A Brief Description of the Department Store in Monfalcone

Saturday arrived and Marjolein and me were in deperate of some proper groceries. To Monfalcone it was. We hopped on the bus in the pouring rain and for the first time saw the town we had briefly glimpsed in the dark on Wedenesday in daylight. It has a beautiful square shops on all sides. Stores have strange opening hours in Italy, though, so we decided to go to an actual mall. My God!! It was huge and overwhelming and after 2 (!) hours of trudging from isle to isle we hopped on bus 51 back to Duino.

Walks and Wankers

The biting cold has left Duino and has turned into a rainy grey, so in a tv-less apartment covered in tiles it can be hard to keep the gloom away. Duino, though has one feature that turns all that glum away: the Rilke path. Named after Rainer Maria Rilke, a Praguese poet of German origin who even wrote an ode to Duino, this path runs over the cliffs all the way to Sistianna. With plenty of places to sit sit down, it has beautiful vistas of the azure Adriatic. On hazy days, like today, you can look towards the horizon and not know where the sea ends and the sky begins. However, before this really turns into a tourist trap description, never fear Italians wankers are also here (and I mean wanker in the literal sense of the word!) I guess beautiful views really are stumulating ;-)

Cucumbers, Casa and College

Hello all,

well we are here in Duino and it's been an interesting 24 hours!

The journey went smooth as a baby's bottom!! The plane landed 40 minutes ahead of schedule, baggage was out before I was even back from the toilet and within an hour of landing we were on the first train towards Duino. On the second train we shared a compartment with two Italians on there way back from Portugal and very quickly we found that some gestures are simply universal, such as peeling plastic down a cucumber. :-)

We were in Monfalcone by 19.00 so only one busride away from duino, which turned out to be soooo small that the bus passed through it before we realised we were actually in a village! The landlord was there within 10 minutes and the magical and wonderfully expensive "villa". Well........villa it ain't. The best way to describe it is a large wintersports accommodation and the wintersports would be done inside as the place was possitively freezing! I actually moved my bed next to the radiator and basically curled against it for the rest of the night.

At 10 in the morning we met Sandy in her office and she introduced us to the timetable (which is complicated) and showed us around the office building. This is actually the only UWC to be scattered over a number of buildings throughout the town. We then met a ton of people in the coffee room and I was whisked away by my mentor to observe the first class. (total time spent in Duino 17 hours).

So, the day has basically been a whirlwind of impressions (good free warm lunch, dedicated and very smart students, meeting our new roommate so that the appartment becomes affordable, walking around Duino, getting IT stuff sorted)

We are meeting our landlord in 5 minutes to get the heating up (which won't be much because Italy has just passed a law limiting heating to 19 degrees because Russia is being...well Russia)

post again soon,

saskia

One more night!!

Yeay, just one more night and I'm heading out to Duino with Marjolein, notwithstanding laryngitis or the very real possibility of teaching at United World College of the ARCTIC. The forecast is dismal, but luckily, I still have my thermals from Mongolia (if only I could remember where I put that thermal thong....)

I hope I'll be able to post here again on Thursday and tell you all about our travelling experiences!

Sas

I've got email promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep.

Buongiorno tuti,

If last year in Mongolia taught me anything, it was that I am pretty bad at keeping everyone posted on my life abroad. Hence, my first ever blog!!! I hope I'll be a little more faithful with this than with email. Pictures may even spontaniously emerge, you never know!!

Sas