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…

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…

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.

The entire week - monday to friday - we had our so-called Blocked Seminar. It’s a one week seminar with eight hours of classes which ended by a two hour written exam on friday. The subject was Public Management, or in other terms, how can the public institutions attract investments and help the national companies compete without distorting competition.

Every day we had lunch in the Bocconi Restaurant. It is actually quite similar to a restaurant, and is usually only used by teachers, professors and the like. Basically it’s far too expensive for students. In any case, as you can see in the pictures the lunch consisted of a nice buffet, wine and coffee if you so desired.

We had social events every day of the week (pictures from the tourism in the post below) and we of course had to finish in a grande finale after the friday’s exam. We first went for aperitivo at a place called g-lounge, following which we had pizza (at 11pm). After dinner we went to a place in Milan with tons of bars, and where people stand all over the street and have fun. Finally, we walked down to Naviglio which is the only water in Milan also covered by bars and a few clubs where we ended the evening.

Camilla left for Australia, but at least we had a nice party to say goodbye.