Tarragona Files: Castells, The Old City And Chemical Plant Field Trips.
Hi there! It’s me again and this week, I want to share with you our means of transportation and some really cool field trips, cultural tours and all the other fun stuff we’ve been doing on this dialogue.
TRANSPORTATION
Our means of transportation is the TGNit. For what I think is an amazing deal, we bought a 100-ride monthly pass for £20. There is a bus that goes to URV that stops at the end of our block so it is very convenient. We are conveniently located, almost magically, such that when we want to go to places other than school, the central station is a block across the street so we just walk over and hop on the right bus. The one issue I found with the bus so far is that, occasionally, it gets very crowded. Luckily for us, we are the reason it gets crowded (24 strong Northeastern Huskies!!). Once, after we boarded the bus, it could not pick anybody else until we disembarked. Also, the buses are not fitted with enough seats, perhaps because of the fact that there are so many of them (for a city the size of Tarragona) running around the clock. Knowing the bus schedule is key to saving time and being on time, especially on weekends. The weekend schedule is a little farther apart so if one missed the bus, it took a while longer for the next bus to arrive. You would not want a mistiming eat away valuable time you could be having fun with so when you make this dialogue (I strongly suggest you do), be sure to get a schedule of the buses in hand so you can maximize the utility of your time. Aside that, I think the buses operate optimally, reliably and efficiently.
CULTURAL VISITS & TOURS
There are so many landmarks and museums in and around Tarragona. As the first Roman settlement outside of Rome, Tarragona is rich with historical buildings and monuments such as Monument als Castellers, Circ Roma, Torre de les Monges, Amfiteatre de Tarragona, Monument al Pescador, Roman wall of Tarragona and many more. Of all the historic sites we have visited thus far, The Roman Wall of Tarragona and the Monument all Castellers are my favorite. The Roman wall is quite interesting to me partly because it marvels in how the Romans managed to build walls up to twelve meters high, with inner reinforcement that runs up to six meters wide at some point. The architectural knowhow and insight employed in building these monuments represent the level of sophistication and technological advancement of the Romans of the time. The amount of work that went into assembling, moving, and mounting the rocks that makeup the walls is unimaginable. And the fact that so many years later, most of these structures are still standing and functional is a testament to the quality of the work that was done.
Monument als Castellers is quite interesting to me because of the subtle meanings I gleaned from it. The human towers are popular through out Spain but because the idea started in Tarragona, this monument carries with it a special status. We were fortunate to witness and actually partake in the local biannual Castellers festival/competition within our first few days here. Prior to taking part in the festival, I thought it was going to be very difficult, especially for those at the base bearing all the weight of those at the top, up top ten stories high. To my surprise, when we participated, it felt almost like there was no weight at all. The number of people that formed the base distributed the load well enough such that each individual felt very little of the overall load. This monument was also one of the very first of marvels of Tarragona that I saw because it is a block from our hostel.
As of right now, we have visited two chemical plants; BASF-PDH and DOW Chemicals, and gone on two cultural trips; one to the old city (Tarragona) and the other to Reus, a town a few kilometers away. On the cultural visits, my favorite is the one to the old city. All the monuments and landmark areas we visited together make up the biggest conservation of Roman history/culture outside of Rome. Even though some of the buildings are now privately owned and occupied, they are still in their original form and compliment the others that have been preserved for tourism. With the plant tours, I enjoyed our visit to Dow Chemicals the most. Even though both trips were very educative and part of our Dow Chemicals presentation was very long, the tour was still more interesting mainly because we a full tour of the Dow facility whereas we were limited to just one section of the BASF facility. The presentations complimented the Process safety course we are currently taking in so many ways. We were presented with industrial applications of the theories that we are studying so we all related to the subject well.
Until next week, ciao.
