Milano - Fashion Week
Legano - City center
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!
Castellanza - Slow Sunday
Switzerland - Fox Town
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:
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 -
Castellanza - Missed things
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
Milano - Finally
We finally managed to get to Milano for the first time, but absolutely not the last! Due to poor weather (for once) we had to spend all day in the shops....like that could be a bad thing!
Prada, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, D&G, Jimmy Choo, Fendi, Vivianne Westwood, Micheal Kors, Alexander McQueen... Milano truly is the fashion heaven it's said to be!
Castellanza - Pool Party
Castellanza - McDonald's
Castellanza - Campus Cave
- The Cave at Campus Park -
Legnano & International Dinner
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!
Castellanza - First Night In
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
Castellanza - First Night Out
The ESN group (the party-fixers) had arranged for all the new exchange students to go to a local pub (30 meters from school, which is great) to get to know each other a bit. It was a really nice idea, the music was low so you could actually talk, it was warm enough to stand outside in t-shirt even though it was late, and the people were awesome. There are about 10 Swedes here, which makes us one of larger groups of nationality, but we do our best to not just join and hang out with the other Swedes but all nationalities. Compared to the French for example...;) So far I hang out most with (apart from Sanaz & Gabriel) a group of Scotsmen and three girls from Hong-Kong. Going international is always awesome!
A Green Beer
- Already a legendary drink around here -
Here are some photos from Castellanza take with my phone, since I don’t have gotten a hold of a camera yet. Today we’ll have the “Italian test” (which means that I will look at the paper, shrug, write my name at the top and hand it in), and since there are no scheduled activates we created one of our own, so there’ll be some sort of game night down at the reception. You must dare to be social to get friends, that’s the one rule to rule them all when you go abroad!
- Campus - Campus - Castellanza - Castellanza -
Castellanza – off to the Grandi Magazzini
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.
Castellanza - Arrival
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.
