Hail, Floods, the Mediterranean, Pompeii, and a whole fish

For my final travel break, I chose to visit the south of Italy with Emily and Brianna. I had a wonderful time. I packed for a weekend of sunny and sixty six degrees and wound up getting cold and rain, but this didn’t do anything to put a damper on the weekend. I took a train down to Sorrento and found the hostel, which was boarded up. I was afraid we might have reservations at a hostel that no longer existed, but it turned out that the front was just under renovation. We went in a side door and found our triple room.


I spent the afternoon exploring Pompeii. It was raining, but we went anyway. I visited the temple of Apollo, the Basilica, the forum, the amphitheatre, and many other sites of the ancient city. Most of the city is from 2nd century B.C., but some things in the city date back to the 6th century B.C. I didn’t expect Pompeii to be as large as it was. It covered more area than we were able to walk while we were there. Many of the walls have old frescoes. The city was covered in ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79 A.D. A famous historian, Pliny the Younger, watched the eruption and recorded his account of what took place. Violent tremors occurred that morning and then a column of volcanic material was sent over 20,000 meters into the sky. Within a few hours, the town was covered with 3 meters of volcanic ash. It cause many buildings to collapse and killed the people inside. The first pyroclastic flow occurred the next morning. Pyroclastic flows are masses of rock and hot gas from volcanoes that can move as fast as 200 meters per second. The people of Pompeii were killed instantly. There was a second flow later which knocked down many of the walls of the city.

Pompeii was rediscovered in 1748 and excavations began. We saw the plaster casts of some of the citizens of Pompeii while we were there. Because the victims were covered in ash which turned to rock so quickly, there are cavities left in the ground where they had been. The director of the excavation at Pompeii from 1860 to 1875 invented a method of plaster casting that was used in Pompeii and is still in use today. Liquid plaster was poured into the cavities left in the ground to see the forms of the people who were killed. The excavations are still going on today, since there are so many new discoveries, both historical and scientific.

I also took a ferry out to the island of Capri. The weather forecast for the day was sunny and sixty six degrees Fahrenheit. The ride was beautiful. We could see the cliffs of Sorrento and Mount Vesuvius in the distance. We pulled into Capri town and saw all the white buildings dotting the hillside rising up from the sea. Our original plan had been to see the Blue Grotto, but it was cloudy and we had read that we shouldn’t go if the weather was bad. We decided to go to Anacapri, another town, and then take a chairlift up to the top of the island so that we could see all the coast line. However, when we got to Anacapri, it started to rain. We ate lunch, but the rain turned out to be really persistent. The storm was thunder and lightning, so we decided to go back to the ferry before the weather got any worse. However, it got a lot worse. While we were on the bus started to hail and the roads began to flood. Water was gushing everywhere and the hail was pelting the bus. We were riding alongside cliffs, and the bus was still going fast over at least six inches of water. When we got off, we got drenched and were standing in water higher than our ankles. There’s a video in the side bar of this website from our bus ride.

Dr. Webb frequently says to us that light packer is a happy traveler. I took a book bag with me for the weekend with two pair of shoes, Converses and Birkenstocks. I was being really optimistic about the weather. The downpour on Capri completely drenched my Converses, so I found one of the times when packing light is not the best choice. I wore wet shoes for one day and sandals with socks the next!


Despite the rain and hail, we still walked out on a rock beach and I put my feet in the Mediterranean. Compared to all the hail and water I had just walked through, the water was warm. Since my shoes and jeans were already soaked, I just stepped in with my shoes on! I have always wanted to see the Mediterranean, so it didn’t matter to me that nothing went according to plan. We spent some time walking on the beach looking for sea glass and then went back to Sorrento, where I got to do something else I have always wanted to do. At the restaurant I ordered a fish that came whole with the head, fins, and bones. Our waiter removed the meat for us. It was really good and I felt it was the perfect thing to eat on the coast.

Since it was still raining, Emily, Brianna, and I decided to go to the movies and see the new Harry Potter movie in Italian, Harry Potter e i Doni della Morte Parte Uno. I understood more than I expected to understand. It was fun to be in the theatre with Italians. The theatre was packed and as soon as the room was darkened, everyone clapped and cheered. They are a much more animated audience than American movie goers and reacted as if they were seeing a live performance.

Visiting the south of Italy was a good experience. The North and South of Italy are drastically different from one another. The South is more agricultural and less wealthy than the North. At the time of Italian unification, the North was controlled by independent city states. The South was mainly controlled by the Catholic Church. When unification took place, the Kingdom of Piemonte, in the North, became the government of the entire state. The North and South have stayed very different since then. Even the Italian dialect is different in the South. I had a harder time understanding the Italian used in Napoli than I do the Tuscan Italian that I have been learning this semester.

Ciao,

Meredith

Hiking in the Alps

“If heaven isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, send me back to Gimmelwald”

I went to the Alps for my second travel break. I had a great time. I was extremely exhausted going into the trip because I had just returned from Poland on Monday night and was leaving for Switzerland that Thursday. The trip there got stressful right away when our very first train was late. It seems like lately every train I get on breaks down. We arrived over half an hour late to Florence just in time to watch our next train start to pull out of the station. We got to experience running with our back packs across Santa Maria Novella train station in hopeless pursuit of the last train to Milan that could get us to Switzerland that night! We missed it. Thanks to Patsy’s excellent Italian language skills, we were able to get our tickets to Milan changed without losing any money. It turned out that the new train did arrive in Milan just in time for us to get on a train to Switzerland. However, we didn’t have tickets for the entire way there, so it was questionable whether we would get to Interlaken that night. However, at every stage along the way, we were able to buy the tickets with time to spare.

We arrived in Interlaken, Switzerland a little after midnight on Thursday and successfully found our hostel. The next morning, I woke up first. I have been to the Rockies before and I remember the first time I saw those mountains. My family had arrived after dark and so we hadn’t been able to see anything. When my sister Elizabeth and I went outside, we were shrieking and jumping up and down. I felt the same way the first time I saw the Alps. The mountains were right outside the window, covered in snow. I could see the rugged landscape, right in front of me. Peaks so beautiful seem as if they could only exist in a dream. When Patsy and Meredith woke up, they had some jaw drop moments too.

We took the train from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen first thing that morning, anxious to get up in the mountains. The train ride was short and the tracks followed a beautiful river. In Lauterbrunnen, we took the bus to Stechelberg. There is a gondola lift there that took us over the cliffs and to the village of Gimmelwald. The village is very small with more livestock than people. The population is about 130. The village has a one room school house. We stayed in the Mountain Hostel, which was an interesting place with an incredible view. We met people from around the world hanging out in the common room drinking hot chocolate and cooking instant food in the hostel’s kitchen. Every night, local people come in to pass time and eat. One night two men came with accordions and yodeled! I have never fallen asleep to the sound of yodeling before!

On Friday afternoon, we decided to go down into the valley and hike to Trummelbach falls. However, when we arrived, the falls were closed for trail construction. I enjoyed walking through the valley and seeing the cliffs on either side of me. Waterfalls created by snowmelt tumble down the sides everywhere you look. The valley used to be a glacier and has the “U” shaped landscape that is typical for valleys that were formed by receding glaciers. We were blessed with a crystal blue sky, which was a perfect backdrop to watch people hang glide down from the cliffs and into the valley.

On Saturday, we spent a good bit of money on a gondola ticket to the top of the Schilthorn. The Schilthorn is a mountain peak at 10,000 feet with a 360 degree view of the Alps. It was cold, but we spent several hours up there staring. We decided to hike back down to Murren from the Schilthorn, but the highest part of the trail was too icy for the shoes we had. We took the gondola back down to the next station, Birg. It was snowy there, but we decided to try it and began hiking down to the next town, Murren. This area of the Alps is very accessible to hikers because there are yellow signs everywhere that give the distance in walking time. It took about three hours to get to Murren from Birg. The trail was extremely steep because Murren’s elevation is 5.413 ft and Birg’s is 8,782 feet. We descended 3,363 feet. I never could figure out what the distance was. The hike gave us wonderful views that the top of the Schilthorn did not. We even went through the small town of Sonnenberg just above Murren, which was even smaller than Gimmelwald. We took the gondola back to Gimmelwald from Murren. The three of us were so tired when we got back to the hostel that we decided to take a nap before cooking dinner. We left a window open in the room because the weather was nice there. While we were asleep, cows were moved into a pasture directly behind the window. We were woken up by a cow mooing right outside our window.

Sadly, we packed up and left Switzerland on Sunday to come back to Sansepolcro, the palazzo, tests, papers, and all night homework. It was the ultimate get away and my favorite travel break so far. I know that I want to return to the Alps someday and show the mountains and towns to my family. Gimmelwald is so far away from the rest of the world, literally and figuratively. It took a gondola, seven trains, and three buses to get back to Sansepolcro! It was worth it!

Ciao,

Meredith

Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau

On the second full day of the Auschwitz Center’s program for students abroad, we woke up early and left Krakow bound for Auschwitz. As we rode though the Polish countyside, I talked with other students about our homes, host countries, and universities. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the barbed wire fences and concrete walls for the first time. I hoped that coming to Auschwitz would help me understand how something as bad as the Holocaust could have happened, and there it was. We met a guide and began our tour of Auschwitz I. We entered through the main gate underneath the famous sign “Arbeit macht frei”, which means work gives freedom. It’s a lie, the first of many lies told to people arriving to Auschwitz I, because no amount of work could make them free.

The prisoners would be processed and selected. This visit helped me to see the extent to which the Nazis were able to dehumanize the Jews. They used business terms and ran the entrance process like a factory, trying to be as efficient as possible and gain the most profit possible. Hair was shaved. Carefully packed suitcases confiscated; even toothbrushes taken away. In the blocks that were once housing for prisoners, visitors can see the things the Nazis took away that had yet to be sent to Germany at the time of liberation. There were shoes piled to the ceiling; shoes that could have been worn by a young boy going to school. There were piles of pots and pans that could have been a woman’s favorite soup pot.
We walked through the execution yard and block 11, where punishments such as standing for hours or death by starvation were given out. We walked into gas chamber and crematorium number one. We could look up at the ceiling and see the squares where the Nazis would put the Zyklon B crystals into the room.
The following day, we visited Aushwitz II-Birkenau. It was exactly what I imagined it to look like. It was vast and empty. The housing at Auschwitz consisted of prefabricated wooden buildings that were originally designed as stables. Walking though the doorways and building where so many people had suffered and died had a chilling effect. It captured all my thoughts.

For me, the most shocking part of the trip was visiting the ruins of the crematorium and gas chamber number three at Auschwitz II. The building had been destroyed by the Nazis in an effort to hide the evidence of what had taken place there, but the ruins remained. We walked around the building and saw what was left of the room where people would undress, the gas chamber, and the crematorium. There were so many people killed in that very building that if one was to dig only a few centimeters underground from where we stood, one would find human ashes.

As part of the program, we were able to meet two individuals who had lived through these times. The first was a woman who won a “Righteous Among Nations” award named Mirosława Gruszczyńska. This award is given by the State of Israel to people who helped Jews during the war. Miroslaw, her sister, and her mother decided to take in a Jew fully aware of the risk involved. As a young teenager, she helped save the life of a young Jewish girl, Marysia, who escaped from the Krakow ghetto. Marysia got very sick shortly after she arrived and they were afraid that she would die because she couldn’t go to the hospital. However, she recovered. Soon, they were ordered to share their apartment with a family appointed by the Nazis. They had one room to themselves and had to share the bathroom and kitchen. This was very dangerous because if Marysia was seen by them, they would all be dead. If anyone came to the apartment, Marysia would have to hide in a space in the closet until the guests left because no one knew about her. Miroslaw’s mother managed to get false baptism papers for her and then she was able to move about pretending to be a distant relative. They remained safe through the entire war.

We also met a non-Jewish Polish political prisoner who had survived Auschwitz. I don’t remember her name. She was 15 at the time she was arrested. Her brother was a partisan in Poland and her family supported him. Her entire town was rounded up to be relocated to make room for German settlement. She and her family were singled out to be sent to a concentration camp as a result of their involvement with the partisans. When she arrived at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, she went through the usual process of showering, shaving, and receiving new clothes. She was given a number tattoo on her arm which she showed us. In Auschwitz, she was assigned to work on the Canada Commando. The clothing and materials that were brought into camp would be taken, stored, and sorted by the workers on the Canada commando before the goods were sent to Germany. As a result, she was able to receive better health care so that no diseases would make it to Germany. Her sister was assigned to move to another camp, so she went too. She was in several camps over the course of the war and the constant changing is what probably saved her life. Everyone in her family died in the camps except for her and her sister.

The weekend was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I know that I will never forget what I saw there. I feel that it was important to go and see it for myself. The facts and stories are the same whether you visit or not, but visiting left me with the faces and the emotions of the Holocaust. Visiting made me realize how many untold stories there are. Visiting made it personal in a way that studying did not. I know I won’t forget the way I felt when I saw that fence out of the car window the first time, in the middle of a big bustling world, still there for people to remember.

Krakow, Poland

My most recent travels took me to Poland. Brianna and I were accepted into a program organized by the Auschwitz Jewish Center for American Students studying abroad in Europe. We left Sansepolcro on the 5:50 bus bright and early on Thursday morning and began our journey to Krakow.

Krakow is a beautiful city. It wasn’t nearly as crowded or full of tourists as the cities in Italy are sometimes. The architecture and atmosphere was completely different. I really enjoyed my time in the city. The main square is really charming, especially at night. I never envisioned myself visiting Eastern Europe when I left home at the start of the semester, but I am glad that I had the opportunity to go. I have heard many people say that Krakow is the next Prague, and although I haven’t been to Prague, I would have to say that it was a pleasure to visit Krakow. I am glad that I was able to see another European country besides Italy while I was studying abroad.

Today Krakow has a very small population of Jews, but before the war it had a large Jewish community. Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe. In Krakow, I toured Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter. We went to a cemetery that the Nazis had destroyed, so as to use the tombstones in construction. The tombstones had all been painstakingly found and put back in the cemetery. All the tombs that were in pieces were used to make a wall around the cemetery.

We visited the Krakow ghetto as well. The invasion of Poland by Germany in September of 1939 started World War II. This was the first country that was taken by blitzkrieg lightning war and was occupied by the Nazis. The Jews of Krakow were slowly subjected to more restrictions and abuses by the Nazis and eventually had to move into the ghetto that the Nazis built. Life in the ghetto was miserable. The area had been home to roughly three thousand people before it was turned into the ghetto. Fifteen thousand Jews lived in that space afterwarads became a ghetto. Anyone who left the ghetto was punished with death and food in the ghetto was scarce. The walls that were built around the ghetto were in the shapes of tombstones.

Today, the ghetto can barely be distinguished from the rest of the city. Most of the wall is gone and businesses and apartment buildings fill the area that was once the Krakow ghetto. There is one square filled with statues of chairs that was constructed as a memorial. There are empty chairs because after the people were moved from the ghetto to concentration camps, there were only the empty buildings and furniture left in the ghetto.

We visited the brand new Schindler’s factory museum in the ghetto where we learned how Oskar Schindler had saved the lives of many of the Jews living in the ghetto. The museum was very interactive. One minute we were in a living room, the next a jail cell. The museum walked us through the invasion of Poland. Poland was invaded on both sides, first by Germany and second by Russia. Polish citizens had to adjust to life in an occupied country. Polish troops were displaced and many went to Persia to train. Then, they fought with the Allies in Italy. The Polish troops won an important victory at Monte Cassino before the front was able to move north to Rome. By the end of the war, sixteen percent of the pre-war population of Poland had died. This was the highest percentage of any country that was involved in World War II.

After the war, Poland was not given freedom and autonomy, but became a communist country under the control of the Soviet Union. Even at the time I was born, Poland was still under the control of communism. Its modern history is so recent. I probably couldn’t have traveled to Poland at the time I was born, but today Poland is a member of the European Union. Many people there speak English and I was able to get through the weekend only knowing one Polish word, dziękuję, which means thank you.

I enjoyed spending time in Krakow and meeting students from other countries. We ate some Polish food, which was a nice change from Italian for a few days. One of the dishes that I had several times is pierogi, which is a Polish dumpling filled with meat, vegetables, or even fruit. I also had a glass of black currant juice, a regional specialty. On our last night in Krakow, we splurged a little on dessert at a café facing the main square. We could see the Krakow cathedral from our table.

Traveling to Poland was a true test of our travel skills. It takes a full day of traveling to get from Sansepolcro to Krakow. Everything went smoothly until the very end. Our train from Rome to Arezzo suddenly stopped in the middle of a field of sheep. It stayed in this sheep field for about two hours, and got to Arezzo three hours late! However, we were on the train with some nice Italian women who patiently tried to understand us when we asked questions in Italian. We missed the bus back to Sansepolcro, but Dr. Webb kindly called us a taxi and we were back to Sansepolcro in no time.

I decided to save my experiences in Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II Birkenau for my next travel journal because I just got back to Italy yesterday and I want to have more time to write that entry. Check back in next week to read about my experiences there.

Ciao,

Meredith

Io vivo in Toscana

I live in Tuscany. Sometimes it seems so unbelievable that I live in Tuscany. It is a wonderful and beautiful place, full of history and art. I am glad to have the opportunity to live here. This weekend we took a trip to Val d’Orcia, which is still in Tuscany. The Val d’Orcia is the valley of the Orcia river. It is full of quaint little Tuscan towns. The Val d’Orcia is the place to find perhaps the most picturesque Tuscan landscapes and scenery which come to mind when thinking of Tuscany.

We visited La Foce first. The villa of La Foce was built as a hostel for travelers in the sixteenth century. La Foce is located at a convenient crossroads linking several Tuscan towns, including Montepulciano. The word “Foce” actually means meeting place in Italian. Antonio and Iris Origo bought the estate in 1929. The villa is located on a hillside and overlooks a valley. The Origos had an architect make the house larger and built a school for the farmers who lived around the main villa.

Iris Origo was born to an American father and British mother. Both of them were wealthy aristocrats. When her father died, her mother decided to move to Italy. Iris married Antonio and the couple bought La Foce. La Foce is famous for being the setting of her diary, War in Val d’Orcia. She recounts the events of 1943 and 1944. During this time, the Origos housed refugee children from Italian cities that were being bombed. They also aided British troops. The fighting moved through the Val d’Orcia area after the Allies took Rome in 1944. In Val d’Orcia, many civilians were killed and buildings destroyed. The Origos had to leave La Foce and head to Montepulciano when Germans commandeered the villa. She had to get 60 children she was responsible for through the battle line. We walked around the villa and visited the graves of Iris and Antonio Origo before driving down the same road that the Origos led the children through the battle line to Montepulciano.

We saw so many different little towns on the trip:

-Montepulciano-a lovely hilltop town best known in the United States as the filming location for Twilight New Moon

-Montisi- a small town in the area with no tourists and only one hotel

-Bagno Vignoni- a town with geothermal hot springs where we stopped to eat and put our feet in the water

-Montalcino- a hilltop town with a fortezza (fort) and some amazing views

-Buonconvento- a town with a wonderful museum about the lives of farmers who worked in places like La Foce

-Siena- the medieval rival of Florence. We visited Il campo, the duomo, the baptistery, and the crypt.

One of my favorite parts of our trip to Val d’Orcia was the place we stayed in. We stayed near Pienza in a agriturismo called Santa Anna in Camprena. It is a former monastery, and now is an agriturismo. Agriturismi are rural bed and breakfasts that were started as additional income for small, independent farms. Agriturismi keeps small farms in business. Santa Anna in Camprena was a wonderful place to stay. It was where much of the film “The English Patient” was filmed. It closes in the winter because it has no heat. However, there is an old kitchen with a large fireplace. We enjoyed sitting around the fire each night of the trip. The agriturismo serves dinner for all its guests. We enjoyed eating dinner in the dining room with some kind people from Vicenza who told us about their town in Italian. Somehow, I think through John Rose’s doing, we ended up singing the national anthem for them. They sang the Italian anthem to us! We also met a couple from Singapore.

Back in Sansepolcro, life is continuing as usual. I got my first haircut since arriving in Italy this week. I asked Dr. Andreini to write some directions on a card for me to take to the hair stylist so that I would not have to worry about saying the wrong thing and ending up with the wrong haircut. I wanted the exact same style with just the ends trimmed. Brianna and I went together and made appointments in a shop right next door to the Palazzo Alberti. I was feeling a little nervous when we realized that the woman cutting my hair had blond and purple hair. Now I know that you really trust a person if you let them write directions for your haircut in a foreign language!

The haircut was wonderful and I got exactly what I wanted. Brianna decided to get some really cute bangs. I enjoyed getting to talk to the stylist. Her name is Sara and she is 24. It was a fun conversation. I try to talk to local people in Italian for practice even though most of them speak a little English. The Italians always want to speak in English to practice. I would ask Sara a question in Italian and she would answer in English! This way we both got to practice foreign languages. I was able to communicate to her in Italian that I would like my hair straightened and not curled. At first I could not pick up what she was saying, but then I caught the words “lisci” and “ricci”, which mean straight and curly respectively. “Ho i capelli lisci” (I have straight hair), I said. It was a fun experience and my hair is the right length again.

I am excited to be about to travel to Poland next to visit Krakow and Auschwitz with Brianna. I was accepted into a program at the Auschwitz Jewish center for students from North America studying abroad in Europe. I have been studying World War II in Italy and I am thrilled to be able to have this experience. We will be touring the Krakow ghetto and the Auschwitz camps. We are also meeting an Aushwitz survivor. I know that I will remember it forever.

Ciao,

Meredith