Italy - The Leaning Tower of Pisa and Pompei

Italy - The Leaning Tower of Pisa and Pompei
The first day on the road on the bus was pretty much non-stop straight thru to our hotel. The bus did stop for breakfast and lunch, and also about every 2 hours for folks to get up and stretch, get a Coke, etc. German laws are very strict about the length of time anyone operating a commercial vehicle may drive without a break. Benny had a partner, Tina, and she would take over and drive for him on occassion. Each driver has a special plastic card that fits into the on board computer. It automatically records who is driving, for how long, and at what speed. That data is saved for 6 months. If a driver receives a ticket for anything, those records can be seized and viewed for any other violation. So if Benny was speeding at even one point 5 1/2 months ago, and was pulled over for something else, he could still receive a fine for speeding that was recorded by the computer even though he "got away with it" when it occurred. To me, that seemed a little too much like Big Brother. But Benny told us that Germans do not mind this at all. The reason is that when every driver of a commercial vehicle has to obey these rules, the road is safer for everyone. (Side note: Also no commercial truck are allowed to run on the autobahn on Sundays, but tour buses may still operate) It is intergrated into the lifestyle of Germans to consider what is good and fair for all people, unlike in America where our focus is mostly on ourselves and what is good for us individually.We arrived at our cool hotel around dusk. There were many life sized bronze statues both on the grounds and inside the lobby. By the time we were settled in our room, it was dark. This hotel was about 1 block from the beach, and we could hear the sound of the gentle surf.Our group met in the dining room and had a buffet dinner. It was ok, but nothing really memorable.After dinner a few of us walked to the beach with our flashlights. I was happy to see that there was not one piece of trash, or one discarded can on the sand. We wished that the light of the day was still bright so that we could have seen the water, which by flashlight looked crystal clear.The next morning after breakfast, we got back on the bus for a short ride to Pisa, where we saw the Leaning Tower and other very old and very beautiful buildings in the area. We learned that the tower was still under construction when the architects of the day noticed it was beginning to lean. They thought if they tried to sort of change the top of the building a little, it would straighten out, and if viewed from one certain angle, you can see that the top of the tower looks sort of like a many-tiered wedding cake that "fell" just a little in one spot. After they built it like that, they hoped for the best. Still, it continued to sink. In the 1900's (I think) a group of architects from all over - the tops in their field - all gathered at the tower to see what they could do for it. They knew that if it continued to sink, that one day it would certainly fall, and they wanted to do what they could to preserve it. They found that what was causing it to lean was an underground stream. The stream was undermining the ground and every year a little more was washing away. All of the architects put their minds to fixing this. First, they put a lot of very heavy weight - many tons - on the "high side" of the tower to try to keep it from coming up and out of the ground. Then they began to carefully dig down on the side that was sinking. They then laid down many pipes full of.....damn, I can't remember! Something very cold...liquid oxygen, perhaps? Sheesh, sorry I forgot this part, but anyway they laid down these pipes all in the underground stream and froze it solid. Then they waited to see if this had stabilized the tower...and it worked! Today the tower is still leaning (obviously) but it's progress to falling has been completely arrested. Architects and scientists continue to monitor it to make sure it will remain upright.Here are some pics of stuff to this point.http://picasaweb.google.com/windburnd/ItalyAtChristmas2007#Now I really wish I had written this all out as soon as we came home, because from this point on, I can recall what we saw, but the time on the bus starts to blur a little as do the different hotels we stayed in.One of my favorite places was Pompei. As we drove by the Mountain Vesuvius, Stephan told us about how volcanoes work, and in a respectful manner explained how they kill people. I had always thought that if hot lava was creeping towards you, you would just leave! Go to the ocean, go anywhere where the lava was not. But that is not what kills.Stephan told us that back on the day Vesuvius erupted, it was business as usual in the village of Pompei. It was a very modern city; they had paved roads, plumbing, banks, shops, and homes. The people had a great love of beauty, and used marble from the area to create beautiful mosaics on their floors and walls of their homes. Of course, they were used to seeing smoke come from the top of the mountain, but they had no way to judge or to measure what was going on inside of it as we do today. Suddenly, the top 1/3 of the Mountain Vesuvius exploded. What kills everyone in an eruption is the pyroclastic cloud of super heated gas that rushes out. This gas is much heavier than the air, and so it hugs the earth. Pyroclastic clouds are very fast, very lethal. They can move around 300 mph, so there is no way to avoid it, or to outrun it. When it comes upon you, and you breathe in that super hot gas, it sears your lungs, shuts down your respiration, and you are dead within minutes. Most of the people that were killed in Pompei died from this cloud.There were others that were inside that didn't immediately die. After the cloud passed, then the ash began to fall. It kept coming and coming. It filled the air like black snow. It was at first only 1 foot, then 2 feet, then 3 feet, and still it kept on coming. The people sealed up their doors and waited for it to stop, but it didn't. Eventually almost the entire city was covered. Then it rained, and the rain hardened the ash. If there was anyone left alive inside their homes, they found themselves entombed and unable to leave. The once thriving city of Pompei was now gone and only death remained.It was the encasement of the houses, streets, and bodies of the hardening ash that preserved the city so that we are able to see it in this time. It was a slow process to dig the city out, and only a little of it has been opened to the public even now as the excavation continues. As the bodies decayed inside the shells of ash, they left behind a perfect image of themselves. As these bodies are discovered, a mixture of some kind of plaster is carefully injected into the shell left behind, and once it has set and the shell of ash removed, we can see the face of the person who died so horribly, we can see their clothes...their sandals.Walking the streets of Pompei with our guide was one of the most eerie experiences I have had. I could almost believe that the very stones of the houses and the streets were still waiting for what used to be. I could almost feel the presence of a great sorrow composed of the souls that had once lived in one of the most prosperous and modern of Roman cities of the time.Here are some pics of Pomei.http://picasaweb.google.com/windburnd/Pompei#