Hi Suleika,
it's a great surprise to me reading someone that writes in italian and is not Italian!!! Why did you learn our language? It's because of your occupation ("classicial musician"... WOW!)? I knew an Irish girl at Dublin, seven years ago, who spoke italian because she studied it at school where she was studying to became a "violinista".

What cities did you visit in Italy? Don't waste your time visiting Milan, in any case. Yes, the cathedral (the "Duomo") is very nice and a day spent in commercial streets it's a must, but if you search for the Italy that usually the foraigners expects, Milan it's not the good place. It's the richest italian town, but also the most chaotic and industrial zone you can find in our country.

You said the truth about the fact that it's easy to find a restaurant where to have a dish with meat and vegetables. In fact I've no problems at this. The hard part it's that in Italy most people it's so used to have pasta in it's diet every day, sometimes twice a day, that a lunch without pasta seems to be uncomplete or not satisfying.
As I said, I found that this diet is good for me and my wife is supporting me very well in this choice, but for my friends, parents and collegues, I appear like a "little green man coming from Marts".

I'm sure I did a lot of mistakes, I hope you can understand what I've written. :-)

Bye.
Fabio