reflections +

it’s just after lunch on tuesday, april 27. in two days i will be home! we have our final studio presentations tomorrow, and my group’s boards are ready to print, so i thought i’d take some time to reflect on the past four months…

ever since knowing i was accepted into the genoa program, i had been so excited to come to europe. i was nervous about leaving the country and being away from home for so long without even option to visit home if i had wanted. knowing almost everyone else who was coming (most students here are from my year at clemson) made it easier. if they could do it, i could do it. a lot of my friends had studied at the barcelona program last semester, so i had seen all of their pictures on facebook last fall. i was ready to make memories of my own!

living here for four months has been indescribable. the ability to hop on a train or get a cheap flight to visit a different city or even country for the weekend is awesome. i am a pro traveler. subways, trains, planes, metros, buses, funiculars, you name it and i can figure it out, even in different languages. checking in at the airport, passport checks, going through customs…it’s all become a way of life for us. balancing our travels with our work was challenging at times, but visiting the different places gave us an opportunity to explore, see, feel, experience, SKETCH even more. It sounds dorky, but all of the classes we take here relate somehow, and mostly show architecture from around europe. so the point of almost all of our group and individual travels are to see what we’ve learned about. seeing it in pictures in a slide show during a lecture and being able to walk around the building, go inside, see other people seeing it, is on two totally different levels.

bernhard, our professor in residence here, has told us countless times about the importance of traveling. he’s encouraged us to continue it back in the u.s., even if it’s to a place two towns away from where you live. he flew to chicago for the first time early in the semester (he was born in romania and lived in germany for most of his life), and immediately sent us an e-mail telling us how incredible it was to be in a new city. it was kind of ironic. it was one of the first weekends that we had free travel, so while all of us were exploring parts of italy, france, and germany, he was in america, in a city a lot of us have visited before. and we all had the same sense of awe and excitement. bernhard has been a huge reason as to why this program is so great. this was his third (and last!) semester in genoa. he spent a semester in clemson prior, and will be returning to sc in the fall.
there are no words to explain living in the villa. last semester, there were eleven students living here. this semester, twenty one! we are split into six bedrooms and share four toilets, six showers, three washer and dryers, and one refrigerator. like i said, most of us knew each other prior to coming. there were little ‘cliques’ when we arrived. people hanging out with the same people all the time. after living together and especially being on our nine-day trips with each other twentyfour/seven, you learn to hang out with new people. i’m so glad we had a big group this time. i’m so much closer to the people i knew, and have made great friendships with people i met four months ago. sharing this experience is something we will have in common forever. no one else is going to understand climbing hundreds of steps every day, the daily ‘luciaaaaa’ call, or grunting like serverio. there is an infinite amount of inside jokes, secrets, and memories that we can call our own. i’ve never lived with more than three people. i must say that i lucked out and got a pretty big room to share with three girls with our own balcony facing the port. unfortunately, i did not luck out when it came to the bathroom. upstairs where our rooms are, there is a wall of bathrooms. the two end ones are connected to bedrooms, each to a room with three girls, where they have the ability to lock the door of the bathroom that opens to the hallway. that leaves three bathrooms to the rest of the house. only two of them have toilets (the third has two showers in it, weird? yes.) that means that fifteen people share the two full bathrooms. that means that my three female roommates and i share two bathrooms with eleven guys. as bernhard has told me, ‘poor ashley’. and i must say poor bernhard, because his wing is on the main floor, where all of our studios are, located a floor above the kitchen and dining room, and below our bedrooms. so bernhard hears everything. and i know he’s had many sleepless nights, especially those nights we are too lazy to climb the hill to go out, so we just stay in and drink and play games in the kitchen. we have the next professor to take over genoa for a few semesters visiting us this week. one of the first things he said to us was that he was a light sleeper. bernhard just laughed and said, ‘then you will not sleep.’

the past four months have flown by. i thought by now i would be homesick and ready to come home, but honestly, i think i could do this for a few more months. don’t get me wrong- i can’t wait to see all of my family and friends! and i know that my wallet wouldn’t support ANY extra time here (thank you mom and dad for helping me out, and aunts and uncles-you know who you are!) but i know all of us definitely feel at home here. living in genoa was perfect. it was not the touristy rome or florence. it was the quiet little town between a port and a mountain, filled with adorably dressed little kids and the cutest old people, where they only speak italian and look at you in a funny way when you wear shorts, even though it’s seventy degrees out.

well i’ve gone on longer than i planned. i guess i had more to say than i thought. time to start cleaning up and packing. thank you all for reading my blog this semester and sharing all my travels with me. i have tons of other stories i can’t wait to tell you when i see you :) arrivederci!!

the last full week...

the countdown is into single digits- 9 days until i come home! this past weekend i stayed in genoa to relax and catch up on work. we watched movies all weekend, and a lot of people went hiking in portofino and cinque terre. saturday night, the few of us who were still in the villa, went to the genoa hofbrauhaus for some german food. this is zac’s favorite restaurant, so he was really excited to find one in genoa. it was decorated so well inside we thought we were in germany. i had wienerschnitzel and potato salad and beer. it was delicious!

jamie’s parents were supposed to visit her in genoa this weekend. her dad was already in the uk for business and her mom was flying into genoa to meet both of them. but because of the volcano, jamie’s dad was stuck in london all weekend, and her mom got rerouted to rome. her iphone got no service there, so she had no way of contacting jamie or jamie’s dad, so jamie had quite a stressful day. her mom had to wait in line for two hours at the airport, then go to rome’s train station and wait another two hours for a train, and then take the four-five hour train here. thank goodness she had a card for jamie that she had forgotten to send so that she had our address! she took a cab to the villa and stayed with us all weekend.


my roommates, judith, catherine, and kelsey were all in Ibiza this weekend. i was supposed to go with them and even already booked my flight, but decided to stay in genoa this weekend instead. good thing, because airports in the north of italy are closed, and the girls are stuck in Ibiza until tomorrow (if everything works out!) another grad student, sylvia, went to berlin over the weekend, and was stuck as well. she had to take a train all day today and will hopefully be back tonight. our coordinator, sylvia, was supposed to fly to clemson for a few days for meetings, but had to cancel the trip because of the planes not flying for so long. what a mess!


on sunday, there was a half marathon in genoa that our teacher, bernhard, was running in. grad student tyler and i got up early to go down to the port to cheer him on. but tyler looked at the route wrong on the map, and we actually got it backwards. we got to see everyone take off from down the street, but didn’t get to see bernhard. we waited around for a while to try to catch them, but no luck. so we went to get gelato instead. by the time we made it back to the villa, bernhard was returning not far behind us. he laughed that we got the route wrong and showed us where they really went on the map. he then asked us if we wanted to do a nice dinner that night, which we agreed to, but first, the soccer game.

at three o’clock, most of us had tickets to see uc sampdoria (one of the genoa teams) play soccer against ac milan. a 2002 clemson graduate AND david beckham plays on the ac milan team, but seeing as our tickets sat us in the home section, we of course still had to cheer for our ‘home town’, genoa. uc sampdoria ended up winning 2-1 in the ninetieth minute of the game. it was really intense! and the italian chants and cheers were so cool to hear and try to sing and clap along with. we had taken a bus there, but somehow i ended up in the small group that decided to walk up the giant mountain to get back down to our villa. logan, allender, and i were not happy as we followed jeff and tyler on a hike! we made it back before everyone else though, so i guess it was worth it. i had time for a fifteen minute power nap!

bernhard had made reservations at a small restaurant in a little town right outside the center of genoa called boccadasse. we only got to see it at night, but it was beautiful. when we got off the bus, we told bernhard how great it was, and he said it’s going to get a whole lot cooler in a second. we turned the corner and there was a little beach right in front of a street with a bar and restaurant on it. it was gorgeous! dinner was delicious (complete with wonderful white wine and tiramisu!)

we had our final in our sketch class today. we each had to make a book with fifty of our sketches and present it. it took all day to go through all of us, but we did it, and now we only have studio to worry about! we have our final review next wednesday. i can’t believe i’m almost done the semester!

weekend in london

i spent this past weekend in london. because we had an itialian rationalism final friday afternoon, catherine and i couldn’t leave until saturday morning, and we met michael and nate, who had flown out the day before. they’re landscape architect majors, so we told them to fit in all of the parks they wanted to see before we got there ;)



the boys were pretty impressed that catherine and i figured out the train from stansted airport to liverpool street and the tube without one mistake! we checked into our hostel and dropped our bags off, and then took the tube to go on ‘the eye’ before it got too dark. when we got off at our stop, we were walking out, looking for a snack, and i spotted a krispy kreme doughnut stand. it was glorious. we all got so excited that we ordered a dozen doughnuts to share. not wanting to have to carry the box around all day, we seriously each ate three doughnuts in about ten minutes.

we had preordered tickets for the eye so we picked them up and got in line. the eye is a giant, glass ferris wheel. it moves really slowly and takes about a half hour to go all the way around. you can get some great views of the city during the ‘flight’ as they call it. it was designed ten years ago and paid for by british airways. it was supposed to be a temporary exhibit, but it’s still there. this was one of my favorite parts of the weekend, and i had been looking forward to the london trip solely to ride the eye :)

after our ride, the boys took us down westminster abbey. we saw the parliament building and big ben and Buckingham palace. we looked for prince william and harry, but didn’t see them. we had heard that the first hard rock café was in london, so keeping with tradition, we went to find it. they had a two and a half hour wait, so we chose the pub down the street instead. i had ‘bangers and mash’ which was sausage in mashed potatoes with peas and carrots. it was delicious! afterwards, we went back to russel square where out hostel was, and went to another pub. we were trying to meet up with my friend from high school who was studying there, but all of us got too tired before he made it out with his friends. we did get to watch the real madrid vs barcelona soccer game at the pub though, which was pretty exciting.

the next day, michael, catherine, and i wanted to go visit wimbledon. nate’s not really a tennis fan, so he decided to go visit some more gardens until we were done. the three of us took the metro to wimbledon, but got off at the wrong stop. we followed signs to ‘wimbledon’ but didn’t realize they were leading us to the center of the town of wimbledon, not the tennis courts. so we ended up circling through the whole town before ending up at the stadium, which was the first stop on the metro that we had skipped. we visited the museum which was really cool and interactive, and then we could walk through this glass tunnel to see center court. that was sweet and i would love to go see wimbledon some day! (now i know how to get there.)

we had all talked about going to see a show while we were in london, and i found the place where they sell discounted ticktets, so we went to see if there was anything left. since it was sunday, there were only about five plays going on, and our top choice, lion king, was already sold out. the choices came down to ‘legally blonde’ or ‘stomp’. knowing we were with boys, i figured we would go see stomp, and i was pretty excited, but then michael shocked all of us when he said he really wanted to see legally blonde! nate passed on this too, and probably went to see more gardens. catherine, michael, and i bought tickets for the show that started in less than an hour and walked to savoy theater. our seats were really good for buying them same day- we were in the front row of the first balcony! the show was really good, exactly like the movie with really great, funny songs.

after the play, we raced to try to meet nate. he told us to meet him at london bridge, which was perfect because we got to pass tate modern, the shakespeare globe theater, and some really cool, modern architecture. unfortunately we missed the london bridge (which is not at all impressive) and walked all the way to the tower bridge (which is a lot more memorable). we didn’t realize this until we couldn’t find nate at the bridge, and had to turn around and walk about half way back. nate was a little upset when we finally found him; it was getting chilly and he had to sit outside and wait forty five minutes for us to figure out where the london bridge was. oops.

we bought him a beer at dinner to make up for it, though, so everything’s okay. we went to another pub for dinner, and i had steak and ale pie which was delicious! we had a few drinks and then headed back to our hostel. we had to leave at six thirty the next morning to make it back to the airport, so we went to bed pretty early.

our flight was on time out of stansted, and we made it back to genoa airport a little before one, with the one hour time change. we took the airport shuttle and bus back to the villa, and had some lunch before having studio. london is one of my favorite cities i’ve visited. it reminded me a lot of new york city, with a touch of harry potter. i’m really glad i got to go while i was over here. i can’t believe i’ll be back in america in sixteen days!

travel 3 = basel + verona + venice +

day one / sat 27 mar 2010 =



we left the villa at six am to take a train to basel, switzerland. it took over seven hours and two train changes, but we made it to our hotel and to our tour at three. an architect gave us a quick walking tour of the city. we went to a church and he told us about the history of basel and then took us across the city pointing out unique buildings and famous architects’ studios. one building i really liked was the children’s wing of a hospital. they used a special material on the outside and the colors changed as you moved past it.

we were on our own for dinner, and after getting some swiss francs, we learned how expensive things are in switzerland. we explored a little bit, had dinner at a chinese restaurant downtown, and then went back to the hotel. one of the girls here, allender, knew a girl who had been a foreign exchange student at her high school and lived right outside of basel. she met up with us and took us to this place called ‘city beach’. it was a club that changes locations every year, and the whole inside of a warehouse-type building is transformed into a beach resort. it was really cool! it reminded me of prom with tons of sand on the ground and beach chairs and cabanas. they had a pool going through the one room and a hot tub in the other. no one told me i was going to need to pack a bathing suit!

allender’s friend gave us instructions on what trams to take back to our hotel. after we switched trams, no one noticed that they had changed the track and times because of day light savings time that night, and trams stopped running an hour earlier than we thought they were going to. so we ended up at the last stop without passing our stop. luckily someone had a map, and we got directions how to walk back to the hotel. we knew it was going to be a long walk when we passed a sign pointing us to the ‘city’. it took over a half hour to get home!

day two / sun 28 mar 2010 =


we had a private bus take us to ronchamp, france to see le corbusier’s chapelle du ronchamp. this is one of those places that we’ve studied forever, so to see it in person was pretty cool.

we had lunch at a little rest stop café, and then we stopped in mulhouse, france to see low budget social housing, which we had a lecture about in our contemporary european architecture class a few weeks earlier.


we got dropped off at the hotel, and catherine, kelsey, judith, and i ordered pizza to the hotel, because we are cheap and were feeling lazy. turned out that everyone else did that too and six pizzas were delivered. we watched mr. and mrs. smith in italian with a couple of the grad guys and went to bed.


day three / mon 29 mar 2010 =


when we checked in to our hotel in basel, we were each given a card so that we could use the public trams and buses for free, so we took the tram to this place called goetheanum in dornach, switzerland. it was this crazy looking building, kind of rock-like. all of the interior space was similar, it all looked like it was carved. the inside was painted in crazy pinks, blues, and greens. we had a tour guide tell us about the building and surrounding campus area and kept relating things back to the human body. by the end of the tour, we were sure they were trying to brainwash us.

we were running late but had time for a quick tour of the beyeler foundation which is a museum and building workshop for renzo piano. it was a really cool space and landscaped beautifully.

then we were off to weil am rhein, germany. it was so crazy to just hop on a bus and change countries, but we did it the whole first half of the trip! in germany, we visited the vitra campus. we had also learned about this in alessandro’s contemporary european architecture class and we were blown away to see it in person.

my favorite building there was the vitra haus. the whole idea was to model pieces of the building after the traditional house, like a square with a triangle on top. the model house is stacked and twisted on top of each other so it looks like a pile of houses. the places where they intersect create really cool spaces and views into other parts of the building. after our tour of the campus, a couple of us had time to tour through the vitra haus, which is home to a collection of crazy looking furniture. this was definitely my favorite part. you got to try out anything you wanted, and they had this system set up where you could swipe your card and make a wish list of furniture you want to buy. it was really cool.

we decided that we would be able to find a cheaper dinner in germany rather than switzerland, so bernhard took us to this little german restaurant where we could all eat outside together. i had a german beer and schweineschnitzel and fries. it was so good!

day four / tues 30 mar 2010 =


we had an eight am train from basel to verona, italy. we stopped in luzern to look at the train station and convention center. it was a really pretty town on the water, and we wished we could have spent more time there. we had two more stops and finally arrived in verona a little after five.

highlight of the day- we only had fifteen minutes to change trains in milan, and our train bringing us to milan was running twenty minutes late. our tour guide, giuditta who was traveling with us, had already changed our train tickets to catch the next train, but she didn’t tell bernhard, our studio professor. so when we get to milan, bernhard runs to the platform to see if there was any chance that our next train had been delayed. seeing him run, the rest of us tried to keep up. the conductor blew the whistle and we all tried to jump on the closest car. people were pushing each other and throwing luggage to try to make it. half of us made it on the train with bernhard, only to realize that our train ticket was still with giuditta and the other half on the platform. oops! bernhard made some phone calls, and apparently giuditta had to call the conductor of our train to tell them eleven people were riding without a ticket. bernhard just came into our car and said, ‘today we ride for free!’ and laughed. we all thought it was really funny, but the other half was a little bitter they missed the train. we ended up waiting about twenty minutes for the rest of the group at the verona train station.


since we were running late, we didn’t have time to go to the hotel first. we went straight to castelvecchio which was a castle that was transformed by carlo scarpa into a museum. we toured the building and got gelato. by the time we were ready to head to the hotel, it started storming. it was our first thunderstorm in italy! and we were pretty miserable walking in it. we were soaking wet by the time we got to the hotel. we decided to get something close for dinner and all ended up going to a pizzeria around the corner.

day five / wed 31 mar 2010 =


we met at eight am and took a train to vicenza. there, we walked with bernhard to see a couple of villas. the first was villa valmarana ai nani, which was really pretty. here is a sketch i did there.

afterwards, we walked to la rotunda. this was designed by andrea palladio and inspired thomas jefferson’s works, even seen at university of Virginia. we got to tour the inside and took a group picture on the steps with the tiger rag.

we walked to a really cool place for lunch. i had gnocchi cooked in a rabbit sauce. it was really good. after that, we walked to the olympic theater and met a tour guide the program had used before, vilma barbieri. she was a tiny, italian lady who had a microphone pack and was pretty hilarious. we got to go inside the theater as she told us about it and the city. we even got to see a sound and light show sitting in the theater. the set was incredible, especially the perspective showing the city of thebes. the stories she told about the theater and stage were really cool. she took us around the city a little more, showing us some of palladio’s work and some rationalist structures.

we took a train back to verona, and a lot of us went to this mexican restaurant down the street from our hotel. i had enchiladas, nachos, and a margarita. it was delicious!


afterwards, a couple of us met rich and logan, and they showed us the balcony that inspired romeo and juliet. it was gated off since we went at night, but you could still see tons of love notes and messages written on the walls leading to it. we also saw the arena and the bridge before going back to the hotel to sleep.

day six / thurs 1 apr 2010 =


we met at eight am to take a private bus to meet vilma again. she was going to take us to a bunch of different cities. we visited a cool covered, wooden bridge in bassano, a museum of statues and studio by carlo scarpa in possagno, villa barabaro and villa emo by palladio, and brion cemetery by carlo scarpa. it was a long day and half the time we didn’t even know what city we were in, but everything we saw was gorgeous, and vilma was a really good tour guide. we joked with bernhard that she never gave us a rest…even on the bus to the different cities, she was on the microphone the whole time! afterwards, we dropped her off at a bus stop and took the bus to venice. once there, we had to take a water taxi to san marco and walk to our hotel. as we crossed a tiny bridge to our hotel, we saw a hard rock café right across a canal. we knew where we were going for dinner! kelsey, judith, catherine, michael, zac, and i beat the rest of the group and had an awesome american dinner. it was really late by the time we were done, and we all just headed back to the hotel to sleep. when coming back to the hotel, we saw our tour guide from genoa, giuditta, checking in. she spent a few years in venice when she was attending school, so she knew just about everything about the city.

day seven / fri 2 apr 2010 =


today started at nine am and giuditta took us to piazza san marco and talked forever about the piazza, basilica, the clock tower, palazzo ducale, and libreria marciana. we went to wait in the ridiculously long line to go inside the basilica. mario had visited venice a few days before and had e-mailed me the tip to check your bags at a nearby church and you could skip the line. rich was reading his bible aka the rick steve’s italy book and it gave the same tip, so he and i decided to try it. we took his backpack to the church down the street, and they gave us a little card to go right in. we paid to climb to the top and waved to the rest of our class still waiting in line.

giuditta and one of her friends she had met up with who still lived outside venice took us to a less touristy part of venice for lunch and i had pizza margarita and gelato.


after lunch we went to a couple other churches by palladio (this was a palladio trip for real!) and walked back to the hotel. for dinner, judith, kelsey, catherine, michael, zac, and i walked to ponte di rialto and ate an italian restaurant right on the water. i had vegetable soup and white sea bass and bread. it was really good! we walked back to our hotel and a bunch of people came to hang out in catherine and my room. we watched tv, talking and enjoying venetian wine until bed time.


day eight / sat 3 apr 2010 =


today started by going to the peggy guggenheim collection at her house which has been turned into a museum. we got to take a mini gondola ride across a small canal. we had a tour of the museum with a lot of history about how she collected the works of art as well as about the rest of her family.


afterwards we went to a museum and a church. after we went inside the church, i was sitting on the steps finishing up a sketch while we waited for everyone. two little girls came and sat down next to me, practically in my lap to see what i was drawing. they kept saying ‘que bella!’ and ‘come fai?’ which means ‘how beautiful!’ and ‘how do you do it?’ haha but i didn’t know what to say back in italian so i just laughed. their mom was talking in Italian to giuditta and told her that this was the first five minutes they had been quiet all day! it was really cute and everyone was laughing at me and taking pictures. we decided that i had inspired them to become artists. they’re my first fans!

the sketch they were staring at

next we were off to the venice biennale which is a huge park where architects have designed and built different pavilions for different countries. once a year, there is an exhibit where each pavilion is opened, but we weren’t visiting at the time of year, so we saw them all closed up. here are a few sketches from wandering around the garden.

that night, catherine, allender, and i went with our professor bernhard to dinner. he took us to a small, cute restaurant called trattoria alla madonna. he had already been there a few nights before, but told us it was good food at a reasonable price, so we were in. i had lasagna and we went through two bottles of wine, which bernhard kindly paid for, he’s so nice. the best part of the night- we were talking about returning to south carolina in the fall, and three adults at the table next to us told us they were from charleston. allender told them we were all clemson students, and the two men at the table said they graduated from clemson over thirty years ago. we thought that was crazy but it gets even better. they asked what we were doing in venice and i told them we were studying in genoa for the semester. they asked if we were architecture students, and we all said yes. turns out the two men graduated from the school of architecture and had studied in genoa too! they told us they had scrubbed the marble floors we were enjoying now haha. they work for ls3p architecture in charleston, sc and we had a really great conversation with them. they were visiting the man and woman’s son who went to the citadel and was studying in madrid for the semester. it was so cool to meet them, it blew our minds!


after dinner, we went back to the hotel (after bernhard made us get gelato) to meet up with the rest of the group. bernhard wanted to celebrate max’s birthday, which was sunday, so practically all of us followed giuditta to a little bar in a piazza not too far from our hotel. we all drank and talked about the trip. i went with the first group back to the hotel, but then jeff called me, because we had promised each other that we would ‘get lost in venice together’ because that is what you do in venice, so i walked back to the piazza and hung out with jeff, max, tyler, giuditta, and catherine for a little bit longer.

day nine / sun 4 apr 2010 [easter sunday] =


today was our free day. we didn’t have to check out of our hotel until noon. catherine and i got up for breakfast and then went back to bed. we finally did pack up and check our bags in the lobby, and then walked around to pick up some last minute souvenirs, lunch, and gelato (of course). we waited for the rest of the group at the hotel and took a water taxi to the train station to catch our train home. we changed trains in milan. this time everyone made it ;) and we made it back to genoa by eight pm. we took the bus back up to the villa and christina had lasagna and bread waiting for us to heat up.

 we had monday off from classes to unpack, catch up on sleep, and work. since it’s still a holiday here, almost nothing in genoa is open. the villa angels arranged for us to have food all day. nate made us all french toast this morning, and since they don’t sell maple syrup here, he made it from scratch! we had powdered sugar, too :) grocery stores closed at noon today so there was a rush for all the guys to get beer and meat to grill for us. this afternoon we had burgers, hot dogs, and barbeque chicken on the grill in our garden. nate, allender, and jamie made homemade french fries, and nate made bbq sauce, since they don’t sell that here either! everything was delicious! earlier today, when we were all talking about how much work we had to do, bernhard was taking pictures of our sketches in the villa and told us not to worry about it, that tomorrow was another day. ha my kind of teacher. and when he brought out a bottle of wine to the barbeque, we knew that today was a relaxed kind of day. after eating, we played soccer, frisbee, and catchphrase in the yard. it was the perfect day :)