Tuesday, November 9, 2010:
I can’t believe it’s been so long since my last blog. My cousin Gwen was here for a week. Her luggage was here for just a few days! We had a great time despite the lost luggage. By the third day it just became funny. We got several different stories… the bag never made the original flight in Denver, it missed the connecting flight in Washington DC, it ended up in Frankfort, Germany, it got sent back to Denver, and it sat at the airport in Rome for two and a half days because the Rome airport refused to deliver it! Gwen headed back home the day we left on the north field trip with the students. When she arrived at the airport, they told her she had cancelled her return flight! They couldn’t tell her on what day and time she did this, but assured her that she was the one who had cancelled the flight. Gwen actually arrived home an hour earlier than her scheduled flight. If you are wondering what carrier could make so many blunders, it was United.
Gwen and I parted at the train station… she headed for the Leonardo Express to reach the airport and I was headed to Switzerland with the Graphic Design students and faculty. It was a 7 hour trip with a stop in Milan, Italy to change trains.
The train station in Milan is very beautiful. The design for the station started out very simply, but Mussolini kept changing the design to make it more complex and majestic to represent the power of the fascist regime.
The trip didn’t seem near as long going as it did coming home! I do enjoy traveling by train. It’s fun to see the rural areas of the country. Italy reminds me of western Iowa at time and the foothills of Colorado at other times. I saw a few fields of corn still standing tall. Lots of sheep herds in Italy, which quickly changed to herds of cattle once we crossed into Switzerland. Switzerland is beautiful! It definitely looks a lot like the mountains of Colorado.
We were headed to Zürich, the largest city in Switzerland, so my pictures of countryside were taken from inside the train. We spent one night in Zürich and two nights in Basel.
We went to the Plakatraum, a typographic poster museum in Zürich as soon as we arrived around 3 pm. Then the rest of the evening was a “free” evening. Cheri, Brenda and I ate at a Swiss/German restaurant called the Zeughauskeller Restaurant that reminded me of the restaurants in the Amana Colonies. I ordered the pork roast and potato salad dinner. It was so tender and tasty! It was a huge portion, but I ate every last bite. We were all stuffed, so it was a good thing we had to walk part of the way back to the hostel to spend the night!
We were up early the next morning to get back on another train to head to Basel. Basel is the second largest city in Switzerland. It is located where the Switzerland, Germany and France borders meet. The Rhine River flows through Basel.
It is a beautiful city. The Swiss Franc and the American dollar are basically the same rate right now, so we knew exactly how much we were paying for things, and everything was expensive! I didn’t buy any souvenirs while we were there, but it wasn’t so much the cost as it was hard to find any souvenir shops!
There were chocolate shops on every corner, but no souvenir shops to be found. I thought the last thing I needed was to buy chocolate, but when I saw the cute Christmas chocolates I thought I’d buy some for my kids. When I saw that these little Christmas tree chocolates with a ribbon to hang on the tree were 8 CHF each, I decided I could buy Swiss chocolate in Ames for a lot less!
Vitra Museum
Germany
Claraplatz
Paper Museum
Paper Museum
We toured the Vitra Museum just across the border in Germany, shopped in the Claraplatz area of Basal, and toured the Basiel Papiermühle (Paper Museum and Mill) with the students before heading back to Rome. The Paper Museum was really neat and “hands on” as all of the students, and myself, made a sheet of paper, marbleized a sheet of paper, got to work the letterpress, tried our hand at calligraphy (one of the employees was quite impressed with mine J), and watch employees do other jobs in the mill. It was a little like Living History Farms in West Des Moines, only it was all located inside three buildings connected together.
Cheri, Brenda and I also went to the Tinguely Museum on our free morning. We left Basal at 9 am, three train changes later we were back in Rome by 5 pm. It made for a very long day. Most of the students had made arrangements for personal travel from our stop in Milan. Our job was to get them all back into Italy before they headed out on their own. J
We’re back in Rome and the rainy season is well upon us. Up until now, when it would rain, it would rain for an hour, then clear up and be beautiful. It rained the last two full days Gwen was here. The first day, it rained off and on all morning, but was sunny in the afternoon. The last full day she was here, it rained all day, but we didn’t let that stop us from going out to see the sites. There was even thunder and lightning, which was a first since I have been here. It was also a national holiday, which meant a lot of stores were closed, but we found everything we needed. It has rained off and on all day for the last three days now, which makes living in the same building as the studio nice, because I don’t have to go out into the rain.
On Saturday, Cheri, Brenda and I will travel to Spoleto, Italy to visit Primo and Deanie Angeli, who led the packaging workshop for our students. I'm looking forward to the trip.
