Recently, I was in Italy for a 10-day long summer workshop on developments in various aspects of ultra-cold-atomic physics. I have to say, the workshop was pretty tiring, with 5 one-and-a-half-hour lectures every day, dispersed between 9 am and 7 pm. But it was also very exhaustive in its scope and very enlightening from a scientific point of view. I previously did not have much of an interest in ultra-cold atoms but the scope of experiments that are possible in the field is truly breathtaking and so the developments are worth watching out for, even from the point of view of a general condensed matter theorist. Of particular interest to me was the discussions on the possibilities of studying disordered systems via ultra-cold atoms, as recently I've been doing a lot of interesting stuff in the general area of disordered spin systems, noise and localization - there are many universal issues in these systems that in my opinion, deserve a more comprehensive answer than what has yet been provided. Back to the school. A lot of things piqued my curiosity, and this resulted in me asking a ton of questions during the talks. So much so that at some point I wondered if people might be getting a tad upset. Or maybe not, because, perhaps on the basis of this, the director of the program was kind enough to ask me to join his group in Florence as a theorist. I told him that I just like America a lot :P
Now, about Italy itself. My first site of Italy was the Linette airport in Milan. The airport is pretty tiny, the customs check virtually nonexistent, which was great. A slight peculiarity was the presence of many emergency buttons all over the baggage carousels, reasons for which seemed fairly obscure to me. As I got out, my first thought was, well, this reminds me a lot of Delhi, and the shuttle bus ride I took to the Milano Centrale (the Milan Central Station) reinforced that notion to some extent. It's an interesting city. I think we passed through a few small neighborhoods with small roundabouts encasing small parks, which were surrounded by some sort of community building complexes. This reminded me a lot of the neighborhoods in Rohini which have big apartment complexes and lots of community parks between them - but the comparison was not because of the architecture, because things here were rather diminutive, and distinctly Roman in form, but perhaps because of the yellowness that permeated the sky and greens, and the texture of the soil and grass, that seemed so reminiscent of home. While the areas were generally clean, unfortunately, each and every single wall was donned in an excess of graffiti, and graffiti that was far removed from any notion of art - this was just a bunch of words spray painted in an ugly fashion, most of them were simply names of footballers of local football teams such as Inter and AC Milan. I'm guessing these were primarily poor neighborhoods that we were passing. Interestingly, the people seemed to be a somewhat diverse mix of immigrants and locals (honestly sometimes it's very difficult to tell). The roads were also somewhat peculiar in their construction - there were 2 poorly maintained dividers on the road, with a central space earmarked for buses. It didn't look pretty and I'm not sure if it worked well. At Milano Centrale, I quickly found myself being ambushed by some poor people, who wanted to help me punch in the address of the place I wanted to go to on the ticket dispensers in exchange for a coffee. This perhaps sealed the deal for why I felt so much at home :D Instantly, I was like, I know how to handle you guys! And I basically went about shooing these people from the get go, knowing that if I let them do anything for me, they will ask me for money. I felt like a pro, for once, amidst all the confusion of a foreign language, and at home. It was just, honestly, the most homely experience I've had in a long time, in a weird way. Perhaps the one bad thing in the whole place was the smoke. There are smokers everywhere. I get this stuff, or at least, I used to. But smoking next to toddlers is not OK. It was curious to note that an overwhelming majority of the smokers were women. On to Varenna.
The coolest thing about Italy are Italians. It was never difficult for me to pick up a conversation and I cannot remember spending any of my time on Italian trains without talking to someone. The people are very open and expressive, and very welcoming. There is also a very homely air to their way of treating strangers, which I'm guessing if a facet of the collectivistic nature of their society. So for example, the lady who was the keeper of the hotel we stayed in (the participants of the school were distributed over many small hotels, each with maybe a dozen residents), in Varenna, would literally urge me every morning , 'How you focus, if you not eat breakfaaaste' (imagine the Italian 'e' at the end of every word, and you wouldn't be far off from knowing what it sounded like). And another example is of the conversation I had with an Italian kid also attending the school. I think I was dangerously traversing the border of `fun' and `rude' when I mentioned to him how the Italian hand gesture reminded me so much of a person begging for food. Admittedly, I did it get a provocative response and he was quick to oblige! Thankfully, he took my comment in, what can only be described as a very Italian spirit, and instantly replied with, "Non No! Not four fingers. Two fingers. Not this. This. This, is to make a point, not to beg for food". And I was happy to have learnt something new that day :) Also, the locals seemed very keen to help tourists. I had a bit of a misfortune in that, the one day of the workshop that was free, and I wanted to use to go to Switzerland and see the Alps, the Trenitalia (an Italian rail company) employees went on strike. So I had to make do with what I could, and which was, by no means, a lesser treasure - Lake Como on which the hilly town Varenna is based, is also home to many other gorgeous towns, including Lenno where George Clooney owns a villa, and Ocean's 11 and Casino Roayle were shot, and Bellagio, the town that inspires the eponymous hotel in Vegas. Nevertheless, I was notified that there still may be a chance that the trains would run and so I ended up at the train station at 7 AM, and was duly left disappointed. As I tracked back up the hill to reach my hotel, I met the director of the program to whom I narrated my disappointment. He asked me if I wanted coffee, and I replied with, "it's OK, I will buy it myself, don't worry", to which he again asked, "do you want the coffee or not?". At this point, I accepted the coffee, no questions asked. Very kind man, he tried to find out if I could still make my connecting train in Switzerland, but realized that I could not. Anyway, so I then decided to take the ferries around and see the various towns on Lake Como. The ferry system is a tad complicated and all the route timings and details are all in Italian, which makes it a little worse. But I was helped then by a ferry operator who literally spent 15 minutes chalking out a whole plan for me on how to spend the whole day on Lake Como - again a shining example of Italian hospitality. I ended up visiting the towns of Lenno, Bellagio, Mennagio (pictures to follow). In Bellagio, I met a really wonderful oil-painter. His work was very original, and of course, cost quite a lot. I left the place apologizing for my inability to purchase any of his work, and I could sense a wry smile take form on his face as I left.
The region of Lake Como is a region for the rich. A lot of the people, especially the British and American folk (and possibly the other folk, who I could not understand) seemed to be property hunting and figures of a couple of ten million dollars and such were being bandied with remarkable regularity. But enough of that - the place is absolutely stunning. Words cannot describe the beauty of the place, and so for this reason, I will let the pictures do the talking here.
Now, about Italy itself. My first site of Italy was the Linette airport in Milan. The airport is pretty tiny, the customs check virtually nonexistent, which was great. A slight peculiarity was the presence of many emergency buttons all over the baggage carousels, reasons for which seemed fairly obscure to me. As I got out, my first thought was, well, this reminds me a lot of Delhi, and the shuttle bus ride I took to the Milano Centrale (the Milan Central Station) reinforced that notion to some extent. It's an interesting city. I think we passed through a few small neighborhoods with small roundabouts encasing small parks, which were surrounded by some sort of community building complexes. This reminded me a lot of the neighborhoods in Rohini which have big apartment complexes and lots of community parks between them - but the comparison was not because of the architecture, because things here were rather diminutive, and distinctly Roman in form, but perhaps because of the yellowness that permeated the sky and greens, and the texture of the soil and grass, that seemed so reminiscent of home. While the areas were generally clean, unfortunately, each and every single wall was donned in an excess of graffiti, and graffiti that was far removed from any notion of art - this was just a bunch of words spray painted in an ugly fashion, most of them were simply names of footballers of local football teams such as Inter and AC Milan. I'm guessing these were primarily poor neighborhoods that we were passing. Interestingly, the people seemed to be a somewhat diverse mix of immigrants and locals (honestly sometimes it's very difficult to tell). The roads were also somewhat peculiar in their construction - there were 2 poorly maintained dividers on the road, with a central space earmarked for buses. It didn't look pretty and I'm not sure if it worked well. At Milano Centrale, I quickly found myself being ambushed by some poor people, who wanted to help me punch in the address of the place I wanted to go to on the ticket dispensers in exchange for a coffee. This perhaps sealed the deal for why I felt so much at home :D Instantly, I was like, I know how to handle you guys! And I basically went about shooing these people from the get go, knowing that if I let them do anything for me, they will ask me for money. I felt like a pro, for once, amidst all the confusion of a foreign language, and at home. It was just, honestly, the most homely experience I've had in a long time, in a weird way. Perhaps the one bad thing in the whole place was the smoke. There are smokers everywhere. I get this stuff, or at least, I used to. But smoking next to toddlers is not OK. It was curious to note that an overwhelming majority of the smokers were women. On to Varenna.
The coolest thing about Italy are Italians. It was never difficult for me to pick up a conversation and I cannot remember spending any of my time on Italian trains without talking to someone. The people are very open and expressive, and very welcoming. There is also a very homely air to their way of treating strangers, which I'm guessing if a facet of the collectivistic nature of their society. So for example, the lady who was the keeper of the hotel we stayed in (the participants of the school were distributed over many small hotels, each with maybe a dozen residents), in Varenna, would literally urge me every morning , 'How you focus, if you not eat breakfaaaste' (imagine the Italian 'e' at the end of every word, and you wouldn't be far off from knowing what it sounded like). And another example is of the conversation I had with an Italian kid also attending the school. I think I was dangerously traversing the border of `fun' and `rude' when I mentioned to him how the Italian hand gesture reminded me so much of a person begging for food. Admittedly, I did it get a provocative response and he was quick to oblige! Thankfully, he took my comment in, what can only be described as a very Italian spirit, and instantly replied with, "Non No! Not four fingers. Two fingers. Not this. This. This, is to make a point, not to beg for food". And I was happy to have learnt something new that day :) Also, the locals seemed very keen to help tourists. I had a bit of a misfortune in that, the one day of the workshop that was free, and I wanted to use to go to Switzerland and see the Alps, the Trenitalia (an Italian rail company) employees went on strike. So I had to make do with what I could, and which was, by no means, a lesser treasure - Lake Como on which the hilly town Varenna is based, is also home to many other gorgeous towns, including Lenno where George Clooney owns a villa, and Ocean's 11 and Casino Roayle were shot, and Bellagio, the town that inspires the eponymous hotel in Vegas. Nevertheless, I was notified that there still may be a chance that the trains would run and so I ended up at the train station at 7 AM, and was duly left disappointed. As I tracked back up the hill to reach my hotel, I met the director of the program to whom I narrated my disappointment. He asked me if I wanted coffee, and I replied with, "it's OK, I will buy it myself, don't worry", to which he again asked, "do you want the coffee or not?". At this point, I accepted the coffee, no questions asked. Very kind man, he tried to find out if I could still make my connecting train in Switzerland, but realized that I could not. Anyway, so I then decided to take the ferries around and see the various towns on Lake Como. The ferry system is a tad complicated and all the route timings and details are all in Italian, which makes it a little worse. But I was helped then by a ferry operator who literally spent 15 minutes chalking out a whole plan for me on how to spend the whole day on Lake Como - again a shining example of Italian hospitality. I ended up visiting the towns of Lenno, Bellagio, Mennagio (pictures to follow). In Bellagio, I met a really wonderful oil-painter. His work was very original, and of course, cost quite a lot. I left the place apologizing for my inability to purchase any of his work, and I could sense a wry smile take form on his face as I left.
The region of Lake Como is a region for the rich. A lot of the people, especially the British and American folk (and possibly the other folk, who I could not understand) seemed to be property hunting and figures of a couple of ten million dollars and such were being bandied with remarkable regularity. But enough of that - the place is absolutely stunning. Words cannot describe the beauty of the place, and so for this reason, I will let the pictures do the talking here.
The view of Lake Como from the School in Varenna -
Bellagio from the Ferry.
Approaching Lenno
Lenno from afar
The Alps lie beyond
Some wine for lunch and some wine for dinner and a view.
Menaggio
Me in Menaggio
Lake Como, another view from the Varenna school area.
Stairs going up hill in Varenna.
And downhill.
Varenna from the ferry.
Another view of the lake. Just imagine swimming here. :)
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