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J-term

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!, 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