the university of bologna is the oldest in europe (founded in 1088). these are just a few images from the university museum with its many globes, and then also from the terrace rooftops. bologna has the prettiest red roofs and these angles really allow you to see the towers, as opposed to the bird's eye view from the towers.
potsdam is a small city 25 minutes outside of berlin by train. it's known as the location where the potsdam conference was held and overall is a very historical town. (it's really famous for its palaces, but more on those later). this is where david spent his 4 months in germany- studying at the university of potsdam. i was fortunate enough to visit a few times- once when we were just finishing our european adventure, the second when i had just come back from the philippines, and the third when we spent our last week in europe together before flying home. these photos are from one day when we started at the dragon house and then took a path that took us into a random residential area. it's a bright, quiet, charming kind of town.
getting home was quite the adventure- a four hour layover in munich turning into 6.5 when our plane was delayed and then the other 11.5 hour flight just to get to san francisco. but 206 days and 12 countries later i am finally here.
after my latin summer school program in bologna, i flew to berlin to stay with david for our last week in europe. before now, i've been to berlin/potsdam twice before- early april and then again in late june when i had just come back from the philippines. other than this post, however, i haven't written much about the stuff i've done here.
before sunday, the last time i'd been to a zoo was at least 4 years ago at the san francisco zoo. seeing these amazing animals in person really reminds you of how incredible they are. my two favorite parts of the trip were seeing hippos up close (and seeing how the GIGANTIC creatures are so good at swimming) and also the fact that it was summer and most animals just had babies in the spring.
although ravenna used to be the capital city of the western roman empire and later the kingdom of the ostrogoths, my interest in ravenna lies in the fact that it is home to some of the best preserved byzantine mosaics in the world.
in less than 24 hours i'll be on my way to berlin, my final european stop before heading back home next saturday. it's bittersweet knowing that today is my last day in this beautiful country.
true to my wanderlust, i couldn't resist a little day trip to padova this weekend and enjoyed the sunshine. i guess in english you would call this city "padua," but i think "padova" is much nicer to say so i'm going to stick with that. padova is a quaint little town in the veneto region (it's close to venice) and it houses one of the oldest universities in italy (after bologna, of course).
this normally quiet town was particularly quiet because it was a sunday and most everything was closed. the city, however, is cute enough to enjoy just walking around and appreciating its sleepiness.
on wednesday my friend nikolas came up from florence to visit me here in bologna. bologna is pretty small so we mostly just walked around and then we decided to take the hike up to the basilica della madonna di san luca, or.. just san luca for short. when i took italian last fall, i did a report on bologna so i've known about this walk for a while and wanted to walk up when i visited in february but didn't have enough time.
the porticos felt endless. every time we thought we saw the end of the porticos, we'd turn the corner and see another long stretch of porticos before us. but, we FINALLY made it. the little church was lonely and beautiful, and we felt triumphant.
