Internazionale a Ferrara

Last Friday was my day off and Andrea took a day off too to join me for an extra day in Ferrara.
Internazionale is a current affairs magazine that I read since probably 1994 or 95. I used to read it while at the university and later I became a subscriber when I left the Univ.
Then too much busy and could not read a whole magazine in a week while always working in travel agencies...
It's a couple of years now that I read it every week but did not got back into the subscribtion... now I think it is time again to join them on a weekly basis.

Internazionale is the only magazine of current affair with a lot of different topics...starting from politics and ending with comics and 'true stories' passing through technologies, science and 'Italy seen from the other countries'. I love it whole. There's a lot of humour in it even if it's one of the most serious publication I've ever read.
The peculiarity is that it is written by journalists of foreign countries so that I don't have to read about the Italian comedy or tragedy from italian 'slave'-journalists.

On Friday we had the chance to see and interact with Michael Braun (Die Tageszeitung), Jennifer Grego (Financial Times), Jeff Israely (Time), Eric Joszef (Libération). They usually write for a column called 'Italieni' where we can read what other countries write about Italy and our weird way of living or doing politics.
It has been very interesting to hear that my feeling of the fact that the press in Italy is not free at all and is indeed slave of the Government, no matter if from the left or from the right, is a common sharable feeling.
Later we attended a meeting about 'Latin America Lula and Chàvez: two faces of the latinamerican left' where Cristina Marcano (Venezuela- El Nacional), Mino Carta (director Carta Capital- Brasil) and Ugo Pipitone mexican economist confronted on those realities...
In the afternoon I finally had the pleasure to listen to what Amira Hass had to say about the Palestinian occupation. She's an Israeli journalist who lives in Ramallah and writes about how it is living in Palestina. I've been reading her forever... and it has been great to hear what she had to say.
On Saturday I worked in the morning but we drove to Ferrara in the afternoon to attend the meeting with writers I've read and wanted to read. The title of the meeting was 'Literature - a world of stories: fiction and journalism' with Arundhati Roy, Efraim Median Reyes, Elif Shafak and Laila Lalami.
I loved this meeting.
It may all sound boring and snobbish but I can tell you it has been everything so simple and familiar. The organization didn't expect all this crowd so we had to wait in lines and in crowded place... most of the people had to sit on the ground of the big cinema room but it was really worthy.

P.S. For those of you who speak Italian and want to listen to the meeting of Intenazionale a Ferrara go here. Some of the interviews are in english.

Again... I feel I am good in listening, reading and commenting but I am not doing anything to draw a different picture of the world. And feel often frustrated. I know I do a lot of small things but sometime I wish I could commit more to my believes.

Other than this... Monocolo is still sneezing around and today we had to give him another shot. I really hope he's gonna recover soon.