Varese facts

Varese is a town of about 100,000, 40 or so miles northwest of Milano. The Swiss border is only ten miles away. The nearest big Swiss town is Lugano.

Here's a good site (except for the part where it's in Italian): http://www.varese.net

Varese is in the region of Lombardy. Italy as we know it is surprisingly young - united in 1861. Before it was a group of balkanized nation-states with some with familiar names, some not: Tuscany, Calabria, Piedmont, Sicily. Lombardy is one of these. Here's a map of regions: http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/special/italyreg.htm

The regions have strong identity. More than many European countries, Italy is a land of dialects, although all kids learn "standard Italian" in school. Dialect is widely spoken among locals in a community, and dialects can vary substantially over small differences. In Italy dialect means much more than "regional accent." There are different words, pronunciations, and spellings.