New experiences in Cornell. The kind of fun ones you say ” I’d do again if I went back in time… but only without knowing what I am going for!!” …

Late evening, after laundry and a bit of work. Outside is snowing a lot, but because of that the temperature is surprisingly warm. I have worked the whole week, I had to prepare a talk in the evenings. So when the idea of walking toward Collegetown just to take a tea comes out, it’s actually welcome! Let’s get out from these rooms!

So, we step outside. It’s snowing cats and dogs right now (I do not see why I cannot extend this idiom to the snow, if I am leaving in a place where the snow it’s the only things that comes down from the sky). It’s nice, after few minutes my scarf and hair are encrusted. And with my snow boots nothing and no-one can stop me! I am finally enjoying the TrueIthaca™ experience I was prepared for… ;P

We even take a (long) shortcut trough the wood…during the night…scary…if it wasn’t just a path parallel to the main road, a couple of meters below. But I have to admit, was pretty impressive…
So we arrive at “the Old Tea House”, a small small shop where you can choose among tens of different kind of black teas, green teas, milk teas… with taste of almond, peppermint, chocolate, lychees (Ema! a moved thought went to you in Paris..)… there is only one feature they have in common: they are extremely sweet! Or at least, most of them are, but when we tried to ask the (probably) normal one, we were discouraged by the seller “I’d rather suggest you to choose something else, this is a bit salty”… Americans love sugar. So much.

And the surprises are not ended. The tea is  actually known as “bubble tea”, you know why? An hint: read the title…a second hint: they give you LARGE straws..I mean, more than 1 cm of diameter…
ok, I bet you cannot guess, especially if you are Europeans. They put TAPIOCA bubbles inside the tea, that you suck up while drinking. So imagine. First sip, it’s quite sweet, maybe not your favorite but you still think you can handle it until the end. Second sip, here it is, unexpected, a jelly slimy dark bubble stop right at the beginning of your throat. I know it’s dark because I couldn’t resist to check what it was [see picture 1, among my tooth ]
And after that every sip just adds a sweet taste to your mouth, and tapioca bubbles in your stomach, and you cannot do anything else than start laughing and continue to drink, and laugh.. you start to be disgusted but you cannot stop, because it’s fun in a weird way.. that why I sad I would do again, if I had to go back… but not again now that I actually know.

But it’s not all. The end is still far; when you think you’ve reached the bottom, when you believe your tasting sense cannot be tested anymore, they offer you a Japanese cookie. The texture is like foam, the taste like.. I do not know, I am not even able to explain..and inside there is a sesame black thick sticky paste… oh, gosh! Look at my face to try to imagine how it was [last picture, I am holding the cookie]… the tea seemed suddenly desirable!

And that why I took another huge sip…Unfortunately because of the hurry – I wanted to delete the awful taste from my mouth with a less worse one – I drank from the straw  but the cup hole was directed toward me, not on the opposite site.. So, here is the deserving ending for that evening…tapioca tea straining over my scarf and sweater and shirt… Enjoy, Silvia!

Cornell! Again!
I left less than one year ago. It was warm, green and pleasant, but  almost empty. Now it’s cold, withe but alive.
And I know places and people, and I have the feeling I am not a total foreign.
Plus, it’s fun to try a different life style for some time, pretending being a college student … I am not betraying Munich – I swear! – but there are some things you cannot get.

Like that one for example! Something I was pleasantly surprised to find out. Once a week, in one of the campus canteens, few Italians meet few people who want to speak Italian. They sit and chat and eat…for free! So, what is better for a student to have a meal with nice new people? And meet young and not-so-young fellows who think about your country with the same mixture of excitement and misunderstanding you feel for their homeland. The retired Opera singer who has travelled all around Italy, the law student who went to Rome for an exchange. The young Italian couple whit their baby which everyone likes.
Here we are again, ready for another melting-pot of people and ideas!

We have been quiet for quite a long time. But things were moving underneath.
We were busy preparing for the next trip overseas. You know, stuff you need to check and work on. Study the winds, decide the course, collect the pantry. Select the crew.
Which translate, in a matter-of-fact way, into organize the work you are going to do, collect tickets and house reservations, prepare fresh work to show. And pack!
You see, how focus we were looking into the horizon…

So, still another damn week (is that a “sailor spoken”, right?), and we’ll be ready to weigh the anchor. A new trip, crossing old friends and facing new challenges.
If next saturday you will see a small ship becoming even smaller far away, that’s will be us…

(C’mon, you are not really thinking that I am going to US by ship, aren’t you!?!? )

Images: Hugo Pratt

Here we are, jumped in the next decade; ready for other amazing years around the world?
Who knows from where I’ll write when the second digit will turn again…

Anyway, up to know and for few months at least, I am in Munich, where I spent New Year Eve!
I did nothing special, actually, but I enjoyed MY town, with friends and fun and cheer. Which is nothing more you want to start a new year…
if I have to be sincere, I also felt a bit of fear.. but shh, so not tell around. And it could be kind of exciting at the end. Some time before midnight, we went outside right in Munich center to take part of that tradition called “fireworks”. Which in Munich could sounds more like that:

Watch the reportage! NOW!

we exit our refuge and walk carefully down the street. We look around, and we start to see the friendly fire in the distance. So we decide to reach that place. While approaching, we have to avoid enemy’s trap [crowds of people in the middle of the street, dense enough not to feel the cold and not to let others come across]. It tries to stop us with loud noise too [rap/pop music loud outside]! We finally reach the battlefield, and we settle our camp: we have army, we are ready! At that point, everything gets confused. We are in the middle of crossfire, but we HAVE to launch our rockets, the life quality of next year is going to depend on that! [for every rocket we fire, we express a desire..so sweet...] So, brave and [almost] fearless, we get to the firing line and start..nobody can stop us. We launch, and launch, the smoke around is getting thick but we do not care. We have to be better than the enemy! [but we kind of failed... the Germans around us were so munch into that, that they didn't even stop to countdown at midnight! We were the only few people trying to shout louder that the noise] …better before that civil war ends…

around 1 am. When people run out of fireworks, and started to walk away for a party, or a bed. As we did.
I mean, walking and searching for a party, of course!

But besides my  overemphasized description, it was rally fun. I guess next year I’ll train myself better, so to be able to launch even bigger rockets.. Munich be prepared.. ahahahah

which I associate with family, Italy, with old lost friends; which is beat by  melancholy and a lot of laughs.

Holiday time, represented by  sleeping until late, thinking randomly about work, sitting few minutes in front of your pc and then going out. And thinking again about work late in the evening: “crap! I did nothing today, again..”

Winter time, when the cold outside makes you desiring warm feelings and friends hugs. When it snows and you only want to sit with a soft blanket. And keeping your friends hands, you like chatting about life and wishes and  video-games and trips and the latest stupid thing you have done; and you need to (re)discover that people far in space and in time share the same fear and braveness and joy and confusion and excitement.

Christmas time, when you have to deal with the year just gone and the one approaching, just because a date on the calendar decides something is gonna change.

So, to all of you who recognizes in something above,

Enjoy these days, and Christmas and New Year

and let’s come: a new year is going to start, and to be honest  I should admit the premises are not so bad this time.
What the plot will be, that’s up to me, and blind Chance, and Luck, and you, and most likely me again.

.

By the way, I am not the only one who feels every other days to have the world in my hands, and the next that the world is squashing me, right?!

saying by to the mountains.. with this intense look at…

It’s impressive how fast you get used to one place, how fast you stop thinking to new acts but just feel comfortable with new people in new situations. If you like something, it’s easy to get “addicted” and search for repeating it ; I would say that’s nice… but maybe I am wander too much now!

We are at the telescope from Tuesday, and we are leaving tomorrow, and seems a long nice time has been passed… Life here is beat by the observations.
Lunch is at 13:30 and dinner at 20:30. The food is amazing, kind of traditional Spanish cousin, muy rica and really strong..maybe the cook thinks that high in the mountain you need energy, even if you are an astronomer sitting all the day in front of a computer! And without even using the brain so much..
Today we had  paella, yesterday sword-fish and empanadillas for lunch ..ahh, soo good!

Besides eating, you have to observed, of course! We are six people here to run observations, which are supposed to be 24h/day…supposed to, because we had pretty bad weather the first day, and tonight up to lunch time..usually the sky clears when we all decide to go to bed! let’s see what is going to happen today..

Ah, right, Montgomery  itself helps now to schedule the time at the observatory. It comes right after lunch time, and waits patient and with experienced touching eyes.. someone is going to feed it soon. (for who hasn’t get yet, Montgomery is the fox on the left).

And then of course other things happen, like going outside for a walk at sunset right after the snow has stopped. You enjoy the sun, take amazing pictures, and you can even manage to fell on the only squared meter with cement in the whole mountain!
Or you can organize on the spot a “bi-lingual scrubble match” to keep you away while observing at 3 in the morning. And to make it easier, you play against a German, with the Spanish alphabet… and you poor italian are allowed to use only german words and vice versa..
[We didn't go very far..]

Oh! As I said, we have routines, and since it’s almost half past eight, good food smell is coming up from the kitchen.. see you!

FIRST PICTURES HERE! CLiCK Here, I Mean!

Here we are. High on a mountain in the Sierra Nevada.
Few things to say about the trip, I’ll try to post pictures and let them explain.
But here few words, just to be unnecessarily rhetorical

We left early this morning, with a mini van; ten people among astronomers and telescope operators, three rows of seats in the car and three conversations in three different languages!
Spanish in the front,  where the driver tried to kill us (here another similarity with my trip in Mexico! – others next time. Observatory drivers seem to like overtaken other cars at high velocity, just on bends along steep mountains roads… mam, do not read this, I am fine!)
An english conversation about work in the second row.
And something in German in the third, the wrong one I choose! Or was that the right one, just to practice my Deutsch? There is no way out, i am surrounded by Germans here too, actually more than in Munich!
(yep, the telescope is operated half by the Max Plank Society, so…)

So we started driving up and up, first by car.
We are in the middle of Sierra Nevada Mountains, declared National Park; sometimes I imagine that the need of having a telescope at high altitude, far from civilization, in an amazing landscape is just an excuse astronomers have found to make these trips something .. metaphysical besides physical. You see the land changing, the snow starts to appear; you have the full overview on the valley below, and you start smelling the cold pure icy air, mixed with the  smell of just-backed bread …

- C’mon, it’s not my fault if the driver stopped at a bakery to fill a bag with bread. I didn’t ask for that just to make this story better  -

And you see the antenna up there, you are suddenly arrived. You take a cable-car, and in few minutes you are climbing with your I-come-from-a-city trolley luggage over a Snowcat. You compress with the others inside, and while bouncing one against the other you start smiling.. you try to behave, not to look too childish, with that increasing smile over your face. But when you are almost succeeded in going back serious, yo turn and see The Telescope.. and there is no way again!

Arrived! I am in Granada right now, it’s dark outside.
I am waiting for the others, we still have to have dinner… moving south from Germany have also these side effects. Let’s see later how this ancient city, celtic, greek, moorish, will welcome us.

In the meanwhile the trip was good, we had no big problems.
Indeed, the best part was landing in Madrid. We couldn’t see the land for the whole journey because it was cloud. And when we started approaching the city, the plane did a couple of veers – luckily from my side! – each of them to change direction by almost 180 degree, each of them by descending for some (hundreds?) meters, closer and closer to the clouds, plunging into that white water, but not really touching them..

I was feeling anxious to reach the clouds, and light because of the falling, even if it was not real. So strange…

Oh, they call me for Tapas! Silvia, let’s go back to real, concrete world.