The spring is turning Bologna into a beautiful and sunny city. Walking under the porticoes in the afternoon, the rays of sunshine add another dimension to the buildings already gorgeous with their crumbling bricks and peeling plaster. After such a long, cold winter it feels so good to have warm air rush over me while I am sitting at a cafe' or taking the long way to class through the park.

Since returning from Barcelona, my life has been centered in Bologna. After finishing a rigorous medical evaluation in preparation for the Peace Corps, made more difficult because I am in Italy, I am taking two French courses and studying on my own in order to learn that language before leaving for sub-Saharan Africa in the fall. If all goes according to plan, I should be leaving in September and will be working to teach communities how to solve environmental problems.

At the moment I am enrolled in three science courses at the University of Bologna: Atmospheric Chemistry, Hydrology, and my personal favorite VULCANOLOGIA! For the last course, we are making an excursion to see Etna next month, and I am very excited. The geology students in the course are fun and enthusiastic, and I find it incredibly entertaining to argue with the guys about soccer (about which I know nothing except I am a fan of Juventus and that Milan and Inter are not good).

In the last couple of months I’ve also had some great dinner parties at which I have cooked passatelli (a dish that is like pasta but made with bread crumbs instead of flour and cooked in broth), pasta alla carbonara (made with a whip of eggs, shredded pecorino cheese, and small pieces of bacon cooked together with pasta in the pot) and a potato dish which I invented (recipe top top secret). More Italian friends have been coming to my dinners lately and I have received numerous compliments on the development of my culinary abilities (sviluppo delle mie abilita’ come cuoco), although I know that nothing could every compare to what they eat when their mothers cook at the house.

For a dinner last month I invited our neighbors from the second floor, who before I only knew in passing, and now we have become great friends! One of the girls is a hair dresser (parucchiere), and she constantly reminds me that she needs to cut the train wreck that is my hair again (like every 2 weeks). After coming to my dinner, they invited me to an aperitivo at their apartment, which is like a party with a buffet, where I met all kinds of Italians who work in Bologna but are from all over the country. One guy gave me all kinds of advice for where to go in Sicily, so hopefully I will make it there soon!

There have also been the usual trips to the Mercato delle Erbe to get tons of fruits and vegetables at rock bottom prices as well as to the library Biblioteca Salaborsa, where I continue to support my adoration of Marcello Mastroianni as well as great jazz artists like Lee Konitz and Jerry Mulligan. Also, last month I prepared a virtual presentation for Carolina Navigators at UNC which I hope to be giving soon. With this presentation I will be talking to children in North Carolina about the food and culture of Italy using my web camera, telling them about where I’ve travelled, giving them a tour of my Italian apartment, and teaching them how to make coffee with a moka. I give the presentation for the first time at the beginning of next month and I can’t wait!

With friends at the Giardina Margherita.

While I have been spending much of my time in Bologna, I did make another amazing trip to Liguria for Easter break to go to a wine festival with my friend Simone and his compatriots. The first couple days of the break I went out with my friends here in Bologna and had a pretty good time dancing, but the third day I knew that I needed to get out of the city. So, when Simone asked me if I wanted to plunge into the wilderness again I jumped at the chance.

Cinque Terre is a set of five tiny villages on the rocky coast of Liguria northeast of La Spezia. Bonnassola is the first town north of Cinque Terre and is even smaller. The town where the wine festival, called Terra e Liberta’ Critical Wine, took place was not even in this town but in an even smaller one nearby called Monteretto. I took the long train ride to get to Bonassola (made shorter by the fact that I had Dante’s Paradiso with me) and took a walk through the sea side town bordered by steep rocky cliffs. All of the restaurants had great lunch specials from the sea whose names rolled off the tongue, and it seemed like every person walking by was eating gelato and smiling.

A little later that evening I caught a shuttle bus headed for Monteretto, and I tried to snap a few photos as the bus crawled up the side of a mountain on a road with a million switchbacks. The bus driver honked the funny sounding horn every time we went around a sharp corner as well as several times when he saw people he knew. This latter always scared me a tad because he would swerve a bit on the edge of this cliff while he was smiling and waving.

Bonassola from above.

I could see the sun on the water, and the horizon stretched for miles away from the rocky coastline. After a time, the village of Bonassola appeared small and far away under us, like a jewel in the middle of a blanket or Dante’s view of Earth before passing into the Cielo delle Stelle Fisse. The packed bus finally reached some level ground, and then began the down hill to the tiny town of Monteretto.

After getting off the bus and seeing the town hanging over the sparkling water of the Mediterranean, I was simply amazed that there could be such a beautiful town on all the Earth, more amazed that I could exist in it, and most amazed that there was a party in this town which would last until the sun came up the next day. My cell phone appeared to be dead, so I went in to one of the towns two café’s and hooked it up to the electricity, which came from I don’t know how far away. I made friends with the barrista and, after talking to my friend Simone, found out that they were going to be a bit late.

I decided not to wait for him. I went ahead with the degustazione of the wines and began meeting amazing people and tasting amazing wines from all over Italy. There were wines from as far away as Sicily and as close as the vineyard that led to the campsites. There were wines from the palest shade of white to the strongest red that just stuck to your mouth like they wanted you to forever have that feeling. Many times it would take me 5 or 6 tries before I actually felt like I had tasted the wine (know what I mean?) and around 10PM when the music started I had my arms around my new friends sharing wine with them and trying the wine that they poured into my glass. It would be difficult for me to tell you exactly which vineyard each of these elixirs came from or the name of the winery. All I know is that it was all so delicious and cheap and so GOOD!

Simone and his friends arrived in proper Italian fashion, four hours late and bounding with exuberance. He called to me across the crowd and I introduced him to everyone I had met or talked to or made eye contact with, and he threw his friends into the mix. The band playing on the tiny main piazza of the town was a cross between 8 or 9 musicians wielding classical string and wind instruments on the left hand and another group on the right jamming on native instruments from Africa and the Middle East. I don’t know how the harmony worked, but it was awful good music.

The night wore on and after an unreasonable number of encores the band stepped off the stage. The party moved into and out of the café’s, under the tents, to the campground and back. There was not another foreigner in sight. I remember attempting to play the guitar and missing the strings, I remember dancing quite well with many people, I remember walking through the vineyard and trying to sing along with traditional Italian songs.

When I woke up in the morning, I decided that I would rather not test my mortality by staying another night of the festival. I climbed into a slightly more comfortable position in the camper I was in and continued to slumber. After I awoke, I met up with Simone, who was walking a dog that was not his, and got us coffee and croissants at the café’ on the piazza. I filled up my water bottle with mountain water from the spring tap, bought a couple of bottles of my favorite white wine for my roommate Guillaume’s birthday, and took about 3 hours to say good bye to all my new friends.

Instead of taking the bus back, I took a path through the woods that led all downhill to the town of Bonassola. I walked down stone steps, over ancient bridges, along dirt paths that led through the vineyards on the mountainside and took a rest at a church that did not have a road leading away from it. Many of the trees in the farms had nets spread out between them to catch the olives as they fell. The view from the courtyard of the church was absolutely incredible, with great big white poofy clouds crawling slowly over the sea towards the coastal town below. I walked along a bubbling stream for the last stretch into town, bought a ticket, and sat down to drink mountain water and wait for the next train back to Bologna.

At the moment I am preparing for the arrival of my best friend Alex who is coming to visit me next month. We are going to spend 4 or 5 days in Rome and then hang out on a rocky beach nearby. By that time the water should be swimmable, and I will be diving head first in crystal clear water and watching at the light plays tricks on the intertidal stones. Also, I have continued to foster my dreams of taking a bike trip through Italy. In fact, yesterday I took a trip to nearby Modena to check out a bicycle which I will probably get for the trip. The bicycle belongs to the uncle of my TANDEM partner, who I have met once a week for about 4 months now so I can practice Italian and he can practice English. The frame and many of the parts are Campagnolo, which is, as I was expertly informed, il migliore, and if I can get my knee better by July I will be whizzing down (and hopefully up) hills as I head north in the Appenine mountains!

That is currently la mia vita here in Bologna. While North Carolina feels far away, I know that in three months I will be returning to my patria to graduate from UNC in August and then begin another part of my life. Seems like this time in Italy passes quicker every day, but if the stay wasn’t limited it wouldn’t be as precious. See you at the end of the summer…