My first foreign visit happened to be to Italy. Well getting visa is not a formidable task if you are visiting ICTP (The Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste). Sometimes you can get it even in one day, but beware to do so.
Thanks to the emergent science everything impossible until yesterday is becoming trivial. Of course, no direct international flight from Allahabad, so had to go to Delhi. Unfortunately my experience of this city have never been good. So I locked myself in a room of DAE Guest House at Neeti Bag, open for DAE employees. One funny thing to tell, they forbid you to bring anyone, specially of opposite sex. To catch international flights one need to go to Terminal-3.
The procedure one need to pass through for boarding is quite straight forward. So faced no problem at all. Turkish Airlines are relatively cheaper so ICTP arranged tickets in the same. It was a break journey via Istanbul but I had to stay there for only 6hrs so postponed the plan to visit the historic city.
It takes six and half hrs to reach Istanbul. It was summer of June and Istanbul was also quite hot. First time I came to see actual Turkish style. Being a corridor to Europe, quite like Europe with a hereditary of Middle Asia. Well six hrs passed in a single glance. Here I had to board to Venice. If I had not met Sadhna from TIFR, here, I could have claimed that one can reach ICTP from HRI not using more then 100 words, not sentences.
The ambiance in Venice was quite pleasant. Low temp, inferiorly populated, clean roads, everything automated, smartly dressed people etc i.e. all good an Indian could dream about. English being barely known to common men one might need to grasp face expression and hand movements to get needed amount of information. For a person going abroad first time let me inform you, in a connected flight you need to collect your luggage only once, at the destination.
Mestre railway station is roughly 15 Km from Venice airport and takes less then 30 minutes to reach there. Low population and plenty no of trains means borrowing a train ticket is not as hectic as in India, where one need to plan a journey before taking birth. Venice to Trieste is around 120 Km, takes couple of hrs. I booked a second class ticket alongside the window, though hardly 5-10 people in a coach. As soon as I boarded it started raining and I found the sight of countrysides along the rail track very captivating. Every edifice was surrounded by green agricultural land all around. Sun sat around 8:30PM. My mood was so much vernal that for almost half an hr I could not realize that I have reached Trieste. If it weren't the last station I was going to be in trouble for a while. Anyway, I had to come back to real world after looking at my wrist watch. I reached Galileo Guest House around 11PM and dinner time was over. Why I should unnecessarily describe the beauty of ICTP site if I have already attached an aerial view.
The procedure one need to pass through for boarding is quite straight forward. So faced no problem at all. Turkish Airlines are relatively cheaper so ICTP arranged tickets in the same. It was a break journey via Istanbul but I had to stay there for only 6hrs so postponed the plan to visit the historic city.
It takes six and half hrs to reach Istanbul. It was summer of June and Istanbul was also quite hot. First time I came to see actual Turkish style. Being a corridor to Europe, quite like Europe with a hereditary of Middle Asia. Well six hrs passed in a single glance. Here I had to board to Venice. If I had not met Sadhna from TIFR, here, I could have claimed that one can reach ICTP from HRI not using more then 100 words, not sentences.
The ambiance in Venice was quite pleasant. Low temp, inferiorly populated, clean roads, everything automated, smartly dressed people etc i.e. all good an Indian could dream about. English being barely known to common men one might need to grasp face expression and hand movements to get needed amount of information. For a person going abroad first time let me inform you, in a connected flight you need to collect your luggage only once, at the destination.
Mestre railway station is roughly 15 Km from Venice airport and takes less then 30 minutes to reach there. Low population and plenty no of trains means borrowing a train ticket is not as hectic as in India, where one need to plan a journey before taking birth. Venice to Trieste is around 120 Km, takes couple of hrs. I booked a second class ticket alongside the window, though hardly 5-10 people in a coach. As soon as I boarded it started raining and I found the sight of countrysides along the rail track very captivating. Every edifice was surrounded by green agricultural land all around. Sun sat around 8:30PM. My mood was so much vernal that for almost half an hr I could not realize that I have reached Trieste. If it weren't the last station I was going to be in trouble for a while. Anyway, I had to come back to real world after looking at my wrist watch. I reached Galileo Guest House around 11PM and dinner time was over. Why I should unnecessarily describe the beauty of ICTP site if I have already attached an aerial view.
First task, I could think of finding students from India attending the school. Well, I knew about Ila and Charan but there were 9 of us attending same activity and many more others. My roommate happened to be a nice German guy for different program. I enjoyed staying with him.
One week has passed, and the major activity was to attend lectures and, sometimes, walking around. Didn't go anywhere except for shopping on Saturday, where I purchased nothing. Weather remains nice so no living difficulty, except tasteless vegetarian food. On Saturday and Sunday there was a trip arrangement to Slovenia and Italian-Alps mountain but could not go because I don't have the companion I wish to go with. Meanwhile I met with Goran Senjanovic and Borut Bajc(two well known physicists in my field) and surprisingly they remembered me. I had met them first at Chandigarh last year in SERC school.
Today, friday june 18, is the last day of the school and tomorrow I will have to start back to India. Yesterday there was social dinner and the best part of it was the band playing Latin music and songs. The dinner started at Leonardo(main) building around 7:00PM. Everybody was happily enjoying and dancing (Soon I will post at least one pic). My stay at ICTP passed extremely good, though I am going back with little less, academically.
Thanks to Riaz bhai for providing this pic.
BTW the bathroom doors can't be locked, remember that!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately or for the sake of precaution I didn't use bathroom
ReplyDelete