Aquileia is above Venice, very close to Slovakia, so we had to take an overnight train thursday night (and a full day of classes) that left from the Tiburtina station around 10:30pm. I've never been on an overnight train and, after experiencing one, would prefer never to do it again. Thankfully, I roomed with Kate and Joe who were cracking me up telling ridiculous "scary stories". The cabins are like closets. There's barely any room for even two people to stand on the floor. The beds are like bunk beds, except there's 3, stacked to the side on the wall. Kate was on the very top, I was in the middle, and Joe took the bottom bunk. We didn't fall asleep until maybe 12:30. We had to be up and ready by 6:40am to be able to quickly jump off the train by 6:48am because it only was stopping for like 5 minutes. At 3am, Joe all of a sudden wakes up and tells us we gotta get up and get off the train and that we must have slept in or something. I thought he was pulling our leg. I had been awake since I couldn't sleep very well. And Kate was all confused and I kept telling her "No" "He's just kidding, Kate it's 3am, go back to bed". Then there's silence for a minute and Joe goes "Guys i'm sorry it's only 3. I'm so sorry guys." He hadn't been kidding at all. haha.
So anyway when our alarm finally did go off around 6:15am we all got ourselves ready to get off the train, which went smoothly. But once the train pulled away, it was go time.
A little side note on Jan Gadeyne. He's pretty much one of the most intense professors I've ever had. He from Belgium and loves to boast about how he had these intense German professors and how he survived all these hard exams and blah blah blah. On top of that he's a sarcastic prick. He loves to insult. It's like a favorite past time. And sometimes it's funny but realistically it's always a jerk comment that isn't appropriate coming from a professor. And he's somewhat bi-polar and on this trip we got the extreme of his bad side...
So anyway, we take a bus to Aquileia that took less than 10 minutes and walked to a church and sat in the cold for an hour while he lectured at us about crap I can't even remember or decipher from my notes. Awesome. We then are a loud to eat breakfast we only find a little shop that has cappucino and pastries so I was hungry 5 seconds later. Then we sat outside a bit more while he lectured about more stuff and then FINALLY the church opened. It was actually kind of cool inside. The whole point of this trip was to see Mosaics. They are the best in the world in Ravenna but also in the other cities we visited too. This church had an entire mosaic floor still intact. Of course I didn't take any pictures while in Aquileia but it wasn't as interesting as it may sound. After the church we took a long, hot (mother nature heard my plea a little too well), and rather boring walking tour of some of the ruins like a necropolis, the forum was was barely noticeable, old harbour and houses which was a dried up stream with a few ruins, then we saw a church with another mosaic floor.
So that was Aquileia. Next we boarded a bus that took us 15 minutes down the road to Grado. We had lunch first and I had a pasta dish with a fanstastic tomato-based sauce and then we got some gelato afterward. Grado is actually really beautiful and a little expensive because I guess it can get touristy but it was;t crowded or anything. They have a little harbor that comes into the village and that was cool. It's in the same lagoon as Venice.
So we pretty much just visited early-Christian churches and the Baptistery of Grado which were again full of original mosaics and some still had their mosaic floors intact. Which was cool to see and actually be able to walk on one. The other places having you suspended on the floors on clear floors so you can see below you. After Grado we got back on the bus and took an hour long drive to Ravenna.
This is the coastline while leaving Grado.
So we arrive in Ravenna around maybe 8ish and we're all exhausted. The hotel is really nice though, except our shower was really small, like a closet and I kept shutting the water off with my elbow. Oh well.
This is the only picture I managed to take of Ravenna besides the hotel room. It was that kind of weekend...
That's my roomie Kate!
Our sink was outside of the bathroom. haha.
We had dinner at a nice place that was reasonably priced and we headed back to the hotel to work on our oral presentation. Did I mention we had to present our research papers? On things relating specifically to Ravenna? Things that, until that very moment we were about to present, we had never seen before? We were all dreading Ravenna, which should have been the highlight to our trip but was rather the focal point of our doom. We didn't know how hard he was going to really be on us. He told us we had to know all our sources for each bit of info we would present and to expect being constantly interrupted during our presentations to be questioned by him. We'd find out the next morning just how serious he was...
So the next morning he of course hits the ground running. By the way, he's known for walking blocks ahead of his class and never looking back to make sure you can see where he's going and where he turned. It's REALLY annoying... So the first two presentations you would think were more like verbal flagellation. He wouldn't let them finish a thought, and he shredded them apart for ridiculous things. He embarrassed them in front of us, making them sound unprepared and correcting them on every little thing. The weekend pretty much just went like that. He'd loosen up for the presentations at the end of the day but be a total nazi for the morning presentations. And of course I was part of the Sunday morning presentations. So Saturday night my roommate and I stayed in our hotel and with fear motivating us to prepare for the worst we went over our papers again and again. So much for enjoying Ravenna. So the morning came and of course he ripped me to shreds and the girl before and after me took verbal beatings. He was particular about what he felt needed to be said when. He stopped you before you had a chance to make a point to tell you you're wrong. He made you skip around in your presentation because he wanted to hear one thing before another. I did the architecture of San Vitale. And he said I made it confusing to understand the interior. Thankfully people came up to me afterward and said they thought I said it exactly the same way he said it after he tears you apart them takes over and re-lectures your paper. Thankfully Kate was able to handle it well enough and although he told her to not talk about certain things and talk slower but make the presentation shorter but include key points she managed to do it all. It didn't help he was on a tight time schedule that day because we had to be at certain places at certain times and there was a whole bunch of us who still had to present. So some people didn't have any problem with their presentations because he was happy some moments then would get nasty at others. He might also have favorites but even the people he seemed to prefer over the semester got attacked ruthlessly. Some people even said they were on the verge of tears. And you could see it in their faces that he needed to back off and that it wasn't a learning experience if they're feeling attacked and humiliated.
So needless to say the weekend wasn't all that great. I was so happy when we got on our train to go back home. Even afterward I still felt frazzled and nervous from all the built up stress that loomed over me the entire weekend. At least it's over!! It's crazy to think that next week is finals and that weekend my family will be here! I feel like the end of the semester went by so fast and soon I'll be back in the States, graduated, and working like I did before I decided to go back to college to finish my degree. Time really does fly. And it was the best decision I ever made.
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