roman architecture in english. The topics they covered varied across bridges, roads, pilgrimages, and more. It was interesting and all but everyone seemed to be freeing in the room. Halfway through all the lectures, we noticed to our surprise a neatly cut hole in the window which was the culprit of the breeze. Upon further inspection they had similar holes in many of the windows in the buildings. We never had the chance to ask about them, so we’re not sure what their purposes were other than discomfort. Following the lectures we had a quick lunch break where we split off to look at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. We all spent about an hour looking around and then headed back for more university stuff.

After getting the group together, we were given a tour of the grounds by the students and faculty. We first saw one of their larger classrooms which supposedly held about 100 students at maximum capacity, but I wouldn’t have guessed more than 50 or so. Italians really must be significantly smaller I guess. Next we headed up to the library, which, as many people put it, looked like something out of the Harry Potter series. It was dank with the smell of old books and had huge bookshelves which went up two levels. I asked the student guide about how often books from way up there were used and she confirmed my suspicions that really, they were just for show. Finally, we headed way downstairs to look at their civil engineering road lab. The lab was placed almost directly under the courtyard and had a plethora of intense machines and shrapnel from road materials. In summation of that lab, they seemed to be working on creating better road concretes and ground materials.

Now some of you may have noticed the lack of pictures so far which I must apologize for. For some reason that I seem to lack an excuse for we did not have any usable photos from that day, so I am sorry. Anyways, onto the next day, today.

Today was spent mostly within the Vatican but also at the Bernardi Campus, a St Thomas owned campus in the northwest section of Rome. Early in the morning there was a primary tour of St Peter’s Basilica with our favorite, Gino. A couple of students went to that but alas I did not, so I don’t have much to say about it. All I was told was that Gino described the architecture as being from the “Barrack period,” which we assumed was an accented pronunciation of “Baroque.” At about midday we all met up and headed east down Via Candia, which for simplicity I will call “Candy Street.” Down Candy Street were a ton of shops and American classics, like McDonald’s and Burger King. Running down the center of the road was a train rail, but it didn’t seem like that tram ran anywhere often enough to be efficient, but that’s Italy I guess. All in all, it took about 20 minutes to walk all the way there, but it was a relief to be in the midst of fellow midwesterners who understood everything.

Crossing boundaries, making history

So let’s get this straight; Bernardi Campus isn’t a campus. It’s a communal living space. It’s a single building dedicated to the semester long living quarters for Catholic studies majors. It’s about 5 stories high if we include the roof, so it’s a fair size. We weren’t sure how many people lived in there but it’s fair to assume no more than 70. Since it was small we split into two groups for a quick tour and went from top to bottom, checking out living spaces, common rooms, a small church, and a nifty kitchen. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad place to live, but it for sure caters to the Catholic studies crowd.

From the top of the building the view isn’t bad

After the quick almost 30 minute visit, we turned around and changed that 20 minute walk into a 15 minute stride to huff it back to the Vatican for our Scavi tours. For those who don’t know, the Scavi (which translates into excavation) is the excavation of the necropolis underneath St Peter’s Baslilca which happens to include the bones of St Peter himself. Since the necropolis dates back 1700 years, the Scavi is under high security and temperature controlled. For ruins like the excavation, temperature controlled environments are really only super humid and warm tunnels. For our guide we had a priest in his second year of study who happened to be from Milwaukee (Go Packers!) so communication was simple. To keep clutter and damage to a minimum, our group had to be split in two and separated by about a half an hour. After a brief intro, we dove right into the site and began the tour. Pictures weren’t allowed so I’ll have to do my best to briefly describe it. It’s a ways down underground, and actually under two churches. First is the visible basilica and then the Constantine church that was built in the 300s. Finally at the bottom is the necropolis which was originally like an open air city filled with sarcophogi and urns. The excavation couldn’t make it very open, so space was an issue. Let’s just say that someone with claustrophobia wouldn’t enjoy it but it would be tolerable. Our explorable area consisted of a long hall with some branches of rooms that were decorated with some artwork and had coffins piled in. I was informed that every body had been removed from the dig site, so no need to worry about spooky skeletons. It wasn’t all that long before we emerged into the remnants of the Constantinian church, still under the Basilica and with that the tour was over.

After a bit both groups had finished their tours and had emerged outside. Right away we met with our tourguide for St Peter’s basilica. Like before, he was a priest in his second year, but I didn’t catch where he was from. He talked for a while about the basilica’s construction and the external features and then we got in a line to reenter the Basilica territory. To get into the church, visitors have to go through metal detectors and send their personal items through a small scanner like you would find at an airport. They take their security seriously but I don’t know how long they’ve been doing that for. Five minutes went by before we were all through security and we finally got to the meat of the tour.

The students huddle around their guide

The guide talked about the outside a bit, led us inside, and within 5 minutes was told he needed to leave. That’s right, the basilica guards were telling a priest he couldn’t stay there. It may sound a bit odd, but let me explain. Apparently, there is supposed to be no talking within the basilica past 4:15, which we had barely exceeded. This meant no guides could be inside no matter the sound level. We could have been speaking at less than 1 decibel and they still would have kicked him out even though every other tourist there could be heard well above our whispering priest. We tried to ignore their request to leave and carry on the tour but five minutes later they were back with one more guard so we caved and stepped outside for the rest of the tour. Out there the priest tried to do his best to describe the rest of the material he had planned to talk about, but of course it just wasn’t the same as if we had been inside. For about 40 minutes he talked about the major points of the basilica but I won’t go into all that detail since I couldn’t do it justice and since I probably don’t remember a lot of it due to exhaustion from the day. That time went by and we went back in for a quick drive by of everything he had told us, but we were all so tired and it was 5 already so we didn’t spend as much time there as it deserved. We’ll surely be back like in the great words of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It looks huge, doesn’t it? That’s because it is

Fun fact about the dome, it’s really quite tall. As told by our guide, there’s a few comparisons we could make. You know the size of space ships with booster rockets and all? Two of those stacked tip to tail wouldn’t reach the top. You know how tall the Statue of Liberty is? Not as tall as the dome. As I said, it’s realllllllllly tall.

It sure is a long way up…

Anyways, that was it for the past two days. This weekend will be free for everyone to do what they will, and so we have some people sticking around Rome but most leaving for Venice or Assisi. We’ll be sure to get back to you on how all that goes as soon as we hear about it. To those of you who stuck out this entire post, I salute you.

– Chris Apfeld

January 9, 2015 by