Italia!

 I'm in Italy!

I arrived yesterday at Rome and went directly to the lab, without time to see the city. Just as well, since it was raining. The Gran Sasso lab is in a small village next to L'Aquila, the larger city of the region. From the airport to L'Aquila it is about one and a half hours. After we leave the Rome area, we drive through some very pretty scenery, with mountains, valleys, little villages perched on steep mountain walls or peaks, and the odd little castle here and there. The lab itself has a great background: the snow coverd peaks of the Grand Sasso mountain range, which is breathtaking at clear weather (it finally cleared at end of the day).

I am sharing an apartment with Peter (the oher grad student from Brown) and Rick (the boss) at the nearby village of Paganica ("town of Pagans", apparently). The apartment is spacious enough, although my room is pretty cramped, and it can't be much more than 2x3m. At least the view from my window is awesome! (See picture above)

I will write more about first impressions and details later, right now I don't have a decent Internet connection, neither at the apartment nor at the office. I haven't been assigned an IP address yet, and I am on a borrowed connection.