Block #17 - Lorrach

After I dropped Nick at the airport in Paris, I caught an early morning train out to Germany to visit with some friends, Ellie and Annie, for the weekend before I headed on the Munich for a couple weeks. They were staying in Lṏrrach, a little town in Germany a stone's throw away from Switzerland. I met them in Basel, and the three of us headed on to Lṏrrach from there after putting our feet in the Rhine River to cool off for a bit. On the way back to the train station I took this picture of a shirt sleeve, just to keep track of things that might be interesting to work in to patterns.


Back in Lṏrrach, we visited a castle that sits up on top of a mountain nearby, and by on top, I mean on top. We drove most of the way up to the castle, and still had to walk what felt like straight up to make it to the castle, then up another several flights of stairs to get to the top of the tower from which this photo was taken.


Another view that I feel like was worth the hike, though. I saw this railing as we were driving around and felt the need to document it.


Sorry about the quality of the picture; it was taken from the backseat of the car, through the front windshield, as we were driving past. Not the best conditions for clarity.

The Saturday night that I was in Lṏrrach was the loser's bracket game for the World Cup, by which I mean the game played by the losers of the semifinal games. Germany was playing Uruguay, and to properly watch the game we took ourselves off to the restaurant Ellie and Annie are working at to watch on a big screen they had set up in their patio area. Now, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the World Cup, but this year the big deal noisemakers were the vuvuzelas, pretty much a long plastic tube flared at one end. I had only ever heard them on through the TV, but I had the exciting opportunity to see one up close and personal at the game, and I just had to take a picture.


Now, I did ask this kid – in German – if I could take his picture before I took it, and he did consent, but he looked at me like I had completely lost my mind the entire time, and I noticed later that he was pointing back at me and telling his mom what had happened. Luckily I didn't get into any kind of trouble for it. I think mostly he was just bemused by the whole thing.

To round out my pattern finding, here's the surface of one of the tables at the restaurant, that we were actually using as stools at the time.


I think the point I want to make with this post is that even though I've spent the last several weeks and huge amount of energy traveling around to collect these pictures of patterns to inspire me to come up with quilt designs, it's something that you can do wherever you are. Just look around you, especially at floors and ceilings, places you wouldn't normally think to look. Those are generally the best places for finding things that are simple enough for most anyone to convert it into a design, yet decorative enough and interesting enough to make it worth your while.

Finally, on to two weeks of language practice in Munich! Bis später!

Block #16 - Pompeii

So,I have to be honest. I didn't actually think that I would get anything useful for this blog out of our trip to Pompeii. I mean, really? How much design and pattern can you possibly get from a town that was destroyed by a massive volcanic eruption nearly 2000 years ago? Lots, apparently. The Romans really knew their mosaics.



I would highly recommend a trip to Pompeii to anyone going to Italy, especially if you're excited about looking at ancient Roman things. The Forum and the Palatine Hill were cool, but you were just looking at the city center area and the mansions that the really wealthy and high society people of Rome lived in. You just came away with a feeling that that wasn't all. It was awesome and incredible and somewhat overwhelming, but it wasn't a city, it was just part of it.

Pompeii on the other hand was everything. Everything was saved regardless of whether it was a temple or a minor bath on the outer fringes of town, whether the person who lived there could have bought the town ten times over or was squatting in a hovel on the side of the road. The audio guide was nice to have, but it was fun just wandering around the place at will, exploring the streets and the houses that were open, and everything in between.



This is the forum of Pompeii, the main central square, with the temple of Jupiter in the foreground and Mt. Vesuvius rising up in the background.

A couple of things you need to know about Pompeii if you decide to go. First, it's hot. Way hot. Rome was hot, and then we drove over three hours due south to get to Pompeii. Bring water and stick to the shade. For example



This is what we were doing the entire day in Pompeii. No, he's not getting ready to jump out and scare those nice people in the street, he's just edging along the wall to keep all parts of him in the shade as long as possible. We probably looked like we were pretending to be some weird sort of tourist ninjas, but even doing that as much as possible, this was the only day out of the whole trip that I came close to getting sunburned (I was red, but it didn't persist to the next day). If you have the luxury of staying in Naples or even in the city of Pompeii, I would highly recommend going as soon as they open in the morning, or later in the afternoon. Doing that you'll miss the crowds of people that come on buses from Rome, and the shadows from the buildings will be longer and easier to stay in. Not to mention it would probably be cooler than the heat of the day.

Also, there are a couple phrases you should be prepared to hear many, many times. Did you know that there was a major earthquake in 62 CE before the eruption in 79 CE? Thus phrase number one is “this building was undergoing renovations/rebuilding after the earthquake of 62, but they weren't done yet.” The other phrase you'll hear a lot, to the point where you'll know when it's coming and be able to recite it along with the audio guide. Repeat after me: “This object [statue/mosaic/urn/bust/etc] is a reproduction. The original is in the archaeological museum in Naples.” Nick and I were up on the wall around the city looking at this vineyard:



I turned to him and said “Hey, Nick. Did you know that this vineyard is just a reproduction? The original is in the archaeological museum in Naples.” We laughed, haha, very funny, but then we came down and I can't remember if there was a sign or if we were listening to the audio guide at that point, but we're going along and come to find out that the vineyard was planted on the site of a vineyard when Pompeii was a real town, and that the vines were planted where they found the imprints of the old vine roots. And the casts that were made of these roots? In the Archaeological Museum in Naples. We stared at each other in stunned silence for a couple of seconds, and then nearly killed ourselves laughing.

One thing that I never understood about Pompeii until this trip was how they found the preserved bodies and made casts of them. I always thought that something along the lines of fossilization happened, and they were just digging in the ash one day and came across whole people. What actually happened is that they were digging in the ash one day and came across a person sized and shaped cavity in the ash, where the person had been covered with ash, which hardened into a rock casing, and then the actual person inside disintegrated away. The supervisor of the dig instructed the minions to fill the cavity with plaster, and then they carefully chipped away the solidified ash/rock until they came down to the plaster cast, revealing a perfect cast of the person that was originally there almost 2000 years ago. So when they say that they unearth people that have been perfectly preserved at Pompeii, what they really mean is that they've unearthed perfectly preserved people molds at Pompeii, from which they can make casts of perfectly preserved people.



Pretty cool.

I should probably wrap this up before you start thinking that I'm trying to write a book about Pompeii, so just a couple last things.

This was on the side of a building, just out there, and I think it was part of a street marker or something, because it was a building sitting on one corner of an intersection



Whatever it was, I like it.

Finally, upon exiting Pompeii on a quest for lunch, we saw this place, which I just had to take a picture of.



Would you like some orange or lemon...sujce? Someone needs to work on their handwriting to the printers.

Well, that brings the Italian part of our trip to a close. Next we're off to Paris for the purpose of putting Nick on a plane home, and then I'm taking the train into Germany for the next part of my trip, a stopover in the small town of Lӧrrach, Germany, just across the border from Basel, Switzerland, and then on to Munich for two weeks to take German classes. Bis spӓter!

Block #15 - Vatican City

Can you just up and go to mass in St. Peter's Basilica? I had this conversation with several people leading up to the Sunday we found out the definitive answer to the question, with varying outcomes depending on who I was talking to. Generally it was the less religious people who thought that one would need to get a ticket or something to go to mass, but I maintained that at some point you have to draw the line between tourist attraction and church, and having to obtain tickets, even free ones, for a Sunday mass in the church of the Roman Catholic church is beyond that line.

Thus, bright and early Sunday morning Nicholas and I roused ourselves out of bed (by which I mean I roused myself out of bed, then spent twenty minutes alternating between getting ready and shaking him repeatedly to get him up), put on the nicest clothes we had and headed off to church. Considering the nicest clothes we had were looking kind of rough, my greatest worry was that they would look at us and decide that we weren't actually dressed for church and deny us on those grounds, despite having dressed in the best that we could manage under the circumstances.

We arrived at St. Peter's, sailed through the security lines, and promptly got really confused as to where we were supposed to go. The line funneled immediately into the crypt, actually a very nicely tiled, well lit area under the floor of the basilica, where you could view the graves of a handful of selected popes, including the most recent one. The Vatican has (apparently) gone minimalist in terms of graves in the past 50 years or so, but I thought the gravestone was classy, simple and elegant. They had an extra couple people at that particular spot facilitating traffic flow because there were a number of people that stopped to pray at the grave. Again, considering the difference between tourist attraction and religious site, they weren't hurrying people along that wanted to pray, there was just the praying area and the walking area, and people discreetly stationed there to make that happen.

Anyhow, we funneled through there, and finally got to the front door. From a handy dandy sign outside we ascertained that we were right on time for a mass, with chorus, in Latin, at the main alter. You would thing that mass at the main alter would be relatively easy to find. As we stepped into the Basilica, though, we realized that that task would be a little more difficult than we anticipated. This church is the great granddaddy of all churches everywhere. This church – we realized later – you can't properly see from St. Mark's square in front. This church is so big that to properly see the whole thing, and appreciate its magnitude, you have to be standing about a mile down the road, outside the Castel Sant'Angelo.


To give you an idea of the magnitude of this building, imagine your favorite cathedral. You know how it's really huge in the middle, but the sides are a little cramped? St. Peter's is huge in the middle, and then equally as huge on the sides. Take the space inside your average cathedral and multiply it by 3, or 5, or 12, and you might start to get an idea of how big this place is.

Anyhow, we ran around for probably 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get to mass, and learning that all of the helpful Vatican staff wandering around know several languages, none of which are English. Finally, after much angst, we figured out how to make it to the standing room only mass. The thing that annoys me is that if we would have known where to go to begin with, we would have been there well enough in advance that we could have sat down. But that's a minor annoyance compared to the annoyance I felt for the picture taking people. Now, the general rule in churches is that you can come to mass, and not have to pay and not have to wait in line, but you can't take pictures during mass. St. Peter's was a little different in that it's so big that you can be having mass up front, and no one at the back or even in the middle would have any idea that anything was going on, so random people just milling around are welcome to take pictures, but they've got a fairly large area for the mass and buffer zone roped off. They let people in freely if you know to ask, but they ask that you don't take pictures. My irritation is the people that obviously told the guy standing there that they were coming to mass, stayed for five minutes, surreptitiously took their pictures of the main alter and then left. That said, here's my picture of the window over the main alter (taken after the processional out).


The next day we headed to the Vatican Museums, home of the Sistine Chapel and everything else of artistic value the Vatican has managed to collect over the past, oh, 1700 years or so. The Museums are housed in the Papal Palace, a term that actually refers to a grouping of buildings rather than one contiguous building. So, worry not, we weren't in any danger of disturbing the pope in our wanderings around. Yet again, I spent a lot of time looking at floors, to the point where I managed to miss the School of Athens, which I'm still upset at myself about. But, I got some really good pictures of floors, this first one from one of the sculpture galleries:


Floor from the first of the Rapael rooms. There were several of these that were along the same style, but each unique. If I ever have about two months on my hands that I can do nothing but applique, I think it'd be cool to do a quilt with a dozen of these medallions on it.


Both of the floor in the room that I'm pretty sure housed the School of Athens. Thus, if you're at the Vatican Museums and see this floor, for goodness sake look at the walls too.



This was of a table, but it's along the same lines as the floors, so it's getting grouped in with them.


In my defense about the School of Athens thing, there were a ton of people at the museum, and you were pretty muchly herded along the entire time, with no real opportunity to stop and look at things. Trying to go against the tide of people was like trying to stay in one place while you're in the ocean. It's pretty much impossible to do, and even when you think you're doing it, you look up and realized you're 100 yards further down the beach than you thought you were.

One thing that I did not miss, however, was the Sistine Chapel. I have to say, it wasn't as shiny as I expected, though it was still really cool to be where the pope is chosen. No pictures, though, as pictures are forbidden in the Sistine Chapel. Apparently if you take pictures, you're approached and requested to delete them, and the Vatican people will stand over you until they're sure you've done so. We didn't learn this firsthand though, nor did we learn it until after the fact. We didn't even think about taking any pictures, because Nicholas hypothesized that probably we would be jailed for taking pictures. I didn't buy it, but neither did I take pictures.

One interesting architectural feature that I noticed, that I bet happened because someone was better at art than they were at math in school. Take a look at this arch:


Looks like a normal arch, right? To a casual observer, it looks like any of hundreds of other interior arches in the numerous palaces/museums we've visited. But take a look at this picture, taken from directly under the arch:


The whole thing is a carefully painted illusion, probably because someone miscalculated an addition to the palace and needed to make it blend. The illusion was amazing, though. If I hadn't been so used to looking at ceilings and floors by now, I probably wouldn't have noticed it at all, just as the majority of the thousands of people that move through that arch every day probably don't notice a thing.

At the end of the museum, as kind of part of the gift shop area, they had a Vatican Post office, so Nick and I bought a couple postcards and promptly sat down to write them to everyone who's address we knew off the top of our heads. Basically, we sent a postcard to ourselves and that was it. There's not much call these days to know anyone's address by heart but your own.

And, as usual, a couple pictures from our walking around just to round things out.


I really liked this window in particular because you could tell it was more modern, and just really pretty. And this car:


I want one. That's a my-size car.

Now tomorrow, off to Pompeii. Ciao!

Block #14 - Ancient Rome

The first day we got to Rome, we spent the afternoon walking around the city, up to a major park in the Northeast corner, from which I took this landscape picture of the city.


That dome just to the left of the center is the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, in the Vatican City. For the better part of the afternoon we just sat around in the shade and watched the world go by, then headed back to the hostel with the grand plan of tackling Ancient Rome on our first full day in the city.

For those who are unaware of the specifics of Ancient Rome (as we were when we arrived), the major ancient Roman ruins in the city are the Colosseum and the Roman Forum/Paletine Hill. A couple that we met in Venice recommended doing the latter first, because you can buy a combined ticket and bypass the line for the former. If you do go to Rome, the extra 2 euros to do both is worth it if only to run past the line at the Colosseum.

The Palentine Hill and the Forum were interesting, but it was blazing hot the entire day which made it hard to really enjoy fully. A couple pictures from the morning:


The Roman Forum, the main plaza of ancient Rome.


The ceiling of one of the very few buildings we were allowed to go into. I was absolutely amazed at how well the frescoes in the buildings have survived.


Mosaics that may or may not have been outside to begin with. It was kind of hard to tell where there were buildings at one point and where there weren't. I'm thinking that this might be a fun thing to try the mosaic patchwork on, seeing if I can make them look exactly as they are here, cracks in the stones and all.

After we spent several hours at the Forum, we rested for a while eating lunch, and then headed out to the Colosseum.


It was amazing, the first building of that scale I've ever seen that wasn't modern, or that wasn't religious in orientation. Apparently the games were free, but each attendee was issued a ticket and a seat, and assigned a specific entrance gate, just like modern sports games. The system we have now is actually based on the Roman system, which is just incredible to me.


Most of what you can see in the bottom left you couldn't see when the Colosseum was in use, as it was underneath the floor of the arena. One of the coolest things I learned while I was there is that there was a complex system of awnings for shade that could be rolled out or retracted, and that sailors were hired to run the rigging for the system. Just one more picture of the Colosseum,


I was in an artsy fartsy mood when I took this picture, and I think it turned out rather well.

Just a couple final things before I sign off for the day. I thought this window was interesting, mostly in that it was quite different from others typical patterns I've seen thus far.


And finally, we met up with some friends to have dinner and ended up at a restaurant that was also a club. I went to the bathroom and felt compelled to document this:


The toilet seat and toilet cover are clear. Now, I'm not sure who made this decision, but I'm willing to bet that whoever it was does not have to clean the bathroom. I mean, it doesn't take a huge amount of imagination to figure out how much potential for mess there is with a toilet seat cover clear enough that it was giving me a little bit of a headache before I realized it was there, especially in a club setting, and even more especially because it was a unisex bathroom. I can't even imagine how many times a night they have to clean up after some guy that didn't realize the cover wasn't up before he let loose.

Anyhow, after that lovely digression, we head on to the sights and sounds of the Vatican City for the next two days. Ciao!

Block #13 - Pisa

With one more day left in Florance, and no real desire to be in Florence, we decided to cave and do the disgustingly touristy thing by going to Pisa and seeing the Leaning Tower. The trip actually turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected. We arrived midmorning and went straight to the tower ticket office, and were given a time to come back to climb the tower. The whole thing was a very slick operation, much, much more efficient than the vast majority of other tourist locations we visited.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa was actually intended to be the bell tower for the cathedral of Pisa, and is part of a complex of buildings, all of which have better foundations



Thus, they are all much less famous, but in a lot of ways much more worthwhile to see. The cathedral particularly had tons and tons of tile work that was spectacular. I swear, I've spent so much time taking pictures of floors on this trip, but I suppose that was the point, so I can't complain. A piece of this particular floor:



And an idea of how extensive the floor mosaics are:



The outsides of the church was equally as decorated, as I've found is most often the case. One of my favorites, on the outside of the cathedral:



After much wandering around and time killing, it was finally our time to climb the Leaning Tower:



Which turned out to be much, much freakier than either one of us expected. At this point we had been up several towers, hills, etc overlooking various cities and countryside landscapes, but this was something altogether different. The way up was a spiral staircase with a fairly large radius, so that it only wrapped around the tower a total of about six times getting up to the first landing. Even from the first loop, though, you could easily feel the lean. Walking up the tower was weird in and of itself because what you felt wasn't so much the actual lean of the tower as it was your body pitching forward, back or side to side to compensate for the slant in the stairs.

When we got to the top of that staircase if was nerve wracking enough, with a fairly substantial railing around the rim and solid stone at our backs, but then we were directed to this tiny little staircase that wound up to the very top of the tower, with a thin little railing around the edge. If you're looking at the picture, it's that little black bit at the very top. We got up there, very carefully walked around it once, took a picture or two and then got the heck out of Dodge. Definitely one of those instances when we way underestimated how unsettling it would be.

At the bottom of the tower we noticed this sign that we hadn't seen on the way up.



I can't read the smaller print, but the yellow print says “Attention: Beware” in five languages, and the picture speak to me says: “Attention: Beware, you might fall off the tower.” I don't know that we would have made it all the way up the tower had we seen that to begin with. But who knows, maybe we would have been braver than I give us credit for.

After the tower we started meandering our way back to the train station to head back to Florence, and on the way we saw this interesting building next to the river. I'm guessing it's either some kind of chapel or a memorial. Whatever it is, it had lovely panels on the doors:



Winding down our trip, we head on to Rome next, for the better part of a week.

Block #12 - Poggibonsi and Siena

We tired of Florence fairly quickly, and since we were in the capital of Tuscany we decided to undertake a couple day trips. The goal of this particular day trip was a wine museum and a torture museum in the little town of San Giamangio. The wine museum particularly because Nick was really interested in seeing how wine was made, but all of the tours we looked into were really expensive and seemed more geared towards sightseeing and drinking wine than finding out how it was made. When the reviews we got from talking to people reliably contained phrases like “hammered by lunchtime,” we decided that the tours were not for us.

We figured out what train we needed to take, what train station we needed to get off at, managed to find a stamping machine in the Italian train station that actually worked to stamp our tickets and set off. We got off the train at the appropriate stop and....nothing. I wouldn't have been exactly surprised to see a tumbleweed blow across the street in front of the train station.

Part of this was our fault, as we arrived during lunchtime (approximately 12-2pm), the main meal of the day. In cities such as Venice and Florence, that means that everyone is out in cafes and restaurants, but in the teeny-tiny town of Poggibonsi (where we ended up) that meant that everyone was at home having lunch, leaving the town eerily deserted. I took a picture of this lovely sewer grate outside of the train station:



How is it that even the sewer grates give me ideas for quilt blocks? I guess that's Italy for you. We decided that probably San Giamangio was somewhere close, and that we'd be able to see it if we climbed up somewhere high (it's a medieval walled town), so we aimed uphill. After climbing what felt like straight up and taking a turn that probably meant we were trespassing on some farmer's fields, we had this lovely view:



Do you see any medieval walled cities, or even anything promising? Yeah, me neither. Nick said that given his hiking boots, he could probably find it eventually by the end of the day. On the way back down the hill, I took another picture of a drainage grate



And a window box that was too picturesque not to take a picture of.



We decided that we were not going to achieve anything by staying in Poggibonsi, so we made our way back to the train station and spent the next 20 minutes trying to figure out how to buy train tickets on to Siena. That in and of itself was an adventure, as there were two automated ticket machines, neither of which worked, and an information window that looked like it hadn't been manned in a couple days, let alone like anyone would be back anytime soon. Finally we noticed a hand lettered sign on a piece of cardboard (think homeless man on the side of the road sort of sign) directing people to the newspaper stand to buy their tickets. Relieved, we finally obtained tickets and got on the train the rest of the way to Siena, which was a much more exciting place.

The whole town was in the midst of preparing for an annual horse race and festival that takes place in the central plaza of the city. The horse race has been taking place since medieval times, and the viewing stands around the plaza looked like they were original. I'm sure that attending this race would have been awesome, but at the same time, the whole operation looked really dangerous to me. I mean, take a look at this picture:



Would you really want to sit in those seats while half a dozen or more horses raced around that track? You can see almost half of the circle, by the way, from this vantage point. I didn't think so. We did take the opportunity to climb the tower that rises above this plaza.




Only 25 people are allowed in the tower at any one time, so you have to wait at the entrance until the previous group comes out. Which is really annoying while you're waiting at the bottom, but it's obvious once you start climbing that they have to operate that way because there's absolutely no room for people to be going up and down, you have to let people go up and come back down before anyone else comes in. It was a great view, though, and I would say well worth the wait.



As we were making our way back to the train station, I had to take this picture



What you can't see is that there was a saint of a mother pushing her child (who looked old enough to walk) in a stroller up this hill. And what you really can't see is that said child had the nerve to be complaining about something at the top of the hill. I was quite impressed with the patience and upper body strength of that woman.

Finally, tired but content with the day's accomplishments we headed back to Florence. For dinner that night we ate in a adorably eclectic restaurant nearby to where we were staying. It was cheap, the atmosphere was great, and they had the best tomato sauce I have ever eaten in my life. It was awesome. I don't remember the name, but if anyone is ever going to Florence, let me know and I'll give you directions to this place. With one more day left in Tuscany, we decided to do the touristy thing and head to Pisa! Until then, Ciao!

Block #11 - Florence

We arrived in Florence around lunchtime, leaving us plenty of time to explore the city in the afternoon. Armed with a map obtained from the hostel reception desk, we set off in search of the major sightseeing locations in Florence. First, the Duomo, the main cathedral in the city, and it is well worth the title. I'm pretty sure that “Duomo” means cathedral in Italian, but what people talk about “The Duomo,” this is the one they're talking about. Well, this one or the one in Milan. The Duomo was amazing first because of its size, and secondly because of all of the incredible tile works around the place. There was one particular pattern on the floor that was really really cool, but at the same time kind of gave me a headache. This picture of it encompasses about an eighth of the design, and doesn't do it justice at all.



The real thing was so much more incredible than what you can see here. The whole thing was so precisely constructed and inlaid, and the illusion so complete that even standing exactly on top of the design it was hard to believe that the floor wasn't curved or something. I'm running out of superlatives to use without repeating myself ad nauseum, but I was totally impressed by the whole thing. It was hard to get decent pictures of the floor patters because they were so big, but here are a couple tries:





The outside of the cathedral was equally – if not more – highly decorated as the inside, with patterns and carvings and statues and spires and flourishes crammed into every possible space all the way around the cathedral.



The front especially put in mind of a wedding cake, sort of.



Walking around Florence after the church, we saw a couple fun things that I wanted to share. First, where would you buy wine in Italy other than the



Plentywine shop! Where there's always plenty of wine. Also, and completely unrelated, Florence's public transportation system consisted entirely of bus routes, utilizing buses of various sizes. Our favorites were these fun size buses running around everywhere.





To top off the day, we hiked clear across the city and then straight up a hill on the opposite side of the river from the bulk of the city. The reward for our efforts?



Well worth it, I believe. I hope you enjoy such landscape shots, as there will be a few more of them in the upcoming posts. Lots of towers in Italy. Ciao!