Saturday 26th July, 2008

My first weekend in Trieste. Last night was the final night that I would have to try and sleep through the loud snores; from tonight on it was going to be blissful sleep. Today I was up early: I was going on a bus tour of the area starting at 9:30. The tour was going to show us a castle in nearby Duino a few kilometres North of Trieste, down to the city of Muggia that had heavy Slovanic influences and finally showing us the ancient Roman ruins in downtown Trieste.

The one castle that we did not visit was Castle Miramare, which was a 10 minute stop from where I was staying. It was something of a pity, as this castle had (in my opinion) the most interesting history behind it. This castle was built for Ferdinand Maximilian of Hapsburg, younger brother of the Austrian Emperor. You see the Trieste region has only been a recent addition to Italy; before World War I it was owned for 500 years by the Austrians. Italy would have lost Trieste to General Tito of the Yugoslavians at the end of World War II, except that they surrendered to an inferior New Zealand brigade in the hopes that they would now fall under Ally protection. A neat trick, and it turns out that it worked — Tito had no desire to start a war with the Allies and Trieste remained part of Italy. Now that the detour through the history of Trieste is over, back to Maximilian and his castle. Maximilian only lived in his castle for four years: from 1860 to 1864. During this time his wife was apparently quite unhappy at her husband’s lack of power and pushed him to seek greater things. In 1864 her wishes were met: Maximilian was appointed Emperor of Mexico and left to rule over the new land. This lasted 3 years, his reign coming to an end when the Mexicans revolted and executed him. The story these days is that the castle is cursed, and that if you spend a night in Castle Miramare then you will die violently in a foreign land.

[I wouldn't count on staying home to save you either, then I think the curse would just mean that you would be invaded so you would still be in a foreign land. Remember this curse is roughly contemporary with Bill "born of a woman, pound of flesh" Shakespeare.]

The castle that I did visit, Castle Duino, had some interesting history associated with it as well. Considering we were a tour group from ICTP it is odd that our tour guide did not point out that the town of Duino was the town Ludwig Boltzmann, the founding father of statistical mechanics, died. We were told about a brighter side of the town, however. Duino hosts the United World College of the Adriatic, a no-fee school that is devoted to helping educate people from 3rd world countries. At Castle Duino the most notable historical item is a World War II bunker set up by the Germans to defend one of their naval bases. You can go down and look around in there if you like; it is quite impressive to see how much rock and dirt the Germans managed to move in such a short amount of time. Although be warned that the bunker is also a little bit creepy and odd as it seems that the curators have tried too hard to make it historically relevant without tying things together properly. There is hardly a stranger juxtaposition than seeing two glass cases side-by-side: one containing the Union Jack, while the other holds the flag of the Third Reich.

Back topside, the rest of the grounds of Castle Duino are absolutely stunning. The castle is located on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, and the surrounding land is a nature reserve. We got to look around the castle and by chance happened to meet its current inhabitant: Carlo Alessandro, Prince della Torre e Tasso. He was a very pleasant down-to-Earth guy, and even though he must have tourists coming through his home all the time he offered to let us take pictures with him.

We were probably only in the grounds of Duino for about an hour. After that we piled onto the bus to head South to the town of Muggia. The bus took quite a long route, showing us various places around the region of Trieste and passing briefly through nearby Slovenia. Sitting next to me was Hyung-Joo, a quiet physicist from South Korea that I had seen around and talked to briefly but did not know very well. He was telling me that he knew a guy from New Zealand back in Korea, and wondered if I knew him too. New Zealand is such a small place that we get this quite a lot, even though the chances are quite small. Hyung-Joo told me the name was Alex, and the name did not immediately mean anything to me.
“Alex Neilson?” Hyung-Joo asked me
As it turns out, I did know Alex. He and I had attended a couple of the same conferences, had a good mutual friend in common, and I believe that Alex had at least once either picked me up or dropped me off at Christchurch airport. We had shared stories about advisors, debated black hole thermodynamics, and had the sort of gedanken-conversations that are the hallmark of theoretical physicists everywhere. This started Hyung-Joo and I talking about all sorts of subjects, and by the time we were halfway to Muggia he was teaching me survival Korean. You know, all the important stuff like “hi”, “bye”, “thank you” and “Do you want to die?”. He also started teaching me how to write various words in Hangul which I found quite interesting.

Muggia was a pretty, quaint town where we stopped for lunch. Unfortunately people mostly spoke Slovenian so my small group were more lost than usual, and the people serving lunch to us were quite slow. Other than being pretty and quaint, there was very little going for Muggia. On our stop there we went around the local castle and into a small church.

Our final stop was downtown Trieste. We were shown the ancient Roman theatre, and told that the Romans had “theatre days” off which are roughly the equivalent of today’s public holidays. When Trieste first joined the Roman empire there were roughly 55 such days a year; by the fall of the Roman empire this number had increased to around 140. There were assorted ruins and Roman concrete, the most amusing discovery of which was some concrete that was excavated while a local company was digging to make a parking garage.

[In fact, the story is somewhat more convoluted than that. This was an area in "old Trieste" where there was not much in the way of parking. A parking company saw its opportunity to build a local garage for the cars, and started knocking down the old buildings in order to construct their garage. There were three problems with this plan. The first was that the buildings are what made the area of interest in the first place, without them there was no particular reason to come to this part of town. The houses are not quite as old as the ones in Florence, but getting close. The second problem was that this area had small narrow streets, so even if they managed to put a parking lot here it would be difficult to access. The final problem was that the local council gave them permission to knock down the buildings anyway.

After construction began, the people digging the foundations came across old Roman-style concrete. The construction had to be stopped and archaeologists had to be called in, because apparently once things get back to the Romans it becomes illegal to destroy them without contacting archaeological teams. In the end the parking garage was abandoned because the people excavating the site took too long to clear the site for further construction.]

The tour concluded and we made our way back to the hostel. My plans for the evening were to go to dinner with Jumin, Spyros and one other person I didn’t know. Those that wanted to meet were supposed to go to Piazza dell’Unit?? at 7 pm for a meeting. Spyros decided to stay at the hostel; he needed some rest after a week of lectures. I went down the the Piazza and arrived at 6:55. I decided to stay at the large clear end so that I could be easily seen by others looking to congregate. I waited until almost 7:15 when I thought that I would try and find a payphone and figure out where Jumin was. During the act of looking for a payphone I found her on the opposite side of the square. It was not surprising that we had not seen each other; not only was the square large but there had also been a fountain and stage between us. It was only the two of us for dinner, and we made our way to one of the Pizzerias I had seen while walking through the Roman part of Trieste.

When we arrived at the Pizzeria one of Jumin’s friends from Brazil was finishing up her dinner. She was not attending the summer school but was a postdoc at either at SISSA or ICTP [I forget which]. I was introduced, and she told us about her upcoming wedding in Brazil. Fortunately both she and her fianc?? had found their next postdocs in Brazil. I have always imagined finding jobs in the same city as your significant other as being something that is quite difficult if you are both academics, particularly at the postdoc level, so it is nice to hear that it works out sometimes. The friend had just finished her meal, so after 20 minutes of chatting away Jumin and I had only just started looking at the menu.

We had originally planned to go and see an open air opera about the history of Trieste a couple of squares over (the Piazzas are everywhere in Trieste!) that started at 9:00, but our dinner went too late. Part of the problem was that we started a little bit later than we expected; it was almost 8:15 before we got any food due to serendipitous encounter and indecisiveness over the menu. The main part of the problem was that between us we spent far too much time talking and not enough eating! At least for my part I think that talking was the better choice: we could understand one another (a claim which I could not make for an opera/musical in Italian), Jumin has lots of interesting points of view, and we could comfortably converse on pretty much anything. I can only hope that she did not feel cheated out of the musical show! After we realised that we were too late to catch the musical we headed down to the second best caf?? in Trieste for hot chocolate.

Then it was off to catch the last bus back to the hostel in Miramare.

Pictures of the castle and the caves can be found here