For those of you who are fashionistas you have to know that Milano Fashion week is currently ongoing here in Italy, and for those who did not know I'm telling you right now. So the I and three girls from Belgium took a trip there for some minor shopping, and stumbled into a random fashion show! It was so adorable when the little child-models worked it on the runway, your heart just melted away!

 

 

  

 

After some hours of walking around we took a walk over to the current Pablo Picasso exhibition and watched over 100 different paintings and scultures of his, I couldn't take any proper pictures of course, but it was very fun to have seen the art (and to feel like a society lady). His cubism was my favourite era, like "Man with a guitar" (google it, and choose the one without sadness). The classic crazy picasso, as seen below, is interesting but some of the pictures are just a bit over my range of understanding...

I was too quick to call Legnano a small town without anything to see, and I say this because we found the city center, and it was so cute and full of coffee shops! 

 

On our way back home, suddenly an ELEPHANT drives by. That's the beauty of taking walks, you can always find something unexpected...

 

 

Since it's Milano Fashion Week we went to a club there, and Yasin was being a sweetheart and gave the exchange girls roses on the way back home. As we usually say; the evening automatically gets better if you go home with a rose in your hand!

Today was like the lazy song: we didn't feel like doing anything. So we shook ourselves up and went for a walk, stumbled onto a sunday market, the yummiest ice cream in Castellanza and are soon about to go to a karaoke party. Yep, just one of those days where nothing happens... ;)

 

 

The semester's first Roadtrip have now been held!
10 sharp did the troups gathered for take off, but due to rental-issues only one of them started at somewhat correct time. So me, Sanaz, Sabrina, Antoni and Kubilay took place in the car and happily singing "Like a hobo" we took of to Switzerland! So now I can check that country off my list of places to visit, even if we didn't see so much of it...because we had another destination in mind:

 

 

Fox town, outlet of brands!

The outlet was a huge mall, and it was thankfully not impossble to find your way around inside due to many maps. What was a bit confusing was that you had to think in swiss currency instead of €, it's funny how quickly you get used to some things. Still liked the £ in england more though, Elizabeth looks more charming than buildings.. On the way back we stopped at Lake Como, the second largest lake in Italy. We also had a little detour on our way to Fox town to Lugano in Switzerland, an adorable little place up at the foot of the alps!

 

- Lake Como -
    

    

 

    

  

 

 

 

Roadtrips are amazing!

I just thought I'd upload some pictures from the previous days, so you can get a picture of what I've been up to lately!

    

  

Also, the first trip around Italy has finally been booked, so in 16 days I'll travel from Castellanza to Verona, Venice (Venedig) and Padova! Since it's arranged by the ESN crew, it means that I'll not only do that trip, but I'll do it with all my new awesome amici <3

 

    

Even if the italian food is delicious, we fall for the temptation of going to McDonald's right outside the foodstore...

 

 

 

Tonight we're going to Milano for a night out - it's gonna be legendary!

 

Today I and two friends from Belgium took another stroll to Legnano, with the sun shining down on us and with 29 degrees in the air. Finally the italian weather gods are doing their job correctly! On the way back we decided to chill in the campus park for a while, when I noticed this cave on the school grounds. I highly doubt you have anything like this at your universities!


- The Cave at Campus Park -

 

After a little meeting this "morning" (because 11:00 is totally still morning. During kick-off week at least!) Sanaz and I were free from class. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that the class Italian lever 1 have started. And it's intense. Mi chiamo Ida, io sono straniero. Da dove viene? Abito a svezia. One lecture in and we're already doing scentences and grammar, woho! 

Anyways, since we were free we decided to take a walk to Legnano, one of the many other little towns next to Castellanza. With us we brought Michelle from Belgium, and off we went! It took about 15 minutes to reach the village, and another 5 to get to what we thought was the center (we found the shopping center, but apparently there's an avenue that we completely missed...), so it's really close :) Today was also one of the sunniest days yet, I can feel how the tan is creeping up on me!

 

 

 

 

 

During the evening the ESN crew had arranged for an International Dinner Party, so each nationality was supposed to bring some tradition foods. Thanks to Niclas and Anna we got a hold of swedish meatballs, mashed potatos, cream sauce and lingonberries (I <3 IKEA) so we could serve proper swedish food ;) People served everything from wienerschnitzel, pancakes, baugettes, bubble tea from Taiwan, healthy soup from Hong Kong, pig ears (...) and pizza. It was so many different dishes, you couldn't even taste all of them before you were full! I love food trades between cultures, you always get so many new ideas of what kind of food you can make yourself later on!

 

    

 

 

So after a day full of informations and papers here and there things seems to be in order. I've now gotten an Italian security code, which feels perfectly wierd. I doubt I'll use it. I also got a hold of the cutest little camera, so now it might arrive som proper pictures...once I've bought a memory card...arrrgh. Still impresssed of myself that I manage to buy such items without being able to speak more than a few word with the cashier (thankfully words overlap..Fotocamera isn't as hard to understand as rocket science.). 

Since we had the night off I played cards with some other exchangies, from spain and belgium. I laughed so hard when I found out the Queen in a deck of cards is called "the Horse" in the spanish version! Also giggled way to much when the scots tried to heat their lasagna...it's not easy to live alone for the first time. Their cooking wasn't that smooth, and that's kind to say.

Tomorrow the Italian course will start, but I'll send you off with my current favourite words:
1. Sono Molto Contento = I'm very happy
2. Pomodoro = Tomato

 

 

First day of actually being in Castellanza, what do we do – we go on a food hunt!

But that is no dance of roses, oh no. We started walking around in the village, which is in a much higher state of quality than I had expected, and with the weather like the one we have you simple must go outside! After a while and still without breakfast we started trying to get a hold of a supermarket. Only not one single person seems to speak any English here. After a body-language instruction we set off to what we thought was the right way. After some time we decided to ask another person, who just shook her head and by understanding words of Italian and again the lovely body-language we were actually offered a ride to the food store.

 

We are still entirely in awe of how sweet Nadia, the woman, was when she just allowed three strangers/ slightly lost exchange students to ride with her in the car, without understanding a word of what we are saying. That would never, ever happen in Sweden. Inside the store we could manage – Gabriel however once needed to ask for the soap, and started to mimic showering to a woman, who just looked at him before asking in perfect English: What do you want? Good times!

So the time has once again come for me to pack everything I might need in the coming 4 months, approach the airport and fly off on exchange. Which is awesome! This time, as most of you probably know, I’ll go to Castellanza outside Milano in Italy. However this time I didn’t go completely alone and spent the night in McDonalds with a crazy lady from Greece, thankfully. Sanaz and Gabriel are my companions from JIBS, and we all flew down here together. The flight arrived 19:40, 25 minutes erlier than expected, which helped since we had to travel for 71 km to get from the airport Bergamo to our university town. So, without having to show our passports (!) we left Bergamo and got on a bus to Milano. After admiring the grand station and gobbling pasta (we’re in Italy, it HAD to be pasta!) we hitched a train. Here it got difficult, since no station had a sign with the name of it. You just see a platform and hope for your dear life that it wasn’t your final desitnation. Thanks to a local person on the train it all went well though, and we got off in the not-so-pleasant weather at the Castellanza station.

 

Here comes the first impression of this semester: the first thing we see is three Italian guys (with the names Mario, Fabio and Paolo) doing “the wave” and happily cheering at us. Without the slightest hesitation they take our heavy bags, like gentlemen, we all squeeze together in a car (apart from Gabriel who had to wait for another ride) and got to the campus. Such an awesome first impression, you felt welcome from the first second!

 

At the campus we smoothly got our room keys. All of student campus is in one huuuuge building, so you never have to walk outside to get to your fellow students, we have internal phones so we can call each other for free between the rooms, they have vending machines -  and more importantly coffee machines -  a cafeteria...I never have to leave this building, technically.

 

But the real crown jewel is the room. You might remember how it looked back in wolves, and I was expecting something alike, only slightly bigger so that two people could fit. Boy, was I mistaken! It is so big, airy, and clean and lovely. The furniture look more of less new: we have two beds, two desks, two large shelves, two large wardrobes, two nightstands and a refrigerator. And we have our own bathroom. And not a tiny little bathroom, a proper one. I adore this room. Picture will come once I get a hold of a camera. So an inventory list will have to satisfy.

 

So, so far I love this exchange semester. The only enemy we have is the bell tower across the road - which belongs to a church which have way too many services and/or way too many reasons to ring the bell. Especially early.