Sunset on Via Castello in Grottaminarda.
So that is it! Six weeks in Italy, 23 out of 40 or so stations installed, and all I could come up with were these roughly 40 lousy web pages. Below is a map of the locations of all of the stations that were put in while I was there. There were a couple of them that I never made it to. I'll just have to go back and get them later.
A big thanks goes out to the INGV folks at our home base of Grottaminarda.
Below is Vincenzo Flammia. He was the one that got things "taken care
of" whenever we needed anything. After a while I started calling him
Mama Vincenzo, because he was always checking to see how we were doing.
The caretakers at the castle were Elvira Racca, Sonia Faretra, and Antonietta Minichiello.
They put up with our dirt, mud, and equipment invasion of the castle and kept on
smiling. Antonietta and her family took John and I in for dinner on
Christmas Day. We ate, and ate, and ate, and ate...
We had a really nice time.
Below is one of the last evenings in the dinning room of the hotel/restaurant La Carina in Grottaminarda which was where we stayed all of the time that we were in town. On the left is Alberto, then me. Next is Pasquale who operated the family-owned Hotel Ristorante "La Carina" and who took pretty good care of us. Pasquale had a translating program on his PC that helped out a couple of times. Chad is next, and then Francesca Di Luccio, who worked for INGV and who also came down my last week there from Roma with Alberto to help us and to learn from us how to take care of the equipment and the data.
This is Rocco -- waiter, cook, and English student eccezionale. When John
and I were left over Christmas and New Year's without an interpreter Rocco wrote down suggestions for dinner then we would look them up in our phrase books
and translators to figure out what they were. It kept us from starving to
death.
On my last day in Grottaminarda we all went by the beverage store to pick up some, well, some beverages for the trip to Roma and back to the States. Chad had only been in Italy a couple of weeks, but he seemed to get the hang of the local customs quite quickly.
I will admit it. In the beginning I never really had any desire to go to Italy. I had just never thought about going there too much. On top of that this was a pretty difficult project because of the logistical problems, and the language barrier. However, as the weeks went by Italy grew on me like a good funghi (mushroom). If you must go to Roma and Nápoli and Venice and Milan, but if you really want to see Italy go south and go to the towns that you have never heard of. When it came down to it, as has always been the case as I have traveled around the world, it was the individual people and the local folks that made the trip something really special. Thanks to all of you!
Below is Leo Frino. He was the librarian, and a big fan of the USA and Bob Dylan, in Sant'Andrea Di Conza. We met Leo on our first service visit to the station there. We got there during lunch. He was the only one in town that we saw moving around and he made a couple of phone calls to get us access to the station. Grazie, and ciao, Leo!
THE END
2015-09-27