...Sicily! 
On Monday, 13th of March, we started our trip from Húsavík to Catania in Sicily. It was part of a regional project called Cristal, which is a cooperation between Norðurþing in Iceland, Sweden and Italy. Our host was Vincenza Ferrara, a young sicilian lady, who makes highest quality olive oil under the label "Le gemme di DORA". 
The  main goal was to learn about sustainability, environmentalfriendly agriculture, how to find ways to promote remoter areas and so on.
The plan was to go to London on Monday, from there to Catania on Tuesday, a visit to Vincenzas farm and the village of Villarosa on Wednesday, Thursday a workmeeting at our hotel and in the afternoon a trip to Enna, Friday an early start and a ferry trip to the Island of Ustica, where we were supposed to stay until Sundaymorning, then Palermo and a visit to the FabLab there, before going back to Iceland on Monday. Well, we got an unforseen extra day as it was that windy that we couldn't sail from the island to the mainland on Sunday. So our supervisors spent part of Sunday with rebooking all our flights, getting us a place to stay at Rome and so on. 
Most impressive in my opinion was the marine reserve at Ustica and the way people take care of this unique island. There's a 3 seamiles zone around the island, which is divided in A, B and C, where A means "no take zone", humans are not allowed to interrupt there, no swimming, diving, sailing without permission. In zone B you are allowed to swimm and sail, but no diving without permission. Neither in zone A nor B are you allowed to fish. In zone C "everything" is allowed and the 9 local fishermen put out their nets there. No other fishermen are allowed into this area close to the island. 
Great to see all the efforts to preserve the island and surroundings. On the other hand I was quite shocked about the immense use of plastic everywhere. Olive oil was packed in small, single use packs, salt, pepper, your coffee to go in a plastic cup with a plastic lid, plastic cups wrapped into plastic and so on. I think there's a lot of potential in reducing waste.
If you'd like to check out some pics, have a look here.