"So, how's your bike?"... I don't have one yet, but that doesn;t make me less "dutched". As I walk by the canals, I wonder who came first here, the mallards or the people. Amazing people indeed (not that mallards are less amazing, but they just don't talk that much nor show off in any way...); these guys literally stopped the sea. Amazing. Where I come from, they would have probably said: "oh, to hell with this place, it keeps getting flooded, let's just move elsewhere".

But not them, the fierce yet gentle Dutch saw their homeland flooded once, twice, and again, and again... and at some point they decided enough was enough. Bring on the Dams. Hence the canals...and the fascination with this place. Yeah, flat-land, flood-land, but..where else could you visit a whole country on a kayak? Here you can.

As everybody knows, long time ago in the ancient city of Babel, mankind came quite close to perfection. By speaking one language, with unity of intents, they built a very high tower, and got quite close to god...so close in fact, that god himself  at one point "confused their languages and scattered humanity troughout the Earth", some say because the tower of Babel nearly reaching Heaven posed a serious threat, some say because the tower was meant to worship "false divinity" and this offended god; whatever the reason, the amazing thing is that, apparently, when men manage to understand each other by means of  a common language, the results of their work can be quite impressing.

"Oh, yeah, and... here's my card. Send me a fax". A fax? wait a second there... A fax? You mean, that old machine..where you insert the page (or fear, more than one), dial a number, wait for the call to go through (hopefully it's automatic so no one will answer, sparing you the pain of having to say: "I am trying to send a fax, could you please press the "OK" button or just hang the phone so I can dial the number again?"), then wait for the confirmation message to come in, then perhaps, just to be on the safe side, you call and ask: "did you receive my fax"?....Is that what you are talking about?

Arguably the best sounding language on the planet, or simply the most beautiful; warm, sweet, funny, moody, articulate, enriched by unique gestures (which should be studied as an integral part of the grammar, as they do have an important role in everyday Italian conversation), Italian is my mother tongue, the language of some 60 million people in Europe and numerous immigrant communities all over the Planet, the language of the Divine Comedy, the language used by Leonardo da Vinci and other countless cool dudes, the key to understand the variegated puzzle made of genius, creativity, laziness, generosity, anarchy, humour, cynicism, ancient history and contemporary problems that is Italy.

What works like an alphabet, looks like ideograms, has a perfect structure and can be learned in 24 hours? The answer is: Hangul, a unique writing system developed around the year 1443 by King Sejong the Great, during one of the highest periods of  Korean history. Widely regarded as a very advanced linguistic inventions, the Korean alphabet is perhaps one of the best tools to deepen our knowledge of the uniques features of Korean people. The picture on the left portrays a few paper rolls (exposed and sold in the traditional area of Insa-dong, in Seoul), with the Korean alphabet and the relative Chinese characters shown side to side.

In 2000, right after graduating, I decided to take a one-way trip to Korea, with little or no money, little or no clue about the language spoken there, the people the culture. I paid myself a 6 months language course at one of the biggest Universities in Seoul, and that was it: "let's see what happens". The rest of the trip, I thought, would have been figured out while there. Although the trip proved to be successful in the end, and my staying there went on to be...