First 3 days in Bologna

The view from my apartment on the fourth floor of an apartment building. My place is on Via Vizzani.

A statue in a deserted courtyard in the same building as the Ufficio Internazionale at 33 Via Zamboni.

The Amsterdam airport early in the morning.

One of the many walls that line the porticoed sidewalks. This one is adorned with frescoes which passersby who are not tourists seem hardly to notice.

Bologna is a city where modern technology is shaped to fit into ancient buildings, where every direction a person looks on every street there is graffiti and decaying posted ads on crumbling bricks, where the drivers are insane and the streets are choked with motorists and bicycles but somehow no one gets hurt. Bologna is beautiful because the women dress vicariously and the men all wear aviators, because there is a cafe on every corner and flower boxes hanging above every alleyway, and because sidewalks are covered by porticoed roofs.

I left last Monday, and the plane ride to get to Bologna was atrocious. The first step, getting on the plane, was the worst because in that moment I decisively made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I first flew to Detriot, where I took two Benadryll, then headed off across the Atlantic to Amsterdam. For the whole flight, I just could not sleep because of the excitement and because of the thoughts I was having about the people I left in North Carolina. I tried to watch the Watchmen and read but most of the time I just stared into space with the same strange feeling I woke up with that morning that my world was changing. Uffa.

The Amsterdam airport was very clean with vodka and chocolate for purchase everywhere. I paid too much for a scone and some strawberry juice and settled down to write and watch the sunrise.

While waiting for the airplane I watched six or seven Italians play a card game I didn't know. I rarely understood their words and so I sat most of the time smiling stupidly and trying to pick them apart. All of the cards were different from the ones we use in the United States.

After a 3 hour layover in the Netherlands I met an Italian girl just before boarding the plane. She had been in Austin, Texas learning English, but we did our best to talk in Italian. After the flight, we talked while the luggage was coming out of the baggage terminal and I found that she studies medicine (medicina) at the University of Bologna like here sister. Like many other Italians since then, she offered to help me figure out what I'm doing in this new country.

The first impression I got of Bologna was not white sculptures or ancient churches. It was the driving. After picking me up, my taxi driver proceeded to nonchalantly weave in and out of fast moving traffic on the way to the hostel, laughing and correcting my Italian. I arrived at the ostello San Sisto and proceeded to meet five or six other exchange students, none of them from the United Stated. I decided before I left that I need to make Italian friends or friends that don't speak English, and I've done a pretty good job so far.

I arrived around noon (mezzogiorno) and did my best to get settled in. After buying a telephone card I fought with the public phone for an hour and a half trying to call all the people I found online and had very little success. Finally, after making Chiara at the front desk help me many times, I left for the city center (il centro) to meet Gal. Here were the streets of Bologna I had heard of, porticoed and covered sidewalks where people always seem to be in a hurry. I got lost, found my way, got lost again, and finally arrived at Gal's house to discover that he had given my room away twenty minutes before. Uffa! It was all good though because we had a cappucino and talked for about an hour before we left to get a slushie. Slushie has another name here which I forget. I lost Gal and his friends (i suoi amici) in the crowd.

Around 8 I headed over to the Hotel Academico to meet Sara Mazza, the only other person doing this program, for dinner. We stopped at some little restaurant whose name I have forgotten. I had squid, she had spaghetti, we polished off a liter of the house wine, and talked about our concerns with our experience in Italy, what we had left behind in the States, and what is waiting for us in the next ten months.

We finished eating and I said goodbye to her at the hotel. I walked to the station and caught the wrong bus back to the hostel (21 instead of 21B in case you are ever in Bologna) and ended up getting made fun of by the driver and his girlfriend. This would not be the first time that I would get criticized for not knowing English. It won't be the last, and it hurt pretty good. I got off that bus, caught 21B, and after meeting several strangers at the bus stop arrived back at the hostel around 1AM. I hung out till 2 with people outside, then got up at 7:30 AM the next day for breakfast and so I could check the internet.



I arrived at the first Intensive Italian course in the morning and was immediately surprised at how much the students there wanted to speak English. I arrived late (tardi) and embaressed. After talking with Sara for a while, I would go out on the edge and try to use tenses or words that no one else was using with the teacher correcting me the whole time. Whenever she left the room it seemed to me that people just began to speak English again. I would also wonder why I would want to talk Italian when our common language was English, but the same feeling used to pervade the classrooms at UNC. For the last three days, I have made a true effort to stay away from foreigners and get to know Italians: the Italians at the hotel, the people I meet when going to look at rooms, the professors.

After leaving the classroom students congregated in the courtyard, but I left early so that I could go check out the apartment I live in now. I will be spending the next year with three Italians who know hardly any English. This forces me to learn Italian because there is no other way for us to communicate about important household matters. We ate spaghetti and they waited patiently for me to get across something I wanted to say and helped me along.

This apartment is on the fourth floor (quarto piano) and has a balcony from which I can see red tiled buildings and sheets hung off ledges swaying in the wind. It is so beautiful here. I don't live in the city center, but I am going to buy a bike soon so that I can easily commute and get my exercise at the same time. Both of the guys currently at the house have broken bikes, but they don't seem angry or sad about it at all. This is how it goes, come va. Bikes get stolen often in Bologna and resold for 10-20 Euro, and that is how it goes. All of the streets are narrow and people go as fast as they can in cars and on scooters inches away from pedestrians, and that is how it goes.

I walked around on my own for much of the day after visiting the apartment, enjoying Bologna and looking at all the wall art and arches that Italians seem to easily pass by. The ancient is combined with the modern. Everywhere I look there is something else to entertain or divert me. I don't know how I could ever concentrate in a culture like this.

Last night I went to the Giardino di Margherita and danced the night away with a bunch of exchange students. I felt very proud of myself after the party because I introduced three guys from Portugal to three girls from Germany and they ended up getting along real well and talking mostly in Italian. I could feel the city move around me last night. All of the cars, the hurried pedestrians, the buses, the flickering street lights, all of it spoke movement. So beautiful.

Today I managed to move into my room. I ate pesto with spaghetti with Giulio and Davide, and I have eaten very slowly ever since I arrived because it is difficult for me to form my thoughts while I eat. Also it gives me more time to talk. Afterwards I returned to the city center to go to the International Relations office and spent two and a half hours waiting and talking to meet with an advisor. I have learned all the vowel sounds in Dutch and have learned to count to ten in German. This city is full not only of Italians but of people from all different nationalities with all different languages, like a happy Babel. And all the languages: French, German, Dutch, Belgian Dutch, Scottish, Arabic, all of them sound so beautiful.

Finally I returned to the apartment and had dinner with my housemate. He speaks hardly any English but is still a huge fan of Blink 182.

Before I go further, I just want to note how surprised I am of the American influence in this country. At the discoteca, the DJs played primarily American songs so that after flying over the whole Atlantic to get to this country I did not get the opportunity to dance to hardly any songs created by Italians (which, by the way, does not mean I didn't have a rip roaring good time). But it stinks that after going to such lengths to immerse myself in a culture they seem to take after the place I came from so much. I keep wishing that Italians would listen to Italian music and watch Italian movies, and I have found that not to be the case. Many of them are translated, but still.

My roommate is awesome. We went and drank beer at a really old bar tonight and he told me how to say a million things in Italian. I am unsure whether I want to even continue attending the Italian course because I feel like I learn so much more just from hanging out with or even partying with Italians. While the Italian course is full of English speakers, there are none here, and it is better that way.

Millions of tiny differences exist between Chapel Hill and Bologna. They flush the toilet differently and there is a biglie in each bathroom. They have no respect for other drivers but never get angry. Businessmen and students go to work and school on moped. Hardly anyone exercises because they go so many place on bike or by foot. I already feel like I belong in this place, where there are so many things to get people angry but they remain so calm and collected. I love it here. I will sip cappucino on my balcony at 7:30 tomorrow morning, look out at the city, and be happy.