I'm moving to Italy!

So about my big adventure of 13/14: Still in school and still young the world is full of possibilities and there are lots of things on my “100 things to do before I die” list and I’m not usually sharing to much of my personal life, but this 13/14 I see as one great trip. I’m going on exchange to Italy, my neighbors will be Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, haha… I haven’t gotten a host family, so I don’t know what city, hopefully somewhere near Rome. Or Tuscany. Or the sea...
   . I don’t know anything. I know about 20 Italian words and none of them will get me far on my own in a foreign country, with classes in a language that I don’t know. So it’s time to start an Italian course and a new blog. I will still tell you about the cities and the country here, but if you want to follow the life of an exchange student, visit: www.destinationit.blogspot.com (you can go just by clicking the link in the sidebar!) And check into my new life in beautiful Italy in September. I will launch the site properly later, just thought you all should know about it J

-Mari Clémentine

Pisa - Capital of Tourists

I have so much trouble getting up in the morning these days, but eventually we went to the train station to catch a train for Pisa. Pisa is the capital of Italy in the eyes of tourists not going to the rest of Italy, or so it seems. Never in my life have I met so many tourists on a train connecting two cities.

    Around Pisa we discovered a bunch of people speaking languages we could understand and we all came for the very same reason: The Leaning Tower. It’s actually the freestanding bellower of the Duomo and was constructed on unstable foundation – therefor it became the “leaning” tower.

    Pisa was hot. We crossed Arno River again. I ran into an Italian bookstore just because of the air-condition. Pisa: Not much to see but the leaning tower, but people speak great English! We were supposed to go on to Lucca or Volterra, but the heat were too much so we returned to Florence for one last drink at Hard Rock. Next stop: London, baby!

Mari Clémentine

Sunflowers

Ah, the train. The air-condition. Love. We even had our compartment for ourselves most of the way. It was two years earlier, on a 7-hour long trip from Rome to Milan, I first saw the sunflower fields. I don’t think I’ve passed anything more beautiful during a train ride. So ever since that day I’ve had a thing for the sunflowers.

   As many of you may know I’m a writer. I write. I’ve written four books and writing in general is a great part of my life. It was only months after my trip to Italy I wrote a chapter called Grand Soleil (which means sunflower in French) where one of my characters gives a sunflower to my main person. It was set in the city of Paris.

 Sunflower fields of Tuscany

    Paris is one of my favorite places. I’ve visited the city several times and the autumn of 2011 we went there again. The first thing I see when we arrive in the city: A market where they sell flowers. Sunflowers.

    It wasn’t until this summer my passion for the flower started blooming again as I was walking the streets of Oslo with my boyfriend. We went cross a square where they always sell flowers out in the open, and there they were. Pretty, yellow sunflowers in a pot. And now not my home nor my hotels rooms are complete without a bouquet of sunflowers. So if anyone wonders where I am headed tomorrow, you’ll find me at the flower shop.

   Being back in Italy, on the very same track (from Rome to Milan) is kinda wonderful, kinda weird, but when it comes to seeing the sunflower fields again, I do not regret taking the train this time either. Florence, here I come.

Like a 14-year old in Paris

Mari Clémentine