More from Turin…

The next day, back to the museum. I had spent 6 hours the day before and pretty much covered all the smaller items in the Egyptian collection, now it was time to go into the statuary section of the museum. I knew it would only take a couple hours based on the brochure, and I planned afterwards on going to another nearby museum that has a city history collection. There were no flash pictures allowed and it tended to be rather dark in this portion of the museum but I did my best to hold the camera steady. Some pieces had accent lighting so those pictures turned out well. Many of the others are rather shaky and just turned out OK. During my tour of this portion of the museum, I wished they’d turn the lights up. Some areas were just too darn dark. And the funny thing was that this statuary was solid stone! No paint anywhere to fade. I didn’t understand what they were trying to do with the low light levels. Mood lighting? For stone? It’s not like these pieces are rare and fragile oil paintings by the masters that might fade if there’s too much flash photography done.

Some of these were in excellent condition. And yet were thousands of years old. The vagaries of life, time, and history I suppose.

You can get a sense of the size of this with those people in the background bringing ‘scale’ to the picture.Many of these statues were 12-15 feet tall. Some works were 20-25 feet tall. Finished with the tour. And the brochure was right, it did take around two hours. Back out on the street and it’s only 11 AM or so. OK, started walking to my next destination maybe 1/4 mile away. Weather was threatening but holding off.

The Museum of the Risorgimento is fairly unique, even in Italy. It was established in 1878 shortly after Italian unification. I might not have all the details correct but as I recall, nearly the entire collection was found locally.

Over the centuries, particularly after the Vandals and Visigoths started attacking Italy, in a period after a protective wall was built that surrounded the city of Turin, many times there were attacks and attempts to sack the city. So the rich often buried their possessions, sometimes for years during periods of repeated attacks. This often resulted in the owners losing track of where the treasure was because of the fog of war, not to mention that they might have been killed or died, or were carried off as slaves. A couple thousand years later, as builders excavate for another large building, they stumble upon this buried treasure and often it ends up in a museum. The history of Turin itself was pretty interesting. There’s been people living here for probably 10’s of thousands of years. There was a really neat diorama of the ancient landscape and the tiny village of Turin 5,000 years or so ago. Could not find an angle to take a decent picture though.

Silver riches. Much ornamental armor along with lots of jewelry. I wandered around this museum taking 10’s of pictures without flash when this ordinary guy walks up and tells me that photography wasn’t permitted in the museum. Huh? I hadn’t seen any signs to that effect, and the guy looked like someone off the street so I asked him who he is? He pulls out his ID and turns out he works at the museum. A department head even. Here I’d been wandering around for a couple hours taking pictures and no one had said a word. So after he wandered off, I had to surreptitiously take the following pictures. I was pretty close to being finished there anyway. I didn’t take too many photos there because both the ambient, man made lighting, and the glass cases weren’t really suited for photography.  Then it was back outside. Walking down the street I stumbled on the church where the Shroud of Turin is kept. Like all relics it’s fake of course and that’s really all that’s well known about this church. The architecture is unremarkable as you can see so I just kept walking. Not much of a crowd either. This is one of the old watch towers still standing. There use to be a wall connected to it near the base. This building use to be where a king or something hung out hundreds of years ago.The Palatine Towers on either side of one of the first century BC city gates is in the below photo. You can see how they’re working on them. The wikipedia article says that this is the best example of Roman gates in all of Italy. Built in the 1st century BCE. They were restoring the gates so all I could do was wander around them where the fencing would allow.

This is an example of what a Torino street looked like before cars. I was staying about a block from here.

After touring most of the city center of Turin, which included browsing around the open air market, and buying some fresh strawberries, only to find them a euro a kilo cheaper at another stall, I headed back to the apartment and did some research online about places to go next.

Here’s a map I was looking at to figure out where: Europe

I was hot to go to Switzerland but it was just May 1st and I didn’t really have much in the way of cold weather gear with me. Many of the eastern European countries were on my long list to visit but nothing jumped out and said, “Come here, come here“. I knew I wanted to go to Prague or Budapest, just when I’d do that was still up in the air.

OK, I can’t decide where to go east, so I’ll just go to Paris. Did a little research, and reserved a flat in Porte d’Orleans. Since I was flying by the seat of my pants, I wasn’t able to get into the place for 4-5 days, so I reserved a bed in a 6 person, co-ed room at St. Christopher’s Paris Gare du Nord Hostel.

After getting that done, I wandered downstairs and just outside the street side door to the apartments was a semi-upscale cafe’. First time I’d seen it open since I got to Turin. Sat down at one of the sidewalk tables and had an enjoyable time talking with the owner while trying to figure out what to snack on and drink.

But then Giulia wandered by and I invited her to join me, which she did. She had gotten off work early and it was a delight to have a local to talk to. She had been pretty busy while I was there sharing her and Marco’s flat so I hadn’t really seen much of either of them. I mentioned that I couldn’t figure out where I was suppose to go to catch the train to get to Paris. Giulia knew exactly what I needed to do and was kind enough to offer to guide me to a hub where I could buy my ticket for the train the next day. We left the cafe’, passed the main plaza, down the street where the trolley was, then on the way we stopped at a 15th century church that I wanted to get some pictures of. Unfortunately my camera battery decided to die right at that moment. I did tour the church though. Tiny. Ancient. Weird. Funny looking. Interesting example of building techniques from the 1400’s. I invited her in to tour with me but she thought she might burst into flame so she waited outside. Afterwards, another block of walking, and we jumped on the trolley, and traveled to the hub. With her help bought my ticket from what appeared to be a tourism office (they don’t have ticket machines here for some reason), then back by trolley to the main plaza. She gave me specific instructions on how to get to the main train station the next morning, which was a couple miles beyond the trolley hub we’d been to. The train ticket was non-refundable so I made sure to pay close attention to her instructions. But as long as I got on the trolley at the right kiosk I couldn’t go wrong because that trolley terminated at the train station.

Back at the sidewalk cafe’ for a nice wine, I learned from Giulia that she, like most of her generation, and all of her friends, are atheists. Here I’d been careful not to belittle the pope, catholics, or the religious in general around them and here they’re all atheists. Hah! She tells me that religion is rather passe’ here in Italy these days. No one she knows goes to church except some go to appease older relatives on occasion, certainly not every Sunday though.

Eventually it was time for her to head upstairs and start dinner for her and Marco, so I got instructions on where to find the local laundromat, gathered my clothes and scooted off to do my laundry for the first time since I had gotten to Europe a little more than two weeks before. I was close to running out of clean clothes. Found the laundromat right next to a cafe’ so that was handy. The ‘mat was empty, which was great because it took me forever to figure out how to operate the machine. Finally got my clothes washing, headed back to the cafe’ to find it’s closed. Damn. Well, they left the tables set up so I sat there for 35 minutes then went back in and moved my damp but clean clothes to the dryer. Thirty-five minutes later, I go back in, still the only person in the place, and watch my clothes spinning around for a minute or two when two black guys came in and loudly sat on the plastic chairs near the door. I notice right away they don’t have any dirty clothes with them. Hummm.

I don’t care to be a victim, and like many I have a sense of when things aren’t quite right and I go with my gut. Which told me to get the hell out of there. My dryer stopped, but instead of gathering my clothes, I turned around, walked right past the two guys, who were both talking at me trying to get me to engage with them inside the ‘mat. In both English and Italian. I’d call it ‘insisting’ I stop and talk to them inside the ‘mat. Nope nope nope, I ignore them and kept going until I was outside on the sidewalk. The street was virtually deserted by that time of the day…around 5:30pm, but thankfully it was still daylight and there was a person or two here and there off in the distance. One of the guys had followed me outside and is talking to me when I finally pretend to notice.

He leans in close and starts jabbering…I raise my hand and say, loudly, ENGLISH PLEASE. Why loudly? Because bad guys always whisper or talk quietly for two reasons, one is that it makes a physiological connection with the intended victim, and two because they don’t want anyone nearby to overhear and realize they’re trying to scam someone. Everytime he’d try to whisper something I tell him in a very loud voice that I can’t hear him. He tries 3 times and I can see little beads of sweat forming on his forehead. And it’s cool out. I cup my ear…CAN’T HEAR YOU, DUDE. Hehehe. He shuts up for a minute when I point out the huge hot air balloon off in the distance still taking tourists on tethered rides 1,000 feet above Turin.

Finally he makes his last attempt and it’s of course him wanting money. I tell him NO. With a smile and an outside voice. I can see in his face how frustrated he is, but I could give a shit. Finally he gives up and motions to his friend and off they go down the street. When they’re out of eyeshot, I go get my clothes and hightail it back to the apartment.

As I had mentioned, Giulia and Marco were nice enough to allow me to stay another night, but there were consequences it seems as they had a friend there when I got back to the apartment from the laundromat. Seems she was from out of town and scheduled to stay there on the futon. I still occupied the master bedroom though. But, they all seemed to know each other well and the three of them spent the night together on the futon. Must have been a little uncomfortable as it was barely big enough for two. If they’d asked I would have been happy to move out to the futon for my last night there.

Next morning, fairly early, I headed out, and they all headed for work or the stage (Giulia, I found out, is an actress and was rehearsing a play while I was there. I knew from the start she was an artist!).

I found a quick Italian breakfast while heading to the train station. Everything went well, and I arrived an hour early. Goodbye, Torino! Hope to see you again! Four nights & five days seemed to be about right for my visit.