Erasmus a Bologna

It has been far too long since I've written anything, I know I know, I'm sorry! As ever it's been pretty hectic (I am always v.confused as to how even though we have hardly any work I always seem to be dashing around catching up on stuff :s) After the Paris weekend I was meant to be going skiing for a few days, but sadly had to pull out due to being suddenly being struck down by the lurgy. I ended up spending the entire weekend in bed, watching far too many bad italian rom-coms, but at least I was then cured in time for the big trip to Rome the following weekend! I was heading down for 3 days to meet a friend from Edinburgh who's studying in Verona this year. We'd managed to get tickets to the Italy v Wales match (despite the fact she's Scottish!) so again, it was a pretty rugby-themed weekend.
I used to know Rome pretty well, having spent every easter there for about 5 years, but hadn't been back since the summer before starting Uni, so it was great to get back there. We did lots of touristy stuff as ever, and lots of catching up over cocktails! Match day itself was great - boiling hot, sunny all day and great atmosphere thanks to the thousands of welsh fans who'd flown over. I ran into a load of friends from home and also from Uni which was a lovely surprise, and added to the whole random feel of the weekend! The match was fun, if not too close for my liking, and later we headed back into town to get some food. In the evening Gemma and I decided to go on an uber touristy pubcrawl, which I have to admit, was great fun. Again, it seemed a v.small world when we met a group of students from Swansea who I knew through a friend at Siena on said pubcrawl! Later as we were walking down the street we also bumped into a friend from Edinburgh who's living in Rome this year - totally random, and again a lovely suprise. After the pubcrawl we ended up at a club which was lots of fun, although somewhat pricey at 12 euros for a vodka+redbull! I also wasn't too impressed as my camera went "walkabout" from my bag at said club. Hmmm.
The next day was a bit of a write off, and then on monday we came home. I found myself sitting with 2 old women and a priest on the train home. They all sat down and started reading their Bibles, and kept giving me v.judgey looks as I was reading "Il Diario di Bridget Jones"! Later though the old women fell asleep, at which point the priest went "oooh!" in a very camp voice, put down his Bible and got out a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover!! It was hilarious!
Talking of priests, I had a bizarre encounter the other day. I was home alone one afternoon when the doorbell buzzed. I went off, expecting it to be one of the boys having forgotten their keys, but instead I found a v.old priest standing there, in full garb complete with swingy-orb-on-a-chain! (As I'm not catholic I don't know the terminology sorry!) He started talking at me extremely quickly, and unfortunately I understood absolutely nothing as he was so old he didn't seem to have any teeth. I eventually managed to work out he wanted to come in and bless the flat for Easter. I was a bit at a loss of what to do as I don't know the etiquette in these situations, so just kept telling him I was foreign in the hope he'd just give up and go away. He got a bit uppity and seemed offended I wouldn't let him bless the flat, but eventually resigned himself to the fact I was a thick foreigner, and gave me a leaflet telling me to call him if I changed my mind and wanted the flat blessed at a later date! Again, hilarious, and soooo random.
Erasmus life does seem to be very random, as you've probably gathered from these posts,and again last night was no exception. A wee group of us went for dinner at a mate's flat, then headed off to a house party. The house party was a graduation party for a friend of a friend of a friend... but apparently it's fine to crash these things so off we went. It was WEIRD. As soon as we arrived we realised we knew absolutely no one, and tried in vain to make friends, but as the Italians were already absolutely wasted we didn't get very far. The guy who was graduating was hilarious, kept trying to get everyone to join in with a congo line and then when "You can leave your hat on" came on the stereo he actually did a full on strip-routine. So so so weird but so so so funny! After a few hours the weirdness got a bit much so we decamped to Phil's to get wine and his guitar, and headed off to Piazza Santo Stefano. Santo Stefano is a really nice square in town where all the students hang out of an evening - a few hours of chilling, (and singing badly!) there was great, then it got a bit chilly and we ended up back at mine, attempting to sing badly again on my roof terrace. I'm not sure how impressed my flatmates or neighbours were about this as it was 4am... oops!
Tonight it's one of my best friends' leaving do', which should be fun but is also a bit sad as it'll be weird when she's gone Guess we'll just have to make sure she gets a great send off!
This month I've seemed to notice the cultural differences a bit more - possibly due to the sudden heightened presence of priests in my life! There are also some seriously weird things though that i'll never understand... such as how a song called "Luca era gay" (Luca was gay) can get to number3 in the charts, even though it's horrifically homophobic, and would have been banned back home. They also had a special day last week to celebrate fathers who actually involve themselves with their families and don't leave all the domestic stuff to the women. Yes, the macho italian stereotype is alive and well. I guess it's good that they're trying to change, but I find even the idea of rewarding men for spending time with their own kids very strange, and unbelievably old-fashioned.
Strange, but interesting nonetheless.
Until the next time, ciao!

Last weekend was one I'd been looking forward to for a loooooooooong time. This was the weekend of the 6 Nations match between France+Wales, which could mean just one thing... The Edinburgh Uni Welsh Society's trip to Paris! Despite the fact I'm obviously not in Edinburgh this year I'd spoken to my friends in 'the Soc' over the summer and decided I'd travel up to meet them in Paris anyway. So while they were clambering onto the bus in George Sq on thursday night, I was with friends in Milan, getting ready for my early morning TGV on friday. My trip up was very simple, and I arrived at the Gare du Lyon with minimal stress on friday afternoon. I managed to navigate the metro and got myself to the hostel, assuming I'd run into the Edinburgh crowd as I arrived. When I arrived it turned out this was definately not the case. After a few slightly panicked phonecalls I managed to establish they were stuck in traffic in Paris, although they had no idea where. Nevertheless I befriended a group from Cardiff Uni who were also staying at our hostel, and the Edinburgh crowd arrived an hour later. It was so great to see them, especially as I hadn't seen many of them since the exams last year. We all changed into our rugby tops, and all brandishing all manner of tacky rugby paraphernalia, headed towards the Latin Quarter. After a quick break for a very overpriced pizza (I'm getting wayyyy to used to cheap Bologna prices!) we all reconvened at a wee irish pub, and settled down to watch the match. As anyone who has ever experienced a welsh rugby match will know, this involves a lot of singing. By the end of the first half we had sung ourselves hoarse, but as Wales were leading at this point we didn't care. Unfortunately the game took a turn for the worse in the second half, and France ended up winning, but despite this dampner we didn't let it spoil our fun. A wee bar crawl followed, then more stops for crepes, and then it all went a bit haywire as we managed to lose first our way, then each other. After what felt like centuries, we eventually made it back to the hostel!
The next morning I had to be up early to meet a friend from Bologna who was also passing through Paris. He and I had to get a hostel together that night, so met outside the Louvre and jumped back on the metro. Luckily the hostel hunt was quick and easy, and soon we were zooming across the city towards the Eiffel Tower. The rest of the day was spent enjoying the sunshine and sightseeing. A friend and I went up the Arc de Triomphe, which was very cool and gave you great views of the city. (you can see the Eiffel Tower in the background, it's not just us!)

After a brilliant afternoon of relaxing in the sun I had to say goodbye to the Edinburgh crowd as they started on the Long Drive Home. I headed off to meet my Bologna friends, eventually finding them at the Musée D'Orsay. Again we were a pretty international group - a Belgian guy, a Brazilian guy, a Norwegian girl and me. First we went up to Montmartre, and saw a hilarious gig outside Sacre Coeur, then ended up heading for a curry on the other side of town. Sadly we were all too shattered to go out and party, but it was fun, and good to catch up nonetheless.
The following morning Maarten and I were up bright and early to go to the Louvre. As it was the first sunday of the month, all the museums were free, so we dashed around the Louvre, as always, getting very lost. We managed to lose Fabrizio and Pia early on, luckily though we found them as I was leaving to get my train back to Milan. Definately not an emotional drawn out farewell - I was literally shouting goodbye at them while dashing to the metro, constantly thinking "I really hope that's not the last time we ever see each other!" Fingers crossed it won't be

When we have exams in Edinburgh, I am not usually to be found 5 days before randomly deciding to go on a weekend away. Instead I am usually to be found holed up in the library/elephants and bagels/a dark corner of my flat in various stages of panic, trying to get everything done in time.
In Italy though, especially for erasmus students, it's an entirely different kettle of fish. The week before my exam was the end of the Carnevale in Venice, ie. the biggest party all year. I was unsure as to whether or not I should go, seeing as I was already pretty stressed with work, but when my flatmate reminded me there are two chances to do the exam, but only one carnevale, I felt I had to go. So on the friday lunchtime my flatmate and I got the train up to Venice, armed with several kilos of pasta, several litres of wine and masks each. Some friends had found a wee apartment on the internet which we were renting for two nights - it was great, although obviously as we are cheapskate students we kept prices down by having 9 of us staying in what was advertised as a 4-person flat. Oops! It was a very international affair - me, 2 Belgians, 2 French, 3 Spaniards and an Italian. Our flat was right in the centre, so when we arrived we dumped our stuff then headed straight for San Marco. Friday was great because it was busy, without being ridiculously so. There was a very cool show going on in San Marco called the Heliosphere, which basically involved a girl hanging off a giant balloon doing acrobatics over the crowd to music. I guess it has to be seen to be believed...

We went for a walk around town and saw some very cool costumes. At first it was very surreal, but it soon became completely normal to see people dressed up in very odd costumes. My favourite of all was this wee boy, very nonchalantly dressed as a dinosaur as if it was the most normal thing in the world!...

That night we went out, all masked up to look for a festa. We'd been told to head to the Rialto bridge, where there were people playing music. I expected "one man+his guitar"...instead we found hundreds of people all over/under the bridge dancing away, with a DJ with portable decks playing electro and reggae. It just got weirder and weirder. At one point we were dancing when an enormous conga line started - conga-ing down the Rialto bridge with a load of randoms dressed as gnomes is definately a once in a lifetime experience. Later we found another piazza where an impromptu rave was going on - it was completely dominated by students from all over Italy and Europe, and was just fab. There was a live band there, and everyone was in fancy dress... good times.

The next day we wandered around the city, enjoying the glorious sunshine. I met up with a friend from Edinburgh who was on an erasmus trip from Siena, and had a great time catching up over lunch with her. Later when I rejoined our group we headed to Campo Santa Margherita, which is near the Uni in Venice and is where all the students hang out. This was FAB. There was a show first, involving lots of fire and pyrotechnics; apparently there was some sort of storyline but it was a bit difficult to follow. Nevertheless, it was very pretty! After the show a DJ appeared and they created a huge outdoor dancefloor. The music was fab - very much like a cross between Liquid Rooms and Big Cheese, which when you consider it was mid-February and we were dancing outside in a random piazza in Venice, was very odd, but absolutely ace. At the other side of the piazza there was another DJ playing 50s/60s music, again - A LOT of fun. One of the main things you will see during carnevale is the sheer abundance of confetti everywhere - I'm not entirely sure of the reason behind this but basically everyone grabs bags and throws it over everyone else as you go around town. Of course we joined in, so grabbed ourselves a few sacks and skipped (literally) from the Uni district back to the Rialto, showering everyone with confetti. Again, there was a live band at the Rialto and lots of cheap spritz, so yet another great night. It's one thing I'd definately recommend - if you ever go to the Carnevale (which you MUST!) try and stay during the night, as it's so completely different to the Carnevale during the day. Apart from the amazing masks I found the daytime Carnevale a bit dull after a while - the crowds are so huge you can't move, you end up trapped down wee alleyways, lose all your friends and frequently almost get pushed into the canals by over enthusiastic tourists with their enormous cameras. By night though, there's much more space to move, even though there are still thousands of people out, but generally the atmosphere is much more chilled. It's completely driven by the students, and is generally pretty mental but amazing. At one point we found ourselves dancing under the rialto, right on the jettys where the gondolas usually go from, to random brazilian music being played by a load of guys with bongo drums!
Sunday involved trying to escape the crowds as much as possible, so we just kept on walking until we got to the far end of the lagoon, and sunbathed in a nice quiet park! We had plans to meet other friends, but as always in Carnevale it just wasn't possible, we physically couldn't get to our meeting point due to the volume of people! That was a bit gutting, but nevermind. Then it was time to dash back to the apartment, grab our stuff and then battle (literally) to the train station to attempt to get home! We arrived back in Bologna bruised, battered and shattered, but having had a fantastic time. Here's just a few more of the pics...

There are certain things you never think you'll say during a year abroad. Things such as "Oh, I do miss DHT and written exams", but amazingly, this was exactly how I felt last thursday.
In Italy almost all exams are oral, and generally considered a hellish ordeal which can at times involve public interrogations where members of the public can come in and heckle you, if they have nothing better to do with their time. Luckily for my first exam here, I was due an essay/oral exam combo - it was or my english lit course, and I'd had to write a 20page essay discussing feminism in fairytales (yes, exciting stuff I know) which I'd bashed out over the holidays while I was up in Edinburgh. When I got back to Bologna I discovered things wouldn't be as easy as I anticipated - firstly just printing it took 3 days after the copisteria people decided they couldn't be bothered to open the shop, then when I eventually took it to my lecturer's office I got shouted at by the lecturer's evil assistant, and told to get lost. Hmmm.
The "exam" for me was different to that for the italian students - I had to turn up and discuss my essay, so was told not to sign the list to get a slot for the exam. This seemed bizarre, but nevertheless I was there, bright and early on thursday morning. We hung around for an hour before the evil assistant I previously mentioned arrived, and told us the lecturer couldn't be bothered to do the exam that morning, but would possibly do the afternoon ones, if she felt so inclined. I explained to the evil assistant that I was erasmus, so was doing a different exam etc, only for her to look at me blankly, then tell me I'd already done the exam! She barked this at me, then glared at me and flounced off. So I followed her and kept pestering her until she told me to come back in the afternoon and speak to the lecturer, although apparently I shouldn't hold out much hope of being seen.
Duly I returned at 1pm, and settled myself in the corridor outside the lecturer's office. Where I waited for 5 HOURS. It was ridiculous. Eventually the evil assistant came out, seemed furious I was still there and said it was pointless for me to wait and that I should come back on Monday. This entire day having been a complete waste of time, I wasn't in the best frame of mind, although felt somewhat better seeing as even the italians I'd got chatting to were complaining about the ridiculous system too, and generally very sympathetic.
On Monday I turned up again at 9. This time we waited an hour and a half before the lecturer bothered to arrive, at which point I explained myself again and she very offhandedly told me she probably wouldn't have time to see me, but I should hang around on the off chance. By this point I was so angry and fed up, but just had to sit and wait. She saw three other students, then came to get one of the other italians who very sweetly took pity on me and insisted I went first. The exam itself was bizarre, partly in English and partly in Italian, but I managed to get through it.
All went fine until they tried to register my marks on the computer system. It was quite literally a case of "computer says no", at which point the evil assistant (who i now feel is my personal nemesis in life) claims i can't have the credits as I'm apparently not eligible to do the course, and that possibly (at best) I can have 3 credits but no more. This was ridiculous, god knows where she got that idea from but after me explaining every reason why I definately was entitled to the full 9 credits she made numerous phone calls, always snarling "erasmus" under her breath while glaring at me, I got sent outside to wait for another hour before eventually being given my 9 credits. I was very glad it all worked out in the end but it all seemed hugely stressful for no real reason! My next exam is at the end of February, so at least I have time to study, though after this ordeal I am terrified. Watch this space for updates on how that one goes!

Following the last post about the disastrous attempt to go skiing before Christmas, here's the account of when we actually managed it!
A few weeks ago we all had a strange sense of deja vu as we packed our bags and our picnics for the bus, and headed back to the autostazione. I was convinced we would get there to find AEGEE had somehow forgotten us/sold our places on the trip to illegal immigrants or some other such nonsense, but amazingly we arrived to find a very calm guy, who actually managed to get us all on the bus and on the road only an hour later than planned (must be a record for Italian standards!)
Once more though our plan to hit the Alps had been foiled by those pesky avalanches, so we were going back to Slovenia, but to Maribor, a really nice ski resort in the east of the country. Sadly the bus ride was obscenely long, eventually arriving at the hotel at 3am. There were 12 of us staying in a very cute chalet, literally 100metres from the pistes.

We dragged ourselves out of bed after a mere 3 hours sleep to head down early to get our skis, only to be told the shop wasn't open until 9! Argh! So...a leisurely breakfast, then we eventually got onto the slopes by about midday. We spent the first hour or two teaching 2 portugese girls who'd never skied before, then got started on some easy runs. (I can ski, but not with any particular skill, style or elegance. It's more just a matter of physically getting down the mountain while incurring as few injuries as possible!)
Our only problem hit when we came into contact with a chair lift which also involved a moving floor. This bizarre contraption was hilarious - Frouke and I shuffled forward and got thrown onto a moving carpet/conveyor belt thing, at which point somehow our skis crossed, Frouke panicked and pushed me over meaning we were now sliding towards the end of the conveyor belt, me with one ski on and one ski off and a chair lift approaching quickly. Somehow we managed to jump on the lift in time but I couldn't get my ski back on, so we ended up sailing off grabbing the ski and clutching our poles. Halfway up we realised our ski poles were now completely trapped between the bars of the lift, and were psyching ourselves up for an interesting exit at the top... as we approached the top of the lift the little man in the hut came running out, yelling at us in Slovenian, but didn't stop the lift! Absolute chaos ensued, somehow eventually we got off, managed to ski away from the lift with surprising panache before both losing control on an icy patch again and crashing to the floor. It was at this point Frouke realised her ski pole was practically bent in half having been crushed by the lift, so tried to bend it back... and promptly broke it in half!

Sadly that evening apres ski banter was thin on the ground due to extreme tiredness again, although we did almost manage to hijack a skidoo...

...before again being shouted at in Slovenian :s Oops!
The next day we hit some harder slopes, and after getting slightly lost on the mountain and almost having to navigate a black (eek!) we made it back to the hotel ready to go home, only to be told 3 of the group were in hospital, including one of our friends! Thank God they were fine, just a few sprains, so we were on the road before too long. We arrived back in Bologna at 3am, again so tired and achey but having had a very good weekend. I'm off skiing again in March (fingers crossed for Monte Rosa this time!), and now cannot wait!

It has been a ridiculously long time since I wrote anything here, I'm sorry. Due to general Italian chaos/procrastination (which is of course a national hobby here) I have somehow completely lost track of everything - but today is a major chilling day, so I'm catching up now! Ok...first blog here dates all the way back to pre-Christmas, and our last week in Bologna before the holidays...

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, Italians aren't exactly skilled organisers. I knew this before I arrived, and had almost come to accept this until the fateful ski trip. A big group of us had booked months ago to go skiing with AEGEE (one of the erasmus organisations) for a weekend for the bargain price of 80EUR. Genius, we thought, a whole ski trip for just 80 EUR!Sign me up! We were meant to be going to Monte Rosa in the Alps, but a few days before our supposed departure we got an email saying there had been avalanches and we'd be going to Slovenia instead, staying in Ljubljana. As we'd only just got back from Ljubljana we weren't thrilled that we were heading back to the same uber creepy hostel, but were still excited for the skiing. We all arrived at the autostazione at 6pm, clad in our salopettes and goggles in anticipation, all clutching homemade punch in Fanta bottles (yes, we're that classy.Turns out all students are exactly the same, regardless of nationality). Then the chaos started. There were 2 coaches which we kept attempting to board. Two of us made it on, only to realise our friends were nowhere to be found. Eventually we discovered that due to a "clerical error" our wonderful AEGEE man had overbooked the trip and there was quite literally no room at the inn! As you can imagine, we were raging. Furious doesn't even begin to describe it, though it all seemed so unreal we kept giggling and all became slightly hysterical. We ranted and ranted at the guys who'd "organised" it, which was good practise for our italian if nothing else! We harangued them until eventually they struck us a deal, promising a full refund, free places on the next ski trip in January and free places on another trip to Croatia in the new year. Somewhat appeased but still not really believing the situation we headed home, much to the amazement of all our flatmates who'd had to endure our excitement throughout the previous week. Later we converged at one of the guys' flats, ordered in LOADS of pizza and generally got rather merry. We decided AEGEE weren't going to spoil our fun, so spent most of the evening online, trying to track down cheap flights/trains to go anywhere. We were so angry with Italy in general by this point it became Project Escape Italy. We narrowed our options down to Bratislava, Billund (despite us having no idea where it was) and Vienna - unsurprisingly, Vienna won! So the next day, again not really believing this was happening, a Dutch friend and I headed off towards Venice to get our connecting night train. As Venice had been severely flooded a week before, first stop was obviously Upim for wellies...little did we know these would make us famous in Austria! Here are our beloved stivali colorati...
The train ride was pretty uneventful at first, though got quite exciting at the Austrian border where we had to stop due to literally mountains of snow. We had a wee snowball fight with some of the guys at the station, which was hilarious! Alas our problems began when we woke up just as we were arriving into Vienna, and realised Frouke's bag was open on the floor. Alarm bells started ringing as she scrabbled through it and realised her purse and camera had been stolen. Luckily I still had all my stuff, and our tickets to get home but it wasn't the ideal introduction to Austria! First stop in Vienna was of course then the Polizei, where we met our fave guy of the whole trip - Bernhard the policeman. He was an absolute legend, and sort of became the mascot for our entire trip. After that debacle we headed into the centre and managed to find ourselves a great hostel. Having dumped our stuff, our first stop was of course the Christmas Market at the Rathaus. The Rathaus was amazing, and the market enormous. We kept going back for more gluhwein and giant pretzels! We saw a lot of the city that day, which is beautiful and especially at Christmas with all the lights and decorations.
That evening we managed to get cheap tickets at the Volksoper so went to see Hansel und Gretel, which was hilarious. We intended to hit some bars but were so shattered we ended up heading back to the hostel and having a makeshift dinner in our room.
Still the next morning we were up bright and early, and headed back into town for some culture. First we went to the Kaiser's palace, which was great. Very informative and very fun too! We danced around the ballroom and got to "speak" to the Kaiser on a phone which was very exciting. Then after yet another *essential* Konditorei stop, we headed up to the Belvedere art gallery to see the Klimt exhibition. We wandered back through the city, stopping at every christmas market we came across for more gluhwein, naturally
That evening we went to a great Mexican place for dinner before hopping back on the U-Bahn and heading back to the Westbahnhof. Our train this time was much more fun due to (a) the lack of robberies and (b) the fact we were sharing a carriage with 2 absolutely mental austrians. We bonded, despite our very dodgy German and their non-existant English, and had a great time. They decided the train should be renamed Der Party Zug - we ended up as the only carriage awake all night and got invaded by a random italian who came in to join the party! Sadly the fun was interrupted slightly by the arrival of a Peruvian father and son combo who sat in between us and the mental Austrians, and kept glaring whenever we spoke . Hrmph. Later, the son (who incidentally looked like a Peruvian version of a young Michael Jackson, if you can imagine such a thing) kept writing stories and then reading them out to his very bored father in an extremely dramatic fashion. Hrmph. Although in hindsight, very entertaining. We arrived back into Venice in the early morning, absolutely wrecked but having had a fantasticly spontaneous weekend (no thanks to AEGEE!)

Unlike the past two Decembers in Edinburgh,spent stressing over exams and being battered against numerous trees en route home across the Meadows thanks to the gale-force winds this year December has been decidedly calm. Even though the Christmas lights are up in Bologna, the huge tree has been installed in Piazza Nettuno and there is a definate festive atmosphere, I'm yet to hear Mariah Carey bellowing about what she wants for Christmas (although this can never be a bad thing!). And although little stalls are popping up on street corners selling amazingly tacky fibreoptic tree-decorations, the festive vibe here is definately different to that which we're used to back home. Admittedly though it's still early, being only December 7th, and apparently it all kicks off after tomorrow which is Festa dell' Immacolata Concezione - so a day off Uni/School/work for everyone and then from the 9th onwards it's officially Christmas, or as they call it around these parts, Natale. Woop woop!
Despite the fact Italians don't officially start the celebrations yet, we Erasmus decided to take matters into our own hands. On December 5th, our Dutch contingent organized a huge party for Sinterklaas, which is celebrated every year in Holland on December 5th (yet bizarrely on the following day in Belgium, according to some Flemish friends)which was great fun. Sinterklaas is a hilarious tradition whereby Sinterklaas comes to Holland (or Italy in this case) from Spain via steamboat, aided by an army of Italian helpers, all called Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). Kids leave their shoes (or clogs, I assume) and overnight said shoes are filled with sweets, presents etc. If a child hasn't been good that year, instead of being given treats they are instead taken back to Spain by Sinterklaas on his steamboat! It seems also that Sinterklaas parties are all the rage with Dutch students, so obviously we had to have one here... the party was so much fun, so much effort had gone into it which was very sweet. A few days before we'd all been randomly assigned someone else to buy a present for, and we also had to write a poem for said person. Our budget was a student-friendly 5euros, so needless to say many trips to the 99cent shop were made this week! When we arrived at Frouke's flat for the party everyone left the presents in a big pile and were later handed out. When you picked your present from the pile you had to read the poem aloud, then open the present and thank Sinterklaas for said gift. Only after everyone had opened their presents could you guess who was your Secret Sinterklaas. Pretty standard Secret Santa practice, I'm sure you'd agree, though after this things got much more bizarre, and much more...Dutch, for want of a better word! Suddenly Luuk, Misja, Frouke and Julia left the room (Dutch contingent plus token Brazilian who'd organized everything), then after a few minutes there was a hammering at the door and the next thing Frouke, Julia and Luuk skipped in, singing, all dressed as Zwarte Piet and literally showering us in sweets! It was soo funny! They were followed by Misja, dressed as Sinterklaas who sat on his throne and proceeded to judge whether we'd all been "good" enough this year, or whether we'd have to be taken back to Spain on his steamboat. Here's Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet (my friends aren't hideously racist btw, apparently it's all part of the tradition for everyone dressed as Zwarte Piet to black their faces!)

After all that excitement Frouke's flatmate arrived with hundreds of Spaniards (sadly not just off Sinterklaas' steamboat), and all of a sudden our very civilsed small party turned into a full on Spanish fiesta! It was very fun but very bizarre, the flat was full of randomers who nobody knew, whoever was in charge of the music played nothing but absolutely dire 80s tracks, and there was wine being thrown all over the room. Generally it was total chaos! Lots of fun though, until 3am, when all of a sudden the police turned up :s Apparently we'd been making too much noise (not surprising frankly considering the guy from downstairs had come up at 9.30pm to complain that the noise of our chairs scraping on the floor was disturbing him. Ahem. But apparently a full on flat party didn't disturb him until 3am...anyway). Everyone cleared off pretty quickly as you don't really argue with italian police, especially the carabinieri who turned up on Friday.All in all it was a really fun night, but definately bizarre!
The following night I went for dinner at an English friend's flat, where we decided to have our own festivities...which for us meant brewing up an enormous vat of mulled wine and playing Slade, Wham, Shakin' Stevens and all those other great Christmas choons very loudly. I'm sure the neighbours loved us! We attempted to make chocolate oranges by melting lumps of Dairy Milk which Phil had been sent in his Red Cross Aid Package of British food (hehe) and it kinda worked, though not quite. Still, at least we tried! Later that eve we managed to project my Bill Bailey dvd onto the wall which was great fun to watch again, though I'm not entirely sure the Dutch/Italian friends quite understood what was going on!

I now only have 10 days before I'm back in the UK for Christmas, and I can't wait! I love being here in Italy but I'm also sooo excited to come home. Not just to see friends and family but also to catch up on the little things I've missed...such as houses with carpets and central heating, bagels, Radio 1 and curry! I have a feeling the next week will pass extremely quickly too as next friday we're going on a ski trip up to Monte Rosa, then we get back on Sunday night and I'll be spending monday and tuesday sorting myself out, ready to fly home on Wednesday (assuming the airlines aren't on strike, which is genuinely a bit of a worry round here :s). And inbetween everything we still have lectures to attend, christmas shopping to do and I definately think a trip to the new ice rink is in order! Good times...

One of the best things about Erasmus has to be the excuse it gives you to flit around Europe visiting friends who've also been posted out, evacuee-style to random universties scattered over the continent. Until now I've stuck to within-Italy visits to catch up with fellow Edinburghers, though last week we made a break for the border and hopped over to la belle France for a long weekend. Our destination was Tours, a university city in the Loire valley which I'm sure will be familiar to many of you. The Italy Contingent (myself and Gemma, another Edinburgh erasmuse-ette studying in Verona) were heading over to meet three friends from home who all, by happy coincidence had ended up together at Tours. After spending hours interrogating surly moustachioed men at the train station I thought I'd found a good deal on a eurostar from Milan-Paris, costing us a mere 100euro return. Great, I thought. Bargain! That was until Gemma called and told me that she'd found flights from Milan-Paris for 20euro return, including taxes! Fantastic! We booked straight away, and spent the next week hopping excitedly around our respective cities and measuring out liquids into handy wee bottles and trying to hunt down some freezer bags so we could smuggle our make-up stashes onto French soil. There turned out to be only two drawbacks - 1) Our flights were at obscene times and 2) Both "Milan" and "Paris" airports turned out to be nowhere near said cities, so this incorporated much more travel times/costs than we'd anticipated. Regardless, we were in high spirits when we met at midnight on Thursday at Bergamo airport, armed with a massive picnic each, ready to camp out at check in until our gate opened at 5am. The airport sleep-over was...erm...interesting. Bizarrely departures was full of not only tired travellers but also a busload of local tramps who seem to hitch a free ride to the terminal every night, sleep at check in and then disappear back off into the city to mill around the train station at daybreak. I must say it seemed a quite an ingenious plan, although we didn't appreciate the cloud of flies they brought with them :s Somehow we got through the night, slept on the plane and found ourselves safe and sound (despite the standard bouncy Ryanair landing)at Paris Beauvais airport at the ridiculously early hour of 8am. Ok, I know I ramble at the best of times but I have to digress a second as I have an issue with this - Beauvais airport is 2 HOURS AWAY FROM PARIS...THUS HOW CAN IT BE CALLED "PARIS BEAUVAIS"?!?! Maybe there is some blatantly obvious reason which I'm missing, but seriously!! We do not, for example call Bristol airport "London airport", merely because it is 2 hours away. Ok, maybe that isn't the best example but you get my drift! Hrumph. Anywho, it was simple enough to get the coach from "Paris" Beauvais to Paris itself,so I suppose we can't complain...especially at 20euro return for flights! By 10am we were wandering down the Champs d'Elysee, obscenely tired but still very excited to be in gay Pareee. After a quick coffee stop we navigated the metro and I took Gemma on a whistle-stop city of a few of the main sights (Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, Notre Dame, Left Bank, a wander along the Seine) before we headed to Gare Austerlitz and somehow, despite, rather than thanks to, our mangled French, managed to procure two tickets to Tours. We eventually got to Tours in the afternoon, and were promptly met at the station by the girls and whisked off to the nearest pub to recuperate, in true student fashion. We had a nice chilled evening - a good catch up over a pub dinner and lots of Monacos, then a dvd night back at the girls' halls. Amazingly we managed to stay awake until midnight, at which point we realised we'd been awake for about 36 hours non stop, and immediately collapsed.
On Saturday a wee group of us headed out of Tours and to a wee nearby town, Azay le Rideau, to see the chateau there. Azay was lovely, once we eventually found it. The train station is handily located about half an hour outside of town, and the walk over isn't exactly picturesque...when we did eventually find the town though we had a lovely afternoon being very cultured and touristy skipping around the very pretty chateau...

That evening we headed back to Tours (after having been harrassed by a scary mentalist at the train station) and got ready for our night out. As at home, this involved copious pre-drinking at halls, then at midnight we all piled onto the bus and made our way into town where we met the girls' new Erasmus friends. Thankfully for Gemma and I most of these friends were italians so we didn't have to inflict our truly awful french on them. After a wee bar crawl, far too many Monacos and the obligatory chip-shop refuelling stop (classy, ain't we ) we found ourselves in a v.entertaining bar called Cafe Chaud, whose downstairs downstairs dancefloor area was designed to look like a metro platform. Genius. And yes, in true girly style we just dumped our bags and coats on the floor in a heap and danced around them like mentalists. Fun times.

Sunday was very much a chill-out day. We headed into town for lunch, had a huuuuge meal and then meandered around, went to the Cathedral etc and attempted to be tourists...but soon the freezing cold got so much so we retreated back to halls where we (I'm ashamed to admit this) watched High School Musical :s Three of us had never seen it before so it was quite an initation, I'd never appreciated quite how overwhelming the whole thing is. Still, definately a good way to spend a sunday evening!

Monday was our last full day in France, so after yet another brilliantly huge lunch (even coming from Italy it seems the French could out-do us in their obsession with food) Gemma and I hopped on the TGV and were soon back in Paris. We'd booked into a hostel not far from the Eiffel Tower so headed there, dumped our stuff and were back on the metro heading for the Trocadero in a flash. This was yet another whistle-stop tour of the city, but this time we did "Paris-by-night" (must be read in a dodgy French accent) which was muchos fun. Even though I'd been to Paris relatively recently I did still turn into a proper tourist and squeal excitedly when the Eiffel Tower flashed by the metro window as we arrived at the Trocadero. At the moment it's trussed up with a huge EU flag and glows blue which is quite pretty, if slightly bizarre. As always we were ridiculously touristy and took far too many photos...

After another wander along the Seine we found ourselve at the Place de la Concorde which has a huge Christmas ferris wheel (sadly not open yet though), and then we made our way back up towards the Champs d'Elysee, absolutely starving by this point. Luckily we found a wee bistrot down a side street and had a very French dinner of steak (barely dead, of course!) and chips, followed by Tarte Tatin and all washed down with lots of vin rouge. As we had yet another ridiculously early flight the next morning we were somewhat at a loss of what to do after food, as we didn't fancy hitting the bars/clubs, but neither did we want to head back to the hostel...we pondered as we wandered up towards the Arc de Triomphe when completely randomly, we decided to go to the cinema. And what did we go see, I hear you cry? Yes, Mamma Mia in French. I know, we are just so cultured. I have to say though, it was hilarious. The cinema was practically empty, we counted 15 other people in the whole place - us,2 other girls and the rest were all gay couples in their 50s. We all sang and danced along and generally had a brilliant time

In the end we failed to get any sleep at all, having spent all night chatting to randomers at the bar in the hostel, and eventually boarded the bus back to Beauvais at 5am feeling like death. Touching down in Italy was such a relief, cause even though we'd had a fantastic weekend we were so aware that we were getting closer and closer to our beds and being able to sleep again! On the way home I stopped off in Milan to meet some friends, and eventually made it back to Bologna at about 6pm, having almost fallen asleep on the train and missed my stop! Suffice to say the next few days were a bit of a wash out but it was such a fantastic weekend I didn't care...now we're just gearing up for the next weekend away, though I think I've learned my lesson and may stock up on ProPlus beforehand!
Au revoir

One thing I've noticed so much since being here is how much more politically aware Italian students are than us Brits. Fair enough, I'm sure the majority of Edinburgh students have at least a basic knowledge of current affairs/politics, and opinions on said topics, but I doubt many would be able to quote Chapter Blah of Article Blah of the New Law concerning Blah, passed last week by Mr Blah. See my point? Here though, it's a completely different story, and for the past few weeks, it's really kicked off.
The main problem at the moment is to do with a huge education reform one of the Italian ministers, MariaStella Gelmini, is bringing in. This seems to involve huge job cuts, budget cuts and lots of related chaos. Suffice to say people are Not Happy - Gelmini is quite possibly the most hated woman in all Italy, and as if Berlusconi wasn't disliked enough as it is, he's now seen as some sort of demonic figure.
So about a month ago, in true Italian fashion, people decided to to take matters into their own hands, and since then it's been a constant run of strikes, protests and disruptions. It began with the schools - students and teachers "occupied" the schools, refusing to go home and sleeping there, this soon spread to the universities, though as you can imagine was handled somewhat differently. Part of the Gelmini proposals which angered people most was the decision that the vast majority of budget cuts would come from arts and humanities departments...so of course the first students to protest were those from the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy. The occupation of the faculty went on for weeks - I'd assumed this would be a miserable sit-in, with lots of angry waving of placards and cries for justice... I couldn't have been more wrong. Yes, there was lots of waving of placards and cries for justice but I hadn't realised that here in Italy, occupying the university basically is a by-word for "massive rave and piss up" - on the first night there were over 600 students in the main courtyard of the department, they set up bars and had a DJ! This carried on for weeks, and soon spread to other departments too. There were also protests, one in particular involved around 30,000 students marching through the streets of Bologna, bringing the entire city to a standstill. This was organised in all the major cities on the same day, luckily most protests were peaceful although a few people we injured here, including a journalist from one of the major national newspapers who got caught in the crossfire between students and police.The students then marched to the train station, which they also occupied - blocking the tracks by sitting on them and refusing to move, and they also occupied the trains themselves. Back at the main square they stopped all traffic on the two main streets by sitting on the floor at the main junction and refusing point blank to move. It was chaos, but impressive nonetheless.

There have been numerous national protests too where hundreds of thousands of students have gone to Rome to protest together. To be honest I'm not entirely sure if this will change anything, although at least it feels as if people are trying. It is definately a bit of a culture shock though - I have friends at other universities whose Unis have just gone on strike, cancelling all lessons for a few weeks,classes being held outside in the piazza as part of the plan to draw public attention to the problem, and others who have had masked students storming into lectures,grabbing the mic from the lecturer and ranting about the new laws. The weirdest thing of all for me is that in that case, the lecturer eventually grabbed the mic back and then gave the students her full support and said she was totally behind all their protests! Here in Bologna Via Zamboni, the main uni street is covered in graffiti, such as this...

So now I guess it's a question of waiting and seeing what happens next...for now it's calmed down a wee bit, after a huge demonstration in Rome last weekend with over 200,000 students from all over Italy...only time will tell!

A week or so ago 100+ Erasmus students converged at Bologna autostazione at the ungodly hour of 6am. We were dispatched to various coaches and settled in for the morning's journey to Ljubljana. The trip was organised by Aegee, one of the eramsus societies here, and involved a weekend away visting Ljubljana and Trieste. Despite the horrifically early start (I am definately not a morning person!) it was worth it as we arrived in central Ljubljana by 11am and had lots of time to explore. The city is so pretty, especially down by the river. When we arrived we discovered a huge outdoor market, which on closer inspection turned out to be a wine festival! As I'm sure you can imagine, this news was met with great joy by us students. We quickly dashed into a bookshop initially, to pick up a dictionary and taught ourselves some basic Slovenian ("thanks", "wine", and "beer" seemed the most appropriate to learn!) then headed back to the wine stalls. They did a great deal whereby you bought a glass for 5euro, and then took this around all the stalls and tried as much wine as you liked. There were also stalls selling food, jewellery, souvenirs and general tourist tack. There was a great atmosphere, it seemed the whole city was out and about, and along with the blaring of numerous oom-pah bands who were wandering the streets the whole thing was pretty special.We attempted to go on the city tour later that afternoon which had been organised by Aegee, but as there was one guide and hundreds of students we couldn't hear a thing and it seemed somewhat pointless - so we soon ditched the group and headed back to the river, constructing our own "city tour" as we went. At one point we were befriended by a group of Slovenians who were hilarious and so lovely - conversation was somewhat stilted as it had to be conducted in a mix of italian, english and our very poor attempts at Slovenian, but still we got by. They invited us to a festa that night, so we left with plans to meet them at a square in town later that night.
In the evening we were bussed out to the hostel to dump our bags. I can safely say that was the weirdest hostel I've ever stayed in... it was in the middle of nowhere, in a basement of a gym! Soo strange. There were 10 of us in our room, which for some reason was called Blacksmith (we were just glad we didn't get the one called Bicycle Shed!), and had been decorated to look as if it had blood spattered all over the walls. Delighful stuff. Still it was warm and clean which was the most important thing. Later we headed into town and attempted to find a Slovenian restaurant...and failed miserably Alas, no goulash for us, but instead pizza at an Irish bar. Ach well! We were so tired by this point it was more a question of finding fuel rather than Michelin starred food! There was an erasmus party for us at one of the clubs in Ljubljana - we started off there and it was pretty cool, but not hugely exciting so we left in the hope of finding the randomers who we'd met at the wine festival and getting ourselves to a real live Slovenian party. Sadly we then got very very lost and couldn't find the meeting point Despite this we wandered for a while and had a nice chilled time, even if we didn't actually manage to get to a proper party!
The next day we piled back onto the bus and were shipped back over the border to Trieste. It's a gorgeous city, and bizarrely doesn't feel at all Italian. Unfortunately as it was Sunday it was slightly erm...dead, but we didn't let this stop our fun! We found a great restaurant down by the marina and had a really long lunch, then in typical student fashion, ran around taking lots of daft photos. We've developed quite an affection for "jumping" photos, and are hoping to have a whole album of us "Jumping around Europe" by the end of the year. So here's the Trieste chapter...

As we meandered around the city, we then found to our great excitement, a chocolate festival! Great news, I'm sure you'd agree. A few hours later, after far too much chocolate and having taken far too many pictures we bade Trieste farewell and headed home to Bologna, tired but very happy. A great weekend all round!