La mia casa è la tua.

Trieste, finally! Tomorrow we will meet the members of the IIMC Trieste for a little interview and encounter.

Our tour in Western Europe is coming to an end, soon we will be in the Balkans.

In Italy we descended from the mountains to the sea. It was nice to see the landscapes changing, from mountains with icy headwind, to a beautiful green gorge, next the green hills with beautiful old Italian villages on top (a challenge for the calves though!) and cyclists shattered all over the landscape, to end in a flat farmer’s landscape again.

Apart from cycling, we had gorgeous experiences with our hosts. We shared pasta della mamma, we ate and slept in an Erasmus student house, we played some basketball game and 'Dopo' (a frantic card game with very enthusiastic cheers in Italian) with our last host, we got to know the difference between ‘real’ salami and the supermarket version, and maybe we drunk a little bit too much grappa 😊 …

Next to that, we always forget to make pictures of our short encounters on the road during cycling, but they are equally important, these people.

The ‘Ciao Regazzi’, ‘Salve’ or ‘Dove vendite?’ (waar kom je vandaan; de eerste gok is altijd ‘Hollanda?)

have become daily food during our biking days. Italians love the bike, although maybe a little lighter than our bikes with the heavy backpacks. And a very warm memory to the very Italian grandmother in the gorge (we asked for some water as our bottles were completely empty) who kept on talking and who offered us some local apple slices in dough. La mia casa è la tua.

Grazie Italia.