Last posts, last parties. Exams are over, it’s been some insane final weeks regarding project work, presentations and exams. The most surprising element is how unorganized exams are. I had four, none of them started on time, and the worst case reached a 35 minute delay because there was a lecture in the room for our exam. Now, there’s no reason to finish off with some boring stuff about studies and exams, so we obviously planned some partying. We started with a casual evening where it would be easy to talk and say goodbye to one another. About 16 of us had dinner at a restaurant near school after which we went to my place to get some more to drink. In fact, we already started drinking some of the booze at the restaurant, Martin shows off his secret pouring skills.

The following day, Friday 20th, was planned to be the big night. And what a night indeed. We kicked off with drinks and snacks at Melissa’s place, around 15 of us. All of us, plus others that prepartied elsewhere, went to Karma. Karma has simply been the best club for Friday evenings throughout the semester. This night really turned up to be la grande finale. Many of the people I met throughout the semester showed up, and the party was nothing less than amazing.

Ciao grazie.

Early December marks the CEMS Annual and Graduation event. Let’s cut to the chase, there’s a career fair - it’s like any career fair - and it’s not very interesting. However, for the people graduating there’s a large graduation dinner, for students there’s a buffet and after some hours everyone is joined together for a huge party. The location changes every year, last year Dublin, this year Milan (no travel expenses), next year Paris. The annual event attracts cemsies from around Europe, providing a good chance to meet up with people from back home. Anyway, I figure pictures of drunk people dancing speak for themselves…

So the second week was kind of short, not because they have less than seven days a week in Australia, but because Camilla had to study for exams (and I supposedly had to do some group work for the studies in Italy). Anyhow, on Tuesday 13th, as soon as Camilla finished her last exam we left for Sydney… e.g she finished around noon and we got on the flight around 15.

We had booked a hotel in King’s Cross, which basically is the funky part of town - much like Vesterbronx & Istedgade in Copenhagen. The hotel was fine and cheap. That is, it wasn’t that cheap, but our room was cheap because of booking online (saved ~100 Australian dollars/night). The view from the hotel was very fitting with the price, I mean its by far the most interesting light shaft I’ve seen (and only?). There was this really cool fountain nearby, so you can see it both at night and day on the pictures. Anyhow, the first day we just walked around downtown Sydney and went to the movies.

The second day, Wednesday, we kicked off by going to the Opera house. Ironically, we started by going up next to it from where - I’m sorry to say - it is anything but pretty. I’ll spare you the close-up pictures, and we also skipped the inside tour. Instead, you can look at the millions of pictures we ended up taking at a distance. Of other mentionable atrocities in this category you find a bowl made out of melted plastic soldiers and of course the Harbour Bridge, which also happens to be more famous than pretty.

We spent the rest of day in walking around The Rocks, shopping, and eating near our hotel. There were a couple of curiosities such as the totem and probably the coolest sink in the world. Basically the whole bathroom table/sink is one large piece of black marble which leans downwards into the wall. Just open the faucet and the water will run straight into the wall. Must have! Also, it is really weird to walk around in shorts and find Christmas decorations all over the place.

Day three, Thursday 15th. Darling Harbour, Market in Chinatown, Hyde Park, and Sky Tower. We took the train from our hotel to downtown and caught the monorail to Darling Harbour. Lots of shops, lots and lots of fountains, and other kinds of decorations. You can actually see the IBM building on one of the pictures, not a bad place for a corner office.

In the evening we went up in the SkyTower, a 360 degree view of Sydney. Unfortunately, everything is inside making it quite difficult to get good pictures due to reflections. We were also hoping to get good sunset pictures, but ended up with nothing but a bunch of clouds. A bit of a let down, but still a good view in retrospect. Last two pictures show the the Christmas three from the previous day but now fully decorated and the fountain I mentioned before.

The last day of my visit to Australia we opted for a walk through the botanical garden. The botanical garden, which is more like a park with a large assortment of trees and plants, covers a huge area in Sydney, and you can enter next to the Opera House (and tons of other places of course). So I’ll treat you to a few more Opera pictures, before heading back to Italy.

The second week kicked off with a two day trip to Surfers Paradise. Surfers is a town located on Gold Coast which, as the name reveals, is a series of towns on the coast, much like the French Riviera. Surfers, located about one hour south of Brisbane, was originally a place for surfers, hippies, and the likes of trendy people, but as trendy people attract the rich it is now filled with skyscrapers. Apparently the surfers have moved further south to Byron Bay.

We arrived midday on Sunday 4th and spend the afternoon and evening walking around Surfers, checking out stores, the beach, and so on. As you can see, there’s a really beautiful sunset although it goes down towards the country. And although there are many skyscrapers, the beach does not resemble Cannes or Rimini where the whole beach is covered by hotels and their reserved seats. In fact, you could buy something like a 100+ square meter apartment for 3m danish crowns.

The second day we went for a whale watching trip which also gave us the tourist tour of the river and expensive buildings in Surfers. Do note the floating church, interesting place to get married. The picture following the church is the Palazzo Versace, a 5 star hotel created by the Versace brand - unfortunately a tad too expensive for us.

On the water we saw 3 or 4 humpback whales. We got quite a performance, there was a calf that jumped out of the water several times (near-impossible to get good pictures of) and the mother telling us to bugger off with her tail. Not much more to say, the pictures speak for themselves.

I assume it’s no surprise for most of you that I spent my mid-term break in Australia visiting Camilla (woohoo!). I departed from Milan on Saturday 27^th of October, following a nice Friday party evening of course, flying over London and Singapore, and arriving in Brisbane Monday morning. Camilla and I spent the first week in Brisbane where she showed me around town, got accustomed to her place and friends, went partying and barbequing and we celebrated having been together for a year (with some delay, too).

I actually ended up being a tourist on the way down to Australia. With the stopover in Singapore I got the chance to see probably the most amazing airport I have ever seen. Not only does it have grandiose areas, it has several fountains, and it of course also has an outdoor(!) cactus garden and bar…

As mentioned, the following days were spent in Brisbane. For those unaware about Brisbane, it’s a fast growing city with 1-1½ million inhabitants. It’s located about 2 hours flight north of Sydney, meaning the climate is a lot warmer. A river swings it way throughout the town and one of the public means of transport are the rivercats that travel up and down on the river. Finally, downtown Brisbane is basically covered by skyscrapers with hotels and businesses.

The pictures just show some of the buildings and areas. The cafe we’re eating at is called The Coffee Club. It’s basically a Starbucks/Baresso/etc type of place except that some of them also have a “restaurant” section which serves cafe food. They make awesome all-day breakfasts as seen on the pictures.

The first Wednesday Camilla and I joined her house mates for a night out. Camilla’s favorite place in Brisbane is a place called Downunder which basically caters to students and internationals. The first couple of pictures shows our cab ride to Downunder, which of course turned up to completely overcrowded as you can see in the queue… maybe going there on Halloween wasn’t the greatest idea. Anyways we went to an other place nearby called Victory for drinks and Karaoke. After some time we went back to Downunder for drunken dancing…

Camilla and I had agreed to spend one of the days celebrating our 1st year together, although we were a couple of weeks late. We decided to check into a fancy hotel in Brisbane to get a bit away from everything and just be able to enjoy one an other. The hotel had an outdoor pool on the roof, but unfortunately we didn’t get all that lucky with the weather so we only used it a little. As for dinner we had booked a table at a restaurant on the riverside called ChaChaChar. ChaChaChar was a great place, awesome service and great steaks (their specialty)… pay attention to their steak knives…

The week ended with a barbecue on south bank. South bank is basically a recreational area on the opposite of the river from the central business district, but on the same side as Camilla lives on. There’s a large pool (which was closed), plenty of grills to use, and grassy areas. Food, good weather, football…

This weekend my parents visited me here in Milan, arriving on Friday morning and leaving Monday afternoon. Friday evening I just put my apartment at display followed by aperitivo. It quickly turned out that they also enjoyed the concept so we ended up having aperitivos every evening.

As for sight seeing, it’s no secret that Milan doesn’t offer all that much so we focused around the old area of Brera, which I have visisted a few times, and the Duomo. The Duomo is one of the largest churches in the world (either is or used to be the 3rd largest after Rome and Sevilla) and it has 3500 statues on the outside. As a result, the inside which can contain some 40000 people, is not all that interesting. The main attraction of the church is the ability to walk on the roof. The view, one of the highest in Milan, is amazing.

It’s been slow on updates lately. Basically we entered “everyday” life with following lectures, doing group works, and partying or at least going out for a few drinks 5 times a week. And as the “everyday” life doesn’t warrant camera’s as much, I haven’t had much to update.

Never the less, here are a few pictures from two nights out. The first three are from the Armani nightclub which is a really exclusive club in the basement of the Armani store here in Milan. Girls can get in for 10€ while guys more or less have to purchase a table at 30€ per person. There’s only two pictures from inside as the guards were quick to tell us to stop taking pictures. It was a good night, but not something you do every day. The remaining pictures are from a running dinner. We were a few groups who had dinner in various places so my group had the entry at my place, then we moved for the main course and finally desert in a last place.

The weekend of the 22nd and 23rd of September the student organization organized a bus trip to Tuscany. Leaving at 6:15 Italian time (7ish) from the university we drove to a nature park to enjoy some lunch. From there we went to a wine castle in Tuscany to try some of their wines and a short tour explaining how to make wine. We tried one white and two red wines, and while the former was decent the latter two were quite boring. As many of the participants on the trip were more interested in the alcohol percentage over the actual taste the tour was quite short, the tour guide quickly perceived that people had no clue/low interest – not that it mattered as Italian wine barrels look remarkably similar to the ones I’ve seen in France…

Anyhow, we then drove from the wine castle to Pisa where we were going to eat dinner, party, and stay the night. Dinner was good, although in very Italian style (disorganized, not the actual food), party itself was so-so, after party at 3am at the campsite was great. In fact we ended up drinking some Vino Santo from the aforementioned wine castle that someone bought there. It tasted great, but my view my have been biased by the earlier alcohol consumption.

On Sunday we had an organized tour of Pisa. Basically, Pisa is a small town of 80-90k inhabitants that would be completely unknown if it wasn’t for the leaning tower. The leaning tower is one of the three main buildings in the area of the cathedral, which in addition to the tower contains the cathedral and Italy’s largest baptistery. We only saw the tower from the outside as it costs a fortune to get upstairs and instead settled for the other buildings which certainly did merit a visit.

This is one of the events I have anticipated ever since I first heard of it. It’s a simple concept, and beyond that I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

- Rent a special tram
- Get a Heineken sponsorship
- Get 40-50 people into Heineken merchandise and decorate the tram with Heineken
- Load the tram with said 40-50 people and drive around Milan for 3 hours
- Party on.

On Wednesday September 12th nine of us set sails, or wheels, for Rimini in two cars. We stayed a hostel not to far from the beach as September is already out of season for Rimini. The town was indeed a bit dead, but it was a great trip which lasted until Saturday morning.

One the way down we stopped in Bologna to pretend to be tourists, and I must say that we succeeded. First of all we drove around town without a map, having no clue where to go. Secondly, we managed to arrive late enough for restaurants to be closed for lunch. Thirdly, well we also saw some stuff… Basically we just walked around in Bologna and the main highlight was to go up into one of the old towers. The trip up is about 100m, and includes 500 steps.

We also had an excursion to San Marino, the small state inside Italy with about 28000 inhabitants. The main interest of San Marino is the old castle which is placed on a very high hill and explains how such a small republic could keep its independence for so long. The view up there was great. A great view to the Adriatic sea and a similarly great view into Italy.

Finally, as going to Rimini without partying would be an act of blasphemy there’s also a few party pictures… We had some good fun at the hostel drinking and playing games, and of course at the beach enjoying a bottle of polish white wine.