Africa

Mid-terms are finally finished and now it is time to enjoy Easter/Spring break! For me that means heading to Morocco! This will be my second trip to Africa and I am very much looking forward to it. We are planning to Visit Rabat, Marrakesh, Fez, the Desert, a few beaches, and possibly Casablanca or some other place!

As I said this will be my second visit to Africa. My first came about two years ago when I went on International Tour with the Wartburg choir in May 2008. One of our destinations was Cape Town South Africa! I have uploaded a short video with some of the music we heard in and some my pictures.

The pictures include but are not limited to: arriving at the airport to a concert, dinner in traditional restaurants with traditional South African music, cape town (quite foggy), boating to see seals, the cape of good hope, safari, Simon Estes' music school, and finally a picture from the Gugulethu concert (which is also where the music comes from).

Bologna Scuderia

So today was another beautiful day in Bologna! It was right around 65 and perfectly sunny. So instead of staying inside all day and studying for midterms (the smart thing to do) I took a few hour off to go for a bike ride. I decided to Bike up to San Luca Basilica as it would take me into the foothills and out of the city of Bologna (and it is Palm Sunday after all so a Basilica in Italy is only appropriate). I like to take the back roads up to San Luca instead of taking the main road next to the 666 arcades covering the sidewalk up to San Luca. The back roads are less steep and wind around several off the foothills giving some cool views of both the city of Bologna and San Luca. By the time you make it to San Luca though you have still done a decent amount of climbing and are ready for a break!

Foothills/Countryside on the way up to San Luca

San Luca Basilica

Obviously I have blogged about going up to San Luca before so that is not the main point of this blog post. When I made it to the top I was surprised to stumble upon a big event! The Bologna Scuderia were hosting a car race up the steep main road to San Luca, but the cars were not new flashy supercars, they were instead really cool old racing cars! So I spend around an hour hanging out watching all the action as cars came shooting up the road. I must say that this type of "old car show" sure beats the typical American version where everyone just parks their cars in a parking lot for people to look at. It was fun to see them all in action! It is always fun to stumble on events such as this and sure was better then studying for another hour. Below are pictures of some of the cars I saw and some video footage of some of the cars racing around. Enjoy!

This was my favorite Car

Quite low to the ground

Show cars first finishing, then shows cars coming to the very top of the hill, and finally all the cars headed back down the hill before round two!

PS - In case you had not checked lately I changed my blog layout. The picture/title at the top is a photo of the Bologna skyline at sunset! I thought it added a neat new edge to the blog!

Sicily

While more and more days are starting to look like spring here in Bologna, we are by no means home free. Often a 50 degree and sunny day is followed up by several 30 and rainy days (I know nothing compared to Minnesota winters...but still ugly). So in an attempt to escape Bologna life eight other SAIS students and myself went down to Sicily last weekend!

Our flight was at 6:30 am Friday morning with Ryanair! The upside of the early morning flight was that we were in Sicily by 8:00 am and had the whole day there. We spent the first part of the day traveling to the town we would be staying in Cefalu. Well situated in the middle of the northern coast of the Island we heard it was a beautiful beach town that was well situated for day trips to other places in Sicily.

The weather did not let us down as on Friday when we arrived it was in the mid 60s and sunny out! In fact we were even crazy enough to go to the beach and get in the water (all of the Italians thought we were crazy!). Since the weather was so nice on Friday we spent basically the whole day hanging out at the beach a relaxing. That evening we found an excellent local restaurant where we enjoyed great food and wine. I should also mention that the B&B we stayed in was amazing! It was right on the sea and had a huge terrace that was about 40 feet above where the sea met the shore.

The crew after getting off the train in Cefalu (la rocka in the background)

Me in the main square of Cefalu (where we had breakfast every morning) with the Duomo in the background

The view from the terrace at our B&B

Everybody on the terraceTossing the Frisbee around on the beach

More Frisbee with the setting sun in the background

Me on the beach in Cefalu

Saturday the weather did not prove to be as great as it was only about 50 and mostly cloudy. Still we wanted to make the best of it so we chartered a van and a driver to take us all to Mt. Etna! The driver was very excited to have a bunch of young students and dubbed his car the "Disco Bus" and played crazy techno, disco, pop, and all other forms of loud blasting music the whole way to Mt. Etna. By the time we got to Etna we were all a bit sick (either caused by the Music or those famous Italian driving skills). Once there we were able to walk around the lava fields and craters and explore part of the mountain. As it is still "winter" in Sicily Mt. Etna had a lot of snow and people were even sledding and skiing on it (what a difference from the previous day)! Due to all the snow all routes to the peak of Mt. Etna were closed, but we still enjoyed exploring the volcano. On our way back we asked the driver if we could have a bit more music and managed to sleep a good portion of the way back to Cefalu. The evening then concluded with a good amount of excellent Italian food and Sicilian Vino!

The Disco Bus Crew

Mt. Etna (click on the picture to get a better view)

View Upwards into the clouds towards the top! (note the ski lifts)

Me in the lava fields

Sunday was our last day in Sicily. The weather unfortunately deteriorated further and it rained most of the day. Still this did not stop us from further exploring Cefalu. We managed to go part way up "la rocka" a huge rock right in the town of Cefalu that had excellent overviews of the surrounding areas. Mid-afternoon we took a train into Palermo there we had a late afternoon meal and wandered the town to see some of its sights before jumping on our bus back to the airport for our flight back to Bologna.

Me on "la rocka" in Cefalu

The view from "la rocka"

Cathedral in Palermo

Opera House in Palermo

All in all it turned out to be a great trip. It would of been awesome to have 3 hot and sunny days but we made sure to enjoy our time away from school and each others company no matter the weather or conditions.

Movie of some of our activities. Starts out with a panorama of our view from the B&B, then me getting into the sea to swim, and finally some shots of the disco bus (notice please the crazy music and the drivers lack of hands on the steering wheel)

I imagine I will not do a lot of traveling the remainder of the month now as mid-terms will be upon us very soon and in order to save money for my spring break trip to Morocco! If you would like to see more pictures from my trip to Sicily check them out on Facebook (no account needed).