A Sustainable Train of Thought

Here’s a bit of strange Italian trivia: in certain parts of Italy it’s illegal to turn on the heat before 15 October or after 15 April. This would explain why there’s still no heat in both Talponia and the Blue House, even though the weather’s gotten pretty cold in the last couple of days. Today it was 12C in Torino, with a low of 7C, although I suspect it’s colder in Ivrea as we’re right next to the mountains. On the way back from Milan on Sunday, it started raining and hailing. The weather before Saturday was consistently warm, but ever since Sunday the weather’s ranged from really chilly to cold. I could see my breath while walking home tonight. I can smell winter lurking behind the mountains.

A lot’s been going on lately. I took a trip to Milan on Saturday, stayed overnight, and came back Sunday afternoon. I’ve also been working on the Memory project for the last couple of weeks. It’s been frustrating at times, but I think we’re heading the right direction now. I’m just worried about coding the thing in Processing, as I don’t believe the programming language can express what we want to do.

Aside from schoolwork, I suppose the interesting news is my trip to Milan. This was the first time I’d been outside of the train station in Milan, and I had really no idea what the expect. I was pleasantly surprised. There’s a lot to see, and it’s pretty easy to walk around. A group of us had intended to depart for Milan together early Saturday morning, but I think some people overdid aperitivo the night before and weren’t able to haul themselves out of bed for the 8AM departure time. A group of four of us ended up leaving early, with the intention of meeting up in Milan with the rest of the students later that day. Thank goodness for cell phones!

After arriving in Milan, we decided to walk to the Duomo, which is the third largest cathedral in the world. I needed to find an ATM along the way, but this turned into a very involved process. Let me just say that taking money out from an ATM in Italy is a bit like playing Russian Roulette. The threat of death, of course, isn’t present, but there is a healthy amount of terror at times. For example, after inserting my card into one ATM, it decided to inform me that my card was being withheld and my bank notified. Thirty seconds later, out popped my card. Whew!

Admittedly, not all ATMs have such strongly worded messages, but I have run into my fair share of insufficient or zero balance warnings even though there’s plenty of money in the account. There doesn’t seem to be a particular rationale behind which machines will take my card and which ones won’t, so I inevitably have to visit five or so machines before I can get to my money.

Having successfully wrested money from yet another recalcitrant ATM, we grabbed some sandwiches and continued our trek towards the Duomo. Along the way, we ran across what I believe is the US embassy in Milan, as well as (after a wrong turn) the house of Versace. Or at least that’s what the huge plaque on the building seemed to indicate. After consulting the map in my guidebook, we headed through the fashion district, which, as one might expect, is filled with incredibly expensive things.

We eventually ended up at the Duomo, the front of which is completely covered in scaffolding. However, the rest of the building is visible, and I was suitably impressed. The building reminded me of the church in Cologne I visited earlier this year with Syd, except that the Duomo was much, much lighter in color. I’m sure they’ve done restorative work on the Duomo, and it’s amazing how different one’s sense of the building is when it’s light-colored instead of dark and sooty.

After checking out the interior of the Duomo, we decided to walk up to the roof. Yes, you can actually walk on the roof of the Duomo, and it sure is amazing. The weather was a little overcast on Saturday, so we weren’t able to see very far (apparently you can see the alps on a clear day), but that didn’t spoil the experience of walking on top of this church. We shunned the elevator and walked up the several flights of narrow stairs. I think we stayed on top of the Duomo for about an hour. I took a bunch of photos and was amused at how some of the steep sections on the roof resembled the trail on Hua San mountain in China. After walking around the entire accessible roof structure, I started to reconsider our decision to walk up and down from the roof instead of taking the elevator!

The Metro stops right in front of the Duomo, but we decided to walk (sensing a trend?) to la Triennale, which is a kind of pavilion or exhibition hall for art, design, and architecture. It hosts a variety of exhibitions during the year, and it just so happens that Marcello’s wife is the curator. Yes, this is the same Marcello from our “30-second Visions” project a couple of weeks ago. We were to all meet him at the museum around 1PM.

On the way from the Duomo to la Triennale, we passed through Castello Sforzesco, one of the landmarks of Milan that houses, among other things, the final, unfinished sculpture of Michelangelo. We didn’t know this until later, however, so we just continued on to la Triennale to meet Marchello and the rest of the students who hadn’t gotten up in time for the earlier train to Milan.

The big exhibit right now at the museum is the Andy Warhol Show. I was suitably impressed by this exhibit, which looked at his work from the perspective of how he developed his art. After reading more about the time period, the processes he used, as well as the points he was trying to make, I think I appreciate his artwork more. I still find some of his work strange and enigmatic, but some of his other pieces make sense now.

The other two exhibits were an architecture exhibit about a competition that solicited new designs for the center of Milan. A bunch of famous architects were involved, and I ended up wondering how one would tell Frank Gehry that his group’s design lost out to the group group with Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind.

The upstairs exhibit was about industrial design, and displayed a selection of winners from this year’s ADI winners. ADI is the Italian Association for Industrial Design, and there were some very interesting exhibits, including a Bertone Birusa, which pretty much stole the show as far as I’m concerned. I managed to take a photo with my phone, but there are much better pictures out there of this beautiful car. On a humorous note, the front-right tire was flat…go figure!

It’s getting late, so I think this is a good place to stop. I’ll finish this story up with another post some other time.