Il vento di Bellinzona

Today we had the famous wind of Bellizona. On the phone Nico said, "It is too cold outside to take the bike." But when there's wind it's usually warm because it's Foehnwind. And, ecco, it was so warm in the sunshine I was worried of getting a sunburn!! And even though after having missed my Mom's birthday by one day (sorry for that again) I finally realized it is November because today is the 12th, the birthday of my best friend Danny, it isn't like November at all. Because for me November is all about the cold and the grey. Riding my bike through Muenster's half frozen streets, with a scarf wrapped around my face and thick gloves, the wet-cold permeating even the warmest clothes, while the sky above me presses down in that depressing dark gray for weeks on end. Arriving at my apartment my face red, my hands frozen stiff and my ears hurting and my first thought is "hot tea!" But, really, it feels like September here with golden leaves in the sunshineand the wind rattling the shutters and thus I really didn't see how late it already was... holy cow, next month there's Christmas!! What a weird thought at 26 degrees celsius in the sunshine!!

So once again we took the "last rays of sunshine" in the Piazza Collegiata and solved a Sudoko while the wind was beating all the leaves and a few plastic bags and table cloths through Bellinzona in direction of Giubiasco. They have cut almost all the branches of the trees now so that all the cities resemble the cities in France when I went there. Nico says it is to avoid the mess of the leaves but Pierre said it was for having more shade in the summer. But I found it's a typical Mediterranean thing. Later we went to the stazione and I bought a phone card with which I will call my friend Danny subito. If I remember my German, that is.

Later we went to the Valle Maggia and walked around a bit in the sunhine and climbed the rocks. "The river's beauty hides its danger"... there are signs like that in the four languages Italian, French, German and English in all the pretty places because a couple of tourists managed to get themselves killed. And then we went into Locarno and now we're back in Bellinzona and as soon as we entered the città the winds picked up again.

Yesterday we went into Varese again, a città in Italia I really like. The traffic is really crazy there but there are all these little shops and I like the atmosphere of it. We also went to the market in Ponte Tresa, which was way different from the one in Muenster. I bought a sacco of biscotti and they were buonissimiiiiiiiii!!!