Travel Virus

Today I was in a family reunion in Saccone (Trento, very north of Italy). There was the Festa di Saccone with mass, food and dancing. This is the view from the village.

Since yesterday I’m back in Lugano to work, and I also got a new nice office, in the central building with only two other colleagues.

It’s hot and nice, and I’m glad to be back although the university is nearly empty

I went to see a Shakespeare play in St. John’s college, with Eleni and Iris. In fact there is the Cambridge Shakespeare festival going on here: until the end of august, every night at 7.30 there are various plays taking place in the colleges’ gardens. The actors (students) were very good. The best part is that it is very informal and you can also bring your pic-nic and enjoy the play while relaxing on the grass.

My time in Cambridge is nearly over. It was a good experience all together, especially from the professional point of view. Despite the moonsoon season going on during my stay, I managed to visit quite a few new places and people, and to get to know lot of new people who are doing interesting research. It was also very interesting to see how is every day life in what is ranked the second best university in the world.

I heard in Italy the temperature of the swimming pool water (not the air) is 32 degrees… I’m coming!!!

For my last weekend in the UK I had a very nice trip to Coventry to visit Jeanne, together we went to Kenilworth castle which was really scenic. I suggest to see it if you are in the area, there a great atmosphere. Then we visited Warwick, a nice historical city with a famous castle and an interesting church.
Surprise surprise I also met with fr. Joseph in Birmingham! He just came from Smiling Children home, India, and he’ll be there for at least one year.
I don’t agree with Friedman that the World is Flat, but I do believe that the world is shrinking!

The summer in Cambridge is actually quite rainy, so the tourists are not disappointed by the cliché of the english weather. It’s also quite cold, but lots of events are taking place. This week there is the Cambridge Film Festival with movies from around the world. I watch Lili and the Baobab, a French movie, it was actually quite good.  Yesterday I went with my colleagues to the indian restaurant Maharajah (Castle Street 9), I can recomand it. Indian restaurants are ubiquitous in the UK and are very popular, I’m quite impressed. Around the town there are free classes of martial arts and meditation, choir singing and the Shakespeare Festival … I hope I’ll have time for that next week.

Some advice if you are in Cambridge and happen to be very hungry. I mean, really hungry…

You can go to Dojo, a noodle soup restaurant, near the Scudamore boat rent.
In the picture you see a Thai Noodle Soup, believe me, it’s huge and delicious.

I visited Oxford with Jeanne and Eleni, it’s actually very similar to Cambridge but at the same time it seems bigger, almost like a city. However Cambridge has around 100.000 inhabitants and Oxford has 134.000 so it’s not actually much bigger. The weather was incredibly nice: for over one month it has been raining every single day (many times a day), but now we have been having no rain for almost 30 hours so far! Amazing.

It was “Alice’s day”, Alice in wonderland and lots of event were taking place. In fact Lewis Carrol was an Oxford graduate and lived in Oxford with his daughter Alice. We visited the museum of natural science, it’s an unusual building, built with steel in the shape of a Gothic cathedral, with the dinosaurs inside! Surreal..

More than 100 million people voted and the new 7 wonders of the world are just announced in the official ceremony in Lisbon:

• Colosseum, Italy
• Taj Mahal, India
• Great Wall of China
• Machu Picchu, Perú
• Chichen Itza, Mexico
• Petra, Jordan
• Christ the Redeemer, Brazil

Good that Italy is there, but I think it’s a real pity that the Alhambra was not included.

See the Guardian’s article