Over the Alps

Wednesday, 20 May 2009

Day 1 (written at 6:45am from Malpensa airport, Italy)

Waiting for the bus in Waltham (I just bought Seth that green mug *with a handle!* to replace that horrible mug he has been carrying around for years)

We just arrived at the quiet Malpensa airport, about 50km outside Milan. I am just waiting with the bags at an airport café for Seth to have his run; I hope he is able to find his way out of the airport grounds and into some decent roads.

Everything has gone surprisingly well so far—besides not sleeping much on the way over, the flights were very pleasant. Cruising over the Alps just before landing was especially fascinating and I will have to remember to have my camera ready when we fly out at the end of the trip. In addition, there weren’t even customs of any sorts when we arrived in Italy, and we were able to keep our leftover stir-fry from the other night as well as some fruit and raw vegetables; we won’t have to worry about going hungry on our bus to Milan Central Station or on the train to Venice.

Now that we are here, I feel a bit intimidated about even leaving the airport, a traveler-friendly place where everything is written in English. I wish I had more time to prepare for the trip and could have at least learned how to pronounce Italian words by now, which was my original goal. To make things even more interesting, Seth’s conversational Italian is not nearly as good as his knowledge of reading Italian from Renaissance Poetry. However, I am positive he will easily pick up modern-day terms and re-familiarise himself with spoken Italian very quickly!

Getting ready to go

Tomorrow we fly out! Besides the usual hustle, a major part of our trip preparation has been cleaning out our fridge. We bought a bit too much veg at Patel Bros. last week and I feel like we have been doing nothing but eating produce and drinking milk the past several days. It is a good thing, though, because I don't know how much of either we will be getting for the next two and a half weeks...

I am not sure we will have much internet access while away, but I think we will be bringing my laptop if we have room, just in case.

Time to get to bed to we can wake up at 5am tomorrow for a run (for Seth) and visit the gym (for me). Woohooo?

Big day downtown with my brother

My brother, Andrew, came over to Boston (from Rochester, MN) for a few days for a medical conference. He was free most of Friday, so after I participated in my first research study (it had to do with hearing and memory), I took the bus down to meet him.

After having Korean sushi in Chinatown with three of Andrew's lab-mates, the two of us headed for a walk around the Medical Center Area, which included Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital Boston, and Harvard Medical School. We next took the T across the river to check out Harvard University (bought Jennifer and Carter t-shirts) then met up with Seth at a Creme Cafe. The three of us had dinner at Border Cafe (the best Tex-Mex I've had in ages!!) followed by coffee at Algiers. A very fun day!

Harvard Square

Harvard University (quad)

Dinner at Border Cafe

Coffee at Algiers (I don't know why this picture looks so similar to the previous one...)

My hatred for Dell grows

So the keyboard on my laptop (Dell Studio 15) which is only 7 months old stopped working two days ago. After 'chatting' with the tech support, I had to call them with additional questions about the issue. However, they would not accept my technical questions because there is some sort of problem with my account. I instantly knew what they were referring to: see blog from Oct 11 (basically, Dell placed a hold on my account and marked it as missing because I asked them to ship my computer to a different address--they delayed shipping my computer two months when I first ordered it and I moved to MA during that time. They refused to change the shipping address, I was unable to pick up my computer for another month or two, and they never removed the hold on my computer, even after calling customer support a few months ago and asking them to remove it).

I just called Dell asking them to remove the hold, and I was transferred NINE TIMES, just to remove the hold. I don't know who in the world I was talking to each time I got transferred, but apparently they need lots of people to try to do one simple thing. The mud on the face came when they said they finally removed the hold and I was transferred to a technician to help with the keyboard, and the first thing he said was "so I understand you have some parts missing for your computer?" >:O

Six days to plan

We just bought plane tickets to Italy--and we leave in 6 days! Seth has some research to do at three libraries in Northern Italy (in Venice, Turin, and Ferrara) and so we decided to make it into a sort of extended working holiday. I'm also taking advantage of having vacation time (though Seth's 'vacation' is far more limited), as well as making use of cheap airfare and a somewhat weaker Euro. There are some unbelievable flights out there, such as Dublin for $220, Sydney for $650, Tokyo for $600, etc. We even considered taking a detour into Marrakesh, Morocco from Rome for about $230. (I would still love to go to Morocco, but this will have to be left for another time). For some reason our flight seems comparitively more expensive at $500 (Boston to Milan, per person, round trip).

Though the big stress of purchasing flights is taken care of, we only have a few days now to plan where to go, how to get there, and where we will stay (we will be there 16 nights). If anyone has any suggestions it would be appreciated!! Of course, I also need to do some research because aside from what I learned in my high school Latin Classes and what I observed in Boston's North End, I don't know ANYTHING about Italy.

Making the most of my time

After a casual job interview a few weeks ago at the local coffee shop, I realized that if I were to actually get a permanent job, I would probably have to suffer the same fate as 99% of the rest of the American working world and only get two weeks vacation per year. Since this horrible revelation, I have been trying to pack in as much stuff into my weekdays as possible, things that I would normally have to take vacation time to complete. I went to the optometrist for my annual eye exam, booked a dental appointment, and yesterday hung out at the Massachusetts RMV all afternoon to get my out of state license converted. However, it didn't surprise me to find that I will have to return to the RMV and use another what would be 'vacation day' because one of my four forms of identification was not valid. Ergh. (The Watertown RMV is a total mad house and the line always spills out the door--yesterday one particularly stressed customer actually snapped in the waiting area and started shouting and caused a scene, which thankfully helped pass the time).

Last week I was able to participate in one of the Waltham Land Trust's trail building projects. I spent three hours raking a new trail (I was sore for the next several days), but it felt good to be able to make myself useful. Very luckily, I did not get poison ivy (there was an unbelievable amout in the reserve and I felt that I was constantly bumping into it--I guess I must have washed down afterwards really well), but unluckily a pod of 2-3 dozen tent caterpillars fell on my hat and down my back and arms. That was really terrible.

I have also managed to get in contact with the Waltham Kiwanis Club. They recently stopped holding regular meetings due to poor attendance, but I was still invited to help them at the soup kitchen on Monday and a few days later attended their monthly board meeting. It will be great to keep active with Kiwanis and possibly get involved with the Bently College Circle K, which seems to be relatively strong.

More recently, I found on the Brandeis Classifieds a 'wanted' section for research study participants. I have already booked myself to participate in a few memory/cognition experiments at a lab on campus. I love reading about the outcomes of these sorts of psychology studies and I think it will be fun to see what they are like first hand! As the icing on the cake, I get paid a whopping $8/hr, which is $8/hr more than I get paid now ;o)

The boom and bust of Tom Turkey

Last weekend when running up Prospect Hill, Seth took me to the summit where he had been spotting a large wild male turkey in full display mode. I found this a little hard to digest because I always thought of wild turkeys as being scrawny, lean little guys, but when we made it to the summit (located at the end of a road which I normally bypass), sure enough, I saw a great big Tom Turkey strutting along the ridge overlooking the entire city of Waltham, with downtown Boston spread out in the distance. He probably hadn't left his post in days. It was the most remarkable thing I had seen in months; he looked just like a farm-yard turkey with a colorful head, barred wings, a decorative beard of feathers hanging off his chest, and an amazing tail that he periodically fanned out, making a swoosh. Who would have thought, that positioned at the second highest peak in the entire Boston area, struts a turkey? I returned a day or two later with a camera but like a ghost he was no where to be found. In fact, he hasn't been seen since that wonderful Sunday morning...

Ironically, last night I baked up a huge Thanksgiving-style turkey dinner to celebrate the end of Seth's first year teaching as a professor--he submitted the final grades to the registrar earlier in the day. (This served the triple purpose of also clearing out the freezer, which was annoyingly occupied with that 9.5lb headless carcass, and allowing me to practice roasting an entire bird for ourselves, just in case I botched it). It was a good thing we didn't have guests over because the turkey was still frozen, even though I transferred it from the freezer to fridge three days ago (we have a cold fridge). Also, I realized I didn't have a meat thermometer so couldn't check for doneness, so I cooked it at a lower temp for a few extra hours and it turned out dry. Oh well. I cooked everything from scratch (which took all day, but at least I won't have to cook again for several days), with the best part being the dark chocolate pudding pie for dessert (no Jello-Pudding here!). ;o)


*Yes, I realize the light is really bad, so don't be fooled--the food was more appetizing than the photos suggest!