Cheese-ing in Parma

When I was young, in fourth or fifth grade perhaps, I had a very normal dinner with my family and we had a pretty typical conversation.  My dad asked me how my day went and I proceeded to list all my classes, and some of what the lessons were.  When I finished my half-hearted spiel my dad told me something that stuck with me in a way that only small lessons from parents or loved ones stick with you.  He said "It's all well and good to hear what you've done, but tell me a story."  And really from three I've understood at a basic level that the form of a story is what best communicates experiences between people.  And that isn't a lesson I've applied to my writing as much as I'd like, but maybe it's time to flex that muscle.

I'd like to point out before I go further that the above story didn't happen in the factual sense.  But it follows the basic arc of a story.  Exposition, some plot, a climax, and a resolution.  But isn't that story effective.  Do you not feel like you have a little bit more understanding of the way of the world because of it?  Our knowledge of history comes from passages which read as if out of an epic poem.  A preacher's sermon is a kind of story, politicians use anecdotes of life experiences all the time to convey their message.  I'm reading right now about the history of ancient Rome, and the various events, like Romulus and Remus founding Rome, with Romulus slaying his brother in a fit of rage, or the tale of the Horatii triplets, read like they are part of a screen play. This was the history that was passed down from generation to generation before it was written down.  So without further ado, here's a story of today.

Today started like any other.  Well not "any" other day.  It's hardly common to start your day eating breakfast next to a number of elderly Welshmen, who are part of a singing group, in Parma, Italy.  But it was normal enough.

I'm hardly a man who plans for the day ahead, apart from weather conditions, which were fairly rainy until the evening.  I'm just as comfortable going on the bus and moving in the direction I'm pointed in.  As such I didn't really know where we were visiting today.  But my ignorance led to a few pleasant surprises.

The first stop was a cheese museum, specifically for processing parmagiano reggiano cheese.  And that place was super informative.  I learned that Parmesan cheese used to be made in an upturned bell over a fire, as well as all the processes that went into crafting each block.  And the tour finished with a tasting of Parmagiano Reggiano cheese.  Which I really relished, not knowing how much cheese I would eat that day.

The next stop was a Parmagiano Reggiano cheese factory.  And that alone should be indicative of what was to come.  Because after taking a tour of the facilities and standing in awe of a giant cheese wall, or rather, giant cheese walls, we sat down for lunch.

And really, at first the lunch seemed like your typical multi-course lunch in Italy when dining with a school group.  There was bread, there was water, sparkling and flat, and there was lots of Parmesan cheese (gee imagine that).  Meats were brought out on a platter, and we dined on salami, prosciutto, cheese and bread, telling stories to each other.e.

During this lunch everyone really loosened up and started having fun.  By the end of the ravioli course someone had requested Billy Joel's "Piano Man" to the DJ, and he actually played the song.  There was a pretty substantial number of the group joining in on singing that song, yes including me.  Also, the chaperon, Cary Rappaport, started singing too.  It was possibly the greatest moment of the Dialogue.

But like the passing of the day, all good things must come to an end.  Dessert and coffee were distributed, and the meal came to an end.  We boarded the bus and set off for our next location, a wine museum, which deserves far more embellishment than I'm going to give it because I'm tired and need to wake up early tomorrow.  Today was truly a bonding experience, and emphasizes, in a very real way why wine and cheese are such an important aspect of the culture of Italy.

Italy on the Radio

It's hard to overstate the impact of the mastery of electricity on the human race.  And the fact that this force was able to fly around the world in very short order, revolutionize every facet of the economy and create the world we know today.  There were a few very important discoveries and inventions which I would consider truly monumental.  Telegraphs allowed near-instantaneous transmission of information.  The light bulb lit up the night, and decreased risk of fire by replacing gas and oil lamps. The radio then allowed for the transfer of information at the speed of light, while allowing for mobility, and decreasing the needed infrastructure.

Like any invention, there are many claimants to the technology.  Ernest Rutherford in particular is credited for inventing the first wireless transmitter and receiver.  But Guglielmo Marconi acted faster.  He was able to create a transmitter and receiver which could communicate over a few kilometers.  He patented his invention in Britain, and founded his own radio company fixing radio onto ships.  He would in a few short years broadcast a signal across the Atlantic ocean, from England to St. John's in Newfoundland, Canada in 1901.  That's just five years after he patented his 3 km radio.  He would later orchestrate an even further broadcast in the 1903 between Teddy Roosevelt on Cape Cod, and the King of England in western England.  It was because of the ability of the radio to transmit long distances that the Ionosphere was theorized, an example of practice driving theory.

Marconi's later life was perhaps a little distasteful for our modern values.  He was an Italian nationalist, and he enjoyed being celebrated as an Italian hero and a genius.  He fell right in to Mussolini's fascist regime as the President of Italy's Royal Academy.  He died in 1937, around when fascist violence was ramping up in Germany, but before the second World War broke out.  And around the world he was honored with a moment of radio silence.  And it's hard to guess how he might have been remembered had he survived into WWII.  Would he still be considered a celebrated engineer and scientist?  My guess would be in the affirmative, given how many scientists in the Nazi regime are celebrated, like Heisenberg and Von Braun.

It was so cool to look at all of the cool pieces of electrical equipment from a hundred years ago.  The designs have a certain antique charm that's hard to place.  They are hardly ornate, but there are certain aesthetic choices which tie together.  They are made with finished wood and brass metal objects.  The devices are often clean, symmetrical, and use very few wires to clutter up the device.  There is certainly a contrast to be made with the tools and objects of the Galileo Museum back in Florence, which are far more ornate, and no less beautiful.

The Marconi museum wasn't the only place I went today.  To the east of Bologna, in the middle of a farm there sits a massive dish, 32 m (100 ft) in diameter.  This dish is for the detection of radio waves originating in space.  And though the technology of the dish is dated by modern standards, it was built over 30 years ago in 1983, it's still in operation.

However, what I really appreciate about this place is how there is a superposition of high tech of space radio frequency telescopes, and the low tech of farming.  Ironically the farmers might just be using newer equipment.  According to the tour guide here the farmers and the science lab share the space well, but there was an incident where the farmers plowed over the fiber cable carrying Internet to the control building.  There are also a couple of other dishes, though they don't really look like a solid dish of anything.  They really are just an array of parabolic guilds with thin wire traversing the length of the array all the way across the parabolic arc.

Got Away to B-O-L-O-G-N-A

The last blog posts were way too long. If this blog is going to be sustainable I’m going to need to condense these thoughts into shorter snippets. So with that in mind here are the events of today.

We woke up early, and got on the bus early to leave Florence and head to Parma for a few nights. We stopped in Bologna around the middle of the day to look at the train station, and how the team there manages the rail traffic, and monitors all the dangers on the rail.

We had lunch at a sandwich place, and I got a delicious sandwich with eggplant and Bolognese Salame. And while we ate we were shocked by a car suddenly catching on fire. The fire fighters of the city were fairly quick to respond. And it didn't appear as though anybody was harmed.

After that incident we went back on the bus to drive to the Ducati motorcycle factory. Those bikes were beautiful. They had angular designs and chassis of bright red or silver. One of the models, the Scrambler, is reminiscent of the style of motorcycle in the 60s and 70s.

And following that we went to the Lamborghini museum, which was cool for a few minutes. But too much time was scheduled for it, and the museum wasn't really that big. One of the Lamborghini heirs was present though with an actor. They might be making a Lamborghini movie soon, I might feel obliged to see that now.

But now I'm in Parma. And really I haven't seen much of the city yet. But I'm staying here for at least a few nights. All I can say is the cheese really is tasty here.

Retrospective: First Day in Italy

I’ve flown in a plane before. At least once before college for sure. When I was in 5th grade I flew to Florida to visit Disney World, and then I didn’t fly for a while. But in the past few years I’ve been flying more. I’ve taken a plane to Rochester, NY from Boston, and a small plane out of Lake Placid. Much more recently I flew to California on a trip to tour Silicon Valley. But I never flew out of the country, until now.

I just got my passport a few years ago, and I didn’t really know what I needed past that. So I brought a backpack and a duffle bag of clothes to the airport, took the Orange Line to the Red Line to the Silver Line all the way down to the international terminal of Logan Airport. I miraculously avoiding the need to check my bag, and I was off ... after a few hours waiting for the plane. I didn’t really know anybody too well then. We played Euchre and chatted a little bit. It’s really strange at this point to think of my relationship with everyone else on the trip at that point. I know everyone on the trip so much better now. It almost seems strange that there was a point where I didn’t know them.

Right before we left Cary Rappaport gave a small lecture on the electromagnetic scanners used in airport security. How they are useful, and ways they aren't so useful. And then we flew on the plane. Alitalia was pretty fancy. We were served probably the best airplane food I’ve ever had. It even had cheesecake, yum. The seats all had screens on the back, and on them you could play multiplayer pong, and watch out of an exterior camera on the bottom of the plane. I watched some episodes of HBO’s Rome I had downloaded earlier on my own computer, and tried to get a little sleep on the plane. But I didn’t really get too much. And soon enough we landed.

As it was, getting through security, and customs was easy. The guard just looked at my passport, stamped it with the date, and I was able to go on my merry way. We left late at night back in Boston, so with the combination of the time difference and the 7 hour ride we got to Rome in the middle of the day.

The first thing I thought about Rome was how undeveloped it was, but then I found that the airport is actually pretty far from the city. JFK or Logan it ain’t. It also struck me fairly quickly that the signs weren’t in a language I was used to. We went into Rome proper from the airport. To the Trastevere district, across the Tiber from the main body of Rome. From there everyone was split into 3 groups, so 8 per apartment. I happened to be assigned the apartment an extra 5 minute walk up hill.

We unpacked at the new apartment, got our keys, explored the compound for a little bit and set off to explore Rome. The area we were in wasn’t super high scale. There was a lot of graffiti on the walls and the streets weren’t especially clean. But we soon found a place to eat, and we found that the pizza in Rome was much cheaper than Boston, pound for pound. Also the alcohol was super cheap. A bottle of beer was something close to one or two euro.



Later we would take a tour of the Trastevere district. And it was on this tour that I was first astounded by the majesty and ornamentation of the Churches of Rome. We saw Santa Maria in Trastevere, and when I got in I basically just stood for a minute with my mouth agape. The church had a gilt ceiling, with recessed panels and artwork in each. I’d come to learn that this was only the beginning of the awe-inspiring cathedrals of Italy. Later, we had a group dinner of several courses at a place called Spaghetteria, though at this point I forget what the actual meal was. Following the dinner was a walk across the Tiber to see some of the splendid monuments of Rome.

We first stopped by Largo Argentina, which we would come to call “The Cat Palace”. It was a set of ruins dating to the Republican Era of Rome set into the center of the square by about 30 feet. We then walked up to Piazza Navona to see an eternal feature of Rome. People trying to sell you useless things. The objects de jour were little helicopters which could flung with a rubber band, SPLAT balls, which flatten when they hit a hard surface and slowly return to form, and laser pointers with a diffractive lens which created a grid pattern. There were also several people selling pieces of art and posters of famous painting. As I’ve traveled through Italy this kind of vender has been everywhere. Perhaps the only constant in the whole country. In the square was also a neat building and Fountain of the Four Rivers, which is topped by a massive obelisk. Each of the figures looks away from the Church. Cary told us that sculptor had a bit of a rivalry with the Church’s architect, so the fountain was designed to Poo-poo the church it sat in front of.

And then I went back to the apartment to fall into a well deserved sleep. I was jet-lagged and sleep deprived. And I was completely oblivious to how much more awesome the Italian Dialogue would be.

I was smart enough to reflect a small moment on the plane in the notebook I'm keeping, so I'll leave with a snippet of my entry from that night:

I figure while I'm putting pen to paper I might get a little thoughtful. I am going to be a guest in this country. And though I know its history well enough, I know very little of how it exists currently.What are the issues on the Italian people's lips? This is a question I cannot answer on the plane, but it's one I should hold in my mind while I'm in Italy.

Last Day In Florence

Sunset from Piazza Michelangelo

There is a painting called "The Ideal City" Painted by Fra Carnavale near the end of the 1400s.  This painting makes efficient use of linear perspective, a technique developed during the Renaissance.  This painting doesn't depict a real city, but a real structure stands out.  That structure is the hexagonal building to the right of the central Triumphal Arch.

This building is based off of one in central Florence.  That building is the Baptistry.  It sits in front of Florence's largest and most recognizable landmark, The Big Red Dome of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, better known as Il Duomo.  This is a structure whose doors were characterized by Michelangelo to be "The Gates of Paradise".  There's a whole history behind this building, really even just the history of the doors is interesting and I'm really tempted to write a bit on them.  But that will have to wait for another post, as this one needs to be kept short(er).

The point that I'm really getting at is Florence really is an ideal city.  Granted, there are a lot of tourists in this city, and it's a bit more expensive than the others I've been to in Italy, but it's beautiful.  Nearly every building is laid out in a similar plan.  Stores on the bottom floor, so you can just walk right up and shop, or buy food.  Apartments sit on the next two or three floors, and then there's a roof.  There aren't too many tall buildings in the city, unlike the US where twenty something story buildings aren't uncommon.  That means you don't need to throw out your back trying to look at the sky.  You can see major landmarks a long ways off, and the city itself isn't intimidating.  Moreover, all the buildings are made with similar materials.  They are almost all plaster-on-brick neoclassical style apartments with terracotta roofs. The streets of central Florence are highly walkable.  There aren't too many cars to worry about. You move slower, but that only makes it so you see the details of the ideal city better. 

But enough gushing over Florence in general.  I had a pretty busy day, and it was different from other days in that we didn't have any guides for the places we were visiting.  Normally the group is led around and told about what we were seeing.  Today, for better or for worse, we were basically on our own.

We started the tours of the day in the Palazzo Vecchio.  The building, a symbol of the Florentine Republic, but was transformed into a royal palace when Cosimo I became Grand Duke of Tuscany.  Outside the palace there are two very famous statues.  A copy of "David" by Michelangelo, and the bronze statue of "Perseus with the Head of Medusa".

The David (Copy) Original by Michelangelo

Perseus with the Head of Medusa by Benvenuto Cellini

Inside the palace is a museum which houses some beautiful paintings by Vasari, the famed painter and architect of the Medici. There are several rooms with several frescoes.  One set celebrates women from history, like Penelope in the Odyssey, and the Sabine women in the battles following their abduction.  After that I climbed to the top of Il Duomo.  It took several hundred steps up a narrow passage and spiral stairs, but I don't think anything can compare to the view at the top, plus a close up view of the painted ceiling depicting the triumph of Christ over the forces of hell. The painting of the figures at the top of the dome look at though they are stepping right out of the painting, like they are about to fall right into the church. One could spend hours studying all the details of this painting.

As I said, the view from the top is amazing.

I also climbed Giotto's Bell tower, and that was pretty underwhelming compared to the dome.  The massive bells inside were neat though. The largest bell is over 15 tons in weight.  The Duomo museum was more interesting.  It was a very modern museum, with a free app I installed on my phone, and used it as a guide around the museum.  It housed some impressive sculptures, plans for the redesign of the facade from the 1860s and some neat relics, like the chains of St. Peter.  The museum also had one of Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures, the "Florentine Pieta", often called "The Deposition".  It was damaged by Michelangelo in a fit of rage, but was later restored.  This Pieta is obviously not as famous as the one that sits in St. Peter's Basilica, but it has it's own history and it's worth seeing while in Florence.

The last building I toured was the Florentine Baptistry, the building with which I started this post.  It was an interesting structure.  The floor was a marble-mosaic with designs of waves, and squares made up of four dark and light triangles to make a bow-tie pattern.  The ceiling was a gold and tile mosaic which depicted Christ triumphal over the forces of Hell, as in the image on the inside of the dome.  Strangely enough these two buildings have been the only places where I have seen images of Jesus and demons of the underworld in the same image.  Florence must really like evoking Dante's vision of Hell.

I finished the day with a group dinner near the Capelle Medici.  It was a multi-course meal with potato-filled ravioli topped with a meat sauce, and a second course of pork with gravy and roasted potatoes.  Dessert was tiramisu.  All in all, not bad for a last day in Florence.

Introduzione

Ciao!  I've decided to start a blog to document my time in Italy.  This is partly as a keepsake of my thoughts and misadventures through the lands of Caesar, and the stomping grounds of the Medici.  It's also for my family and friends, who I think would appreciate reading up on a daily updated narrative about my time in Italy.  And if I could a way to handle an assignment, for the class which I owe coming to Italy, then more power to me.

I've already been to Rome, Herculaneum (around the Naples area),  and I'm just finishing up my time in Italy.  So, I won't be able to document all the happens when it happens.  That's just how things work when you get an idea to do something too late.  But I'm also determined to turn this obstacle into an opportunity.  I'm going to have two different "types" of posts on this blog.  A daily post to cover the events of the day.  And every now and then I'll post retrospectives on certain days, and these will allow me to do a more researched blog post with a semblance of a narrative.

There will be another post today, because I'd like to get started with the daily posts ASAP, but I'd also like to use this opportunity to give a little introduction.

I'm going to Northeastern University, transitioning to my 4th year (it's a 5 year program with some time thrown in for a few 6-month Coops)  The program I am travelling to Italy on is called a Dialogue of Civilizations.  And I am studying "Science and Culture Through the Ages".  That not only means that I'll be looking at the science of ancient Rome, or the Renaissance, but also the modern stuff.  I've already been to a neutrino observation facility and a nuclear fusion reactor.  There really is a lot to look at. with regards to Science old and new in Italy.  And though I'm an introverted Engineer, I'm really loving learning about the culture.

I'm here with 23 other students, for a total of 24 including myself.  That leads to a breakdown of 16 guys and 8 girls, which is frankly a pretty good gender split in the world of engineering.  The class is taught by Cary Rappaport, who specializes in electro-magnetics and ground scanning radar and Lauren Pouchak. And the trip is covering a lot of Italy.  We started in Rome, went to Abruzzi for a day trip, Naples area for a few days to climb Vesuvius and see ancient Roman ruins.  Now we are in Florence, and yesterday we took a day trip to Pisa, but we are leaving this city soon.  Tomorrow we are going to Parma, where we'll stay a couple of nights, we also stop by Bologna before going up to Milan, later Turin, and we wrap up in Venice.  In the end we'll be seeing what I consider to be a good cross-section of Italy.

All I can say is stay tuned.  Arrivederci!