First stop: Roma Termini (Rome Train Station). I took a short-distance
train from the airport to the station, and took a train to
Trento. It's a 7-hour ride. |
The underground passages in Roma Termini. |
The lobby in the station. There was no air-conditioning, and
everyone (and his brother) was smoking! Oh and did I mention
you have to pay to use the restroom? |
With a little bit of luck (in deciphering what's written on my
train tickets), after almost 8 hours I arrived at Trento, a
small town in the north. This was taken in the morning on the
next day. Alps with clouds, just outside my dorm (yeah sleep
near the highway). |
Taken from my dorm looking outside into the open space surrounded
by the apartment buildings. |
Here's my room. The bulb would burst in a few days... |
Here is Matthias from
Konstanz, Germany, one of my roommates. In the following days
we became very good friends... |
A group picture taken by ESSLLI (I stole it from their site). |
An ESSLI party: the tents were set up along a river, and we were
supposed to enjoy all kinds of water sports. Alas, all the
people ended up in the tent because of rain. The guy to the
left is Juan Antonio from
Mexico, I enjoyed a lot of his paper about G3 logic during
the student session. |
On the 1st weekend we went to Venice (or shall I say Venezia).
This is taken from the boat between the parking place to the
port of Venezia. |
Busy port in Venice. Tourists were everywhere... |
Me arriving at Venezia. |
Started to see all kinds of water passages and gondola (the small
boats). |
Matthias with his compass hanging on his neck. |
St. Marco Square - the largest square in Venezia. I'm not sure
if we had more pigeons, or we had more tourists. |
Musicians in the outdoor coffee shops. |
So we paid 15 euros to take the gondola tour. Take a closer look:
it's a one-way waterway! |
The luxurious taxi on the water just passed by our gondola (it
actually has 'taxi' painted over the boat) |
Matthias making a funny face on the gondola. |
It's a beautiful day: blue sky and all. |
Me in the St. Marco Square again (another angle). Oh according
to Matthias in Germany they called pigeons "flying rats". |
In front of a colorful mask shop. |
With the help of Matthias's compass (yeah right) we initiated
our depth-first search, aiming to find places where tourists
seldom go. It's one of them - so we had our lunch sitting in
the shade of an old church. |
A lion sculpture on one segment of the castle walls. Someone
told me it's the symbol for Venezia. |
If you can read the signs, it's actually belonging to the department
of Physics and Math of a university there. What a nice place
to study math and physics! |
St. Marco Square, looking toward the port. |
About to leave Venezia. |
The apartments in Borino - nice student apartments in the hills
(belonging to Univ. of Trento). Kathrin and Ari are
lucky enough to be assigned to stay here. |
Kathrin and Matthias behind me. It's our 2nd time visiting the
girls, and this time Matthias promised to cook for them (the
last time they cooked for us). |
So we bought 50 euro worth of raw material to the girls' apartment:
Matthias was the chef, with Juan Antonio and me being the most
obedient assistants. |
"Hm... should I put the slices of banana in 90 degree angle or
in 80?" |
After an hour of preparation (or longer?), we finally got to
sit around the table, and the dinner seemed to form... |
The other residents in the apartment were all excited... |
After a great meal (not bad really - a German dinner!), several
rounds of coffee and wine, and everyone's love stories, Matthias
and I finally got the chance to sing for all the friends. We
practiced for about 4 hours (or shall I say just to entertain
ourselves) the day before. Matthias is currently singing in
a choir, and I was in a choir before. |
On a bridge over the beautiful Adige river. The cable car can
be seen in the background. |
Over Adige river. Every morning during the 2 weeks of the summer
school, Matthias, Juan Antonio and I would walk from behind
the church, cross this bridge, and on to the building where
we have lectures. |
Did I say breakfast before the classes? Yes ESSLLI fed us very
well. Here is the breakfast from 8:00-9:00 every morning (from
left: Matthias and Juan Antonio). |
The gate leads to the student restaurant where we had our lunches
(free) and dinners. |
On the last weekend, after all of the intellectual refreshment,
Matthias and I decided to do some mountain hiking. We took
the cable car to the top first (yeah we're lazy). |
On the cable car: you can see the bridge over the Adige river
and the lovely church I mentioned above. |
The cable car brought us to the Panorama Hotel - the place where
all the lecturers (gods) stay. See the parallel? It's Mount
Olympics. |
Me on the platform of the Panorama Hotel (belonging to Univ.
of Trento too - why are they so rich?) |
If you are one of the lecturers, every morning you take the cable
car down from Mount Olympics, and keep thinking how to make
those stupid students suffer. |
On to our hiking trip: a vineyard along the way. A small village
can be seen in the back. |
Now we're in the village - notice a nice portrait of the Holy
Mother on the wall (between the windows)? |
A cross along our way. |
The bright color of sunflowers contrasts the blueness from the
sky. |
Cool water to wash away the dirt and sweat from the trip! |
The church in the village - the bell kept chiming on every hour. |
After the hiking trip, in the evening Matthias and I went to
Verona (2 hours of train south to Trento) to see Tosca - one
of my favorite operas. This is Verona. |
The opera was performed in the arena in the picture. The egyptian
stuff you saw was from the opera Aida the day before (they
don't have a better storage area?) |
The arena. We arrived there at around 6pm, and the opera would
start at 9pm. We had to cuz we bought the cheapest tickets
and the seats were not assigned - the earlier you went the
better seats you could find. |
Five minutes before the show. |
Tosca, the end of Act I, Scarpia joined in the Te Deum, singing
with the lust for Tosca. I intended to capture the big procession,
but alas my camera was not up to the job... |
The last day in Trento: just walked around, and then took a train
back to Roma Termini during the night (spending 7 hours on
a sleeping train gave you little chance to sleep, it turned
out; but how beautiful the landscape of Italy in the night
is...) |
