(the following was mostly written on 2023-06-22-Thursday; the entry was created mostly for the purposes of putting up some pictures.;)

a brief stayover at Treviso, on my way to Slovenia

This is the first public entry regarding my volunteering experience in Slovenia; it corresponds to my first of two days of travel – as the direct flights were a little too expensive, and both the hosting organization (Zelena Centrala) and I were a little self-conscious about the CO2 emissions my travel would be responsible for, we settled on a two-day trip, with a sleepover at Treviso, where I would land after flying from Porto.

The flight was rather uneventful; I remember putting a lot of effort into learning some TiddlyWiki tricks while offline at altitude, and realising this would be the perfect platform for making some of my journaling and writing public. For the sake of reference, I'll directly quote some notes regarding the hypothetical format of this future blog.

What exactly should my website's homepage be?

- It should introduce myself.

- It should have content in Portuguese, English and Slovene.

- A link to a journal - it will be mostly written in English, I suppose.

- It should have direct access to my tiddlers.

Turns out that almost a month later, it has finally come to fruition.

As for the trip, Treviso is quite a nice city. I've never been to Venice, but as far as I understood, there are some similarities between the two: there's a river flowing through its center, and the city seems very well integrated all around it. As I got there quite late in the afternoon, I only had time for a stroll through the center; I was also on the lookout for a place to eat.

I don't think Treviso is renowned for its cycling, but in any case I was quite impressed by the amount of bicycles. There are bikes everywhere, it seems...except in Portugal.

The city center was small, but with some really pleasant streets; most of it was vetted to cars, which is really nice.

In fact, I think the city center had barely any cars, or none at all. Very soon I was noticing a prevalent Italian bike brand, Pinarello, and craving a bike of my own, too.

This was one of the few points where the river was accessible. To the right, there was a painting with an old representation of this very same view. Maybe I should have took a picture of that, too.

This house (?) had a balcony over the river, which seemed very comfortable, almost dream-like.

I generally avoid eating out, specially if I am in a touristy area – it makes me very self-conscious to be participating in something like a little circus (and most of the time, I'd be better off just cooking for myself). However, as the apartment where I stayed had no available kitchen, I tried to find something cheap and veggie-friendly nearby. I was in luck!

After dinner, I spent some time googling what exactly coperto was, and why did it cost 1.5 euro – apparently, it is standard in Italy to charge for the seating place at a restaurant or bar; I also read the obligatory fortune cookie's intuition for what I suppose are my three months ahead: Cogliete al volo un'opportunità favorevole. Maybe the future looks bright indeed, but my night at the Airbnb certainly did not: I had the company of a mosquito throughout all evening, and it was really, really hot.