Perambulations in Padova

With the pandemic now firmly relegated to the status of The Event, it's time for another travel post.

Truth be told I submitted a couple of abstracts to EAS 2024 just on a general feeling that I probably should try and go to conferences once in a while, rather than any unsated travel-lust. Which meant, as per usual, that I booked all the flights and accommodation later than I probably should, but it all worked out in the end.

As it transpired, this was a really good conference with no less than three full days dedicated to stuff I'm directly interested in, but you can read all about the science highlights over on Little Physicists. Here I'll just do the travel bits. Knowing nothing whatever about Padova except that it was close to Venice (which I missed visiting when I was in Bologna last year), I decided to go the Saturday before and return the following Sunday. That gave me two full days of exploration, or closer to three because I arrived pretty early on the Saturday.

Padova

My flight over was absolutely uneventful. The only annoyance is that there aren't any direct Prague->Padova flights, so I went through Venice and took a bus – an easy 40 minute trip and you buy the ticket from a vending machine. Instantly on leaving the airport the heat made itself very much known, something which was to get worse before it got better. The bus ride itself was forgettable : you don't see anything of Venice itself, the Italian countryside is flat nondescript farmland (the area around Bologna is somehow more picturesque), and the parts of Padova the bus goes through aren't the nicest. Which will unfortunately be something of a running theme here.

Somewhat annoyingly, the left luggage at the train station wasn't open. Nor was the hotel/apartment office that day*, which meant I had to drag my thankfully-not-heavy suitcase and somewhat-heavier backpack around all day. 

* Keys were placed in a deposit box on the street, for which I was sent the code and a series of nice clear pictures explaining exactly where everything was and what to do.

A literal rainbow bridge ! A building nearby had a huge "Pride" banner hanging from the upper floors, so I presume there's a connection.

Part of the historical bits of the University, I think.

One of the main squares, taken on the Sunday morning. On the Saturday it was full of people.

One thing I immediately noticed was the tourist density contrast, which is much higher even than in Prague. That is, there's a distinct tourist route : deviate from it even a little, and the population density crashes. I've a feeling in Padova this might align with the places the locals actually inhabit as well, but what's striking is that the empty parts are really empty. And something about the place deadens the sound, so get away from the main routes and the streets turn silent.

Still, by a little after 2pm, after having explored Padova for a good three hours or so, I was extremely conscious that it really was quite astonishingly, ferociously hot. It was only 31 C but if someone had told me it was 41 I'd have believed them. I'd been consuming liquids all day like it was going out of fashion but quite honestly the heat felt to me to be – and I don't say this lightly, pray remember the name of the blog ! – worse than the tropics. Maybe it was that "baked in" feeling of the heat radiating from the stones, coupled with the humidity, I don't know. But it felt like it was eight billion degrees and humid enough to drown a fish.

Whatever it was, having seen the message that the key would be available "before 3", I went and collected it a little after 2:30. Being close to the train station the area... wasn't the best. It's not that it's run-down, though it's hardly the tourist scene either. It's that there are a lot of large street gangs hanging out there most of the time, and as far as I could tell, this seemed to be the case only in this particular and very small area. The main activity here for the youth of today is to hang out on the steps of the streets. Why this is appealing I've no idea; I imagine conversations going along the lines of "what about going to the cinema bro ?" followed by "nah mate, gotta hang out on the steps cos that is where it is AT !" or suchlike.

So far as I could tell the area isn't actually dangerous in the "seriously don't go there" sense, but it's definitely intimidating. The presence of numerous open shops, little old ladies going about their business, and other people walking around staring at their phones gave me some confidence that random crime isn't something to be overly-concerned about, at least.

Compensation for the scuzzy area came about by way of the hotel itself. This was a sort of apartment/hotel, with individual rooms but with two shared bathrooms and one kitchen. The company's called CleanBNB and it was indeed commendably clean. Even better, the air conditioner was fabulously, gloriously efficient. In less than an hour I'd reduced the indoor temperature from 29 to 21 C. This was bliss, and the pattern for the other days was to retreat here whenever needed.

Or in other words, finally I understand the point of a siesta. 

The first evening I managed to get the external roller shutter stuck and couldn't figure out for the life of me what I'd done, so had to make do with a rather bright interior (the next day, I realised a handle on the shutter itself had got lodged at the top, and I was able to dislodge it). Other than that it was comfortable enough and surprisingly quiet in the night. I tried to avoid arriving back too late, but from what I could see, the street urchins mostly disappear by around 10 pm or so. 

The restaurant scene in Padova is not a patch on Bologna. That first night I even had... a bad lasagne. In Italy. Shock, horror ! Luckily for that place (deep in the tourist zone) they did a mean Cuba Libre. But finding restaurants was a struggle; often I made do with a big lunch and limited myself to snacks in the evening. When I did go out, though, the staff were invariably friendly. Usually I was even offered a student discount ! Alas, that ship has sailed...

I decided that evening that doing Venice the next day would be frankly silly. The heat in Padova was bad enough; in Venice the humidity would surely be even worse and the crowds unbearable. So I decided to do more of Padova instead, now of course sans suitcase. I forced myself to walk at a snail's pace to avoid working up a sweat; this helped quite a lot, but even so, there are limits. Padova is (as long as you avoid the train station) a perfectly nice place to explore, with the need to proceed with all the urgency of a glacier helping to compensate for its small size.

My first glimpse of the old astronomical tower, of which more later.

That day I decided to visit a few of Padova's tourist attractions : the Palazzo della Ragione and the civic museums. The Palazzo is a spectacular medieval hall which claims to be the largest in Europe; Wikipedia claims otherwise but it certainly feels very impressive. It's worth spending a good quarter of an hour or so walking around listening to the audio guide's explanation of the frescos, but you don't need much more than that unless you're an art enthusiast. It's also surprisingly warm inside, unfortunately.

The civic museums, I have to say, aren't great unless you speak Italian. Everyone speaks English but the number of explanatory signs in English is very small indeed, often just one small panel in a room of dozens if not hundreds of artifacts. So I'll skip over these entirely, except for the highlight : Giotto's 14th-century masterpiece, the Scrovegni Chapel. The building from the outside is utterly nondescript, easily mistaken for a 20th century church. I asked the guide about this and she wasn't exactly sure, but presumably heavy restoration work (or perhaps more accurately described as reconstruction work) must have been done to the exterior. 

The interior, however, is altogether more impressive. So determined are the Italians to preserve the paintings that you spend 15 minutes in an airlock for reducing the humidity, strictly limiting groups of visitors to 25 at a time. Sensibly they use this time to show you a video describing the history of the chapel and the significance of the paintings. You get 15 minutes inside to look around a take photos, minus the flash, of course.

The Conference

The next day it was time for the conference, in an extremely modern and climate-controlled building*. No frescos, just 1500 astronomers, the usual sort of "look at our cool telescope !" booths and so on. Tea breaks... well, it claimed to be Twining's English Breakfast, but it wasn't my idea of a good cuppa. Delicious biscuits though, and very plentiful. Lunch was mainly a burger van that had set up outside, which was surprisingly decent fast food (and not at all the usual sort of grubby side-of-the-road variety, even if it was hardly healthy).

* Though fortunately it cooled down considerably mid-week, and remained so until the weekend, which was still not as bad as when I arrived.

I shall pass over the science here and skip ahead to the social aspects. The first was a concert with a small orchestra playing (what else ?) The Planets, with visuals shown on a gigantic LED screen, mostly real images with some visualisations and animations. I was much looking forward to this, but my experience was somewhat marred by a couple of... incidents in the day. 

That morning I decided I needed breakfast, and not knowing the conference venue sold croissants, I went into the centre. Going down a side street very close to the tourist region, I made the mistake of answering someone addressing me - well, you never know, often people are just asking directions, and I don't like to fob people off unless I can see this is obviously a discussion I want to avoid.

Well, it was weird. "Can you help me ? I'm looking for something, something for my baby", said the man, proceeding to direct my attention to a small sign he held up, which was of course in Italian. It's hard to think of a more obvious declaration of "I'm trying to scam you" than this, so, "Sorry, no", I immediately said, and walked off. 

This has happened to me hundreds of times over the years and there's nothing unremarkable about it so far, apart from the weirdness of the request and the fact it was 7:15am – not exactly peak scam time ! He called after me, which is still nothing unusual. But he was persistent. When it got to, "Sorry ? Why sorry ?" I started to feel more uncomfortable. When it got to "Hey, boy !" I was not at all happy. And when he then proceeded to call to his friends I was walking past, who then in turn proceeded to call out to me as well, I was positively nervous. I ignored them completely, kept on walking at my usual brisk pace and made straight for the nearest café, which was, fortunately, the very one I was aiming for anyway.

That rather put me on edge for quite a while. It wasn't an empty side street and there were plenty of open shops (it was only just outside the centre at this point), so I doubt anything would happen... but you don't know. Now I'm quite familiar with the rules of social engagement being markedly different, for example, in America than Britain. I mean we Brits are not necessarily unfriendly or untalkative, but we don't stop to chat to complete strangers – that tends to be an immediate sign of a scam to us. But when it's obvious someone is trying to scam you and really starts to press the point home, that's rather unpleasant.

What made it worse was when I went out that evening to the concert, it started raining. So I had to go back for my umbrella, and on this occasion the gang hanging out on the street corner decided to block my path. And that's literally all they did – I simply asked to go through, and they let me. I retrieved said brolly and proceeded without further incident, but it gave the evening a distinct unpleasantness about it. Again, it's just hard to know how to adapt to different social rules : is this just greater exuberance and talkativeness, as with Americans, or a precursor to some sort of threat ?

As it happened, when I got back around 10:30, they'd all gone, perhaps rained off or perhaps just following usual behaviour, I don't know. There were no further such incidents for the rest of the trip, barring the occasional "Ciao" from random passers-by which I stoically ignored.

The concert was very pretty though. The orchestra weren't the Vienna Philharmonic but they were good enough, and the acoustics in the room were great.

The next day was the conference dinner for anyone who could afford the €90 (!) fee, which I wasn't going to shell out. So I'd signed up for the free tour of the astronomical tower instead. This was originally a medieval prison, complete with (so the sign and guides claim) a trapdoor underneath one of the later telescopes, down which prisoners were thrown into the dungeon. It fell into disrepair until the 18th century, whereupon it was converted into an observatory. It's well worth a look around – I would actually have liked more time to read the signs, a luxury not afforded to us as part of the conference

After touring the tower it was time to topple the Tories and I stayed up the whole night watching the election coverage, of which more in a future post. Last time I stayed up all night at a conference I spent the whole time getting drunk; this time I survived the morning on an adrenaline rush from seeing the last fourteen years of corrupt stupidity and no small doses of abject racism all done away with; scantily-clad villainy replaced, I have good reason to hope, with common sense and decency (well, we'll see).

That was the morning. In the afternoon I began to crash, but somehow I made it through. I slept, needless to say, like an especially happy and contented log. I'd been grinning from ear to ear like an idiot all day, but come on.... fourteen years. This was a historic, seismic moment, one I wouldn't have missed for anything.

Venice

That brings the conference socials to a close, but I still had a full day left. After umming and ahhing, I finally decided that Venice was so easily accessible (30 minutes and €5 by train) that I had to at least see it, being able to immediately retreat if it proved necessary.

It didn't. I loved it instantly. It's a wonderful little city, for the most part delightfully charming and quaint, peppered with bits of the truly spectacular. Following my favourite strategy of "wandering completely at random", I begin in the less touristy parts. Contrary to what little expectations I had, the canals aren't a gimmick, they're everywhere. A huge fraction of the streets do indeed simply have water instead of roads. There are no cars anywhere : you either take a boat or you walk, those are your only options. Hundreds upon hundreds of adorable little bridges connect the smaller streets, though the numbers of bridges for the larger streets are much lower.

The view immediately from the train station.

Contrary to my expectation, large parts of the city are empty of tourists. And this is a bit silly, because while there may not be anything spectacular in these districts, they're still absolutely charming and a lot of fun to explore.

Even along the main waterfront where you can see the next island over, where you walk past some pretty monumental cathedrals, the number of people was extremely small : a handful along the length of a street, no more than that.

In most cases there's a pavement running alongside the water but not all. Sometimes bridges go directly from building to building. Not all streets connect to each other, making it extremely easy to get lost. I did this quite a few times, but all the streets are short so you can't really get totally bewildered. 

I need not give too many photos of the ungodly number I took because honestly it all looks like this. All of it, everywhere, charming street after charming street. There are a few parks and larger spaces, but not many. And of course in the tourist spots (of which there are plenty) the streets are indeed very busy. Mercifully the sea breeze kept it for the most part to a bearable temperature, though in those parts which were open and exposed to the sun, it soon felt much hotter than the reported 26 C. Again, if you'd told me it was 36, I'd have had no reason to doubt it. 

Still, only parts of the city are truly baking and enormously overcrowded, but by no means all of it all the time. In fact only a few "choke points" have really unusually heavy pedestrian traffic; for the most part, it's no worse than any other popular tourist destination. What helps a good deal is the relaxed, convivial atmosphere of the place. And someone told me that there's no air conditioning in the cafes, but this was simply false. I had a very nice seafood risotto in a random café I wandered into, where I was able to happily decompress and cool down to a bearable temperature, before completing my circuit of the island in the afternoon.

Since I didn't go in any of the museums, I'll wrap this up with a photo-dump. I saw the Bridge of Sighs but I haven't included it here because that was the one thing where I just didn't see what all the fuss was about. The only "sigh" it should elicit is one of confusion that it's especially famous. It's nice enough, but with Venice it's the collective whole rather than any one particular must-see feature that makes the experience worthwhile.

 

Some canals are considerably larger than others. While Venice might not have as many canals as Manchester (reputedly), it certainly has a lot nicer ones.

Some things are clearly just for tourists, as they should be. I even heard a violinist playing the "Just One Cornetto" song, and if I hadn't I'd have been hugely disappointed.

The Arsenal. Definitely a place where I'd like to wander through the museums if I had the time.

By mid-afternoon the heat and 25,000 steps were at last taking their toll on me, and by about 3 (hours later than I expected) I was back on the train to Padova. Venice is somewhere very high indeed on my list of places to visit again. I despise heat and crowds separately and the combination is anathema, but here I will say that a) both of these can largely be avoided, at least a good fraction of the time; b) Venice is so damn nice a place that it compensates for it.

Venice is also famous for having problems of water erosion. And here I want to grab a civic official and throttle them, pointing at the nearest high-speed multi-story yacht and yelling "WELL THERE'S YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM MATE !". They may have banned cruise ships, but there doesn't seem to be any kind of speed limit, and giant yachts are still a thing. Even in British canals, which have no more than narrowboats, speeds are limited to prevent bank erosion even though the banks consist of mud and totally uninteresting plants; in historic, beautiful Venice, boats much larger and much faster are common.

The next day, a final few moments of drama. Just before exiting the motorway for the airport we hit gridlock. This was due to a motorbike accident, where I was able to see the driver lying the floor, his head bleeding, but moving and being attended to by other drivers. Bits of bike were scattered all over the road though the bike itself looked largely intact – that driver, I suspect, could have ended up in a far worse state. In complete defiance of the stereotypes the locals had swiftly organised to divert the traffic past the accident. Police and ambulance services hadn't yet arrived.

Finally, my flight to Dusseldorf was delayed, which had me worried about my connecting flight. Needlessly, as it turned out : the Prague gate was almost directly adjacent to the arrival gate from Venice, and in any case the connecting flight was itself delayed. So a short flight later I was back home only half an hour later than planned, and all was well.