Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 13:48:28 -0800 (PST)
Subject: When in Rome...

Hello everybody - I'm back from Frascati and there is some late breaking
news.  During the collaboration meeting my advisor from Victoria, the
professor I work for in Switzerland, the head of the institute in Vienna,
the head of the Italian group, and Ross (the American who works in Vienna
that I visitted) decided that because of the way certain things were going
that I could be better utilized outside of Neuchatel.  So, the basic plan
they drew up is this:  I remain in Neuchatel until Feb. 18, at which time
I, along with my prof, the other grad student, and the part time post-doc
here, go to Frascati and take along a pile of equipment.  I remain in
Frascati for 2 weeks while the others only stay for a couple days.  Then,
at the end of two weeks, instead of returning to Switzerland, I move to
Vienna for the next 4 months where I have to deny the fact that I have a
brother living in Germany (this is the Austrian equivalent of a Canadian
having a brother living in the US).  While in Vienna, I am "on call" to
both Neuchatel and Frascati (both over 13 hour trips) in case something
comes up.  Then in July or so I move to Frascati semi-permanently.  It
sounds like we won't actually start taking data until, at the earliest,
August in which case my one year of health insurance (the longest you can
buy) is not going to be long enough so I will have to make a trip back to
Canada at some point before October 18.

The most amusing thing was that not only was I only moderately involved in
the whole discussion but they forgot to give me a copy of the schedule
that they drew up.  Good thing I happened to be sitting next to my advisor
while he was drawing it up.

This means my address in Switzerland will only be valid for another month
so anyone (i.e. my Mom) planning to mail things via ground shipping should
refrain from doing so.

Okay, now that I have given you the news, we'll go back a ways to the
olds.

So, way back to christmas time.  The three grandchildren of the people I
live with arrived around Dec. 20th.  They are aged 12, 10, and 8 and their
names are respectively,(excuse the spelling, which you can't correct
anyway) Nephertyss, Ashmaran and Ortess (or something like that),
apparently all named after Egytian gods, their father being Egytian.  The
youngest is the only boy and is a terror.  Anyway, I managed to pretty
much avoid them entirely because I was at the university most of the time.
I did happen to hear them watching Mary Poppins in French, which was
somewhat amusing.  

On christmas I had been invited to the family lunch (it was lunch instead
of dinner because the mother of the grandchildren had to work that
evening).  Attendees included:  Denise and Pierre (the people I live
with), their dughter (the Mother or the grand children), their son
(Jean-Danielle) and his wife, the three grandchildren and Denise's Mother
(who is 91).  As it turns out, their son speaks enough English to converse
with a little.  His wife however, speaks only German and Italian, so
Jean-Danielle was translator for both me and his wife since everyone else
speaks exclusively French (save for Denise and Pierre who speak a little
English and a little German, but not enough to carry a conversation).  At
one point J-D recounted his early English lessons be repeating an early
lesson: "The pigeons are green."  This is a prime example of the quality
of his English :)  Anyway, he is an architect and relatively
scientifically minded, so we talked about a number of things and when I
learned he sailed I even got out my GPS.  He has a small boat in the lake
here and says he is going to take me sailing (in wet suits because of the
temperature).  He and his wife have sailed in various places all over the
world and I have invited them to do so in Vancouver, which he would really
like to do.

Anyway, lunch started with a salmon pate and then moved on to goose, a
potato caserole, weird onion stuffing, salad and some veggies.  This was
followed by fruit, cheese and cookies for desert.  All in all not a bad
meal but a far cry from holiday dinners at home.  

Then people proceeded to open presents.  The children all got goofy hats
so I went and got the hat I made so I would fit in.  After Denise had
explicitly stated that we would not exchange gifts, she gave me a Swiss
scenic calendar.  The grandchildren also got two kittens from their
Mother.  Denise and Pierre's Dog, Tiny, was not especially pleased with
the cats, but was not too bad.  It took me to point out that the kittens
were playing in the christmas tree with the lit candles.  Speaking of
which, the bulk of the tree decorations consisted of real candles and full
size oranges hanging from strings.  No one there had any idea what a candy
cane was and their tree was pretty Charlie Brownish.  I helped wash
dishes.  Their daughter left and J-D took his grandmother home and then
returned.  We had a casual spagetti dinner.

It turns out that the grandchildren were staying for another week and J-D,
who does not live in Neuchatel, was working on an architect competition
with a colleague in Neuchatel and would also be staying for the next two
weeks and his wife would also spend the night so we had quite a full
house.

I left the next day for Vienna and "donated" my room to J-D while I was
gone.  It turns out that the children's father (who was never there) does
not want the cats at their place so it looks like the cats will remain at
the house I live at.

Okay, so onto Vienna.  Well, my trip to Vienna started out rather poorly.
I almost froze to death on the night train.  It was so cold I gave up any
attempt at sleeping.  I got to watch the sun rise and watched as Venus got
harder and harder to see against the rising sun.  I arrived in Vienna to
-10 degrees and snow piled on the ground.  Ross met me at the train
station and we caught the street car back to his place.

The bulk of my time in Vienna was spent avoiding going outside.  With
Ross's wife Karin (who is 5 months pregnant but looks about 7 months) we
played some cards and some Magic, and Ross and I played a good deal of
Cribbage.  I am going to describe the ending of my most fabulous game
there, my appologies to anyone who does not know the rules:  Okay, to set
the scene, he had beaten me the first pile of games we played, but by this
point the tables were turned and he had not one in the last 3 or 4 games.
We are coming up to the end and he has managed to pull ahead, he is two
from the end and I have 10 to go and he gets to count first.  Things are
looking bad and we spend 5 minutes discussing if it is even possible for
me to win and see no obivous way since for me to peg 10 without him
pegging 2 seems impossible since the only good way to get lots of points
is either a 3 of a kind, which requires him to get a pair, or long runs,
which requires him to get short runs.  Oh well, deal anyway - maybe he'll
have a zero hand.  In my hand I keep 8,8,7,6.  He leads an 8, I play one
of mine for 2 points.  He plays a 10 and I give him a go for one point
since I cannot play.  He plays a 4 from his hand.  My lead.  I play my 8,
and he plays his last card, a 9.  I then play my 7 for a 3 point run, and
since he is out of cards, I play my 6 for a 4 point run and one more point
for last card, giving me 10 point, leaving him in the stink hole.  That
was even more fun than when I skunked him :)

While in Vienna I also went and saw _Extreme Measures_ which I thought was
a good movie, but you could rent it for the same effect, _Star Trek: First
Contact_, which I really enjoyed and even though it was a nice theatre I
really wish I could have seen it in the Uptown 1 in Toronto, and _Ransom_,
which was also a good movie.  We also watched _Wolf_ on video and some
videos of Red Dwarf and of Wallace and Gromit.  Since they do not have
cable, we went to a friends one night to Watch Babylon 5 in German, which
made sense with a minimal amount of over dubbing from Ross.  We also
visitted the outdoor market twice and just about froze to death.

On New Year's Eve (Silvester in Austria because it is apparently St.
Silvester  Day) they were having 8 or so people over for a dinner party
thing.  For dinner, we made a Brazillian dish (because Karin had lived
there for 2 years and two of her friends had been there too) which
consisted mainly of beans and about 10 kinds of meat, including pigs feet
and cow's tongue.  It was tasty but extremely filling.  The recipe said it
was for 12-15 people and there was 10 of us and we did not even eat half
of it.  The party reminded me of Arnold's parties as there were 4 gay men
and an extremely strange French woman who screamed alot :)  A reasonably
fun night.

Ross had to work on Thursday and Friday, so I slept in a bit and then met
him at the institute and we would go for lunch and then I would keep
myself occupied until he finished work.

Food wise, while in Vienna, I satisfied my Sushi urge and we also had some
very good thia and chinese food.  For lunch one day I decided to be dull
and ordered a Hawiaan pizza and it came with a single ring of pinapple in
the middle - not quite what I had expected.  

Anyway, my trip to Vienna was good.  I had a nice relaxing time.  Because
it was so cold I did not see much of Vienna, but I did not really mind and
as it turns out now I'm probably going to have 4 months to do so anyway.
I decided not to take a night train back so I spent the day of the 4th on
a train.  I needed change for the bus when I got back to Neuchatel (I had
not renwed my bus pass since I knew I was going to be away) so I bought a
125g bag of Doritos at the over priced train station store for 4.55 CHF.
If there had been a price tag I would not have gotten them, but c'est la
vie.   Well at least I won't be stocking up on them like in Toronto when I
filled my snacks cupboard with them when they went on for $1.29.  I miss
the days when dinner was a bag of Doritos, a can of refried beans and 3 or
4 hours of taped TV shows :)

Here's a question for you - they have vending machines that sell condoms
in the washrooms of train stations and airports, why not in the trains and
planes themsleves?

I spent Monday to Wenesday doing odds and ends and preparing for the
meeting in Frascati.

Early Thursday morning we left for Frascati.  For part of the trip we got
to take the Italian equivalent of a French TGV except it is better because
not only does it go over 200 km/h but the passenger compartments are on an
active suspension system that banks them into the corners.  Unfortunately
we only got to take this train to Milan and so the 5 hours from Milan to
Rome were spent on a noisy and crowded standard Italian train.

We arrived at Frascati sometime after 18:00.  Because of a long and
strange line of events, I was supposed to be staying in the guest house at
the accelerator, but because we could not contact anyone at the site, and
it is a 20 minute walk, and my Swiss professor had recently informed me
they were funding my trip, I checked into the hotel under his advice.  The
Vienna group was also there and we headed out to this dismal place that
was basically a basement room with some tables and chairs where they only
serve one kind of wine that costs 4000 Lira ($4) per litre.  Some people
had gone to a grocery store and bought bread and cheese and meat and we
sat around there for a while and ate and they all drank.  Then we went to
a quite nice restaurant and had pizza.  My advisor from Victoria, who
should have been in Frascati before noon arrived just in time for dinner.
His luggage got lost somewhere and his plans to meet my Mother in the
airport in Vancouver had been screwed up and because he was so late
because he had waited for his luggage he too decided not to go to the
guest house but I had checked into the last room at the hotel so he had to
stay at a different hotel than everyone else.  He was not having a good
trip so far.  After dinner we returned to the hotel and I got to bed
around midnight.

The next day was pouring rain and they decided that instead of walking to
the institute they would shuttle us in cars.  This took a while but all
worked out in the end.  Our 9:30 meeting started a little behind schedule,
but no big deal.  There was 16 people in attendance: 6 from Vienna
(including Ross who is actually American), 3 from Switzerland (including
me), 2 from Japan, 2 from Italy, 1 from Romania who works in Italy, 1
American who is not technically in the collaboration (yet) but was invited
to speak about the theoretical aspects of our project, and my advisor from
Victoria.  My previous ideas about the length of this meeting were
mistaken.  We had a lunch break, a tour of the facility, and a coffee
break at 17:00 but the meeting ran until 21:00 or so.  I ended up talking
much earlier than planned because of the way things worked out.  I think
things went fine although I am sure I spoke too quickly.  It will be much
better next time now that I know everybody invloved and also how things
work at these meetings.

For lunch they had a million finger sandwhiches and heated finger pastries
and stuff.  Way more than they needed fore how many people were there.
For the coffee break they had a million goodies, once again far too many.
A bunch of us went and picked up my key to the guest house and checked it
out since most of us will be staying there at one time or another.  

After the meeting, we were shuttled to some other little town for a
typical Italian meal.  When we were seated we all had 4 forks and 3 knives
and during the meal we were brought 3 or 4 more forks and anybody who was
drinking ended up with 4 glasses.  This meal was crazy.  The kept coming
around and taking away empty plates and giving us new full ones.  I don't
remember it all.  We started with empty plates which they then served (all
cold and individually served) olives, two kinds of meat, beans, stuffed
peppers, eggplant stuff and toast with olive oil.  Then, after a clearing
of plates, crepes.  Cleared plates.  Linguine in a mushroom sauce. The
amusing thing was that if you ever used a knife when you weren't expected
to (I never did) they would alwys bring you another one and at some point
after we had used some portion of the forks they started bring new ones
with the plates.  Rigatoni in a tomato sauce.  Lamb and french fries.
Salad.  There were a couple of other courses, but I cannot remember what
they were.  Then a desert thing that I think was tiramisu, then fresh
fruits.  They served a desert wine at some point (of course during the
meal they kept adding more bottles of a local white wine).  Then one of
the japanese members, who as of January was appointed as a full prof, was
given a bottle of scotch which they passed around, and then liqueurs were
served too.  Needless to say, everyone ate too much but it was a lot of
fun and people were talking about everything.  I am going to have to be
careful when I return to Frascati because George (my advisor) gave the
Romanian member permission to use her vampire abilites to suck my blood as
is appropriate for all new graduate students (she's cute enough that it's
fine by me).  The whole evening was really a lot of fun.  Eventually, we
decided it was time to go home.  Two sets of shuttling got us all back to
Frascati and I got to bed sometime around 1:00.

On Saturday, although our train was not leaving Rome until 13:40 the only
trains from Frascati left at 7:20 and 9:20.  So we caught the 9:20 train
to Rome and did a walking tour for a couple of hours.  It was a nice clear
day although things were damp from the day before.  Went to the colloseum
and saw many other ancient Roman things.  Ate extremely sour oranges fresh
off the trees (in January ?!?).  Rome is a much different place in January
than in the summer.  Fewer people and much more pleasant weather.

We returned to the train station, had a drink at a cafe and caught our
train home.  This time we got to take fast trains from Rome to Milan and
Milan to Switzerland.  The one from Rome is brand new (that was its first
trip) and it is very nice.  They even served free beverages and candies.
I was quite tired but could not manage to sleep.  Finally got back to
Neuchatel at 23:00 then caught the bus home and crashed.  This morning
(well technically this afternoon) I discovered I had left my shampoo and
conditioner in Frascati.

So there you have it - the capitals of two past empires in 2 weeks.  The
ironic thing is that the what convinced me to start looking into going
back to grad school was the fact that I was tired of my nomadic life
between Toronto and Vancouver and I was looking to "settle down".  Hardly
seems to have worked out considering the present plan :)  Oh well, I can't
really complain.

There were a million other amusing details and other things to tell you
(like the flood in the cafeteria here) but I am sure you have all had
enough drivel for one day.

By the way, if anyone in Vancouver happens to be going to Toronto, or
anyone in Toronto happens to be going to Vancouver can you be sure to tell
me because I have something I would like transported.

Aaron de Neuchatel (soon to be Aaroni da Frascati then Aaron von Wienner)