Wednesday, December 25, 2002

Happy Christmas, God Jul, Felice Natale to one and all!
If you want, you can visit our special Christmas page for 2002 and leave us a message!

Patrick & Patrizia

Monday, December 09, 2002

Got some rather sad news this morning from philosopher friend and ex-NTNU colleague Anita Leirfall, now in Oslo: a whole quarter with wooden buildings from the 1850-1900 period in Thomas Angell's gate, in the antique centre of my old home city of Trondheim burned down to the ground Saturday (7.12).



Source: Aftenposten



Source: Verdens Gang


Fortunately nobody was seriously hurt in the blaze, which started in the kitchen of a restaurant in the quarter that burned to the ground. Two firemen were however treated afterwards for smoke inhalation and one for back pains.

One light point in the general gloom is that the whole zone damaged by the fire has previously been extensively documented with both photography and video by city artist Henning Meyer, who has been drawing details of the city for years, so we can be reasonably sure that at least some form of faithful reconstruction of the quarter will be possible.

Apropos the fire: here in Italy (Bologna) I hadn't heard anything at all during the weekend about the event in local and national media. Well, my interest in this particular story is very personal, since I have come to know and love Trondheim after 26 years of highly formative and happy citizenship there. But I guess that I just have to accept that it is not really considered in mass media terms as one of the most important places in the world, especially when viewed from a still rather "provincial" Bologna in the "deep south" of Europe - even though Trondheim is the ex-capital of Norway, site of the highly innovative Norwegian University of Science and Technology, as well as the largest Gothic cathedral in Scandinavia (Nidarosdomen), and not to mention its tenacious Rosenborg Football Club, who surprised everyone in Europe in 1997 by beating AC Milan 2-1, eliminating them from the Champion's League Cup that year...

Anyway, here are a few links to websites with news stories about Saturday's Trondheim fire:

Norway Post (English)
Norway Post (English)
Verdens Gang (Norwegian)
Branmannen (Norwegian)
NRK Trøndelag
Archive of reports from NRK Trøndelag

Friday, September 20, 2002

Oh well, back to work again after the summer... sigh.


Well, I don't really mean that, but as you all know, it's always a bit of a mini-trauma to start back after a holiday, and this year's holiday was R-E-A-L-L-Y nice and relaxing, so that makes diving right back into the running of an admission test and before-term-start exams even harder!


The reason is that we have just spent a whole month, give or take a day or two, in Turkey. First a trip in a ciaico with Patrizia M., Chicco and a group of other friends along the coast from Gocek to Antalya, from which point the two of us left the group to drive our hired car all the way to the Armenia/ Iran/ Iraq border zone.


What a beautiful, majestic country Turkey is, full of constant surprises and lots of kindly people -- and it's VERY, VERY large indeed! One of the most enchanting parts we encountered on our journey was Eastern Anatolia. In all we drove over 4000 km this summer: Antalya - Konya - Cappadoccia - Mt. Nemrut - Lake Van - Kars - Ani - The Georgian Valleys - Mt. Ararat - Dogubeyazit - Lake Van again, then a internal flight to Istanbul, from where we flew back to Milano and Bologna


To be recommended!!


[Some of our own photos from the trip will hopefully follow soon...]

Saturday, April 13, 2002

The Semiotics of Writing is out!!

The proceedings of the 1999 University of San Marino International Conference: The Semiotics of Writing: Transdiciplinary Perspectives on the Technology of Writing, edited by Patrick is now available!!

Click on the image of the book cover below for more information

Thursday, March 28, 2002



Happy Easter to all our friends and their families!
God påske til alle våre venner og deres familier!
Buona pasqua a tutti nostri amici e loro famiglie!