The time starts...now!

I have been inspired by my favourite brother, to keep a blog and a record, a time capsule of my time here in Italy. 6 weeks ago, I left Australia's shores, for the Mafia prone, spaghetti obsessed, beautiful country that is Italy. The time ticks by much too quickly. I have been in Siena for almost one month now. You can check out the stats on Wikipedia if you want a good reference for an assignment, but I will make your work easy for you: Siena is one of the many University towns of Tuscany, with a population of 60000, 25000 of which are university students, and 450 of which are ERASMUS students, of which 5 are Austrlian. Note, these figures are subject to change without notice.

I can say from a completely unbiassed third-party perspective that Siena is without a doubt the most beautiful hill-side town in all of Tuscany. No cars are allowed within the city walls of the medieval town, so in the city centre it is just the hustle and bustle of busy tourists tip toeing their way through Siena's narrow streets. The city centre is divided into 17 contradas, which are constantly at battle with one another and celebrating all year round the the Palio, which this year was won by Tartuca (the turtle). Such celebrations consist of daily parading and marching including drums and men in traditional medieval dress, tights included. There are festas for the contradas at least every week. Last weekend, there was a big festa in Tartuca, to celebrate their victory, the theme was Egyptian and this time the men ditched their tights for some lovely white skirts.