Last stops: Milano, Venezia, Martellago and Parma

I found myself among the “language-of-the-hands” and cars’ noise with crazy Italian drivers, in a city that according to me doesn’t have anything special except the capacity of bring into my mind good memories.

I was in Milan (almost three years after the first time that I had arrived in Italy, in that same huge and marvellous railway station) because of one reason: Bucas.

We haven’t seen each other for more than 5 months – which is quite a lot when you love someone :) - and we had arranged a meeting at 13h in Piazza Duomo.
Just like in the movies… there I was standing in that big square full of tourists and Italian fashion-people waiting for her to show up. I could barely listen anything but my heart beating. Tum tum, tum tum, tum tum…
Apparently I have been influenced by the good Belgian manners that don’t allow you to be late. But I forgot that she is a Portuguese doing Erasmus in Italy. :P So, I waited for her more than half hour… but no big deal, I was so happy to hug her…

The plan was to spend the Carnival festivities in the most famous Carnival in Europe – Venice. Margarida and Catarina joined us. We slept in Martellago – a small town near Venice – and we’ve met a group of Italian friends with who we had a lot of fun, pasta, wine and sprits! It was really funny to find out that we can communicate with them in an “international Latin language”, and once again, we could feel the nice connection that we can have with that people. I just loooooove Italians and they life style – though, I think that they have something to learn with Belgian people… ;)

Honestly the Carnival itself wasn’t anything really special, but Venice is always Venice – it seemed more beautiful to me this time – and we don’t need much to have fun. In this case we just followed some crazy guys with their juke-box, we drunk “Lambrusco” and we walked and walked between S. Marco, the railway station and our square… Campo San Stefano. :)
Actually, we didn’t need to look for amusement – funny situations were just coming to us as mice to cheese. Going back home was always a big adventure which included walking in the high-way at 5.a.m in the morning, walking next to high tension cables in the rain (!!) and almost got killed because of the cold while we were waiting for the bus to that town in the end of the world – Martellago! That hour seemed to us an eternity… and at that time, we couldn’t be sure if we knew how to get to Andrea’s place, because we didn’t know the town at all...
Luckily we were the only “bus users” at that hour in the morning and the bus driver was nice enough to give us a ride to the church – the only reference point that we had…

Some days later we moved to Parma – Bucas’ city.
Parma is a really cosy colourful city in the north of Italy. We didn’t do much but walking, dancing, eating and drinking. But it was so cool… We get into Bucas erasmus experience and I think that was what the three of us wanted. She is living next to the railway station with 6 people and apparently their house is the meeting point for parties! ;) It was really cool to dance all night long among Latin-full-of-joy-people… I must confess I was missing Latin music...

“Parole Parole Parole…”

We were also introduced to the products of the region – as they love to say – Parmigiano cheese and Prosciutto di Parma – the best smoked ham ever!
The cherry on the top of the cake was the unexpected presence – at least for me – of my Viriato! :)

I left Parma just right after Bucas had booked the flight to Ghent – she was already missing me… Ehehe...