It was early Saturday morning and I had to get ready for our little Science and Society excursion. The weather was cloudy and damp, but it was not raining at the time; it was also fairly cold because I could see my breath. On our way to Gubbio, the sky gets a bit foggy and hard to see.
On our way there, I noticed a part of the road that was covered in litter. Normally, the roads in Italy are clean and litter free, so I have no clue why this particular spot was littered on. Whoever did the littering must have no sense of cleanliness for our environment. It just seemed to be completely rude of them to trash the land that they live on. I understand that the United States is pretty trashy on the side of the roads and all but the trash is pretty evened out and not just in one spot of the road. But yet in Italy, the roads are all clean, except for this random spot out of nowhere; I just felt like I needed to get off the bus and clean it up, but that was not the case because we were headed to Gubbio.
Our first stop in Gubbio was the Mausoleum of the Dead 40. This mausoleum was a memorial in honor of the forty random people that were shot to death by the Germans. Of the forty, thirty-eight of them were men and two of them were women, a mother and her daughter. The ages of the men and women ranged from the youngest at seventeen and the oldest at sixty-one. Inside the mausoleum, there were the tombs and memorial of each person with their name and a picture of them. However, of the forty tombs, there was one tomb that only enclosed of a name and no picture was posted of the elderly gentleman. It was really touching to hear about the story of the forty martyrs and have one of our guests to be a son of one of the martyrs.
After the Mausoleum, the bus driver drove us into the center of the town for us to migrate off into. The first activity that we all wanted to do was to go on a lift into the tall part of Gubbio. The lift seemed to close for lunch so we all hurried our way towards it. We finally made it! It turns out that it was only five Euros to ride up and return, so I bought my ticket. My being afraid of heights, I had to find someone quick to ride with, so my riding partner was Jackie. As the toll lift came down and around, people had to ‘jump’ onto it because it does not stop, seeing that made me petrified of trying the lift. It was nauseating to be high up in the air but also jump on the lift, I was thinking in my head, “Yea, no thanks!” But soon, it was Jackie’s and my turn to get on. There were big red circles on the ground to show us where to ‘jump’ on at and Jackie went first. By seeing her jump on made me nervous because it meant that I was next. Here I go! “THUD!” and “CLICK!” was all I heard. It turns out that I made it safely and it was just my weight bearing on the lift and the click of the gate that I heard so there was nothing to worry about.
As I was up high in the sky, it was amazing to see all the scenery around me; as long as I did not look down, I was perfectly fine. I was in awe seeing almost all of Gubbio from above on the lift. It was as if I was daydreaming about the gorgeous scenery. As Jackie and I were getting close to the top, I was panicking about how I would get off because it seemed as if people were merrily jumping off. As we were getting closer, I knew it was time for me to turn around and face reality. At the top was a young man helping us get out and down from the lift, and he wasn’t too bad looking either, he was fairly cute! But back to reality, as I was led to jump off, I felt like I was going to fall flat on my face, but luckily the guy grabbed a hold of me and I was okay. I made it to the top!
It was an amazing sight up there; there are no photos that can do justice for what was seen that day. As we walked up to the church, in our good luck, there was a wedding going on at the time, just like our time in La Verna.
As we circled around the top, it was time to return back down to the center of the town before the men on duty of the lift closes off for lunch. Going down for me was a bit different. I am more scared of going down lifts where I can see as oppose to going up things that I cannot look down on. Luckily, I was with Jackie again and she jumped on first, so her height covered my ability to look over the edge and freak out. Like before, I started to panic about jumping off the lift. If I could choose, I would just stay on the lift until it stopped for me to get off, but this was not the case, it could not stop like that. I did not seem to panic as much as I did the first time just because I knew how it was to jump off the lift; it was just a matter of doing it again.
As we returned to the center of the town, we all wandered to find a nice but reasonable place for lunch. We ended up wandering for about half an hour to an hour; however, it was a nice way to enjoy the town. Half of the group went off by themselves and found other places to eat, and a few of us stuck with Dr. Webb and John Rose. As Dr. Webb would always say, “If you follow John Rose, you will never starve!” so that is what the rest of us ended up doing.