Hello from Italy!

Yesterday I finally arrived in a small town near to Bari, after spending two days in a (surprisingly economic!) car. If you've already started to hate me because of my geographic location, I can tell you that there's nothing to be jealous of - it's cold, it's raining and I have no time to do anything else apart from playing violin and studying. But during this 2000-km journey I had enough time to reflect about things that I'd like to share with you.

First of all, if you've ever had an opportunity to see a sunset in the Alps from a plane, you might think that there's nothing more beautiful in the world. That's what I thought when I saw it last year for the first time. But this year I decided to change perspective and see the Austrian and Italian part of this incredible mountain chain from below. And I'm not able to decide whether it's better or worse because it's totally different, but still, definitely breathtaking. It's impossible to catch it if you only have a poor LG smartphone camera, but still, isn't it just amazing?

Secondly, I had a great opportunity to actually experience some observations from one of  Marc Augé's texts, which some of you and I were lucky to comment with our professor on the master's degree seminary classes. Here's a fragment from his famous book 'Non-places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity':

'France's well-designed autoroutes reveal landscapes of somewhat reminiscent of aerial views, different the ones seen by travelers on the old national and departmental main roads. They represent, as it were, a change from intimist cinema to the big sky of Westerns. But it is the texts planted along the wayside that tell us about the landscape and make its secret beauties explicit. Main roads no longer pass through towns, but lists of their notable features - and, indeed, a whole commentary - appear on big signboards nearby. In a sense the traveler is absolved of the need to stop or even look. Thus, drivers batting down the autorout du sud are urged to pay attention to a thirteenth-century fortified village, a renowned vine-yard, the 'eternal hill' of Vézelay, the landscapes of the Avallonnais and even those of Cézanne [...]. The landscape keeps its distance, but its natural or architectural details give rise to a text, sometimes supplemented by a schematic plan when it appears that the passing traveler is not really in a position to see the remarkable features drawn to his attention, and thus has to derive what pleasure he can form the mere knowledge of its proximity.

Motorway travel is thus doubly remarkable: it avoids, for functional reasons, all the principal places to which it takes us; and it makes comments on them'. 

It's a great observation, valid for the French, German, Austrian and Italian autoroutes. If you think about it this way, a 2000-km journey becomes a long and incredibly dynamic narration. 

That's all by now because the 'siesta' is already over and I have to dress up as an artist and try to win a violin competition. 

Have a nice afternoon!