Culture and routine.

Long time no blog entry. Partly because I have a lot to do, had a visitor (my dear mother) :-)) and every day life is getting a hold of me.
But I do have something new to post: I am amazed by the amount of cultural events that are organized here in Bari. There seems to be some different kind of film festival every week, at different places, about all kinds of topics. Last week I went to "Balafon film festival" for two days and saw movies from Malawi, Egypt, South Africa and Camerun. Have you ever seen any movie from one of these countries? Probably no, because Hollywood makes us blind for the rest of the cinematic culture on this planet. Another day I went to see an old Italian movie which was also part of some film festival, and last week there was another European film festival... and for students it's all free!
I don't think we have this variety of authentic interesting films even in Cologne. Maybe in Berlin, I don't know - but who would have thought I'd find it in Bari, city of 400.000 people in poor southern Italy?
And there's more: literature sessions on women's role and oppression in Iran, English-Italian cineforums, Spanish music...
Bari surprises me more and more, it has much more to offer than I'd have thought.
Tonight, by the way, we're having a Turkish dinner at my place. :-)