Skandorina's Travels

Why I would like to be Scandinavian in my next life, or My Danish Chronicles. I am in Denmark, for reasons that are not relevant to this blog. I am in a small city called Køge. I wish I could tell…

Pessimists might argue that things can only get worse. Undoubtedly, Danes do not belong to that group, at least as far as phonetics as concerned. The first episode of my Danish Chronicles dealt with the poor destiny of letter G when you…

Life is filled with surprises, although we tend to forget this. Our faith in the future is ripped apart by embarrassing images that tell a story of bombs, of hunger, of sudden escape. We pretend to be incredibly busy with…

Over the past couple of weeks I have visited three places that, in my humble opinion, are worth some mentioning in this blog. Sometimes you need to lose yourself. Sometimes, instead, you find pearls and you string them into a…

I then decided to travel to Sweden. Was it because of the Abba? Because of Roxette? Because of the Ace of Base? Because of IKEA? No, I went to Malmö because I possibly needed a friendly remainder of how fortunate it is…

The main character of one of my favourite books by one of my favourite Italian writers, at some stage, wonders: “What is it that we are waiting for?”. As most of my Italian friends do not exactly love this author,…

They sleep. They snore. They mumble in their dreams. They rest in beds that are not big enough to contain their bodies. Colourful bed linen cannot cover their feet. They toss and turn as if they were being grilled on a…

I’m not into horror movies. Monsters, exorcisms, eyeless children crawling in an empty house are not my cup of tea. I’m not a fan of situations that appear normal, but you know, you feel it: they are not normal. Night-time.…