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| Ponte Coperto, River Ticino, Pavia, Italy |
Normally on today's date - March 14 - I'm encouraging people to celebrate Pi Day. But this year I've decided to post in honor of the birthday of Albert Einstein. I'm choosing to write about one slice of his life :-)
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| Ponte Coperto, River Ticino, Pavia, Italy |
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| Ponte Coperto, River Ticino, Pavia, Italy |
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| Ponte Coperto, River Ticino, Pavia, Italy - dome of Duomo di Pavai in background |
Einstein's family moved to Pavia from Munich, seeking better possibilities for his father's electrical business. Einstein was a teenager at this time, and still in gymnasium (high school), so he stayed behind in Munich to finish his schooling and joined his family during school holidays. Young Albert quickly fell in love with this beautiful city. Because of this, much of my post is simply pictures of the beauty of Pavia - with a splash of humor at the end.
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| Duomo di Pavia |
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| Pavia University |
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| Pavia University |
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| Ancient Towers outside Pavia University |
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| Walking through Pavia |
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| Walking through Pavia |
Einstein would take walks through the city with his sister Maja - something he still reminisced about decades later and looked back on fondly. He especially enjoyed the covered bridge, Ponte Coperto, over the River Ticino that flows through Pavia, which is why I opened this post with so many pictures of the covered bridge.
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| Riverside walk in Pavia, Italy - Ponte Coperto in the distance |
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| View from Ponte Coperto, Pavia, Italy |
More than 50 years later, Einstein mentioned Pavia in a letter. A phrase from that letter is engraved on a plaque inside the bridge memorializing Einstein's time in Pavia:
AN DIE SCHÖNE BRÜCKE
IN PAVIA HABE ICH OFT GEDACHT . . .
I have often thought of the beautiful bridge in Pavia . . .
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| Einstein Plaque, Ponte Coperto, Pavia, Italy |
And now for the silly ending that I can't help but include.
Just a bit of a walk down-river from the bridge is an intriguing sight that I like to believe inspired some of Einstein's whimsy.
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| Walking alongside the Ticino River, Pavia, Italy |
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| Walking alongside the Ticino River, Pavia, Italy |
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| La Linguacciona, Pavia, Italy |
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| La Linguacciona, Pavia, Italy |
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| La Linguacciona, Pavia, Italy |
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| La Linguacciona, Pavia, Italy |
I mean, he was still thinking of his time in Pavia half a century later, so might La Linguacciona have inspired Einstien's pose in a picture taken many years later? We'll never know for sure, but I like to think it did.
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| Albert Einstein on his birthday in 1951 |
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