From the left: Kadi, random hostel lady and Mark

Hey guys, we are officially alive and well!

As you can see I found myself a lovely office

As you can see I found myself a lovely office to write about our first impressions. It seems we have gotten ourselves a new form of packing duty — cannot leave Bergamo, our first stop, before I write about it and Kadi has finished the pictures we take, so from now on you will probably hear from us briefly before we move on to a next destination.

It’s funny how sometimes you just talk to a friend about your passion of Italian food and the next moment you are already planning a trip to Tuscany together. As many of you know I always say these stuff like “I am moving to germany in September” or “I’ll travel allover Europe this spring” but I’ve actually been lazy enough to enjoy just talking about these things without taking action. When Kadi and I decided to come here, even I had some doubts about our determination. After all, it was another one of those “ideas” and we we’re drinking wine while developing it.

Look moms, we are fine!

But here we are now, ready to leave the touristy first location and it’s starting to sink in that we actually took this trip. We made it to Bergamo at midnight on first September and eased in to everything at some hotel near the airport. The morning after we agreed that it was the last one we stay at and same goes with the taxy we took. We’ll see how long a streak we can keep on going without the usual comforts of a cleaning lady and a paid driver.

As promised, Kadi bought a hat right away. It seems to be a hit, too — the men don't even try to hide their glances at her.

Yesterday we had a closer look at the town, already. First off, we reluctantly accepted the brosures from the tourist office, ignored everything the nice guide suggested us to check out and went for an icecream instead. When we saw two older women in the park eating a plain bread with fresh slices of ham, cheese and tomatoes we decided to copy them instead of going for a fancy dinner. Turned out to be a great idea since we found a delhi with lots of good stuff just around the corner from our hostel for the night. A quick reminder of our Scandinavian origin was brought to us when we met our roommates — a Swedish backpacker Rasmus and a Finnish woman called Riitta. I hope we didn’t ruin the spirit of this 19 year-old traveller of the world by suggesting him that Lambrusco from the delhi is to die for.

Luckily you don't have to translate salami or lambrusco..

Already a little jolly from the bottle of wine we took a journey to the upper town of Bergamo, the so called old town. I kept on being me when we took the tram up there and managed to miss the restaurant I was looking forward to introduce Kadi to. I’ve been there once before and in my memory the tram rode right inside the place and you could see the whole town from up there. So anyways, we missed it and tried our luck on a walkaround. We even stepped inside a church but agreed shortly that we are not ready to get inspired by the higher powers, yet. When we got back to the tram stop the restaurant had appeared back to it’s usual place. Weird how they managed to hide it from us at first!

Funny story about the church: after realizing we're not that into JC so far, we still figured it would be interesting to light a candle in the altar. Outside we couldn't find our lighter and had to go back inside to get it during the “hail jesus concert”! It was weird… did it, though.

And now, here we are, “packing”. I am actually too excited about moving forward, so I think it’s best if I stop here for now. Plus, I kinda have an appetite for the icecream place we found yesterday.

Next up: trip to Piacenza through a seemingly small town called Crema.

Talk to you soon!
Buona giornatta!

Mark and Kadi