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.