Torino, Italia

09.28.08
Roma, Italia

So we’re now in Roma. We were in Torino for three weeks, but I was so busy with work that I never really found the time to sit down and write. So, I think this is going to just be a bulleted-style entry, trying to quickly recap the highlights.

We stayed in a dorm-style living situation run by priests. Most of the other students there were engineers at the Politecnico, the school where we were also working with architecture students. There were two buildings in this complex: the main building, which had the dining hall and main offices, and our building, where we slept. The main building was a little ways out of town and up a bit of a hill. Our building was 270 stairs up a hill from the main building. We had to do these stairs at least once a day. It sucked in the beginning, but we got used to them by the end of our stay there. The stairs were uneven (some rises were 4”, others closer to 10”), dimly lit at night (and sometimes not at all), and there were maybe 4 landings in the whole run….totally not up to any code, ever. We all came to the conclusion, however, that Italians don’t really believe in safety codes.
We all had our own rooms with our own bathrooms, which was pretty much the only advantage to where we stayed. Some of us did, however, have balconies (myself included), so that was pretty sweet as well, as the view down onto the city was beautiful. We ended up buying a wireless router because there were only 4 wired ports, but the connection was quite slow. It would only reach in one computer room, so every night we all crammed into there, checking email and working on studio, often with the Italians crammed in there as well.
Meals. Breakfast was always the same: very plain cereal, limited amounts of milk, nutella, hot milk, plain yogurt, and over-baked apricot jam filled croissants. I usually had a croissant with nutella and maybe some yogurt with honey. Also, decent orange/mixed fruit juice. Lunch was good at first, really effing boring by the end. They packed us bag lunches with sandwiches, an apple, a peach juice box, and a bottle of water. My sandwiches were usually ½” of cheese or a slab of egg. Delicious in the beginning, really, really gross by the end. The café there had good, cheap sandwiches and yogurt, though, so I often did that instead. Also, getting a macchiato in the morning at the café was standard. Dinner at the convent (as we often called it) was strange. It was a fight to the finish (well that’s a good place to end) to get your food before the Italians. We’d walk in, and there would be a buffet of salad, cold cooked veggies (what?), and maybe some meat or pasta. We’d bring food to our tables, begin eating, and would be served pasta and meat. Once again, good for the first few days, really redundant by the end. The whole building was also part of some Italian fraternity (from what we could tell), and some nights they were all dressed up in capes and ridiculous hats, carrying plastic clubs, and singing, chanting, and yelling all through dinner. Creepy to say the least, when you can’t understand any of it. Sometimes they even chanted “Americani” (Americans) as we walked by. We really weren’t too welcomed there.
As crappy as the living was, though, we got to know a good portion of the city very well, which was pretty fun. Every morning we trooped down the hill to breakfast, picked up our lunches, then walked down the hill into Piazza Vittorio. From there, we caught the 16 tram (Torino has an easy to navigate system of both trams and busses) across town parallel to the river, where it stopped at our school. Our school was in a castle. No joke. Pictures will follow, but it was absolutely gorgeous and was often set off by a blue sky. Once on campus, Jeff and I always headed straight for the café where we bought café macchiato (espresso with a bit of foamed milk), which is now my favorite way to drink the stuff.
The workshop we participated in was very intense; class 9-6 5 days a week, all working on the same project. There were no Italian lessons, no history (except a few lectures), just studio. We got a lot done, considering that we were learning a new program (Generative Components) and working with Italians (they had a very different work style than us and very little motivation), but we were all pretty burnt out by the end of the program.
Okay, now time for random adventure stories.
One night, Viviane, Rachel Pads, Liz, and I decided to go to the grocery store before dinner (dinner’s at 7:45, we were leaving at 6, piece of cake). So we set off, took the tram to where we thought the store was, and couldn’t find it. We ended up having to ask for directions in shaky Italian and still had a hard time finding it, as it was much further than we expected. Whatever. So we got to the store, bought some food, then decided it was time to head back or else we’d miss dinner. We were on the 18 bus line, which takes you into Piazza Vittorio, so we decided to take that. Well, the bus took forever. By the time we got into the Piazza, walked up the hill, and made it to the main building, dinner was over. Whatever, we decided, we hadn’t been out for real food for a while, so we went out in search of pizza. On the way down I ate some camembert that I had bought at the store with some leftover bread from the dinner we missed. When I finished the bread, I wrapped the rest of the cheese up and put it in my coat pocket. This is important for later in the story.
We ended up finding a cute place with a good menu. We ordered pizza and wine, then waited for our food. Rachel’s, Liz’s, and my pizza came pretty quickly, but Viv’s did not. It’s fairly common in Italy for everyone’s food to not come at once, so she told us to go ahead and eat while it was hot. We refused and waited with her. After 15 minutes she made us eat because a) it was getting cold and b) it made her case better if we were eating already and her food hadn’t come, giving her more to complain about to the waiter (and Viviane is the kind of person who has absolutely no problem calling out a waiter on poor service). After much heckling on her part and half-way finished pizzas on ours, hers finally came. After that, all went well until we got the bill. On the bill was a charge for 4 € for something we didn’t order. Also, the cover charge was 2,50 €, which is ridiculous, because usually 1 € gets you in the door, service, and bread…and we got poor service and no bread. We asked our waiter what the deal was, and he said to ignore the 4 € charge, their mistake (but we think they were trying to just rip off oblivious Americans), but that the 2,50 was for the service, the chairs, etc. Whatever, we said, we’ll pay it. We all put in the amounts we calculated that we owed, it came up short (by 2 €, excluding the extra 4), and we said whatever, they were horrible to us, and left as quickly as we could without looking conspicuous. As soon as we got out the door I discovered that not only was it raining, but Viviane, at the front of the group, had burst into a run. We all ran through the rain to our bus stop, groceries still bouncing in our backpacks, and completely out of breath.
To get up the hill, we take the 56 bus, but the 55 works on weekends and (so we thought) travels a similar route. After waiting for the 56 in the rain for a while, we decided to get on a 55 when I drove by. Almost immediately after we got on, the bus took a turn directly away from where we wanted to be going. We asked the driver if he went to Villa Regina Ovest, our stop, and he said no, but he did go back to the Piazza where we started, so we decided to just ride around and wait it out. About halfway through the loop, he stopped at a stop, and then we heard the bus shut down. He explained to us that as part of the schedule he had to wait there for 8 minutes. Once again, we decided to wait it out because we didn’t know whether or not we were in a safe area of town and didn’t want to walk. So we sat on the bus eating chocolate that we’d bought at the store, a little buzzed from wine at dinner, and laughing at how utterly ridiculous the situation was; some of us were still toting around toilet paper and laundry detergent. It was at this point that I discovered that the camembert in my pocket had exploded and I had cheese everywhere. We were all in such cracked out moods, though, that everything was hilarious at this point.
The bus finally started back up and took us to the Piazza. After waiting for the 56 for what was probably 20-30 minutes, Viviane decided that we should just walk and led us up the hill in the rain. Incidentally, she’s also one of the tallest people on the trip (her hips come up to my waist) so keeping up with her, in the rain, while wearing my Emma Willard flip flops was no easy task. When we finally got to the main building, I asked if we could pause there before tackling the 270 stairs to our building, but she chugged on and said “No! Think of how nice warm, dry clothes will feel! It’ll get you up the stairs faster!” Which ended up being true, but still. By the time we got into our rooms it was 11:00…we had just gone on what I now call the 5-hour grocery extravaganza.
One evening after class (we got out at 6) Jeff and I decided that we hadn’t gotten to explore the town enough so we trooped up the hill, put down our bags, and went back down into the city. We ended up just walking around, window browsing, and exploring. We went to a gelato place I’d been spying for a week; they had tons of flavors and it looked like a great place! The gelato counter faced the street, but there was no one there, so we were able to take ten minutes flipping through my dictionary decoding all the flavors. I ended up getting mixed berry and white chocolate, both of which were delicious. All of this before dinner! Hehe oops…
Our first day of class we went to the southern side of town to our site, the Lingotto train station. We photographed, documented, and did our archie thing, then headed north and walked along the 2006 Olympic housing village. It all felt kind of deserted and odd…there was way too much housing, not enough to do, and no people walking around. Weird. Anyway, we walked up to the arc pedestrian bridge (also built for the Olympics, I believe), crossed that, and went into the FIAT Lingotto building. Inside is mostly commercial and a hotel, but the top of the building was the coolest part. It was originally built as a testing track for the cars, so the building is oblong, and the two short ends curve up so that cars could drive around at high speeds. We took lots of silly pictures, and it was actually much harder to get up to the top than I expected it to be.
After the proper amount of goofy pictures, we left (down the spiral ramp, an engineering feat, apparently) and went to Eataly for gelato, since it was Caitlin’s birthday. This place had the best gelato I have tasted to date. Jeff’s pesca (peach) was amazing, a lot of people got grape (strange concept, but really good). I got Bellini (champagne and peach drink), lemon (I hadn’t actually had it all trip, and it was so tangy and awesome), and….drum roll, please…..fichi (fig)! Quite possibly one of the most delicious things I’ve had all semester, no joke.
Our last night in town (the day of our final review), everyone wanted to go out, because, well, it was our last night. Having only gotten two hours of sleep, though, I didn’t last for more than an hour (if that) and ended up heading back early with Rachel Pads, Liz, and Jackie. We stopped at a Kebab restaurant (take-out style, they’re all over the place) for some food on our way home. The guys working there were really nice. They asked us about Obama, tried to get us to speak as much Italian as we could manage (and practiced their English at the same time), wrote our names in Arabic, and gave us free tea. (I have no idea what kind. The menu called it green tea, but it was definitely brown, sweet, minty, and unlike any other tea I’ve ever had before.)
Our last weekend was our main time to explore and really have fun in the city. On Saturday, we got up for an organized tour with a hired guide. We got a bit of history and saw some important historical buildings, including the palace system that spread throughout the city. We travelled between the city’s piazzas and ended up at San Lorenzo, a church designed by Guarini. The interior was magnificent. Octagonal in plan, the lines were carried up into the dome by a crazy vaulting system. At the end of the tour, I decided to hang out with Kendall and Jeff for the day, since they were babysitting the Rieblettes, Faye & Nash. I’d been wanting to get to know the kids, and a lot of other people were being lame and heading back up to our dorm, so it seemed like a great way to spend the afternoon. They found a park, and when I met up with them Nash and Faye were attemptin to drink out of a water fountain and ended up just getting completely drenched. Totally cute, but they needed a change of clothes afterwards because they were soaked head to toe and cold to the touch. Faye ended up going barefoot because even her sneakers were saturated!
We set off for Grom, a gelato place of great acclaim. This place was snazzy. Sleek interior, jazz music, fancy labels for the different flavors, and amazing flavors. I got lampone (raspberry), chocolate extra noir, and cremma di grom. All were amazing. The raspberry was nice and refreshing, and went well with the chocolate, which was super dark, almost too bitter and very rich, but so tasty. The cremma di grom was a cream-like base with cookie bits (almost graham-cracker like)…which sounds boring but the flavors were just incredible. Of course Faye and Nash wanted their own ice cream as well, and made a total mess of themselves. Nash’s cone ended up getting inverted into a cup, so he decided to just eat it with his fingers (ice cream! With fingers!). And Faye decided that it would be a better idea to just hold hers, dripping, over her shirt, but not over her bib. Oy. They’re adorable.
Next we set off for the Egyptian Museum, which has the second largest collection of artifacts (next only to Cairo). Nash was particularly excited, as he had gone a few days ago with Beth (his mom) and developed quite an obsession with pharaohs. The museum was astounding. They had statues large and small, mummy coffins, mummies, tools, dried food, scrolls, shoes, beads, and a wig. Of course I had seen pictures of most of these things, but physically standing next to them made me really appreciate how detailed and OLD they were. It was almost overwhelming at times, actually. Faye and I bonded, and Nash was full of stories. The cutest one is this: He asked Kendall to read the plaque marking a statue to him, and when she was done he asked if the woman depicted was important. “Yes Nash, she was a very important lady.” Nash replied “No, I don’t think she was very important.” Kendall: “Well it says here that she did all these great things!” Nash “No, she didn’t do those. She worked in the kitchen. But don’t worry, she made the salads.” Where this kid gets his material, I have no idea, but he’s hilarious.
On Sunday, we were on our own, but still wanted to see a lot of the city. A group of us went to the Molé Tower, which was originally built as a synagogue, but now houses a cinema museum. We didn’t go to the museum, but did take the elevator all the way to the top, since it’s the highest building in Torino. The elevator ride up is amazing; the elevator itself is glass and flies up 89 meters in 60 seconds. It takes you straight through the main space of the museum, which is a huge, elongated square dome. The views from the top were great; we could see our dorm, our school, the Lingotto train station, and lots of churches and piazzas. Once down, we wandered back towards our hill and stopped at a market. We initially thought it was a flea market, but it turned out to be antiques! There was a huge assortment of items; pretty much anything you could imagine. I ended up buying a spiffy ring (the kind with multiple rings looped together that slip over one another), but spent most of the time just wandering, exploring, and taking pictures.
The studio had organized a big soccer game with the Italians, so the group I was with (Lyndon, Rachel Pads, and Liz wandered over towards the designated field towards the river. We stopped by a bakery though. Intending to just buy drinks, we were tempted by a giant profiterole pile covered in dark chocolate. We bought it, attacked it with tiny plastic spoons, and it was delicious. When we got to the soccer game, they had kicked the ball into the River Po and were trying to retrieve it by throwing rocks on the other side and pushing it back towards the wall. Luckily there wasn’t a strong current, but every now and then someone would hit the ball or aim wrong, and it would go flying back away from the bank. Liz and I documented it well with pictures; including the 15 foot limb they tried to use to grab it. Eventually the rocks did the trick, but it took a good 30-45 minutes. Once the game continued, Liz, Rachel and I just watched from the sides because we didn’t have proper shoes. It also turned out that the Italians didn’t show (they have no concept of punctuality or schedule, but apparently did call someone), so it was just America vs. America. Pretty entertaining to watch, though, because most of them were basketball players, runners, hockey players, or just not athletic.
I think that’s about going to sum it up for Torino. I’m really excited to start writing about Rome and don’t want to fall behind in that!