The 'cassette joint' that changes the gears rotates counter clockwise to shift into a higher gear so the cable needs to be pulled, which means pulling up on the barend.
The hybrid set up is pretty funky. I blocked out the granny because it is pretty useless around here. The larger rings are (IIRC) 48/52 sort of a halfstep gearing I found I did use the front quite a bit. I found at times that the 'sweet gear' seemed to fall between gears so splitting the gear seemed to work out pretty good.
Cassette joint, the cable attaches at the hook looking thing by the yellow dot.
OH That is sort of what the Volpe was built for, to do a little bit of everything.