It was harder to get out of bed today for two reasons: one, it was raining, and two, we had to get up a little earlier than usual because we were traveling to another town. We took a train to Como, a small town outside Milan, for our first company visit to the Como Textile Lab Center. They specialize in supplying services for the support and development of textiles. They can perform over 350 tests in technology, physical qualities, mechanics, flammability, chemical properties, and dyes. We watched a multitude of videos of the machines performing the tests. The company has over 450 active clients at the moment, many within the Como area, since it has a very large textile industry, silk in particular due to the abundance of mulberry leaves, which silkworms feed on.. The company was basically created to allow other companies to find out the quality of their textiles and learn how to make them better. The even have their own trademark, Seri.co, that guarantees the silk products to safe, high quality, sustainable, and made in Italy.
One very interesting thing that Como has developed is a machine to electronically inspect silk. Usually, silk is inspected manually by someone who loops the silk around a board and inspects the strand for impurities like knots, tangles, and splits. But with the machine, the silk can be inspected by sensors that find impurities electronically. This is much more efficient than doing it by hand because a person can only inspect 10 bundles of silk a day, whereas the machine does 12 an hour. Overall, it was cool to see the machines used by the Textile Center to inspect the quality of the textiles and how they can even create a new machine to be more efficient.
After our visit to the Lab, all of us went to lunch together at Numeronove, a local pizzeria. The name translates to "Number Nine," which refers to the business being in the family for nine generations. The owner was so nice and so excited to have us. He looked up Pitt on Google after we told him we all studied there. For lunch, I chose to have the lasagna, which was delicious. Everyone else got different kinds of pizza, which I also happily tasted. For desset, I had the most delicious creme brulee.
After lunch, we had a short tour of Como. Our first stop was the lake, where we all got on a boat to see all the villas on the lake. It was a little hard to see though, because the windows on the boat were covered in water from the rain, but it was still beautiful. Sadly, George Clooney's was too far out for us to see. We also unfortunately couldn't see the Alps, because the fog was too dense. After that, we saw yet another cathedral, this one with pagan and Christian gods on the outside. The funniest thing about this cathedral is that the bell tower has random holes all over it. Old buildings have holes due to scaffolding, but the architect who built the tower didn't know that but was trying to mimic the aesthetic, so he they just put holes in random places.
We would've toured Como for a little longer, but it was still raining so we had to cut the tour short. In our spare time, we all went shopping. many people bought silk ties, a staple of the area. After shopping, we traveled back to Milan. Once we got back to the hotel, some friends and I ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, then we all went to a club with the Italian college students we had met the night before for a fun night out.
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