Northern Italy

13-15 July

This weekend I took a trip with my rooomate (Sara) to Northern Italy to catch up with her family and friends. We started out fairly early on Friday morning (even though our flight wasnt until 11 all the cheap flights are from airports quite a way out of the city centre). Arriving in Torino in the afternoon we were immediately hit by the warmth as we stepped off the plane (so much nicer than the grey rainy London morning we had left!) Managed to figure out how to take the train into the city centre and the bus to the park while Sara liaised with her friends about meeting up later. We had some time to chill before they arrived so peered over the fence to catch glimpses of the bands backstage and sunbaked in the huge area that would later that night be jammed with people

Saras friends arrived and we pitched our tents a little away from the central festival area. After settling into the park with a few drinks we decided to grab something to eat before the concert started and had a whole pile of caravan vendors to choose from - not selling chips and hot dogs but instead pita breads and foccacia rolls - nice but festival food is always pretty expensive.

Around 10pm the bands started up - pretty amazing atmosphere and you can never complain about a free gig in Italy - what a great excuse to come here for the weekend! Check out http://www.trafficfestival.com/en/chi.asp for more information on the Traffic Free Festival that happens every year in Turin. On Friday night, The Coral and then the Arctic Monkeys played and was stoked with how many songs I knew. Managed to mosh our way pretty much to the front and had a great time.

After the concert finished at around 1-ish we headed back to the campsite to wind down and got to sleep at around 3. Up at 5 to find our way to the central station and buy tickets to head towards Sara's hometown, Rolo. Because it was a Saturday we couldnt go the whole way but training through Northern Italy from Torino to Modena was pretty nice - even if we napped a little along the way. Sara's older brother Mario picked us up from Modena and we drove to her place, it was lovely and her parents were so surprised and happy to see her.

Unfortunately we could only stay at their place briefly because one of Sara's best friends Marty was having a BBQ for her birthday in the park so we drove out there. Had a great time chatting to people (despite my very limited Italian!) delicious food (we had Argentine steaks and salad followed by home-made Tiramisu), and just relaxing in the park - but not in the sun because it was too hot!

Came home at around 6ish and were greeted with one of the biggest watermelons Ive ever seen so we had huge slices each which was the perfect way too cool off after being out in the park for the last 6 hours. Spent the early evening chilling and then went out to dinner with Sara's parents and her younger brother to a delicious fish restaurant and had my very first espresso - thats what you get if you ask for a coffee in Italy!

That night we headed to a house party in this huge old house in the middle of the countryside. Sara's older brother Mario and some of his friends rent out this place but its not up to standard for people to live in so they use it as a workshop/studio area (as most of them are artists) and once a year they have a huge party there - which just happened to be the one Saturday we were in Rolo - stoked! The party was great with beer on tap in two bars inside and out, a DJ, awesome art adorning the whole place and a bunch of friends I'd met earlier that day at the BBQ.

We got home from the party at about 6am so after having a huge day on Saturday its no doubt that Sunday was pretty relaxed. It was even hotter than Saturday so plans to walk the three blocks to the centre were traded in for chilling at Sara's and her next door neighbour's place.

One of the coolest things about this trip was that I already knew 3 or 4 of the faces as they'd come to stay at our place in London so great to see them again and get to meet Sara's other friends. Her family were lovely and it was so nice of them to welcome me into their home. Although I will come back and travel around Italy on my own in September its not very often you get the chance to come to a small town and hang out with a real Italian family - it was a great experience!

Italian people seem really emotional in their non-verbal communication. I watched a lot of it this weekend - not knowing much more than Ciao! - but never got sick of listening to people speaking Italian and trying to figure out what it why they were talking about by their tone and facial expresssions etc. Even the graffitti was lovely!

We flew out of Bologna-Forli airport a little late but managed to make up the time in the air arriving into Stansted at midnight, this would have been fine as the last cheap bus back into town runs at 1am and I only had carry-on luggage but I was stuck in the Non-EU passports queue for 90 minutes! So by the time I got through I made an executive decision to sleep at the airport, catch the first bus back into town in the morning and go straight to work. Sara and her friends opted to buy tickets on the 24hr bus and got back home at about 4, while I had a nice fairly solid 5 hours sleep on the seats in the Bus Waiting Room - what a great end to the weekend!