Pisa

Saturday I took a daytrip to Pisa. I was going to go with a classmate, we had plans to meet at the train station. When our train was supposed to leave in 5 minutes, I called him only to have a girl pick up. Turns out she had loaned her phone to my friend the night before, and she was already on the train as it pulled out of the station. She didn't even know what I looked like to tell me that my friend was sick, and since my phone had been out of money, there was no way to tell me. So I caught the next train to Pisa instead and met up with them that afternoon (they also neglected to mention that they were stopping in Lucca first).

Pisa is known for almost nothing besides its leaning tower. The most popular thing to do with the tower, besides climb it, is to take a photo so it looks like you are either holding it up or knocked it down. While I somehow managed to miss out on this tradition, I did see lots of people looking like idiots with their hands in the air. If you look at the two people in the bottom left corner, you'll see that they actually are trying to pinch the tower in their hands rather than lean on it. Hooray for the nonconformists!

Not to miss out on all the fun, we did go up the tower. It was strange walking up it, because even though we were on the inside without windows, you could still feel the tilt. I kept praying that I wasn't going to be the straw that broke the camel's back, the one to send one of the 7 wonders of the world toppling to the ground. It is really a beautiful structure, though not as tall as I had imagined.


A little history about the tower: it actually was not built incorrectly, nor knocked over. Turns out that not so long ago, Pisa was part of the sea, and so the top layers of soil are very soft and pliable. When the architects decided to build a tower, they put too much weight on one single spot of land. Anywhere else it would not have been a big deal, but after building more than half of the stories of the tower it had noticeably sunk into the ground and began to tilt. The building ceased and discussion began about what to do. After no changes for a while, they decided that a little tilt never hurt anyone, and so they continued building upward, but again had to stop because of tilt. However, at this point they had completed all but the bell tower top. To correct things, they then actually built the bell tower at an angle relative to the tower itself so that it sat just about flat on top. However, history ever repeating itself, the tower tilted more, and so now even the very top is uneven. They actually had to do emergency tower-saving in the early nineties, as the stone had weakened enough that some supporting columns were at risk of collapsing. Luckily they figured out how to amend the situation enough that it seems it will remain standing for longer.

Pisa was terribly hot, and I feel like I got sunburned on the back of my neck. I have come to the decision that Pisa has more bookstores per capita than any other city in Italy (it had one or two a block, everywhere I went!), and I really like the architecture in Pisa.

To see more pictures from my trip, you can check out the web album at the bottom of my main page. There are a couple other cool photos in there, including one of a mural put up on a construction wall that was made with mirrors, creating a really cool effect. It reminds me of the same kind of mural put up underneath LSD at the Foster exit.

The trip was exhausting, and when I got back to the main train station I extended my trip by getting on a bus going in the wrong direction. Lets just say that I was very happy to reach my bed that night!