Banks: Suck here too. I never realised that my UK account was such a good deal. In Itay, you can't even have an account for free, and you pay for everything you do. In Germany, at least they only charged you to use other people's cash machines.

Computers are much better in the Uni. Genova. Even though they have no support staff, and just manage them themselves, things work which didn't in Karlsruhe, like ssh key generation. This is important for visitors.
I'll have to build xemacs again though..

Flats all the rental flats in Genova seem to be under the control of a "casa mafia", who we're going to go and visit later..