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Bike, Hike, Wine, Spins, and Hockey
Over the weekend I was all over the place. On Friday morning, I drove the class van a few miles down the road to Mendrisio, so we could load up on supplies for models, drawings, and other stuff. I was the guinea pig for the group of six eligible manual drivers, and thus I was thrust into a world of tense uncertainty. It was like learning how to drive all over again, except with the italian house manager, Daniela, instead of mom or dad. I could both see and hear the fear and frustration from her panicked pumping of the invisible passenger pedals, her outstretched arms on the dash, and her nervous mumblings in english. If you ever find yourself driving a manual car in Europe, specifically a van called a “Jumpy”, take note that the ring under the shift knob is only pulled up to move into reverse… Funny because reverse is in the same spot as 1st gear, and I of course thought I had to mimic my foot pushing down on the clutch with my hand by pulling up on the ring to put the van into gear. WHAT AN IDIOT! Needless to say I freaked everybody in the car out about when it was their turn to drive, because I was having so many issues with moving forward and backward. I figured it out though, no big deal. We made it to the supply shop, got our stuff and were back in one piece.
We got back to the villa and started our first big assignment by sketching the baptistry across the street, which happens to be the oldest baptistry in Switzerland. Our task was to come up with “a presentation” of this building by Wednesday. It’s a big square plan with one apse extended opposite from the entrance. I’m proposing that the square in the facade is derived from that in plan, and I’ll try and show what I mean after it’s done.
We spent friday night in Lugano sampling the bars, and had a pretty decent time. The discoteche didn’t open until 1:00am, and the last train home was at 1:15 so we had to sacrifice our urge to rave for the sake of getting home.
Early Saturday morning everybody in the Villa was scheduled to get on the train to Milan for the day. Time caught up to my roommate, Karl, and I, so we slept through our alarms until 12:30 and missed the train. We decided we weren’t too concerned about it because Milan isn’t more than a 45 minute train ride into Italy, and the professor that was supposed to give everyone a tour that day got food poisoning the night before. According to most people that went, however, we missed out big time, and they would be happy to go again to show us what they saw. Check out what we did instead!
After breakfast, we went on a 30 minute bike ride to Italy along Lake Lugano. I can’t really put into words how incredible it was. It’s extremely apparent that things here are very attentive to detail, and a lot of effort is put into landscaping, to make things look good. That goes for houses, roads, cities, everything. I’m lovin’ every minute of it.
The gelato in the town across the Italian border was pretty good. We enjoyed the sights, smells and sounds around the boardwalk - probably more sights and sounds than smells (I smell cat poop in almost every place I go around here… Real gross).
After that we headed back to Riva for a local wine tasting at the Santa Croce Church. It was the first wine I’ve ever enjoyed, so I guess that means something, and naively speaking it was pretty cheap (15 franks for un bottiglia)?
We were supposed to go to this music show at the middle school after the vino, but it ended up not being free, and we weren’t down with that. So instead we went to a roller rink a little further down, and partied with the champions of the summer hockey league held there. SO fun, and SO funny. If you care to skype or ichat, I will be more than willing to share the details… Anyway the next day was the best and worst day. It was the best because of this…
No, not because I got to creep on some old Italian couple, but because of the hike we took to have the opportunity to creep on ‘em. All yokes aside, the view from the top of Mt. San Giorgio was unlike any I’d seen back at home, and the old folks kind of serve as a sense of scale for how high we were. But they paid me to capture the rest of their afternoon picnic… no they didn’t. Check Flickr for more photos from the top.
This was also the worst day because of the taxing demands of the mountain, compounded with a back injury from the previous night… We were feeling a little loosey goosy when we met up at the playground by the lake with some friends before the hockey celebration, and decided to have a little fun with the spin ride. The spin ride is basically one of those teacup rides from disney world, but for small children. The concept is simple…pull on the middle disc, and the harder you pull, the faster you will spin. I jumped right in with the Hulk (John Jennings) and Karl, and went for a spin. As the speed built up, centrifugal force got the better of me and soon my back was starting to bend uncomfortably over the bar. I told John, “hey man we gotta chill this kinda hurts…” and I think he heard “dude spin faster because my back isn’t parallel to the ground yet”. Then He who will not be named, farted. Ripped a loooooong drawn out, forced out toot. Naturally the increased speed and uncontrollable laughter forced my back further over the bar to just about parallel with the ground and I began to lose oxygen. It looked like I was being exorcised, and eventually sounded like it when I coughed out “PLEASE STOP IM DYING”. I was about as close to you get to crying without crying, and I was thoroughly embarrassed. We slowly decreased our speed, and everyone just about fell out their seats laughing at my excruciating pain. Now I’ve got a bruise and a story to tell.
This was a super long post, and I will try and condense anything else that comes along the way, but a lot went down over the weekend and I had to spread the word. Short and sweet next time, I promise.
