Happy Sant'Ambrogio everyone!

Ho, ho, ho, it's nearly christmas! Well, maybe that's not entirely true, but we're totally getting into the xmas mood! It helped that this Friday was Sant'Ambrogio, the patron saint of Milano, so Fedor and I were both free from work (well, Fedor was free and at University, they just lock the building so it's actually impossible to work, but that's just a detail). Instead, we started on our xmas shopping! And there are so many things to buy in this city, it's very exciting to go shopping!!! Particularly because I made 200€ last Wednesday by recording the slogan for a radio-advertisement in a few European countries (I did the Dutch, German and English slogans), so I actually had money to spend on shopping!


And the city is becoming so beautiful with all lights and decorations throughout, it's enchanting! A final thing that really adds to the athmosphere are a number of markets that open around this time. The official christmas market, I haven't actually been to, but I know from other years it's really lovely. The Sant'Ambrogio market named O Bei, O Bei, however, was as lovely as always. An enormous market with lots of christmas goodies, and food and mulled wine (gluhwein). I love going there...


A separate market that started in December 1 and ended today is the Fiera Artigianale in the local convention centre. It's an ENORMOUS fair with handmade goodies and lots of food from all Italian regions, as well as many other countries of the world. It's absolutely gigantic and we went today with friends, but there was simply too much to see (and taste).


Of course we have also had a few social activities during these days, going to (finally) see the new, uhm, well, house is not appropriate, neither is appartment, but room sounds too aweful. Let's say we went to see the new "domicile" of our friends Felix and Annaig. It's, well, small. But the building is gorgeous and their kitchen is 3 times as big as ours. And they made good use of it, cooking us a grand meal on Friday. Yesterday we went out for aperitivo because Nissrine was in Milan for the weekend. She was very sad, because of all the trouble with her permesso. She actually has to go back to Canada for a few months, even though she has a job and the company is willing to do everything for her. But the bastards at the police station refuse to give her a residence permit. It's sad.

Anyways, the shopping weekend is nearly over and it's back to business on Monday.

Ciao,
OJ