Traveling to Piacenza

Monday, June 30th

We are so excited to be going to Italy. I can’t believe it! Leaving Switzerland we took a familiar route south which led us to a huge tunnel which eventually led into Italy. Wow. A 6km tunnel through a mountain—that was a trippy experience, although it’s become clear since that the Swiss are skilled bridge and tunnel builders. Our destination today: the University Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. (Istituto di Enologia E Ingegneria Alimentare)

As we drove into Italy, I was amazed at the mountains, and how beautiful it was—our bus driver even pulled over to show us the back of the Matterhorn (cool.) I noticed immediately that Italians are not as concerned with how their country looks—we saw many abandoned buildings and a lot of trash—neither of which we saw in Switzerland.

I was excited to see castles at the top of every hill and imagine they would have been fun to explore. After a few hours however, the terrain changed. We were out of the mountains and driving in a flat countryside. It looked a lot like California's central valley. We noted rice fields in addition to other crops.
It was a long bus ride.

Several hours later we arrived in Piacenza, famous for both its food and wine. The University kitchen was kind enough to hold lunch for us, and we dined on meat, a side dish, and pasta. If we liked we could have had wine out of the soda dispenser (Mark and I opted for “fizzy” water). Now, sleepy and full, we met the instructors in the program, the director of the school and listened to three presentations. We are welcomed by Valeria Mazzeni, who introduced each speaker, and translated. We would get to know her better as the week went on.

After the presentations, we boarded the bus again to travel 10km out of town to our hotels. We were all a little nervous about what to expect, as we’d been told we’d be sharing rooms, 4 each. As it turned out we were given our own room. We had air conditioning and a really big bathroom! We couldn’t believe it—our best accommodations yet. Sadly, no internet (the start of a trend for this week.) Bummer.

We had 30 minutes to get back to the bus and head to the center of Piacenza for dinner. At first we weren’t really impressed. Piacenza is kind of dirty, flat and hot, and the buildings are unimpressive. But the downtown area had interesting little side streets and alleys which were fun to walk down---unless you were starving and trying to find dinner. We learned right away that Italians don't usually open their restaurants for dinner until later. We were happy to find a nice pizza restaurant. The food was great, and we even had some to take home for later. The town was buzzing a bit more after we finished our meal, so all in all it was a great night.

Back at the hotel we enjoyed a nice quiet evening with air-conditioning!