I last wrote from Bologna, but I haven't been spending much time here recently. Last Saturday I took the train south to meet Ellie in the Cinque Terre for a bit of hiking before returning to Florence with her for the remainder of the weekend.
I had, of course, always heard that the Cinque Terre were incredibly beautiful. However, my fear of tourist-infested must-see destinations (heightened following the tragedy I had recently witnessed in Venice) had ensured that they were never especially high on my personal must-see list. So I have Ellie to thank for convincing me to go with her and reminding me that it would take a lot more than a few tourists to spoil such immense natural beauty.
I took the train from Bologna and met Ellie on the train from Florence to La Spezia. We had been sitting in the same car facing opposite directions for several hours before I finally realized that the likelihood of there being two trains between Florence and La Spezia arriving at 12.20 was slim and that we were therefore probably on the same train. Oh well. At least we found each other. From La Spezia we caught the train to Riomaggiore, the first town of the Cinque Terre...or at least we tried to. We found the train without difficultly, but when it had still not left twenty minutes after its scheduled departure time, we figured something must be up. The train had, in fact, broken down, and a mad dash ensued to find the replacement train. We ended up sharing a car with an Italian liceo (high school) class on field trip. Oh, memories.
From Riomaggiore, Ellie and I walked the seaside path to Manarola, the next town over. The path was stunningly beautiful, but rather clogged with tourist groups (including all of those high schoolers from the train).
A view of the Ligurian Sea and the Via dell'Amore.
We walked right down to the water. So blue!
From Manarola, we decided to hike the overland path to Corniglia, the third town. This proved to be an excellent decision, as we not only lost the tourist groups and managed to do a bit of real hiking, but the higher altitude meant that we didn't lose the incredible views of the sea. We were also able to take a lot of little side trails through the nearby vineyards and olive groves.
View overlooking Manarola.
We climbed up the hills of Manarola and began our hike in earnest.
Then we got lost in a vineyard.
(Guess whose fault that was.)
We didn't mind too much because the view was incredible.
Then Ellie started minding because we had to bushwhack and she was
wearing shorts.
An enticing side trail.
The gorgeous vineyard to which it led.
(Note Ellie's victory dance in the background.)
Taking in the view.
The view I was taking in.
Who knew when we met on WP as freshmen that in fewer than three years
we would be hiking the Cinque Terre together?
More trail.
The stairs leading back down to Corniglia.
We missed our train back and spent another hour or so at the station.
Our view for those few hours.
Ellie and I met up with Parker and Corey in Corniglia and we all took the trains back to La Spezia and Florence together. Back in Florence, Parker headed off to stay with some other friends and Ellie, Corey and I headed up to Fiesole, a small town in the hills where Ellie's dad lives. Sunday and Monday were spend exploring Fiesole and the outskirts of Florence (and navigating around town during a surprise bus strike).
Looking over Florence from the hills.
The ubiquitous Duomo.
Fiesole is in the hills on the right above the city.
Postcard-worthy.
The door to the apartment in which we were staying.
The whole place smelled of lilacs.
There were donkeys!
One was named Pavarotti.
View from the window in the apartment.
Again, note the Duomo.
So we were truly lucky to be able to stay in such an idyllic pastoral setting. It was lovely to experience Florence from the perspective of someone who lives there rather than as a weekend visitor.
I made it back to Bologna on Tuesday morning, only to leave again early Wednesday, this time for Milan. I took a day trip with my friend Vittorio because he had an audition there and wanted to make the several-hour-each-way-by-regional-train trip worthwhile. We spent the morning on the train and then walking around the city near the hotel where his audition was taking place. Then I got to spend an hour observing Italian aspiring actors and assuring the man in charge that I did not, in fact, want to try out for anything.
After the audition Vittorio and I headed over to the Duomo area, where we shared a picnic and people-watched in the shadow of the great church. When we had eaten as many of the tomatoes as we could manage, we spent some time checking out every H&M in the vicinity (there were several) searching for suspenders, because Vittorio's had broken and apparently a belt was out of the question.
When we eventually headed back to the station after some more lying out in the Piazza del Duomo, we missed our train. Which meant several more hours of aimless wandering and gnawing on the cheapest bread we could find. Fortunately we did make the next train, which was divided into compartments. As we had a compartment to ourselves, we were able to spread out, sleep (in my case), and practice headstands (in Vittorio's case).
Back in Bologna, I discovered that the past week or so of travel and adventure had completely worn me out. How did I discover this? By going to sleep for what I intended to be a quick nap between classes only to wake up twenty hours later. Oops!
La vita continua (life goes on), and things continue to occur at an astonishingly rapid pace (even my three-hour lectures don't seem quite so interminable these days).
A few days ago (as in, Saturday night at two in the morning), my friend Ellie from Wash U wrote to me letting that she was going to be in Bologna on Sunday night and inviting me to continue on the Venice with her on Monday to meet up with Parker (another close friend of mine from Wash U) and Cory (a friend of close friends from Wash U...as in he and Ellie and Parker met while studying at Oxford this semester). This sounded like an admirable plan, especially once Ellie told me that the three of them had rented an apartment for a few days while they were there (apparently some Venetians with second homes elsewhere rent out their Venetian apartments to travelers by the night) and that I could stay with them there at no cost. Perfect, right?
So I spent the next day catching up on various things that needed to be done and waiting for Ellie. Once she arrived around 10pm, I obviously wanted to show her around the city and have a fun night out. Unfortunately, Bologna is absolutely dead on Sundays (especially at night). More fortunately, my friends Vittorio and Milos had been telling me all day that they were interested in doing somehing, so since Milos speaks English fairly well (Ellie speaks no Italian, and Vittorio speaks pretty much no English whatsoever. His vocabulary consists mostly of "Yeah!," which he uses often and with great enthusiasm), we headed over to their apartment (after finally finding them in Piazza Verdi after two hours of searching/waiting for them). Although there were several language barriers in the way, the four of us managed to have a good time and communicate reasonably well (except for the part where I tried to explain the concept of Newspeak and Saussure's linguistic theories about the relationship between the signifier and the signified in Italian...that didn't go very well at all).
The next day Ellie and I walked around Bologna for a bit and did some grocery shopping at the vegetable market before catching the train to Venice to meet the boys. Although the train ride itself was incredibly pleasant and Ellie and I each very much enjoyed both the view and the conversation, disaster was soon to strike. Well, maybe not disaster, but certainly a great deal of inconvenience.
The plan had been for Ellie and I to meet Parker and Cory at the apartment they were renting around 6. What actually happened was that Ellie and I got off the train and straight onto the vaporetto (water bus) going absolutely the wrong direction. So instead of going only four stops, we ended up going fifteen stops and taking a fifteen minute break at the end of the line while waiting for the vaporetto going in the correct direction. Meanwhile, Cory's phone has run out of batteries and Parker's phone, which won't accept calls outside of England, decided not to accept text messages either. To further complicate matters, the apartment reservation is in Ellie's name and neither her nor Parker nor Cory speak any Italian (well, to be fair Parker took a few semesters a few years ago but freely admits that he remembers almost none of it), and the woman at the apartment speaks absolutely no English.
Eventually, after a stunning (if unintentional) tour of most of Venice by water, Ellie and I made our way to the apartment, still without any sign of the boys. At this point, we discover that this is not, in fact, and empty apartment as the listing implied, but an apartment inhabited by a reality-TV-watching grandmotherly Italian woman named Linda. However, she seemed happy enough to see us and, after showing us our room, directed us to the kitchen so we could cook up those vegetables from the market in Bologna for dinner. I was able to provide translations between her and Ellie, so the conversation went relatively smoothly. As she was showing us around, the boys finally arrived and joined us in the kitchen. Linda resumed her reality-TV watching while we chopped vegetables.
Then she came back into the kitchen.
"How many of you are sleeping here?" she asked.
"All of us," I replied.
This was apparently a problem.
After a long (confusingly translated) conversation and several international phone calls to the British woman in charge of the on-line listings and reservations, it became clear that while Ellie had made a reservation for three with the understanding (she thought) that there might be a fourth for the empty Rialto apartment, there had been a mix-up of some sort and the four of us had ended up in Linda's spare room. To further complicate matters, Linda had been informed that the reservation was only for two. Yikes!
After a bit of begging and offering to sleep on the floor (keep in mind, it was already past 9pm by this point), we agreed to finish making dinner (which had been simmering away on the stove this whole time) and leave.
This dinner was one of the more hilariously (in hindsight) uncomfortable experiences of my life. Since we had been unpleasantly distracted throughout most of the cooking process, the pasta was overcooked, the carrots were undercooked, and there was not enough sauce. Still, we ate as quickly as possible while trying to keep the nervous giggling to a minimum since Linda was standing over us banging pots around in the sink as she did our dishes. After refusing to let us do out dishes, Linda then stood at the door as we gathered our things and ushered us down the stairs to a chorus of mumbled "ci dispiace"s ("we're sorry"s).
So we stood there on the street, absorbed the fact that we had just entered an elderly woman's home, cooked dinner in her kitchen, and left, and considered the fact that we were now on the streets of Venice at 10pm with nowhere to stay. Parker and Cory had called all of the hostel numbers in their guidebook, but all were either full or no longer answering phones. So, we wandered. And wandered. And wandered.
After some time, we found an (exorbitantly expensive) internet cafe, where we quickly searched for more hostels in the area. None of the phone numbers we tried worked, but at least this time we had addresses. Armed with this list and our free map, we struck off in search of the B&B Rota. Due to the narrow windiness of the Venetian alleys, the dark, and the absurdly tiny size of the hostel's sign (it was, no exaggeration, about half the size of a postcard), it took us some time to find said B&B. When we finally did find it, we rang the bell...and received no answer. So we rang again. This time a suspicious face appeared in the window. Apparently the four of us with our backpacks didn't look too disreputable, so he opened the door. "He" turned out to be a German backpacker staying at the hostel. He also didn't speak much English, but managed to convey that the receptionist was mysteriously missing. Fortunately, he let us in anyway and the four of us sat in the hallway of the hostel for approximately 45 minutes eating apples and sandwiches and wondering how long we should wait and what we could possibly do other than wait. After about 45 minutes a man walks in, looks at us all sitting there with our packs, and, without batting an eye, asks how long we've been waiting.
Not only were we able to get a nice room for four right off of the kitchen, but we also got a tour of the entire hostel (for rather obscure reasons) and cookies! So, all in all, not a bad night. Walking around a deserted Venice at night was incredible, and we got some great pictures.
The Grand Canal by night.
The next day we spent the morning wandering around the city some more. Venice is a completely different place by day than it is by night.I LOVED walking around the empty nighttime Venice. It was beautiful and, other than being slightly deserted, felt like a real place. However, the daytime was horrendous. The city was obviously still incredibly beautiful and even more incredible to think about (especially considering its past), but it was impossible to escape from the tragic theme-parkification. La Basilica di San Marco had ropes strung up ushering lines of visitors through (it felt like being in line at Disneyland), and the Bridge of Signs is apparently now sponsored by Toyota. I wish I had been able to see Venice at least a hundred years ago, and while I was there I just couldn't keep from being distracted by a feeling of something precious having been irrevocably lost. Really, the only word that can sum up the situation is tragic.
This makes me lose a little of my faith in humanity.
Fortunately, the rampant tourism has not yet completely destroyed Venice's underlying charm. Here are a few (more uplifting) pictures as a reminder of why people go to Venice in the first place.
Small bridge near our hostel.
Ok Parker, I admit it.
Venetian canals DO beat the one in Bologna.
The Grand Canal by day.
A rather over-exposed Parker and I.
Gondolas in which we did not ride.
Italian flag made of laundry!
Someone rather helpfully wrote the direction to
San Marco on almost every wall in the area.
Even the graffiti in Venice is directed at the turisti!
The whole crew.
Ellie, Corey, Parker, and I.
View from the bridge leading to the train station.
One of my favorite things in Venice, other than some of the views, was the fish market, because it seemed like a part of the city that was still living. I also very much enjoyed taking pictures of all the slimy sea creatures.
After we had had enough of Veniceland we hopped back on the train to Bologna, making a quick stop off in Padova to visit Genna. Back in Bologna we made dinner and walked around the city a bit. The next day involved some more serious exploration, as we headed outside of the walls to check out Blu's murals at XM. We even found a few more that I hadn't previously known about on our walk back towards centro!
Parker admiring some large-scale street art.
After all that hiking around la periferia (the periphery), we grabbed some falafel from my favorite kebab place and sat on what I like to think of as "the beach" a.k.a. Piazza Verdi, the major student hang-out in the city.
The Opera House.
"Un popolo senza teatro è un popolo morto."
("A people without theatre is a dead people.")
-Federico García Lorca
Just the usual.
Parker and I chatting with my friend Vittorio.
That night we headed back up to XM for a "concert," which turned out to be a screening of a 1911 silent film version of Dante's Inferno accompanied by an experimental jazz quintet. It was completely unexpected ("imprevisto" is becoming a bit of a buzzword in my life these days...), but incredible nonetheless. I would highly recommend the film if you ever happen to come across it.
The next day Parker, Ellie, and Cory left Bologna for Florence. After leaving them at the train station I headed over the Questura (an immigration office) to (finally) pick up my official permesso di soggiorno (permission to live in Italy...which is apparently not granted by a visa alone). So I'm finally officially living in Italy legally and have the card to prove it!
Whew. That was quite the post. Props if you made it this far! Here's a reward: an awesome music video to a song that you cannot move without hearing most places in Bologna.
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!
