Motorbikes and citrus, wail the megaphones of Moulay Idriss

Alas, alas: I had a huge stretch of text to present for our travels since Dubrovnik, but a power surge in Fes robbed me of so many words! This latest blog entry is the writing of Tom. It necessarily skips through northern Italy and Barcelona rather quickly. The photographs below, mostly by Becky, are probably a more detailed record. I trust there will be an entry about our Moroccan leg, which ends with a ferry trip from Tanger to Algeciras tomorrow morning, posted sometime soon.

From Dubrovnik, we caught the Jadrolinije ferry to Split, changing into a second ferry overnight to Ancona in Italy. Throughout the Mediterranean, we have been finding ferries cheaper and more comfortable than trains or buses. The daylight ride to Split was really beautiful, as we stopped in at several islands on the way, pulling into medieval harbours such as the fortress of Korcula.

The overnighter to Italy was a bit like most cheap overnight travel, except we had the use of a shower, and in the tourist low season we had plenty of room to stretch out. We didn't feel too bad on arrival then. Which was fortunate, because Italy was having a train strike, and we wanted to get from Ancona to Bologna. Train after train was listed on the computer screens as 'soppresso.' A helpful interpreter would then announce to the station over the intercom that 'this train today is abolished.' How very radical! And so straightforward! Abolish the trains! After all, it was the fascists who made them run on time.

Eurostar trains, fortunately, were not subject to the industrial bans. After a long wait and an extra expense, we managed to get to Bologna late that afternoon.

Bologna, of course, is famous for spaghetti Bolognese. Except that's not what it is. What it is, is 'tagliatelle al ragu.' A taxi driver told me off long and and fairly hard for using the 'S' word. You see, the sauce stays longer and better on the tagliatelle. Yes, I do see. It makes perfect sense. I really have no counterargument there.

But Bologna is also Europe's oldest university (1080ad). According to that masterpiece of VSU research, 'Burning Down the House, ' Bologna the site of the first recorded protest action by the student collective (a rent strike, in which the students threatened to relocate their university to another city if landlords did not reduce their prices, which was successful). I had great pleasure addressing a postcard to that bravehearted Minister, Dr Brendan Nelson, outlining same.

Oh yes, Bolognese people also invented lasagne and tortellini. And like all of Italy, cafes there serve universally superb espresso. (It is incredible: an entire nation at or above the top 4%, say, of Australia, which is far from disgraced by world standards itself.)

After three snowy nights in Bologna, we caught the train to Prato, where Monash University has a superb little palace which it likes to call a 'centre.' This was time to tie up some loose ends on Monash work and grant applications -- although when the Monash system mistakenly terminated my internet account, the value of this access to work-in-progress suddenly plummeted. Meanwhile, we were staying at apartments called Residence Manassei, with its own kitchenette. Quite aside from the cost of eating out all the time, you miss so much in Italy if you cannot go into the groceries and delicatessens and prepare their tremendous ingredients for yourself. Becky went into some kind of hyperdrive fuelled by buffalo mozzarella, and I was becoming rather fond of the chianti when we moved on to Florence (original home of the Barry Humphries 'correction' -- see below).

In Florence we saw some galleries. There was this big naked marble guy called David, and although he was a king of the Jews, somebody had forgotten to circumcise him. Also there were same famous painters there. And a chapel or a tabernacle or something Catholic. It is very hard to stay focused on the splendour before you when you are forever being distracted by the splendours on every side of it. But for lovers of rennaissance interpretations of the Annunciation (of Gabriel to Mary), there is a hell of a lot of it on offer there. Quite mystifying in Florence was an op-shop that sells old bottles of wine -- at op-shop prices. We could have picked up a very promising looking bottle of liquorice wine dated 1968. Instead we played it safe with a half-bottle of viotlet liqueur (undated).

Surprisingly, two weeks in Morocco have passed with barely a murmur about the constraints on access to alcohol. But more of that later.

From Florence we caught a train to Pisa, quick stop for a squiz at that famous tower, then onto Manarola in the Cinque Terre.

[The computer has just swallowed another hour of drafting here. I shall have to post more later. This gets rather tiring ...]