Of Nerds and Scientists -- The Utopian and SteemStem Meetup in Italy :)

As you all know I was traveling to Italy this month, to be part of the Meetup between Utopian and SteemStem since my heart is beating for both of this groups of people and the ideas behind them.

The Journey

To be honest, I don't like traveling a lot, it always on my nerves quite fast and I always forget something really useful.
Packing is not one of my favorite hobbies and I seriously suck in it.
This time, I forgot my sunglasses and, yeah what can I say, it was extremely sunny and with over 30 degrees extremely hot as well.
Sunglasses would have really been very useful ....

Apart from that, the journey was quite ok, I landed in Bologna and had to drive one hour and a bit to reach the villa, in which the Utopians were staying.

The Accommodation

The villa had a fantastic view over Lucca, a beautiful town in the Tuscany. It was lying in the middle of small sloping hills just below a convent of Nuns called Convento "Suore Figlie di San Francesco di Sales".
It contained three Apartments and enough space to accommodate a lot of people, there was a quite some space still untaken since we had a few disappointments in regards to Visa politics..

Thursday -- The Hackathon

At the first day, we were totally into the Hackathon and did not meet with the SteemStem half of the people.
Sadly, we also found out by hard that the internet connection was simply not allowing to have a live stream of the whole event taking place. This was really quite a downer since we had brought along quite a few pieces of recording equipment and invested hours and hours to try to make it work somehow.

But in the end, if the god of internet connections is not on your side, there is not much you can do about it. We even thought of walking to the convent to see if we can somehow strike a deal with the nuns :)

Apart from that, the Hackathon was an impressive event, we were thrilled to see all the people taking part with splendid ideas.

Friday -- Virgo Labs

The main event for this meetup was the visit to Virgo Labs, an astounding and impressive site in the middle of the Tuscany near Pisa.
This was also the site where we would first meet our partners in this Meetup, the SteemStem people, and we all have been thrilled to get to know the people behind the usernames on Steemit or Discord.

There was quite a bit of a hectic prior to the visit, in order not to be late. What can I say, we have been the first ones at the scene and the first picture in the series below settles this topic nicely :)

The visit itself was really worth every mile of traveling and every hardship that Ryanair has put me through.
We received introduction words, a lecture that was great and really understandable and even had the possibility to listen to the sound the detector for gravitational waves receives out of the universe.

After these, more theoretical lectures, we also had the possibility to visit the detector and the most interesting spots in this huge building. Just to remember, every arm of the detector is 3 km long.

The whole visit was completed by a lunch in the cantine and as you can imagine being in Italy and such, the Lasagna I had was extremely delicious!

This visit really was an absolute highlight and an event to remember!

To be honest, not only because of the detector itself but also because this was the first moment in time we had the chance to meet the SteemStem people and as it turned out, this is quite a damn nice bunch!

Sadly, I don't have the group picture that we took, it would fit quite nicely in here ;)

Friday -- Pisa

Having started off superb as a big group we directly went on to Pisa, to explore the city and see this crooked tower of theirs.
And dinner, not to forget the dinner that evening!
Eating is something that is very important in this country and we completely transformed ourselves to be the best Italians ever lived, at least in this trait. Well, some of us did not have to transform as much as others ;)

Saturday -- Florence

After having explored Pisa so nicely, we raised the bar for ourselves a notch and went off to the city of Florence. Bigger, more pulsating and a nightmare for every car driver out there.

The way to Virgo and Pisa on the day before had already cost me my dignity but this was complete madness. Everybody seems to honk at everything, a Bird honk, a human honk, another car about to hit me honk, a motorcycle is passing me by in something near lightspeed honk. Well, I think you got the gist of it.
An Italian city is an unbelievable concert...

This lead me up to the point I desperately wanted to get rid of my car, I drove into a garage I had to give my key away and they were, in the end, parking my car, a habit I never experienced before. I was a bit afraid that I might not see that car again ...

Florence itself is a beautiful city with a lot of breathtaking buildings and museums. But I am a bad tourist and was more interested in talking to as many people as possible, when do you have the chance to meet all those fantastic people in person?

And yes, you can imagine, we had lunch and dinner and it was marvelous, every piece of it. And red wine, and talks, and laughs, and ...

Conclusion

I did expect quite a few things from this trip, **but it was so much better in every way. **
The visit to Virgo Labs, the cities, restaurants, everything was organized perfectly and I really want to give a shoutout to @suesa for arranging this so nicely!

In the end, the thing that was best was meeting all of you, having had the chance to talk to most of you, working together with some, sharing wine with others, making plans, listening to stories.

Thanks to all of you for making this trip an unforgettable experience!

Utopian: @amosbastian, @elear, @espoem, @icaro, @jedigeiss, @jestemkioskiem, @ms10398, @poet, @sachincool, and @techslut

SteemStem: @alexdory, @bendelgreco, @egotheist, @fredrikaa, @galotta, @lemouth, @monie, @nicniezgrublem, @reggaemuffin, @robotics101, @scienceangel, @sco, @suesa and @xara

Can't wait for the next Meetup! Take care all of you!

Yours
Jan