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Italy was my first ASTRA secondment destination after having spent seven months working as a researcher in CIRIEC in the city of Liege. Admittedly I could not be anything but excited as the boot-shaped country has always been a cherished place for me due to the rich cultural, architectural and historical context, the magnificent landscapes and the warm people. However, I soon came to realize that the experience would turn out to be much more revealing than I could have imagined. The reason is that I found myself not in the typical Italian setting that I expected and I had already experienced, but in South Tyrol1, a province replete with contrasts, situated between the Mediterranean landscape and the astonishing alpine peaks. South Tyrol is one of these European border regions where identity clashes with language to create a cultural and ethnic amalgam due to a tumultuous historical past2. A trilingual place where one can hear people chatting in German, Italian and Ladin3 when walking in the narrow Gothic arcaded streets of the picturesque cities with the baroque architecture that resembles the Austrian traditions. For an outsider staying only for a limited period in Brixen/Bressanone4, it was exceptionally interesting to observe this ethnic/cultural/linguistic co-existence which is quite complex when it comes to administrational matters and everyday realities, but at the same time comprises the alluring and vibrant Tyrolean narrative of diversities.

A shared aspect among all realities of the province is the majestic alpine landscape. The Dolomites are heralded as one of the most dazzling mountain ranges universally and have been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site due to their spectacular vertical limestone formations and the majestic variety of forests and meadows. As an enthusiastic hiker, I could not be in a better place to enjoy weekend excursions and nature retreats exploring each time different unique crystal-clear lakes, snowy plateaus and breath-taking mammoth peaks. Undoubtedly, being for three months in a narrow valley on the Alps having hiking trails within a walking distance from my accommodation was a very special experience for me 鈥� an authentic city dweller.

Regarding my research project on Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) and Local Development, the experience of my secondment was also very insightful. Italy is renowned for having a strong cooperative tradition5, with 鈥榮ocial cooperatives鈥� having a legal framework since 1991. They are the ones that provide social, health and educational services, as well as those that create jobs for disadvantaged people (鈥�integration social cooperatives鈥�). It was also impressive knowing that Italy is the country with the largest number of worker-owned cooperatives in the world, counting over 25,000 of them. Therefore, it was a great chance to use my time in the country to discover more about the SSE sector through the Italian approach by investigating some selected cases in the northern part of the country. I had the chance to have several informal discussions with work integration, housing, street newspaper projects in order to foster a better understanding of their initiation, networking and funding processes. At the same, I became more familiar with concepts of rural agriculture cooperatives, another very strong sector of the region but very unknown to me. I was lucky to meet very interesting people, experts in the fields of Social Work, Community and Social Economics, and Sociology, and to share with them exciting ideas about future projects and collaborations. This first repository of collected knowledge has equipped me with essential tools for the next step of my research, that of getting to know the Belgian SSE context better which stands in the center of my ASTRA project.