Walking to the Politecnico

In the cities I've visited in the past, I've tended to just go straight to the attractions and stay in touristy areas, but sometimes the best way to experience the city and get a feel for it is to walk the more ordinary streets. Indeed, the 20-minute walk from my dorm to my workplace takes us through some streets that are by no means tourist attractions, but there is still much to see!

Trees!  Many streets are lined with them!  And in the background, we see not skyscrapers, but a mountainside.  And hey, there's a Smart Car on the right side there.  It looks like that Smart Car got a lucky break with its parking spot, because many of the people over here tend to park their car as close as possible to the cars near them.

I suspect that this guy - the Guinness world record holder for tightest parallel park - might fit in (no pun intended) over here:

This "system" helps more people be able to find a place to park, but how the heck do you get out of your spot when you've only got a few centimeters of space between the cars in front of and behind you?  Fernando tells me that the driver of the trapped car would just honk until the owner of either of the cars surrounding notices and moves their car out of the way.  Crazy, eh?

Sometimes, you have to get a bit creative with finding a place to keep your car...

although I'm not sure now if I took this photo because of the car or because of the lovely buildings.

If you take a look at the pictures again, you may notice that there are no SUVs.  Perhaps this is because gasoline here is not as cheap as it is in the US (and to think about how much we complained about $4 a gallon!), or maybe people just don't need or want them here.

There are some interesting vehicles that you don't see in the US, such as the Smart Car, or this motor scooter with a roof.

Hey, this scooter kind of resembles the vehicle we're working on!  But I will get to all that in a future post.

My personal favorite part of the walk to work every morning is seeing "the car" and wondering if it will still be there next time I pass it.  Here is "the car:"

Fernando and Kristen told me that the car's been  sitting there for a couple weeks, and that someone finally did something about it on my first day of work by putting some red and white tape on it.  I wonder what happened to it - there are so many possibilities - and I wonder for how much longer it will be sitting there.

Well, we've finally arrived at the Politecnico di Torino!

Our workplace is still about a ten minute walk from the front entry of the school - it is quite a large university.

Hopefully this tour of the streets has given you faithful readers a good glimpse of what Torino looks like.  Downtown, things probably look a little different - and I plan on exploring there this coming weekend - but this is certainly a huge change from Boston!