Last Suppers (Leo's and Kenny's)

This was a busy week, getting ready for new missionaries this coming week, especially for Myrna, who has to get all their documents ready for their permessi di soggiorno, or permits to remain the country.  Italy is very bureaucratic about these kinds of things. I had to go to a tobacco shop and buy 25 special postage-like stamps for 16.50 euros each, which they only sell the at these shops and you have to pay cash (€412.50), no credit cards are accepted,  As I came back from the walk, I thought that this sort of thing was the last straw that separated America from England, tax stamps. This past week we brought the last new missionaries back in for more training.  We went to Bologna (a two hour trip one way) on Monday and Milano on Tuesday.  I use a PowerPoint to further train them on their use of money and bikes, etc., and we fed them lunch.

Lunch at the church in Bologna at new missionary training.  Myrna made them sloppy joes.

Watermelon, from Italy, along with grapes, are now in season and they are excellent.  I told the new missionaries that bologna in the US, sometimes called baloney, is actually mortadella in Bologna, but tastes somewhat the same, and perhaps we should have served it. No one admitted that they had eaten it in Italy.  We had a repeat performance on Tuesday in Milano for the other half of the last round of new missionaries.

Myrna also made fresh apple cake, which we served with whipped cream from a can (Spray Pan brand), this was the last piece, which they devoured.

With 16 new missionaries coming this week, there will be transfers, and two of our office elders will go, one home to Utah and one back out as a regular missionary, to Trieste.  Anziano Osborne asked Myrna to make him her chicken salad one more time, so she said she would do it on Saturday.  So we went shopping Friday evening and she got up early and cooked all Saturday morning, including her crescent rolls, brownies, cookies x 2, etc. Anziano Osborne also wanted to see Leonardo's Last Supper, so he ordered tickets for 1:45 pm for all of us, and the President asked if we wanted to ride to Lugano with them to a baptism afterward, which we were planning on going to with the Salatini anyway because Anziano Mochellin, who is also going home, called and invited us (he also wanted us to bring cookies).

President and Sister Allen came for lunch, which we had in the conference room, on Saturday, which is P-day for some.

The missionary to the right is Anziano Osborne, Anziano Anderson on the far left is his replacement, and Anziano Barragon, from West Valley City, is the assistant to the president, who is remaining.

To the left is Anziano Thompson (whose hair was just cut by Anziano Pesci), who is staying, along with Anziano Scoggin, in the middle, and Anziano Pesci, on the right, is going home after completing his mission as an assistant to the president this week. He bore his testimony today in Sacrament Meeting, and I am looking forward to hearing it again when he departs this coming week. He has been an excellent missionary, faithful to the end.

We rode with President and Sister Allen to this old church in Milano, which is the church for a monastery, which is to the left of the church. The door under the red banner leads to the refractory, or dining hall, for the monks, where in 1495 Leonardo da Vinci decorated the far end wall with a very large painting of Christ's Last Supper.  We had to get tickets (€12 each) several weeks in advance.  They only let 25 people at a time go in, and only for 15 minutes.

Rather than stand out in the sun, we would have liked to have gone into the church, which would have been fairly cool, but, according to this sign on the door, during August it isn't open very many hours a day.  During August, many people in Italy go on vacation and lots of things shut down.

So we waited in the shade across the street and talked to people.  Two sets of missionaries were able to give away two Books of Mormon. We met and spoke with an elderly couple from Vermont, who really wanted to see the Last Supper but were told at the ticket office that you must order tickets at least two weeks ahead of time.  I am sure they would have paid us much more than what we paid for ours, but we were just friendly with them and wished them well on their European tour.

If you put your finger over the bottom of an always running fountain, water will shoot out the top, and you can get a drink, as did Anziano Thompson, sporting his new haircut.

Once we got inside we waited some more, but were able to read some history and see parts of old frescos on the walls, see above.

We read that during 1943 the monastery, with the Last Supper on a wall, was bombed out during World War Two, and then has been re-built, as was much of Milano. (Actually, if you read about it on-line, you will see that Napoleon's soldiers bunked in the monastery and when they got bored they used the Last Supper for target practice, with Jesus' face as the bullseye.  They hit the mark at least a couple of times, but the mural was restored.)

Out a window we could see the inside the monastery, much different than the city streets outside and the monk's inner garden, where they could stroll and contemplate the meaning of life.

There is still some restoration work being done to the monastery.  We didn't see any monks, perhaps there aren't any left now.

Then into a very well climate-controlled entryway

Then into a very plain (only because a lot of the frescoes were destroyed during the war) large dining hall, where, on the end, is one of the world's most famous murals. We got 15 minutes in that room with 25 other people from around the world.

The other end of the room has a large fresco, in much better shape than the Last Supper, of the crucifixion by a fairly famous artist, Giovanni Donato da Montorfano, who lived from 1440 until 1502.

You can take pictures in there, but not using flash and no video.

You have to hold the camera pretty steady, because there isn't much light in there.

The world's best experts have tried "restoration" work, but the fresco is pretty far gone.  Actually, it started to deteriorate as soon as Leonardo finished it 500 years ago, while Christopher Columbus was still out at sea.  Leonardo tried an experimental way of painting, on dry instead of wet plaster, because he wanted brighter colors, but it failed miserably. There are two full size copies of it mentioned in Wikipedia, one in England and one in Switzerland, which we have seen and wrote about in this blog, with pix, which are much brighter and in better shape, and is free to see in a beautiful little church.

All the walls in the dining room were originally well decorated with frescoes, but have never been re-painted since the war.

At the base of the cross, on the other side of the room, the painter wrote his name and date, 1495. It was done at the same time Leonardo was painting the other end with his masterpiece, which he kept coming back to work on.  He was never satisfied with Christ's face.

In that fresco (on the other side of the room), there are a few extra people, who certainly weren't at the actual crucifixion of Christ, like this bishop, who probably paid the artist well to paint him in it. This was common for the rich and famous to pay to have themselves inserted in historical paintings.

More of  the rich and famous from the 1400s.

One parting shot of the other side of the dining room, of the Last Supper.

Coming out of the monastery into the bright light of day.

One of the piazzas within Milano, this one has a statue of Giuseppe Verdi, a famous opera composer.

Another new soccer stadium going out of Milano.

Heading north we went past many little towns, all with old churches, up against the mountains.

At the border between Italy and Switzerland, the traffic slowed down.

We easily found the LDS church, only a year old, in Lugano, Switzerland, where we went to attend a baptism.

In the chapel we waited for people to come.  I don't think I have ever been to a baptism that started on time. I played the piano as no one had been asked to play.

In the hallway there was this sign giving information about the church's "hotel" at the Swiss Temple near Bern, for members wanting to stay all night. It only costs €27.72 for a family needing 6 beds to stay there.

There was a nice potluck dinner after the baptism.  Myrna took two kinds of cookies, chocolate chip and some made from a mix that Anziano Mocellin's mother sent from France, that he forgot to take with him when he left the mission office as an assistant to the president.  He goes home (dies) this week (so we will see him again this week at the mission office), and was pretty happy to be able to baptize the only person he was able to get in the water with during his two year mission in Italy. A father, originally from Italy, of a family who are already members.

Elder Kenny Mocellin, from Le Grand-Lemps, Isère (near Lyon), France, is a pretty special young man and will become a wonderful French policeman (that is what he says he wants to become).  If I ever get stopped by a policeman in France, and it is him, I expect to get a hug instead of a ticket, unless, of course, I deserve it.

What do you think the Swiss bring to a baptism pot luck, you guessed it, Swiss cheese. (This plate was full when it came, and there was another like it with dry sausage)

And because they also speak Italian, the "main course" was pizza. These were the leftovers.

And because they are also Europeans, the young men and little boys found a soccer ball to kick on the little bit of grass behind the church.

It was a fairly busy, but wonderful P-day in sunny, but not too hot this week, northern Italy.

Ciao.

Brixen or Bressanone, Italy

Sunday, 7 August 2016

Yesterday, our p-day, we went with the Salatini to Brixen (German name) or Bressanone (Italian name), which is about 3.5 hours (normally, it actually took us 5 because of heavy traffic) north east, in the Dolomites, which are alps between Italy and Austria. It reminded me of the Columbia River Gorge, between Oregon and Washington, where we used to go from Cottage Grove to visit Myrna's parents in Richland, when the kids were small. This part of Italy was in Austria before the First World War.  It is a city of only about 20,000, but the Alpine German Mission has two sets of missionaries there. (We usually don' put them in cities of less than 50k.) Effective in Sept. we will transfer this city to our mission, and we will be taking over the two apartments from that mission. About 75% of the people speak German, so all the signs, etc., are in German (the four missionaries all speak German), but it is in Italy and everyone also probably speaks Italian.  President Allen asked us to go check it out and take pix of the apartments so we can start binders for them.  (I have binders for all of our apartments, including their rental contacts, utility payments, etc.) So we had a nice visit to a beautiful place within our mission.  We tried to take the "freeway" two lanes on both sides nice of a nice highway, but it was so slow we got off and took small country roads, sometimes having to follow farmers on tractors, and many bikers.  They were having an annual race in Brixen,so there was probably a lot of traffic for that.  Unfortunately, most of my pix were taken out the window as Anziano Salitini drove our car (he likes to drive, he was a taxi driver in San Francisco, as well as a junior high teacher).  So here are some pix.

At about Verona, going east, we turn north, and you can see the mountains in the background, going north, and the start of heavy traffic, sometimes stopping.

We followed this tour bus a long time, it is from Hungary, and, as you can see, their English is not perfect, but they try.

Along the way, the other side of the freeway (much less traffic coming south than going north,) was one little town with an old church after another.

We saw many medieval castles up against the mountains, and there was field after field of wine grapes and, starting a little north, in what is called the Alto Adige (high Adige River), apple trees laden with red and green apples.

We got off the freeway and on to side roads to get away from the traffic.  We had to go north through Trento, or Trent in English.  You should Google Council of Trent, one of the Catholic Church's most important councils, held in the 1500s, where they acknowledged the Reformation and how they would fight against it.

We had to be brave to get around farmers on their tractors.  I suspect they use the device behind to spray trees or grape vines, or something else farmery like that.

Another castle on a hill, south of Trento.

More grapes, both white and red, and little towns with churches.  The farther north we got the more onion dome like the tops of the bell towers were, which is more typical of Austria.  Innsbrook is only a couple of hours north of here.

Lots of bikers on the roads.

We crossed on bridges the Adige river many times, as it snakes down the valley.

There were many, many fields of apple trees, but they were hard to take pix of, because it was hard to stop.  The trees are all about 6 to 8 feet high and only about 3 or 4 feet in diameter, and seem to be attached to poles, but are loaded with big (for this time of year) apples, both green and red.  There were many with netting over them, to keep the birds away.  The Alto Adige is famous for its apples, and every part of Italy grows grapes for wine.

You may have to enlarge this to see it.  We were about to go through a tunnel, this is the freeway, and there are many tunnels on it, which the side roads (which are ancient) don't have.  You can see above the mountain there is a church, and there were castles like that too.

The new highway was built so close to this church, they had to remove some of it, which we saw when we came back on the other side, later in the evening.

Even though this is a little blurry, you can see the netting above the apple trees, which they grow up the side of the mountain.

On the way back we tried to visit this castle, but they were having a race and the side road was blocked and by the time we would have made it up to the castle, it would have been closed, so we weren't able to tour it on this trip, we obviously want to go again.

Off the main road going into Brixen.

We got to the missionary house, which was easy to find in the middle of town, and the four missionaries were eagerly waiting for us.  This is outside their apartment building, there are two apartments on their same floor, with two missionaries in each.  Left to right, they are from the US (El Paso, TX), Peru, Germany and England, who all speak German.

I took pictures of everything in both apartments, for our binders, to show what was there when we got the apartment.  I will not post many of them, because of space and you would be bored, but this is a typical, but nice, missionary apartment kitchen.

View out their kitchen window, you can see the cathedral towers in the back ground, and we easily walked from there to the Domplaz (German), or the piazza del Duomo, in Italian, after we took the apartment pix.  The big, old, building in front of the cathedral is the bishop's house, which is a visitable museum (6 euros each), which we did not have time to tour, but from the pictures, it is very interesting.

View out the back balcony of the missionary apartment, I used the tele on my point and shoot Canon camera to take the other houses out, but there are these little churches with tall towers everywhere.

For you future missionaries, remember this.  When you have visitors who will take pix of your apartment, clean them up and make your bed.  One missionary, the guy from England, even laid out his pajamas. You can see that they do not have a drier (they have  a washer) and they dry their clothes on these drying racks. which our missionaries also use. (Senior missionaries have driers.)

This is a "new" apartment building, for Italy, built in, as the sign on the side says, built in 1896.

In the cathedral square, they were set up for a race, and we actually watched the winner come in. He must have been really fast, because we were watching for quite a while and No. 2 did not come in by the time we left.

Of course, we went inside the cathedral and I snapped this pix, which blurred because it wasn't very light in there and I couldn't use flash, the organ in he back of the church.  It is more Austrian than typical Italian, but then, it was built in the 1600s when this was part of the Austrian empire.

There was another church next to the cathedral, but they were restoring it so we could not go in and look around, only through the window.

It was pretty dusty where they were working, and they had the artwork, etc., covered in plastic.

There was a graveyard, where they had a monument to the soldiers from this town who died during the Second World War.  They were on the German side.  I believe the German above the dying soldier reads, "Our Father, we have come into Thy Kingdom" and the names are listed.

As I have mentioned before, city water in fountains, in Italy, is generally always drinkable.  Here they had a sign saying it was, including German, Italian and English.  It was cold and tasted like mountain water.

The bishop's house had a large vegetable and herb garden.

Including fruiting lime or lemon trees.

On the way home, another castle to try to come back and see another day.

Back of another tour bus, this one from Germany, according to the license plate, but with the Matterhorn pictured, a mountain sheep, and hello from Heidi, who we expected to see bounding down the mountain side at any time.

It was another wonderful adventure in Italy on our P-day.