Italian Nostalgia: Adventureland
Last week I said what was good about returning to the UK after an extensive Erasmus year in Italy. That’s the good news. Whilst I’ve been preparing for the International Summer School I haven’t had time to catch Post-Erasmus Syndrome yet, but it’s certainly been difficult not to notice the things which are most obviously […]
Returning to the UK: Brideshead Revisited
It’s currently too early to make a post about Post-Erasmus Syndrome and its many horrors. It is, however, the perfect time to make sweeping knee-jerk statements about what benefits await an Erasmus student returning from Italy to the UK. In a list. 1) Pubs. Well, that’s an incriminating thing to start with, isn’t it? No […]
European Summer: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
We pray for heat and when it comes it’s just too hot. That’s what I’ve learned here in Italy. It’s the moral of this story. I do recall some hot days in the David Wilson library in Leicester, but nothing quite like this. Where the air turns to carbonara sauce and you have to punch […]
European Weather: Waterworld
This is simply a postcard to say that, yes, the weather is being weird everywhere. We’re not even safe in Italy. Overly warm winter — although it didn’t feel like it — and then overly cold March. Followed by overly rainy April (don’t give me that April Showers baloney). The spring has had several false […]
Transport in Turin: Speed
A major Italian city needs a major Italian transport system, and Turin has just the ticket. The ticket in question costs €1,50 (with the current state of the economy I won’t bother to give you a currency conversion, but you can at least be assured that’s still less than £1.50), and it allows you 90 […]
Caffè Italiano: Roman Holiday
A large portion of the students at Leicester — and any university — spend quality time frequenting the coffee houses on campus. In Leicester’s case that may mean the Library Café or Café Piazza, or perhaps Starbucks if they don’t like coffee.* For Erasmus students in Italy, coffee almost inevitably becomes an invariable factor in […]
Module Madness II: Three Kings
We’re in the second semester now here in Turin, which means three new modules. I hand-picked them myself. For anyone wishing to study English Literature abroad, I think they’re a rather good representation of the kind of things to expect. This post is, of course, the sequel to the Emmy-award-winning Module Madness I put up […]
Erasmus Gallery II: One Hour Photo
Here we have the sequel to a simple photographic post I made before Christmas, in which I intend to make a picture tell 999+ words. Included are pictures from my visit to some fellow Erasmus students in Bologna, Turin in the snow, and some rare curiosities for your consumption. That’s all for this week, […]
Speaking English: Babel
US Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent politically-suspicious decision not to speak French has made me think a bit about the realities of monolingualism, whether real or pretend. Here in Turin, English is not widely spoken, and not widely spoken fluently. Naturally, I think the likelihood of finding someone who speaks English in Italy is […]
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