Climbing up to the Moon

While listening to the Eels' album 'Electrochock blues', I've been preparing the latest website addition - some photos of my first Italian climbing outing, last Saturday at a local climbing site, about 45 minutes out of Venice. It was a lot of fun to actually be climbing real rocks and hanging off real cliffs compared to the rather sedate and knowingly safe climbing wall in the gym. Your approach to climbing changes completely when there are no obvious brightly-coloured bumps sticking out of the flat wall - instead you seem to feel your way along, testing every little cranny for the chance that your hand might be able to grip onto it and your foot might be able to not slip off...as I said, good fun, as long as you assume that the spiders that made that web are just gonna keep on sleeping, and the bees that made that nest are just gonna keep on nesting...

Before going to Belgium next week I've got to sort out my electoral enrolment - Italians are going back to the polls to decide on a new government (or non-government, depending on how you see it...) and now that I'm an Italian citizen I thought I might as well get my vote in...who knows - it might be my only chance in the two years that I'll be here! That's not a common occurrence - Italian governments have a short lifetime and rarely last much longer than a year before they collapse through coalitions splitting, ministers resigning over criminal charges or just spontaneous combustion. Lots of people are concerned that Berlusconi will get back in as prime minister, although the left coalition has a reasonable chance of making up a majority. Unlike Australia, there is too much political discussion in Italy - the newspapers and television are full of political commentaries and talk shows, respectively, which makes it difficult to know really what the larger public are thinking - all the media reports is opinion, which is only marginally less helpful than statistics.

Sorry about the rambling nature of this blog - I've been meaning to write a bit about Italian politics for a while, as well as Neapolitan rubbish, but too many other things get in the way. Like going to Abruzzo this weekend to visit rellies, and going to Belgium next week. I'll get back just in time for the elections - if I get myself enrolled.

Ciao, Paul.