Bracciano and Field trip for Studio Art

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Link Above for photos from Bracciano where there was a late 14th century castle and Lake Bracciano.  It was beautiful there we also saw two brand new red Ferraris race by while we were walking along the white line on the road absolutely amazing only in Italy.  The second set of pics are from a small town about 45 minutes away where we went for our studio art class.  The castle was once a getaway for the pope and across the square from the castle was a church were we were able to go down into the crypts and walk around the tunnels that connected the castle to the church and also provided a way out of town.  The whole experience inside that castle and inside the crypts had a very uncomfortable feeling.  There were lots of bones under the church and just a very eerie feel.  I was happy to get out of that church and town but luckily on the way out a stop at the pasticeria eased me out.

way behind

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Link to pics above, Pics from Villa Adriana just outside Rome crazy roman ruins and then the at the Mediterrian Sea just outside Tarquinia also 2000 year old Eutruscan Tombs.

Villa D'Este

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Here are the pics enjoy!  Story will come soon, I'm a little behind on posting.

Workin Hard or Hardly Working

This past saturday our gardens and cuisine professor asked for volunteers  to help her in her garden out in the countryside.  She is a landscape architect and a great chef and I had heard that she has a beautiful house and garden around her house and the offer of a good home cooked meal I just couldn't turn it down.  So my friend Mike and I volunteered to help her and she picked us up at 930 in the morning.  Unfortunately I was in a bit of rough shape that morning but ended up sweating it out once we got out there.  On the way out she took us on this ancient Etruscan road that was carved at least thirty feet down through solid rock sometime around 400 BC.  The road was pretty scary actually, hardly large enough for a 4 door fiat punto and wound around the looming rock walls at close to 90 degree corners to the point that our teacher had to lay on the horn while bustling around the corners.  Once out of the tunnel like road we hit the countryside and the pavement soon ended to a terribly rutted dirt road through hundreds of acres of sheep farms, the sheep kept and bred mostly for their milk to make cheese.  The sheep had their lambs and she informed us that most of the lambs would not live past easter as it is customary to eat the lambs on easter.  The older sheep however, were rarely eaten because the meat becomes too tough.  The farm surrounding their house, as she said had over a thousand sheep and the sheep were the loudest neighbors they had.  As we pulled off the road into their driveway we came upon their house a three story place constructed of the local redish brown volcanic rock.  The yard or i should say garden surrounding the house was absolutely beautiful, a few rows of olive trees which they use to hand crush their own olive oil, a formal 4 section garden design out front and a wrap around porch covered in lattice with numerous thorned vines running up the pillars and up the lattice.  The whole compound was surrounded by tall hedges and from inside the garden yard you felt as if in paradise because the only view was over the hedges and spread out over the countryside to blue hazy mountains sitting just on the horizon.  However, lost in the beauty we were assigned to a pile of dirt towards the back the of house.  There we were given pitchforks to sift through the pile of dirt and pick out the trash, sticks, rocks, and gremenia, which is a kind of root weed that grows and sprouts without being planted or cared for.  As we prepared the dirt to be put into the vegetable garden her husband would shovel it into the the wheel barrow and one of us would help him dump it carefully not to spill into the raised bed garden which was already growing leafy greens and beans.  After a few hours of work at the same monotonous project we took a break for lunch of capricollo, prosciutto, pane pizza, and caciatta cheese.  After the half hour break we returned for another three and a half hours of work and depleted most of the pile.  They were impressed with our work and were satisfied with the progress we made that day.  We cleaned up the yard and she set up to start dinner.  The first step was starting a fire in their outside wood fired oven because the flavor from it was unmatched.  While our teacher started at dinner, her husband took us out to these ancient Etruscan tombs.  Carved into the solid exposed rock from a cliff side was a full necropolis.  The set up of the tombs was a large carved facade with T shaped "false door" above the actual entrance and the actual entrance was just a large void into the cliff face with a set of stairs cut down below the meeting area.  Down into the actual tomb would lie the bodies in stone sarcophaguses of the families deceased members.  The actual site was in pretty terrible shape as it was open to the public and there are no funds for the up keep.  Most of the facades were broken off and stairs to the tombs were blocked off by the fallen rock from the facade.  All of the tombs had been raided in earlier times and all that remained were the massive beds that the bodies would lay on.  I was pretty erie being down inside the tombs a very strange energy was in the air and we didn't spend lots of time actually inside.  From the necropolis out across a small flat valley and over a river sat the acropolis.  Taken over in the medieval times by a fort and lookout tower.  The only remaining piece of Etruscan architecture left was the original entrance archway.  But we went inside the fort anyway and climbed to the top of the lookout tower for a spectacular view out over the Lazio region.  From the top you could clearly see why the spot was chosen for a civilization.  Where the acropolis sat was on a triangular shape of land in between two rivers that converged at the point and entrance of the fort.  And as I said directly across the valley sat up on the hillside and inside the cliff the necropolis, completely visible from the acropolis and protected by the river.  That finished our tour of the ancient landscape and we wandered back to the house through vineyards and olive groves the vineyards mostly used for homemade wine which to todays standards are unfavorable and only the farmers who make their own drink their own, comparable i guess to moonshine.  We returned back to the house exhausted and in just enough time to sit out on the porch and watch the blood red sun sink beneath transcending lines of pinks, purples, and blues.  Then came dinner, for first course we had pasta with a sausage cream sauce followed by a roasted chicken and potatoes and the Fibonacci sequence broccoli like vegetable.  Accompanied by an expensive bottle of local red wine which was a mix of merlot and some other grape that I was unfamiliar with.  To finish the night off we had a fresh made apple crisp and an interesting conversation about what to do around Viterbo.  We worked hard but it was totally worth it, good people, good food, good times.    

Bagnoregio: The Dying City

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Last weekend we went out to The Dying City.  About a half hour bus ride from Viterbo out into the countryside.  The dying city is just outside a slightly larger town called Bagnoregio.  We arrived by bus in to the town and had to walk about a mile outside town and down into this large valley to the the entrance of the city.  While walking down the hill we encountered probably the best view of the city perched atop a tall outcropping of red layered rock.  At the base of the city sat a restaurant and a couple other buildings.  We ate at the restaurant and sat for a little over an hour where I ate, the only one to get two plates, a bean and porcini soup for first plate, then a plate of mushroom and truffles in cream sauce over a thick regional pasta.  Very delicious.  We then made the hike up the long ramp up into the entrance to the city.  As you walk into the entrance of the town you step back in time through a few rough stone archways into the main piazza with a bar and a gift shop, then as you continue on down the main road you find the cathedral and the piazza outside that, then a little further down the main stretch you hit the end of town which goes down some stairs and turns to dirt as it wraps around the hillside below the city.  At the end of the dirt path there is a cave which runs through the hillside to the clear other side with another cave branching off halfway through.  It is said that this cave system connects to the basements of most of the houses as an escape route in times of attack.  The town today is only occupied by 12 full time residents.  It has 1 restaurant, 1 bar, 1 gift shop, 1 church, and a whole herd of cats who acted as our tour guides, probably more cats than actual residents.

Blogger Bullshit

Because this website sucks as far as photo uploading I taken on a Flickr account.  I have about 4G of photos from the past two weekends that I am working on uploading to my new account so as soon as I can figure all that out I will post the link here and you can access the photos to my stories through that link.

beginnings continued

At the start of the semester I volunteered to meet with a language partner to help them with their english and in return get help with my Italian.  So after a few weeks I received an email and arranged a meeting time and day with my new friend Stefano.  Hearing from other USAC students, I had the expectation of meeting with another student at the university around my age and being able to go out and have some drinks with them and have a good time as well as language training, but I was a little taken back by our first meeting.  We arranged to meet at 3 outside one of the walls of the city and when I arrived I called and he thought I meant meet at 5 so he said he'd be right there in 5 minutes or so.  Up pulls a Mercedes hatchback and the window rolls down and the man inside says "You Karl?" "Ah yeah, Stefano?" "Yes yes,  nice to meet you." Ok well i walk up and shake his hand he has a wedding ring on and a baby seat in the back...come to find out he is twice my age, married with kids, and has a PHD in Agricultural Economics.  Not exactly what I expected for a language partner but he is a really nice guy and took me out for coffee and we talked mostly in english about art and photography and I found out that he needs to expand his english because he is traveling to Nepal for a work project and they will do all the business in english.  After the first meeting we set up to meet twice a week on day in english and one day in italian.  I will keep this posted to see how it goes.

odds ends and beginnings

I haven't been able to post pics this week because I have to purchase more storage space for this blog its bullshit in my opinion because upon starting the blog there is no mention of limited space but o well.  I will be posting pics of "The Dying City" in a little town called Bangnoregio about an hour outside Viterbo.  However in the meantime, a word about the train system in Italy.  On Sunday we were supposed to go to Rome to see a Van Gogh exhibition, so I figured I'd wait til sunday to get my ticket before we got on the train, I am aware that the ticket window and cafe which both sell tickets would be closed but there are self service ticket machines outside the station that you can use to purchase tickets.  So about 40 minutes before the train leaves we walk up to the station only to find everything closed as anticipated and the self service machine conveniently out of order.  Also its good to know that even though most Italians don't attend church, the whole town pretty much shuts down on sundays.  I've since learned from the first weekend here to stock up on food on saturdays because that first sunday we didnt have anything to eat and walked all over town to find anything and to our dismay everything is deserted.  So back to this past sunday, we frantically, maybe not so, run around town trying to find anyone who will sell us a BIRG ticket, good for a round trip to Rome as well as the metro system, with no luck.  So with that behind us and shrugged off we set out to make the best of our day.  One of the girls we were supposed to go with suggested her rooftop terrace would be a worthy alternative, it being the most beautiful day so far here, sounded like a great option.  So we went out got a few bottles of wine some cheese, prosciutto, and fresh bread and commenced towards a full stomach, sun burned face, and a mean buzz.  A great day ended in all of us tranced in amazement watching the blood red sun flash its last rays of the day over the arid central italian landscape and multi leveled terra-cotta tiled roofs and terraces.  Much better than the hectic Rome rat race I would say.