I couldn't stop myself this time - or rather, I didn't manage to post this in 2 or 3 parts, which would probably have been more appropriate. So either read it when you have lots of time, or split it yourself ;)

I have been living in Italy for long enough now to forget half of my Spanish (which is bad news) and swap it for Italian. So next to not being able to talk proper German as I keep mixing it with Dutch, now I am also not able to speak either Italian or Spanish, I just speak a mix of the two - which is mostly understandable to the Italians it seems. When I am lost in thoughts and suddenly in a situation where I should greet someone I still sometimes need to suppress a "Günaydın" (Good morning in Turkish). So much for my verbal skills at the moment.
I have also learned, by now, to not view a greeting "Ciao bella" as an insult, which I did at the beginning. I mean, if someone reduces me to my looks (be they nice or not), that is clearly an insult. But in Italian every woman is "bella", whether it's because somebody doesn't know your name (or remember it), or because there is three other Martinas in the team, so whether they say "bella" or Martina is about as clear an indication of who they are talking to, or just because a simple "ciao" is too short and you just use it as a way of saying "hey you". By the way, I have had interesting reactions from people when they hear my name, in different parts of the world: some get it the first time and don't think much of it, some just can't pronounce it (in Turkey they found my name really hard), but it is the first time in my life now, that I get reactions like: "Oh, no, really? Another one?!"
To which I learned to reply: "Yes, exactly, Martina, like all the other Martinas too." Well.
Anyway, so back to the bella. I keep wondering what would happen if you say to a man "Ciao bello". But I don't know any man well enough to try it... However, no matter how they would react, the Italian language - just like French and Spanish, for that matter (and maybe most other languages as well, but it's especially striking right now) - is quite sexist, when you look at it properly: you use different forms of words depending on whether you address (or talk about) females or males. Which is okay. However, if there is a group of females and there is only one male, you use the male form of the word. Which is rather stupid: you have a team of girls with a male coach. They played really well and you want to tell them. In order to note also the role of the coach you would have to use the male form of whichever words you use. If there is a male team with a female coach (I know, but just assume for a sec.) then whichever words you choose will not even show whether or not you acknowledge the role of the coach. I mean... really!

Another curiosity about the Italian language. In just about every language in the world, football is called football or some variation of it - well, let's not count Americans right now, because who knows why they call a game football, when the ball is played by hand, but everywhere else, it's football. Well, in Italian it is calcio. Calcio is the term for a shot you take. Calcio on goal, calcio from the corner... So, when you call it calcio, you would expect, maybe, that most of what they do in a regular football match is calciare - shooting. My own experiences have not been any different than in any other country I have played at: The girls I play with also seem to be scared to take shots. Why ever they call it calcio then, who knows...
None the less, I really, really, really enjoyed the last few months with the team. The trainings were great and I had a lot of fun with the girls. I almost cried every weekend at the realization that I can't play in the matches and then they even made it to the play-offs for promotion to Serie C, and they only just didn't win the ticket for the higher league. Which was when I really almost cried. And I so much wished I could have played with them, so much indeed, that I was thinking seriously of staying for the next season, just to play with them for real. But I had made other plans already. Maybe I will come back. I really was having a good time n this place.

Talking about football, while I stayed here I also managed to go to a few trainings of the floorball team in Milano and play a few tournaments with them. Milano, although close is not just around the corner, so I could not go as often as I would have liked to but it was still nice to be with that team as well. Nice to see how floorball develops in Italy....

Apart from the language, the two things I noticed most about Italy were: cheese and roundabouts. Cheese is not so surprising, maybe: parmigiano is put in almost every dish. Or else it is eaten after the main course with bread. In any case, food seems to be so much more important a topic in Italy than in most other countries. Which is certainly not a bad thing but much more than I was used to. Roundabouts, on the other hand, are literally everywhere. There is barely any intersection of roads that has not been made into a roundabout. And while they may be quite nice for cars, for cyclists they are extremely annoying and quite dangerous. Obviously, roundabouts are not intended for vehicles passing each other inside - which is, of course, why this is also not allowed. However, it being Italy, this fact doesn't stop people from doing it anyway and way too often I have been passed on the left by a car while the same is turning to the right, where I wanted to continue straight (or round) in the roundabout. I am still alive, as you can guess, but I was lucky many times on these occasions.
It is quite surprising to me to see how many cyclists there are around Italy. Most of them are in training on their racing bikes, but there are MANY. Or, rather, the surprise is not so much the fact that there are many cyclists, but what I find hard to understand is, rather, that despite the fact that there are so many cyclists, there is almost no infrastructure for them apart from the main cycle routes. For myself this makes cycling annoying and a little bit dangerous, but I realized that I could not take the kids for cycling tours because there were no roads that were safe for them. And that was very sad. And I wonder why they don't start building cycling or walking paths next to the roads.

So I have managed to go to Milano several times without seeing much more than metro stations and gyms. With the floorball team I also went to Varese and to Venezia, again visiting only the main sights there: the gym and a McDonalds. Now I went to Pisa to visit the famous bird ringing station for two weeks. So I successfully managed to see all the important things in Italy and I am ready to move on.

The last few weeks were a little bit different from the rest of my stay here. First I went to Pisa to work at the bird ringing station there for a couple of weeks. We didn't catch a lot of birds but of the few birds we caught many were new to me to see in the hand, and we caught a lot of shorebirds which is nice even as such. So I still had a good time - until it got really cold and wet and we had to close the nets. Then I took my chance to escape and go back to visit my friends at the eco-village that I visited on my way to Turkey, and this time, as you might have noticed already, I brought a camera... It was again very nice and relaxing to be there. A lot of work in the garden, some work on the house they are renovating. A lot of good food. Shame on me, it was the first time in my life that I cooked and ate nettles. But better late than never! Definitely good skills to have...
It rained both on my way there and back but the days in between were rather nice. One night was clear enough for us to go star-watching and I saw my star sign for the first time (it not being visible in the summer). And for the rest I got to relax a little before going back to my now rather busy life with the family near Lecco.
As I said, it was raining on my way back to the train. I was hiking down the mountain as it was starting to rain. I had long stopped trying to get a ride with one of the few cars that are going on that road, so just submitted myself to my fate and tried to enjoy the hike not thinking about how it would be to sit in the train for 6 hours with clothes dripping wet. But, miracles still happen: a car suddenly stopped. A lady was offering me a ride. I got in. If you get such a rare chance, you have to take it. "Hi," the lady greeted me, and asked me where I was from. "I am from Brazil," she told me. "Which is why I stopped. Because Italians don't stop." Yes. I had noticed that. It was a funny coincidence though - or was it some strange fate's way of showing me that I had taken the right decision? Whether that was the goal or not, it did strengthen my wish to leave Europe behind me for a while. Mind you, the trains that day were all exactly on time, so the six-hour trip did not become an eight-hour trip as could easily have been expected - and as would probably be the case outside Europe...

Now I am back to the Lecco province. With my family. Back home. After three months, it certainly feels like home. And like my family. I have missed my boys. I have missed Manu, and I have also missed all the animals. One cat had just had kittens before I had left, so now they are really, really cute (before I left I thought they were rather ugly). So we get to play with the baby cats a lot. And, of course, we still play football every moment that we have nothing else to do. Most of all, of course, I have missed the football trainings with my team. So I get two weeks of home feeling, before I move on again now.

Basically it is just a short stop on my way to Austria. To say good-bye, mainly. Or hello. I don't really know. I have deliberately taken the past 12 months or so, to explore Europe a little bit more than I have before and it came as no surprise to me, of course, that, after all, it is a very nice place. There is not that much wrong with the continent after all. Still, I am also looking forward to discover new parts of the continent of South America, and I have bought a one-way ticket to Bogotá, Colombia, leaving at the end of June. I will get to do some more bird counts in Austria and then I am off. What exactly I will be doing there is still not so clear and much less clear is how long I will stay and where I will go afterwards. All I know is that I don't really feel inclined to pass another winter in Europe any time soon. As for Colombia, I have decided to just see what comes there and take the opportunities I get to get to know a new country, a new culture, nature and new birds, try new things and see where all of this will take me later.

This is also a good time for some reflection:
I spent the last 6 months helping families with kids. The nature of the job already means that you are in a somewhat strange position between child and parent. I don't like categories anyway, so whenever there is no need to put myself into one, I just don't. But I noticed frequently that when, for whichever reason, there was a clear separation between children and adults I instinctively always went for the place which was for the children - and stopped myself at the last second, reminding me that even with the very best intentions at age 34 I could not still be considered a child. But what am I then? Because I have about as much in common with the parents of the children as I do with the children, or even less. Clearly the fact that I have no partner, no children, no job and no home mean that I have not really arrived at that stage in life that we usually call adulthood. But there are other things too: like that my clothes are never clean for more than half an hour - at least not when the kids are home. I don't have enough sets of clothing to always change my dirty ones so have become very accustomed to walk around in dirty clothes even when I go to the store or something where "normal adult people" would choose to put on clean clothes normally. But then, being a field biologist, this "normal adult behaviour" is not so much for me anyway. It may mean more that I am not normal and less that I am childish. And normal I certainly am not, and have no desire to be.
My two experiences as Au Pair could not have been any more different than they were. Still, I also learned from both that I have no desire to have a partner, children, job or a home. It is nice to share somebody else's life once in a while. To pretend to be normal for some hours of the day. But for every hour of the rest of my life? No, thanks!
On the other hand, I found that, even apart from playing football, I really enjoyed most of the activities I did with the kids. Many things of which, I haven't done since I started studying, not because I didn't want to but somehow I never took the time. Like drawing, making presents for birthdays, baking cakes, do crafts. I came to believe that, compared to the life of a child, the life of a "real" adult is rather boring. All those things you don't ever do again. So, really, I must say that being kind of stuck between childhood and adulthood is probably the best place to be. And still I learn from experience (sometimes) so I even get to do things in a different than an often foolish childish way. So basically I am an adult child, if I had to label myself. Which means, that I could still not put myself in one of the categories. It's a little bit like when I have to choose my gender: I am certainly not a man, but I am also not quite a normal woman... Well, I dare say, instead of trying to fit into any of these categories, it would be more beneficial to get rid of the categories instead.

The other thing I was forced to reflect upon, was the existence or lack of a home. Of course, homelessness is normally viewed as a condition that you want to try to avoid getting into and if you got into it, you want to get out of it as soon as you can. There are certainly many, many people who are homeless without wanting to be so. There are also those, however, who choose it. I am not, as such, homeless most of the time - only while I am travelling, really. I have already written about being homeless and sleeping under the stars on my way to Turkey. But having a place to stay, like I do now, or a "home", the two are quite different. There are some things that are an advantage of having a home yourself. Or at least, I am sure there must be those too. I could think of many, but I can't think of any that I have not enjoyed even without a proper home. While I am writing this a three-week-old kitten is climbing up my leg. Which feels extremely homely.
On the other hand, a home brings with it all the responsibilities that I never want to have. People think it also brings with it a safety net. And maybe it does. I have come to the conclusion that probably the better safety net is trust in other people and trust in fate, if you want to call it that. The knowledge that you can always find a way through any situation that might arise. Something that comes with more experience. And with keeping the child in you alive that is able to quickly adjust to changes.

And one final thing that was on my mind lately, for a rather stupid reason. I was in Turkey and I suddenly wanted a book to read (other than the one I had). In Turkey, as you would guess, most books sold in book stores are in Turkish and I really wanted a German or English book. So I tried to get an e-book (for the first time in my life). I went on amazon, even made an account, found a book, wanted to pay for it, only to be told then that, in Turkey, I am not allowed to purchase it. What the heck?! So, I had to find a site with free e-books, and there is one which has all the old classics where copyrights are not valid any more. And this is how I came to read a novel by Thomas Mann for the first time (shame on me again!). It was much better than I had expected. It also made me think a lot. Because it was all about this lady who spent all her life looking for the right husband so she could be a good house-wife and bring some fame to her family. And I felt very, very fortunate that these times have passed, where the only thing a woman could do to have some kind of "success" is to marry the right man. And I appreciate my life as a free person so much more now.

Right, I will not bore you with these thoughts any longer. I may or may not write again before I depart. I hope to see many of you still, otherwise I promise I will write some time when I arrived in Colombia but don't expect anything too soon because I don't know how much internet access I will have. Also, obviously it will take me some time to get used to the climate, the culture, the language and everything else, before I can find something to write.

Wherever you are on the globe, have a good time in the meanwhile, enjoy your summer (or winter), and enjoy the pictures I finally put online. Dance in the rain, sleep under the stars and do that thing you have always wanted to do because tomorrow will come, whether you do it or not, but nobody will do it for you...