It's good to be back in Italy. It's hot, sunny, humid, the food is great and everyone seems to be in a good mood.

Ok, much to catch up on:

Nájera Fiesta

Nájera is a small village near to Eduardo's home city of Logroño. We went there for the main day of their Fiesta, the feast of St Peter and St Paul, just after I had given my talk to the University of La Rioja where Edu works. We'd been warned to wear old clothes, so we ran home to change into shorts and old t-shirts, and in my case sandals, and then sprinted to make the bus at the bus station. We just made it, which is always a good way to start a Fiesta. In Nájera, we met the four girls Eduardo had mysteriously lined up for us to spend the day with, and their instant reaction was to point at my sandals and wag their fingers. Oh dear. At this point I looked around the assembled crowd of thousands of potential Fiesta people and noticed that nobody, absolutely nobody, was wearing anything but shoddy old trainers. Ah. Fortunately, one of the girls had some spare trainers in her flat nearby, and generously gave them to me, and with a bit of swapping I ended up with a pair big enough to wear. So all set.

The fiesta starts with the brass band playing three tunes which you get to hear about 10 000 times by the end of the day. The band are mostly in their sixties and play from a bandstand while everybody links arms and dances in large circles around them shouting along with the music. Then, the band has to march, playing the same 3 tunes, from the bandstand through the narrow alleyways in the old part of the village to the other square, where they will form up and play again. Simple - but not if all the other fiesta people have to squeeze through the alleyways as well, and particularly not if about half of the young men are linking arms and pushing everybody back, while the other half are linking arms and trying to push everybody forwards. Now you're glad you're not wearing sandals, as your feet are trodden on for the 67th time. It takes about 3 hours for the band to go 200 metres, and all the while they must play louder and louder if they want to get through. All this goes on in the heat of the afternoon, with much drinking of beer and wine and calimochos (that's spelt wrong - wine and coke, anyway) and the residents who live in flats with windows over the alleyways chuck buckets of cold water on the grateful revellers underneath. This might sound crazy, but it's actually great fun. Really great fun. And you can slip out of the melee and go into a bar for a cool beer, then charge back in again, it's all very friendly and at the end, all the people who were organising the push forwards are hugging all the guys who organised the push backwards, and everyone's cheering the band who managed to keep playing and probably lost 3 kilos of fluids each in sweat.

However, that's only the start of the fiesta. After that things get really crazy. You go into bars and wonder why all the TVs and speakers are wrapped up in dustbin bags, and why thick polyurethane sheeting covers the bottles and kit behind the bar, and then about half an hour later, drink starts flying all over the place, people are throwing water over each other, and then wine, beer, coke, anything. The bars are rammed with people, drinks are being passed miles over people's heads back across the room, you typically order a round of small strong drinks, like Orujo, and a round of cold refreshing long drinks for drinking/throwing in equal proportions. Before long, everyone is soaked in beer, the floor is an inch deep in a strange mixed liquid, your old trainers are half destroyed, everyone is dancing and singing, and running to the next bar for more of the same. Very quickly you lose track of time, and in my case, forget that you can't speak the language. I made several good friends without any actual verbal communication, including someone who gave me his hat. One place, a sort of village co-operative, is handing out free wine - yes free - in those huge glass drinking horns where you have to hold it high in the air above you and try to swallow as you pour it down your throat. This is of course almost impossible for a first timer, but everyone was very generous in their appreciation of my rather weak effort. I had a certain novelty value being the only foreigner there. The party carried on with conga dancing, stupid jokes, shouting, more soaking each other in drink, more bars, peculiar drinks, podium dancing, confusion of similar-looking brothers with each other (with hilarious consequences) until eventually we were given a lift home to Logroño, exhausted but strangely elated. Anyway, the Spanish, at least in this part of Spain, really know how to have a good time. Really. If a Spanish friend ever invites you to their village Fiesta, away from the English-speaking tourist fest in Pamplona, then go immediately. Do not delay. Pay whatever easyjet are asking. You won't regret it.

Of course I have no photos of the Fiesta. Only a fool would take a digital camera into that. I didn't even see anyone taking photos, which is kind of cool. What goes at the Fiesta, stays at the Fiesta.

First things first.The photos from bass rock, off North Berwick which is near to Edinburgh. Fantastic place. it took two and a half hours to get there on the terrible trains and the food was awful, but the trip more than made up for it. And I got to drive the boat..

I'm now in Edinburgh. Blogging will recommence when I get back to Genova next Sunday - until then the headlines: at the IJCAR conference, I had to do an invited talk in place of my Prof. who was taken sick at the last minute. Went ok though. My presentations also went down fairly well. I graduated in absentia whilst touring the Jameson Whiskey (and Cork Dry Gin) distillery, and taking part in their largest simultaneous whiskey tasting ever. Spent the weekend in Clare which was also good. Pictures and full reports on Fiestas, late Spanish nights, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and all the rest to follow soon

By the way, regarding Friday night´s result, and with reference to this post, I would like to express my profound thanks to the Greek national team. Ela Ellada! (some good pictures of celebrations in Greece here)

Tomorrow I give a talk on my PhD work here to the University of La Rioja. Universities named after wine are obviously the way forward. They´re expecting a largish audience, which is a bit unexpected but will be good practice for the IJCAR talk in Ireland next week.

All very good here in the Rioja region of Spain. I´m staying with Eduardo in his home town, Logroño. Went into the Basque country today to watch some crazy rowing races involving tradtional boats and teams of huge oarsmaen. Also had a great barbecue on a fire made from vine twigs. Wine good, tapas excellent, last night we were out all night going bar to bar in the old town where every shop is a tapas bar specialising in something - seafood or mushrooms or sorbeto or whatever. you end up eating a huge amount, and everything has lots of salt on it, to make you buy more wine. Another excellent thing is the extremely dry Basque cider, poured into glasses over the shoulder at a range of about 1 metre.

more later

In a big hurry to get ready for a little trip to Spain, so no time to post much, just this article in the Grauniad about Italy's unfortunate exit from Euro 2004, which had peole here very annoyed, but mostly just disappointed and not very surprised. yesterday, Fiona was here, had an excellent day taking the little train to Cassella then hitting the town, ending up at a huge seafront bar/club that has just opened for the summer.

Dutch fans have bought Dick Advocaat a flight home, since they blame him for the 3-2 loss to the Czech republic:

Advocaat has been booked on Tuesday's Virgin Express flight from Faro to Brussels, at a cost of 163.14 euros (£107).

"We will give him the ticket through room service at his hotel. All he needs is his passport," De Laat explained.

When it was pointed out that that the flight was to Belgium, not Holland, De Laat added: "He doesn't have to come back to the Netherlands."

(via the aBBC)

Good game, good game. Even the Italian commentators are calling him Roonaldo now. They love the way he does things like bomb the whole length of the pitch just to chase down the keeper. Vieri only moves that fast when he thinks his hairdresser is about to close. La Gazzetta gave him 8.5 out of 10 for his performance, which is an incredibly high score. The only time they ever gave any player 10 was when a goalkeeper saved the life of an opposition striker with mouth to mouth resuscitation after he was knocked out cold and stopped breathing...

An Italian story: In the monastery at San Fruttuoso, just down the coast from here, there is a copy of a sculpture called "Cristo degli abissi" - you might translate it as 'Christ of the perished'. The original, made in bronze about 50 years ago, is placed out in the sea, immersed under about 15 metres of water. Here it stands as a monument to all those who lost their lives at sea. The statue is famous and is even marked on my map of Italy. Divers make pilgrimages to it.

So, this being Genova's year as European Capital of Culture, the statue was brought out of the water for a clean and placed for a few weeks in a little room just of Piazza de Ferrari for people to look at. I went myself two weeks ago, there were maybe a couple of other people there too, to look at the statue and see the film of it being pulled out of the water. Then, last Thursday, a strange and very Italian thing happened. A woman went to see the statue and thought she could see a suffering face on its chest. It couldn't be the face of Jesus on a statue of Jesus, so it must be, of course, the face of Padre Pio. Headline boards outside paper stands on Friday declared 'Padre Pio appears in Piazza de Ferrari!' and the next day, at least 3000 pilgrims arrived to queue up to look at the statue. Companies all over Italy started laying on coaches to bring the Padre Pio followers over to Genova, and fast, because in a few days the statue is being returned to the sea.

What can you say? One man interviewed in the paper said, 'it's like looking for faces in the clouds', but another said 'I believe!', and the man who made the sculpture apparently believes too..

Excellent article on the state of the Italian Euro 2004 campaign in the Grauniad today:

..the Italians are in the ironic position of worrying about somebody else fixing a game.

Cynical, sarcastic journalism is one thing you just don't get here. You do get something equally entertaining though. For example, in La Gazzetta on Saturday there was an article about Wayne Rooney, with the headline 'Go Rooney! You are the Anti-Beckham.' It described him thus:

Rooney is like an ice cream in summer, a cold beer in the desert, fish and chips wrapped in newspaper on a humid autumn evening...

I bet no British newspapers have described him like that...

It's amazing how many things can possibly go wrong when you're trying to register for graduation before a deadline. Faxes go to wrong numbers, titles get mistyped, faxes are received and then disappear. There's one week to the deadline now..

Had an excellent Insalate di Mare on Sunday in Nervi, with the sea crashing about 5 metres away. Fresh anchovies, mussels, squid, crab - about half my annual quota of omega 6 oils. Fortunately, you get a lot of bread to soak it up with.

Ok, finally here are the photos from the luminara and the cinque terre:

The cinque terre is a national park just down the ligurian coast. It consists of 5 villages right on the sea and a lot of vineyards on the south-facing slopes of the coastal mountains. You can get between the villages either by boat, or on the train, or by walking. At this time of year, it's swarming with tourists, which is a bit of a shame: in particular, the villages with beaches are very full of brattish American tour parties. We walked to the middle village which is slightly raised on a cliff, and was much quieter. I'd like to go back and walk up the hills a bit more - it looked quieter up there and the view must be amazing.

The luminara was great fun. Mostly, the atmosphere around the town is what makes it, but the sight of the old town lit up with candles is pretty spectacular on its own. All the shops set up beer and wine stalls outside on the pavement and sell well into the night, while some piazzas have bands or DJs in them, and are crammed with students. The main activity is just strolling around though, and everything is very relaxed. The Pisanos become even more proud of their city than usual and walk around with big smiles. I enjoyed it a lot. the only slightly unenjoyable part was getting up at 6, after 3 hours sleep, to get the train back to Genova - ouch.

Should have mentioned that I now have a cashcard for my Italian bank. Having a cashcard for the country you're in makes you feel much more like you're really living there and not just a tourist. Interestingly, Italian bank cards have 5 digit PINs. To get your PIN, you have to go into your bank and they hand it over to you. I haven't showed any ID in my bank since the first time I went in there - they rely on knowing most of their customers. The lady who deals with account enquiries always recognises me and remembers my name (ok - I'm probably the only English customer, but still).

It all went wrong for Italy last night - a last minute goal by the Swedes means that, according to the explanation in La Gazzetta, if Denmark and Sweden play out a 2-2 draw, both those teams will go through and Italy will be eliminated. 'But we can rely on north-European fair play though - can't we?' says the columnist. Oh dear. Italy in fact played really well I thought; Pirlo, described as a `hunting dog in midfield' by the paper, was particularly good. The atmosphere in the bar where I saw the game was very good, even though the beer barrels had run dry and we were down to bottles of Tennant's Super. Or at least, it was very good until the last ten minutes. Everyone was very disappointed.

My graduation forms have arrived at last, though with a major typo in the title of my thesis (which I just checked does not figure in the actual thesis, thank God). I hope I can get them to change it.

Watched the England game in Bar Lino, close to my house. They have a huge screen and you get free chips with your beer. The Italians find Wayne Rooney very entertaining. Firstly, his name is apparently quite funny in Italian. Also, they love the way he looks so typically English. A man next to me described his face as 'rossato e birrato', which basically means sunburnt and reddened by beer consumption. Not our Wayne, shurely?

Having said below that I wanted France to lose as soon as possible, I now realise that I mean as soon as possible but only in the knockout rounds, since England's only hope of qualifying pretty much depends on France thrashing the other two teams in Group B. So, allez les bleus!

Pictures of the luminara and the fireworks. Almost all the lights in the picture are candles placed around the architectural features of the buildings in the old town. Each year the Pisanos vote for which one looks the prettiest.

It's always nice to unexpectedly find news of your home town in a foreign newspaper. Well, almost always, not when it's the Gazzetta reporting on 400 English football 'hooligans' rampaging through your home town after the end of the England game. My brother sent me this news parody, which you might appreciate if you've ever been to Croydon:

"400 youths went on an orgy of destruction in Croydon last night after England's loss to France. They caused £300,000 worth of improvements."

It seems the college is going to fax me my graduation documents here, so I don't have to wait for the post to turn up. So it looks like I could make July graduation..

Watched the game in a Scottish pub last night - not a very authentic Scottish pub, as there were no bitter Scots shouting 'I hope you lose you ****s!' from the bar throughout the game. However, I'm sure said Scots were more than pleased with England's injury-time self-destruction. There's no doubt that France were the better team, but it would have been nice to beat them anyway.

Normally when you lose, e.g. when we lost to Brasil at the world cup, you want the victors to go on and win the championship. At least then it doesn't seem so bad. But personally, I hope somebody stuffs France as soon as possible. They're like an international Man U., all arrogance and swagger, and like Man U they unfortunately also always win. Somebody has to beat them - come on Italy/Spain/er... Greece...

On a more positive note, at least there hasn't been any widespread rioting by English fans. Yet. The Italian radio is obsessed with 'l'hooligans'. They have a reporter running round Lisbon looking for fights to report on. More entertainingly, they also constantly refer to Frank Lampard as 'Frankie'.

Have discovered another Chagall exhibition, this one in the Hebrew museum in Genova, which is a converted synagogue. Am off to look at it with Megan now..

Having drawn Greece in the DReaM group Euro 2004 sweepstake, last night was a pretty good start to the championship. Even better, today I figured out how to fix my broken Realplayer to view the highlights from the BBC website. Fantastic. That Spain goal was nice, eh?

We don't have a TV in my flat, which is why getting access to the highlights is important. The games are on the radio, which is adding some useful terms to my Italian vocabulary (like 'spinta' - a push), but it's kind of annoying as when something really exciting happens, like a goal, the commentators speed up from talking extremely fast to talking at warp speed, and although you can usually work out who scored, it's about 5 minutes before I get an idea of exactly how the goal came about.

I can see following Euro 2004 in the Gazzetta is going to be good. For one thing, they actually report on the football, rather than on players appearing on balconies in their underpants. Also, their coverage looks set to be comprehensive to say the least. This could be important - since I don't have a TV, I guess I won't be watching most of the games.

There are signs of possible over confidence though. The front page of the paper reports that the championship starts with Portugal-Greece, and will finish with Italy-France. Hmm. They may be half right.

The bank had no explanation for the lack of cashcard. I have to wait another week to see if it is returned to them undelivered. At least I managed to get them to give me some money in the meantime.

Ah, what fun, think I'm going to have to go back to my useless bank today. The cashcard I asked for Monday of last week still hasn't shown up. I asked when I ordered it if it would come in the ordinary Italian post, which is utterly unreliable and completely untrusted by the Italians, and she said yes but it would be fine. Fine. Anyway, I still haven't seen a single (Euro) cent of my wages yet, so I'm going to have to ask them to give me some money without the card, which could be interesting..

Very hot. I've no idea how anyone did any work in the summer here before they got air conditioning. However, cherries at the market are now 3 euros a kilo, for a bag of really ripe, plump beauties.

Apparently everyone in England is hanging out St. George's flags on their cars etc. for the biennial display of frankly tedious nationalism that goes with the major football championships. Not that I won't be watching the games and supporting England, but I can tell you that Italians, who won the U21 European cup on Tuesday night and have a decent chance of winning the main event, are just as excited about Portugal 2004, but there are absolutely no Italian tricolores being hung around the place.

Using an instinct that may be inherited, I managed to find my way to a graduation party today for Luca's girlfriend, which involved her family paying for plenty of Berlucchi prosecco and cocktails all round. Before midday. Pretty decent hospitality from people that I'd never met before, but that's fast becoming the norm as far as my experiences in Italy have gone.

Oh - to the lots of people who have asked - Hugo is a friend I met at the summer school in Oregon last summer. He came to Edinburgh last year too.

Pictures from Pisa. Great weekend.

It's over 30 here now. Very warm.

Getting hot here now: 27 today, 28 forecast for tomorrow, the same next week. I'm hoping to get to Pisa at the weekend to see Hugo and take a look at the city. Must remember to take an InterCity train - they have air conditioning, wheras the regional trains don't. Worth the extra Euros in my opinion.

The computing situation here in Genova is going downhill. It really is pretty poor that the Ph.D. students have to manage the computing infrastructures themselves with shoddy old hardware. Now the hard drive with the home directories on is dropping sectors, the power is randomly cutting out, and to add to our discomfort, all the servers are now in our tiny office. That's 9 system boxes with large noisy fans blasting away about 3ft from my head. You have to shout to make yourself heard.

There are also no backups made of home directories, so you have to remember to do that yourself which is a pain. I just send all my stuff to Edinburgh.

My thesis has been bound, and sent to college today. They should write to me about graduation next week, but the letter will go to my home address and my folks are on holiday, so I won't find out until the week after next at the earliest. It looks like I should make the July ceremony though, which takes place while I'm at the IJCAR conference in Cork, coincidentally on the same day that we make a social trip to the Jameson Whisky distillery...

While I was in Torino the first time, with Mark, I went to see the Marc Chagall exhibition in the GAM. It was fantastic, lots of really good pieces and very well laid out and lit. They're very keen on audioguides here in Italy, there are rarely notices written next to paintings about where and when they were painted etc. like you see in London. The audioguides are quite high-tech, they are like tiny mobile phones and you dial the number of the picture you are interested in. Sometimes they say something interesting, and sometimes they talk a lot of guff, but it's interesting to hear the Italian English all the same.

I'm unfortunately nowhere near the level of being able to take the Italian audioguide. I was barely able to negotiate for a cashcard in the bank yesterday - again I was astonished by just how bad a deal the banks give you here. You have to pay 10 Euros a year just to *have* a cashcard! Of course if you should use any other bank in Italy, you can expect to pay a hefty fee for getting your own damn money out. Come back NatWest, all is forgiven. Well not all actually, but some things are now forgiven.

On Saturday I bought the Corriere dello Sport because the shop at the station had sold out of La Gazzetta. Although opinions vary on the three sport only papers, it's generally reckoned that the best writers write in La Gazzetta, Corriere is a bit more tabloid, and the other, Tuttosport, is extremely tabloid. It's like The Sun reporting only on sport.

Anyway, I got a free guide to the Eurpoean championships with it. In it they reckon England are about 8th favourite out of the 16 teams, which seems about right to me. They also reckon Eriksson will play Hargreaves on the left of midfield - eh? I doubt it. But maybe they know something we don't. If I was Eriksson, I would play a diamond midfield with Gerrard left, Beckham central and Lampard right, let them switch freely a la Brasil, and get Hargreaves in the holding role..