On Friday morning I was up before dawn to head across to Italy for the first of 12 lectures for a course I'm taking on Neuroscience and Design.
The first of my trains arrived out of the fog to take me to the nearby town of Ins.
The fast train from Neuchatel stops in Ins but not my local station, so from here you can get to Bern in about 20 minutes. I wasn’t thrilled about waiting in Ins for 15 minutes at this time of day, but honestly it was quite magical.
Dawn was breaking by the time I arrived in Bern.
From Bern it’s a straight shot through to Milan in a little over 3 hours.
Passing through the Bernese Oberland the sun finally showed up over the peaks.
Arriving in Milan I was feeling surprisingly fresh.
I’d arranged to meet with Viola Cambié from Lombardini22 and a colleague of hers, Ash, who I hadn’t met before. We met by the “Apple Made Whole Again” sculpture, just outside Milano Centrale train station.
We walked to a nearby pizzeria where I was served a really large (but good) truffle pizza.
Believe it or not there was a plate somewhere beneath it. It was an interesting challenge to cut and eat a pizza that overflows its plate by such a margin.
With a (probably excessively) full belly, I took the M3 line of the Milan metro to Dergano, where I walked the last 20 minutes to the Design Department campus of the Politecnico di Milano. It certainly helped burn off some of the pizza.
It took me a while to find the right room...
… but I arrived basically on time. And it seems lectures in Italy often start late, so I ended up having some time to settle in.
The main lecturer for this course is Professor Davide Ruzzon, who will be joined by a number of guest lecturers over the next 3 months.
This initial session was primarily for the attendees to meet one another and get an overview of the course.
There was a very interesting Q&A with Sarah Robinson (in-person) and Sarah Williams Goldhagen (online), makers of a fantastic short film called “What Design Can Do”, which could almost be used as a mission statement for my team's work.
I really wanted to be able to embed the film in this post, but that capability isn’t yet enabled. Here’s a screenshot and you can click here to watch this 20-minute gem of a movie.
We had a nice aperitif at the end of the class, which gave a good opportunity to connect with people, and from there I headed back to my hotel near the main station.
I was still digesting my lunch, and so ended up going out for a very light dinner. When in Italy and all that.
My train home was scheduled for 7:10am on Saturday. It was raining when I left the hotel.
I very nearly got on a train for Zurich. Luckily I realised that I needed to take *another train to Switzerland that was scheduled for exactly the same time* before boarding it.
That seems like a really strange scheduling decision, but there you go.
I did catch the right one, and arrived back in Switzerland with enough time to spend a couple of hours of the afternoon snowboarding. Yay!
The rest of the course is virtual, with the exception of the very last session which will be in-person at the Biennale in Venice. Something I’m really looking forward to.
