Lugano Aug 15th

Plenary: Christof Koch

• He was introduced as making 24th in some magazine's most stylish men in the world list.
• Talked about trying to understand what it means to be conscious.
• Worked closely with Francis Crick of DNA fame
  

Left and started walking towards Agno. I wanted to see a different lake and once I learned the scale of the map it seemed like a very feasible walk. After about 25 minutes I found Laghetto di Muzzano which was a very nice pond. I kept walking and ended up finding the airport and Agro which is on another part of Lake Lugano. I also found out where everyone was. Aug 15^th is an Italian holiday, Ferragosto, so this part of Switzerland also had a 3 day weekend. There is the Vedeggio River entering into the lake and on both sides they had campgrounds filled with trailers and little shacks. Not sure if these people came from the local area or the bigger cities but they had much more life. There was also a bike trail along the stream.

A storm was heading in so I ducked into a pizzeria and ordered a beer on an outside table. When the beer arrived he asked me to move inside and a minute later the sky opened up and a huge thunderstorm hit. I stayed until they kicked me out. They are only open from 12-2:30PM for lunch and then open at 5 PM for snacks and 7 PM for dinner. It had mostly stopped raining so my walk home wasn’t too bad.

Here is a picture of our hotel. Lisa found it. Double click on the picture and it will show full size. You can see the bins in the front they are for garbage. They have a great system where you dump your bag down and each bin is underground. The garbage trucks come around and empty out the bins by pulling each one out of the ground. Check the Louis Vitton store on the right. You might be able to see an old funicula line to the left of our hotel.

The evening the congress had a party complete with a 6 piece Chicago Blues style band. They sang the covers with no hint of accent but you could hear the accent in between tunes.

Lugano - Aug 14th

Today I took the day off. Instead of hanging around the hotel and working on the internet and then going to the plenary session, I left around 7:30AM to head to Mt. Tamaro. The brochure advertised a great sounding walk between Mt. Tamaro and Mt. Lema. The problem was you could get to Tamaro's cable car real easily but it was almost a 2 hour trip to get back from Mt. Lema which is only about 20 km away. After almost an hour of studying the website and brochure, I figured out that they have bus service at the end of the day to take you back to Mt. Tamaro. Well I showed up and the ticket guy called the Mt Lema operator to see how the weather was and they said that there was no visibility.

He suggested that it wouldn't be a great trip so I decided to take the cable car up, hike to the top and Mt. Tamaro and then hike all the way back down the mountain. During the ride up raindrops started to hit the cable car but when I got to the top it was just foggy and cold. I kept to plan and started walking.




So I started up the trail and it was alternately clear and foggy. I get a ways up and see in the distance something that looks like a church. I am amazed at how many beautiful churches I have found on the top of mountains. Well I get up close and find out that it is a microwave, cell phone tower with about 50 different dishes. I guess this is a religious monument of sorts...






I made it to the top and guess what, there was no view. In fact, just as I made it to the top it starts to rain. In addition, a guy is walking his bike up a different trail, leaves it to go back down to help his daughter, friend with his son. They spoke German mostly but had enough English that we could communicate. They started in Austria 4 days earlier and were planning one more night before taking a climbing vacation in northern Italy.



I made it down walking with a little pain in my left leg. It looked like the bottom but this is a view from a small village almost all the way down with lots of old buildings and stone alleys. I tried to find a place for a good meal but it was 5PM. The restaurants don't open for food until 7PM. I was stuck getting beer and pizza but the pizza was the best that I had all weeks in the Italian area. A nice chewy crust with great gobs of ricotta and spinach on top.

The evening event was a panel discussion that was a bust. Not very interesting so I got a nice rest after my long day of hiking.

Lugano - Aug 13

This is the middle day of Lisa's conference so they scheduled a half day off after the plenary. Kristin Linklater was the only speaker of the week that is not a scientist. Her specialty is teaching Shakespeare diction. I wasn't that interested in the topic but it was fun to watch her speak.

Lisa and I planned to walk to Gandria (see previous post). Most of the walk would be new to me as I had taken a bus halfway there before. This way I did find the Museo delle Culture but as usual it was closed. The grounds were nice and we got to watch a swan while sitting on the steps from the building that lead directly into the lake.


It was a hot and humid day so the walk took a while but we made it, explored the end of the Olive Trail and rested at one of the local restaurants. Headed back to Lugano but not sure if was the beer, cooler temperature, or desire for food but the walk back was much shorter. We ended up back at the first restaurant we ate at Cantina Ticinese. This time, I had the lasagna and Lisa had the fried fish. It started raining as we ate but was basically done by the time we were ready to leave.

Lugano - Aug 12th

Well the first day we really had bad weather although it wasn't so bad. It started raining last night and it rained on and off most of the day. Although when it was raining it wasn't too hard. I planned a museum day but by the time I did my computer stuff and then hit the daily lecture it was already 1PM. Tania Singer gave a very technical but not very stimulating talk about how to test for emphathy. I guess it is important but she really didn't explain why.

I looked on the map and there were 4 museums within a kilometer:

• Museo Cantonale d'Arte - I later found it but originally I misread the map
• Museo Villa Ciani - Closed
• Museo Cantonale di Storia Naturale - Found it after stopping at the library but it was closed also
  
• Museo della Culture - I thought it was closed but based on the next day's trip, I never found it.
  

Well in the middle I found the library and the librarian pointed me to the Museo d'Arte museum which was suppose to be open. I found it and it turns out that an introspective exihibit on Swiss Culture called Enigma Helvetica (check these videos out) was going on there and at the Museo Cantonale d'Arte. It was OK and I learned a little about Switzerland:

• A few early Paul Klee paintings
• Some really nice Giovanni Giacometti, father of Alberto, landscapes plus one of his son's thin scuptures
• A cool exhibit of watch parts. They some of the smaller pieces under magnifying glasses so you really get a feeling for how small and precise they are
• A strange exhibit on junk this one guy hung up on his homestead. They ended up dumping everything after his death but some 'lucky' stuff was saved by some of the workers.
• Pictures, models, and painting of trains in Switzerland. The Swiss love to build tunnels through the mountains. The train system is run by the post office, I guess they figured that if you had to get the mail through, then people aren't that much harder.
  

The evening activity at the congress was 4 Alexander Technique teachers gave a music recital. Most of the performers are professionals and the concert was pretty good. I liked the .... the best.

Lugano - Aug 11th

My first day almost to myself. I jump on the computer to catch up with email, work, and blogging. I didn't get too far. Lisa recommended going to the plenary session today. Turns out that Baroness Susan Greenfield was a great speaker on a great topic. She gave a 20 minute intro on how the brain works and then showed how important 'nuture' was to the way we humans end up. She is pushing Britain to prescribe less drugs to kids to 'solve' behavior problems.

I then literally ran and caught the #1 bus and took it to the end of the line. That left me about 2 km away from my first destination. I started walking up the road until I found a path down to the lake. This dropped me into the middle of the Olive Path.

I turned left and headed past San Dominico and ended up in Gandria.







For those of you that didn't click the link, this town is on the hillside and does not have roads for cars. If you live here you park at the top of the hill and walk down or take a boat and walk up. Here is main street along the lake...





After exploring a few of the streets, I decided to head up following a sign that I thought meant Upper town. After leaving the houses behind I kept seeing this sign. At an intersection, I met Will, whose wife is also at the conference, coming down the hill. He pointed me in the right direction ( and gave me a pep talk) about continuing my climb to the town of Bre. See I made it and someone laid out ice tea (well at least not hot), cookies, peanuts all on the honor system.

So I roamed the streets of Bre and finally found the Museo Wilhelm Schmid but the best I could figure out it is only open Thursday through Sunday from 2 to 4. I checked at the local restaurant if I could bring Lisa up there for dinner but the last bus and funicular is 7PM. I decided to hang out there and have beer. I met Achmud and his 2 kids. He is from Egypt and in the energy business. His kids were a little shy and didn't want to speak English. I sure could have used my son Howie!!!
Well it was 5PM and time to catch the bus down. He does this everyday but taking a full size bus down switchbacks on a one lane road seemed a little dangerous to me.






Well I made it and Lisa and I decided to hit the San Salvatore Funicalare since the only thing up there is a view, a museum, and a restaurant. We did splurge and have a local bottle of wine with risotto and a chicken dish. The nice thing about the wine is that it is bottled in .5 liter sizes, just right for 2 old people.

Lugano - Aug 10th

Today Lisa registered in the morning for the Alexander Technique Congress. While she was doing that, I went exploring.

Found the cable car that is a 10 minute walk from our hotel and takes you to the neighborhood up the hill from us.




I then headed north and found a park with a pretty nice view. The best that I can figure out is that this is a little hill side just off of Via Emilio Maraini.





Then I headed down the hill and got lost. Found a large cemetery complete with crematorium and beautiful statuary.








After finding my way back to the hotel, we decided to go on the Grande Boat Tour of the Lake Lugano with a couple of Lisa's Alexander Technique teachers. It was a good way of getting the feel for the region. They stop at a few of the towns where you can get off and explore, just make sure you know when the last boat stops for the day or you are spending the night out!!!



In the evening I went with Lisa to the opening session and listed to Marshall Rosenberg talk about NVC. Since the boat came back late we hit the pizza restaurant in the square and listened to the samba band play again.

Lugano - Aug 9th

Well we got to Lugano as planned. On 1 hour plane rides they give us wine, beer, water, a huge snack bag. One could get spoiled traveling in Europe!!!

We take a short taxi ride to our hotel and find out that we could have taken the finicula down the hill and it would have been a quick walk to the hotel but one never knows the first time in town. We learn that we have to do the 'old fashioned way' of dropping the skeleton key off at the front desk every time we leave the building. We also discover that we got spoiled in our Hilton Suite but over all the room is nice and servicable with a much nicer view than in Prague.

We head out for a walk and after a few discussions we end up at Cantina Ticino. It was a nice cafe overlooking a local boulevard. The cook ended up being an interesting character. Every time the tourist 'train' drove by the front he grabbed his bell gave a long ring and the train would ring back. The placemats claimed that he, ????, put a team of chefs together to make 3 different Guiness World Records but I can't find them on the internet. Can anyone help me out? Oh yeah, the food was pretty good also.

On the way back we discovered that since it was Saturday night that they block of the main street along the lake and have a big party. In the park, there was a great Georgian Jazz Fusion band, Shin, in a packed square there was a Samba band playing, on the street there were tons of kids on scooters. Everyone else was either eating gelato or drinking/eating in a cafe.