The timing could not have been worse. I have a thesis to finish in three weeks. Exams are around the corner. The stone tools that I make in the lithic tools lab are enough to earn me an instant expulsion from any pre-historic community. Yet here I am on my way to Rome, still breathless after the ten minutes run to Ferrara station reaching just in time to catch the cheapest and ipso facto the slowest train to Roma Termini. There are some visa procedures that I cannot avoid.I am perched on the edge of my seat caught between panic and thrill. I have left Bologna and Firenze behind. The landscape has turned slightly flatter and a bright shade of green. A happy spring sun shines bright over the low reaching hills.