When laziness strikes..

Hello people! I've been absent for a while, I know. But the truth is: I didn't know what to write about, I love sharing my travelling experiences with you but that's not all I want to talk about on this blog. I actually haven't figured out yet what's the main topic of this blog, so I guess it is, and it will remain, a random mixture of stuff. :) 

Anyway today I thought I would talk about lazy days. Who does not love lazy days? Well, I do and I had a lot this strange summer since the rain showed up quite frequently and going out wasn't a possible option on those lucky days when you don't have to study, nore to work, and you just can enjoy. One of the things that I really love doing when I have spare time is cooking; I find it relaxing and satisfying at the same time, since you get something done from it (if you can get a good result, of course ;P). 

I remember the first time I baked bread.

I really felt like experimenting that day and when I found this easy recipe on Facebook, I said to myself "why not?!" and decided to give it a try. I had almost everything I needed at home, expect from the yeast. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I needed to go grocery shopping anyway, so while I was there I got the yeast and the moment I got back home I started my experiment. Since it was as easy as I expected it to be, even if it takes quite a bit of time because of the leavening, and the result was awesome (my brother could confirm that :)), I thought I would also share the recipe (that can also be found here  but just in Italian!).  Unfortunately I don't have a picture of my masterpiece but you can get an idea on how it should look clicking on the previous link!

Ingredients:

400g cake flour

8g salt

1g brewer’s yeast

300g cold water(12°-18°)

Start off by mixing flour, salt and yeast in a big bowl. Then add the water and mix it well with your hands for about 30 seconds. Now you'll have to cover the bowl with some plastic wrap and leave it there to rise for 18-20 hours. Then , after covering in flour your worktop, pour the mixture that had been rising on it and fold it up until you get a fine ball out of it. Now it'll have to rise for two hours more. After that you just put it in a pot, a cast-iron one would be the best choice, and in the oven, preheated at 180°, for about one hour. Taaa-da! You will now have baked a delicious bread! Enjoy!! :D

  

Weeell, that's all for today, folks! 

Hope you liked reading this post :)

A smile,

Cami

Can you ever get tired of travelling? - Discovering non-traditional destinations

I just got back from a family Euro trip to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam and it made me think about travelling in general. It's one of the things I could not do without in my life because it makes you richer and richer and richer.

I guess that you only start to like travelling when you start to grow up and leave childhood or, at least, that's what happened to me. I remember myself as a 10-year-old or 11-year-old not being really keen on leaving my house to discover new places. I felt like it was a waste of time and I couldn't get anything from it!

I could never be more wrong!! Now I take the opportunity to visit new places whenever I have enough time (and enough money!). I feel like every place in the world is worth visiting and I try not to be prejudiced on any of them. This doesn't mean, needless to say, that I liked all the places I visited but I would never not reccomend a location just based on my own judgement. The experience is not only made by the enjoyment.

Anyway, today I wanted to talk about two cities I visited at the end of last year that I really liked but which are not traditional destinations: Riga, Latvia and Tallinn, Estonia.

As you probably know if you've read my previous post, the first semester of the last academic year I lived in Vilnius, Lithuania as an Erasmus student and while there with a group of friends met there (we were a mix of nationalities: Italians, French, Spaniers, Romanians etc.) we decided to visit the two other Baltic capitals. 

The first trip was to Riga at the beginning of October. We took a bus in the morning and arrived in Riga after more or less 5 hours (travelling by bus is really cheap and it was also the easiest way since there were not direct connections between the Baltic capitals by train!). After checking in at the hostel we started discovering the city. I must say it's quite a small city so two days were enough to visit it all; and also, being so small, we hadn't had to take any mean of trasport to move around. I remember I instantly started to like the city a lot mostly because of the atmosphere. In some parts you can really feel its past as a Sovietic city but it also feels really young and full of things to do. We easily found places where to eat (there is a sort of dumpling fast food, which is cheap, good and easy to find being on the main street and it's called Pelmeni) and where to hang out even at night (Rokkafejnīca bar, for example); and it never felt dangerous. It also is a city with history and important monuments especially expressions of the Art Noveau.

One of the new bridges that connects the old (Vecriga) and the modern part of the city

A view of the Esplanade Park

Melngalvju nams (House of the Blackheads)

The Freedom Monument

The cat on the roof, a really famous tourist attraction

A bit of time had passed by when at the end of November we went to visit Tallinn. This time we took the bus late at night (I think more or less at 11pm) and arrived in the Estonian capital really early in the morning (I have to say the journey was kind of a nightmare for me since I really cannot sleep on buses, but it was again the cheapest way, soooo..you must adapt!). After taking the tram from the station to reach the centre where the hostel was, we checked in and slept for a couple of hours before starting our new adventure. There was a free guided tour organized by the city so we decided to take it and a lovely Estonian student showed us all the highlights of Tallinn old town in about two hours. As I said before for Riga, also Tallinn is quite small so even there two days are enough to visit it well. I really liked Tallinn since it was a surprise: the old town is surrounded by Medieval walls, which you can also walk on, and full of nice spots (like a really nice cafè/bakery/chocolate bar just behind the Town Hall square). 

I think part of me liking it so much was also because the day we arrived was the day the Christmas market started, so it was really nice to see the city so Christmassy enlighted. 

The old town door

A view of Tallinn from a panoramic spot

The Town Hall with Christmas lights

 We also got the chance to go a bit further from the centre to visit the Kadriorg park, which is really relaxing and it also has a Japanese garden in it, and the beach. It was really cold and windy so I didn't put my bare feet in the water, I kept my boots on ;)

The beach :)

Kadriorg park

Here they are: my feet in the Baltic sea ;)

I hope you like this post as much as I liked remembering the memories I have about these trips. And if you happen to want to go there by bus as we did here are the links we used:  http://www.luxexpress.eu/ and http://ecolines.net/en/. 

A smile.

Xo

Cami

Once Erasmus, Always Erasmus

I guess it’s true what they say: once Erasmus, always Erasmus. If you ever become an Erasmus student, you realise that immediately, the moment you step into this new amazing experience. 

 

I spent my Erasmus period in Vilnius, Lithuania, during the first semester of the current academic year (2013/2014), and I could easily say it's been the best experience of my life so far. From the beginning of my University studies I knew I wanted to go study abroad with the Erasmus programme, so when the time to do it finally came I took my chances and applied. I wasn't sure I would be chosen since nowadays many students want to take part in it, so when the acceptance letter (more or less like the acceptance letter from Hogwarts ;)) arrived on March 14th, 2013 (yes, I do still remember the exact day it came!!) I could not be happier. 

Some months passed before I really got to leave for Vilnius and they were not that easy: I had mixed feelings! Excitement, happiness, joy, anxiety together with stress and worry kept passing through my mind. It's the never old feeling towards the unknown that made the wait so heavy but so whirlwind.

And in a flash August 31st came and my adventure began. 

Discovering the city and getting to know places, neighborhoods, shops, bars and clubs was one of the best parts, especially during the first few weeks when everything is new and exciting :D

These are some pictures from my first days there:

Vilnius new part from Gedimino's Castle

Old Town from Gedimino's Castle

Vilnius Old Town from Three Crosses Hill

 

Cathedral Square (They were probably building a stage for an upcoming event, there were a lot!)

The view from the dormitory balcony (yes, we were surrounded by woods and loved it ;))

Getting to know the university buildings and being able to find classrooms was another great adventure we went through at the beginning. I remember wandering around the Philology Faculty for about 20 minutes before finally founding the Survival Lithuanian course lecture room. :D

During the first week all Erasmus students were also invited to take part in the University Parade that every September marks the beginning of the new Academic Year. The entire students' body of the Vilnius University partecipates in it, divided into Faculty groups distinguishable by some typical symbols and items they carried with them. It is a long walk from the beginning to the end of the main street of Vilnius, Gedimino Prospektas!

Part of the Parade (unfortunately it was raining :( )

Rapresentatives of the Faculty of  Natural Sciences

Buut, all that being said I must tell you that the best part was, of course, the PEOPLE! Yes, people, the people I met are the main reason why I enjoyed Erasmus so much! Meeting new people is always a good experience but in this particular context it is even better because everyone is so open that there's no embarassment whatsoever. And it was not merely about meeting new people, but it was more like meeting new cultures!! Living in such an international environment made me grow personally and mentally a lot. I think that now I'm more open-minded than I ever was before! :D

Listing all the people I met and all the things I discovered living with all of them would be very long and I'm sure I would forget some of them so I won't even try, but they're all in my mind and in my heart (Guys, if you're reading me I miss you all so much <3).

 I'm really glad this programme was created and I hope it will even become better in the future, because, let's be honest, everything can always improve!
 Nonetheless I would suggest every student from every Country to become an Erasmus student: it's a life-changing experience! :D

Aaand, if you wish to find out more about Erasmus check here: http://www.erasmusprogramme.com/
and also my friend Raul's blog: http://errrasmuss.wordpress.com/

Hope you enjoyed this post! 
xo, 
Cami
:)

The Valley

I've been thinking about starting a blog for a long time now, and in this Summer afternoon of boredom I decided that the time to do it had finally come. So here I am! I actually don't know where to start, this is totally new for me but I will try. Sooo, my name is Camilla and I'm 22. I was born and raised in Sondrio. Ok, that's the first fact and you're probably already saying: "I've never heard of it, where is this place?"; well, that's a question I get asked a lot and that's why today I thought I would share with you some info about my hometown, since you probably can't find it in the English version of Wikipedia! ;) 

Sondrio's park and landscape in the Summer

The view from my house during Winter

Sondrio is a town in Valtellina, a valley situated in the Lombardy region of Northern Italy. With a population of nearly 25000 people I can't really define it as a city, even if it is the capital town of the Province of Sondrio. It is located between the Rhetic Alps and Prealps. So yes, I grew up surrounded by mountains and I must say I really enjoyed it, I still do: mountains are probably the thing I miss the most about Sondrio when I'm not there. I remember many family trips to the villages nearby and many excursions during my childhood which made me really grow to enjoy all the nature around me.  

Sondrio, February 2014

It may seem like I love my Valley a lot from what I said, and I do, but I also must admit that, especially growing up, I had my moments of disappointment, if not hatred, towards it; that was mostly caused by the fact that being sooo small (I think you could walk around it, and I mean all of it, in less than 2 hours!) it doesn't offer as many possibilities as you may wanted during your teenage years, when you're in High School and you start to find out about the world, even if only from your computer.

The town itself is quite small and doesn't offer many ways of entertainment: until I was 17 there was only one cinema, that being run by a Catholic association didn't even show all the movies released. 

I remember myself during my fifth and last year of High School being impatient about starting the University. There is no university in Sondrio and not even in the entire Valtellina, beside a separate branch of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Milan which I was not really interested in; so for me that rappresented the moment I could finally leave the nest and go out to explore the world by my self. I didn't go that far away, I must say, since I decided to study in Milan, which is just 2 hours far from Sondrio; but it was nonetheless a big change being Milan the second biggest city in Italy.

Anyway, since I'm now grown up and maybe in the adulthood I started to appreciate Sondrio and Valtellina a lot more; sometimes I really really need some time off that metropolitan frenzy typical of Milan. 

From my roof :)

I hope that my words, but even more the pictures, intrigue you to find out more about this small but peaceful place in the North of Italy. I guess that being born there it is a big part of who I am.
If you want to find out more about Valtellina checke here: http://www.valtellina.it/eng/index.html

I apologise for the possibile mistakes, since English is not my Mother tongue but just my first language of study and long time passion. :)

Hope you're all having a great day!

Love,

Cami 

P.S: Surprisingly enough, I found out that actually an English Wikipedia page about Sondrio exists; here it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Sondrio

Byeeee