La primavera arriva!

Spring has arrived in Bologna, and coats and scarves have been traded for adventure and exploration.  So now I present to you, cari lettori (dear readers), a blog in three parts.

I.  GRAFFITI DI BOLOGNA

As some of you know only too well (and as others of you might have gleaned from past entries), I have an interest in street art and graffiti that comes dangerously close to obsession (and compulsion, as I am irresistibly drawn to photograph and record nearly every marked wall I encounter).  For me, graffiti and street art represent the pulse of a city.  Particularly in the medieval city of Bologna, the weight of history can sometimes be overwhelming; the graffiti and street art serve as refreshing jolts into the present.  The historic city is transformed from an airless museum into a bustling gallery with constantly changing images and ideas.  There is dialogue and transformation.

The city is tactile again.

I have been thrilled by the incredibly vibrancy of the walls in Bologna.  So thrilled, in fact, that I probably have more pictures of painted walls than I do of friends and scenery.  Fear not, however.  I will limit myself now to a discussion of only one of Bologna's most famous street artists, who has work all around the world and whose name you might recognize from a previous post: Blu.

About a month ago, an Italian friend of mine took me out to XM24, a "centro sociale" (social center) outside the walls of Bologna.  At the time, I had no camera and it was dark anyway, so I was unable to document the incredible large-scale murals by Blu that cover the outside walls.  However, the other day I returned with my friend Madeline (during the day! with a camera!) as part of our hike around Bologna in search of Blu's creations.  Here are some of the results:

Collaboration between Blu and 2 other Bolognese street artists.
Side wall of XM24.

The whole mural along the entirety of XM.
This shot is just to show scale, the following are some details.

Look familiar to anyone?
(Hint: check out the 27 February entry)

This one makes me think of Shel Silverstein.

From XM, Madeline and I wandered over the Porta Mascarella, near the train station.  If you walk down the Via Stalingrado bridge from the Porta and take a small stairway down to the small via (street) below, you can find another of Blu's magnificent and intricate creations.

Again, this shot is for scale and the detail shots are below.

First half of the wall.

Second half of the wall.

From here, Madeline and I headed over to Porta San Donato for our last stop.  Unfortunately, this mural no longer exists in it's entirety as the building on which it was painted has been partially demolished.

So there you are.  But before I move on completely, I would also like to point out that Blu does not confine himself to walls, but also creates stop-motion short films using walls and found objects.  The video below is his Big Bang Big Boom, "an unscientific point of view on the beginning and evolution of life...and how it could probably end."  I know it looks long (10 minutes), but it is well worth your time.

So, without further ado, on to the next section.

II.  IL CANALE DI BOLOGNA

So, Bologna has a canal.  Just one, and it is very small and runs under the city much of the time.  However, I managed to stumble across it two years ago when I was in Bologna for the first time, at which point I took the picture which is currently the header for this blog.

When I realized that I would be returning to Bologna for an extended period of time, it became my goal to re-discover this canal.  After almost three months, I achieved this goal when I stumbled upon the canal one day while aimlessly wandering the city with my friend Rob.

My first glimpse of the window again after
following the canal for a while.

See it there in the background?

Look familiar?

Unfortunately, I think it looked better two years ago, which kind of put a
damper of the excitement of redicovery.

As seen from the other side.

So, there it is.  Mission accomplished.

III.  LA GRIGLIATA

Yesterday I headed to la campagna (the countryside) with a collection of Italians and other Americans for a grigliata (think like a barbecue or cook-out).  Enrico (he of the Cesenatico apartment) has a plot of land in the country outside of Bologna with a little one-room shack, an outdoor grill, a picnic table, and the tiniest basketball court I have ever seen, which provided the perfect setting for a celebration of the arrival of spring (and the "birthday" of Teo's stuffed monkey, Augustavo).  As the day was mostly spent not doing much in particular, I believe that this is truly a situation in which the pictures tell the story better than my words possibly could.

View of the hills over the shack.

Francesco being the DJ.

Matteo il capo cuoco!
(Matteo the head cook)

Boys grilling a lot of meat.  A LOT of meat.

Strolling up the hill to enjoy the view.

The view.

Irene and I enjoying some roasted patate (potatoes).

Note the Italian flag in the middle-ground.

Le ragazze americane (the American girls).

Alcune delle ragazze italiane (some of the Italian girls).

Language partners!

...and Francesco.

Tutto il gruppo (the whole group)!
Well, almost the whole group anyway.

FINE.

Actually, one more thing:

Notice anything odd about Neptune?  I learned the other day that if you stand at a certain spot in the piazza, it appears that Neptune has a giant erection (if you move forward, you realize that the "penis" is in fact his thumb).  A little joke on the part of the sculptor.  Nice to know that Renaissance men aren't so highbrow as all that, after all!

Così tanto succede in così poco tempo!

Ciao ancora, cari lettori!
(Hello again, dear readers!)

I know I have not written in what is quickly becoming an inexcusable amount of time, but I have been (excuses aside) too busy to sleep these past few weeks, let alone to write.  So, with that said, AVANTI!

Part of what has prevented me from writing for so long was a visit from i miei cari genitori (my dear parents).  While they were here in Bologna, I had a chance to re-explore the city from an outsider's perspective and eat really, really well.  Not only did I have a chance to try out some of the nicer trattorie e ristoranti in the city, I was also able to enjoy a delicious breakfast of warm croissants, fruit, and cappucini at the hotel at which they were staying.  After several days in Bologna and an unfortunate bout of food poisoning, we headed south to Firenze (Florence) and then Roma.

Some of the highlights in Florence for me, other than eating delicious Tuscan cuisine and climbing the Duomo of course, were the long conversation I had (in Italian!) with a man selling belts on the street and the re-discovery of a certain piece of street art that I had seen first when I was in Florence two summers ago:

It has certainly aged a bit over the years.  "Vietato Morire," by the way, means "It is forbidden to die."  Death, judging by the illustration, presumably means taking a tumble from the top of the Duomo.

Speaking of climbing the Duomo, not only is the view from the top absolutely incredible, but the path up to it takes you right up close to the painting covering the inside of the dome.  Unfortunately none of my pictures do the interior justice, but here are a few that give a taste of the exterior view:

View of the campanile (bell tower).

View of Santa Croce.

View of il Palazzo della Signoria.

View of la mia famiglia (sfortunatemente meno Roberto)!

Also in Florence, we saw "la tomba spirituale" ("spiritual tomb") of Dante at Santa Croce (to match the physical tomb of Dante I saw in Ravenna).

Dante striking an imposing figure outside Santa Croce.

Sad Dante sitting on his "spiritual tomb."

This was alongside the tombs of a few others whose names you might have come across once or twice...Galileo, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Raffaelo (Raphael)...no big.  

After Florence we took the train down to Rome, and continued to eat well (spaghetti cacio e pepe, anyone?) and see beautiful old things.  Esempi (examples):

Castel Sant'Angelo.

Saint Peter's (la Basilica di San Pietro) from the top of Castel Sant'Angelo.

Angel sheathing his sword atop Castel Sant'Angelo.

Il Colosseo, seen from our little ristorante.

Il Foro (the Forum) with the Monumento di Vittorio
Emmanuele II in the background.

Il Panteone (the Pantheon).

San Pietro as seen from the line to enter.

Why we didn't enter.
(Guess who had a knife?)

Proof that I was actually there, in the Forum.
Also a pretty flower.

I got back to Bologna on March 16th, just in time for the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy (and you thought I was going to say Saint Patrick's Day!).  There were flags all over the place and all the storefronts were red, white, and green, but overall I found the celebrations somewhat lacking.  There were certainly a lot of people out and about enjoying their days of from school and work, but there was nothing like the American 4th of July spirit (and certainly no fireworks).

Decorations on a street in Florence.

Flag lights in Rome.

Piazza Maggiore in Bologna.

If nothing else, all the flags were certainly a reminder that I am in Italy!

Expect more soon, cari lettori.  I won't abandon you for so long next time!

Da Milano a Carnevale (con una manifestazione in mezzo)

I have no class on Mondays, so this past week Simon (my companion in backwards three-day weekends) and I decided to head up to Milan for the day.  We woke up early, convened alla stazione (at the train station), and caught the cheap (read: SLOW) morning train to Milan.  The three-hour journey was actually quite enjoyable, and we still arrived in Milan to find rain and plenty to explore.  Exploring (read: walking in circles around Milan) in the constant drizzle actually turned out to be pretty much all we did, beginning with a trip to the center to check out the Duomo and the Galleria.

Mandatory tourist photo: Il Duomo di Milano
(It looks like a wedding cake) 

The sign reads: "Qui il verde è curato da ARMANI"
("Here the grass is cared for by Armani")

Figures.

First corner of the Galleria (Prada)... 

...the next corner (Louis Vuitton)... 

...AND the third corner.  Tragic.

If I had to describe this part of Milan with only one word, it would absolutely be "decadent."  From the incredibly ornate architecture to the temporary runways for fashion week, from the mosaics underfoot to the ubiquitous billboards flaunting designer clothing, evidence of serious money was everywhere.  Nel centro, the McDonald's was five-star and even the grass was brought to you by Armani.

Overwhelmed and feeling that our tourist duty had been done, we headed to the outskirts in search of grittiness and somewhere affordable for lunch.  Milan is a city of sharp contrasts, and not a very long walk from centro is the graffiti-rich periferia (periphery) that still hasn't entirely recovered from WWII's bombs.  It was here that we found not only a reasonably-priced trattoria (restaurant), but also an abandoned carnival and the work of a graffiti artist with an inexplicable fascination with Gary Coleman.

My favorite is the flag with the meat with the pig head still on.

Eventually, Simon and I decided to direct our wandering toward a certain enoteca (kind of like a wine bar) that he had read about that was purported to sell the very rare best beer in the world.  So after a series of calls back to Bologna and the indirect assistance of Google Maps, we headed for the Metro station armed with the name of the via (street) for which we were searching.  After examining the map of Milan at the station, we realized that this particular via was, in fact, nowhere near anything.  But we persevered and took the Metro to the stop which appeared to be closest.  It was a train station (Milan has five) somewhere near an edge of the city.  After striking out in several wrong directions and puzzling an Italian man immensely by asking which way it was toward the center (he was thinking center like downtown, which doesn't exist), we eventually found la strada giusta (the right street) and proceeded to our enoteca without incident...only to arrive after an hour's journey to find that it was closed until seven, which was the time of the train we had been planning to take back to Bologna.

Buio e chiuso.  Così triste!
(Dark and closed.  So sad!)

As we sadly turned around to begin the hour's journey back to the station and the rain began to fall harder, inspiration struck.  We had originally decided to return to Bologna at the early hour of seven because the next train of the same price (read: the next slow train) left Milan at midnight.  But considering the fact that we had done little other than walk in fruitless circles in the rain all day, we decided that it might be worth staying.  After all, midnight was only six hours away and we could easily spend that time eating dinner and lingering over a beer in the enoteca.  Simon was at first skeptical (as Loren says, when faced with a crisis my reaction is generally "why don't we just wait and see what happens?"), but he was quickly won over and we set off again in search of a trattoria of some (not too expensive) sort. 

Cue more circles.  And more rain.  And more circles.  

At this point we were well outside of the center in some sort of quasi-industrial area, on a rainy Monday evening.  There was very little to be found in the way of places to eat other than pizzerias and kebab stands, and what little there was was mostly closed.  But we persevered and eventually found a little ristorante with a two-course fixed menu (perfect for killing time).  Simon and I were the only people in the restaurant other than our twenty-something waiter and the twenty-something cook (who spent the majority of their time quietly giggling over youtube videos in the opposite corner).  Although this lent the dinner a rather interesting atmosphere, we still dined well on risotto alla milanese (saffron risotto) and verdure alla griglia (my vegetarian staple: grilled vegetables).  

After we had eaten, we returned to the enoteca, which was fortunately open by this point.  Also fortunately, Simon's sources had been correct: the enoteca did, in fact, have the best beer in the world (the Trappist Westvleteren 12, only sold to individual buyers at the monastery in Belgium), and Simon was lucky enough to snag the last bottle (from which I was lucky enough to snag a few sips).

Simon in beer heaven.

After spending a few enjoyable hours at the enoteca, we headed back to the train station...only to discover that there was no midnight train to Bologna.  We're not sure exactly how we managed to misread the schedule so badly, but the only train to Bologna other than the 7pm was one that left at 5:15am.  Oops.

Further consultation revealed that we could also commence a four-hour journey back to Bologna by way of Verona.  Although this makes very little geographical sense, we had no choice.  

Milan to Bologna.

Milan to Bologna by way of Verona.

Not our train.

In this way we ended up freezing in Verona for half an hour (the train station was locked) while we were waiting for our connection, which turned out the the the overnight Deutsche Bahn from Munich to Rome.  Simon and I grabbed a spot in the dining car, and at least when we arrived at the Bologna station around four in the morning, we did so in style.

As you can imagine, Tuesday was largely spent sleeping.  It would in fact have no business being mentioned at all if I hadn't decided to roust myself and do some much-needed grocery shopping, only to find a giant manifestazione (demonstration) taking place in Piazza Maggiore.  This was naturally much more interesting than grocery shopping, so I decided to stick around for a while.

"Alongside the North African revolutions!
Nothing is forever!
We demolish Berlusconi and racism."

"We are all precarious workers.
No one is foreign!!!"

"I am not here because I would risk losing
my job."

"I am not here because my husband keeps
me shut in the house."

"STRIKE"

"North Africa revolted.  What are we waiting for?"

"Exploited" / "I want a future"

It appeared to be a rather general protest against bad things (racism and immigrant rights, sexism, and Berlusconi, to name a few), but it's a start.  The next day when I returned to Piazza Maggiore to photograph the snow, I noticed another little detail from the protest that hadn't been taken down yet: 

"TAHRIR SQUARE
Women (and men) who say NO"

Umbrellas in the snow. 

Piccione e sirena nella neve (pigeon and mermaid in the snow).

As for the rest of the week, I experienced my first festa di Carnevale (Carnevale party) on Friday and I learned that Carnevale is a lot like Halloween.  There were a few venetian-style masks, but there were also several cows, a vampire, some Blues Brothers, and a guy in no shirt, baggy black pants and a giant pyramidal "iron" mask who looked like he had just missed the anime convention, just to name a few.  Marie and I were walked back to centro by a smurf in full-on blue face-paint and spandex.  Oi.  With her flapper dress, my sequins, and both of our elaborate masks, we were still among the more lamely dressed.  Now we know for next time?