Forza Rossoblù

Today, we explored Bologna, the Capital of the Emilia-Romagna province. We had been talking up a storm all week about taking a random train in Italy to a random location. We pulled to the Santa Maria Novella Station, and waited in line to buy train tickets and looking at the Departures screen. We were going to a place called Foligno originally, but it would have taken 3 hours on the slow train. We then saw Bologna, saw it wasn't very far away, and saw we could take a bullet train there in 37 minutes. I pulled out my Fodor's Book of Italy, and looked up what we could do in Bologna. We pulled into the Bologna Centrale Stazione, lost, and confused about which direction to even go. We bought a little picture guide book, and headed south walking towards the historical center. The walk to the historical center was very nice because apparently the ruler of Bologna, a long time ago demanded every building has arches for shade, so it was a nice walk. I could've used that to avoid the rain in Florence yesterday, 6-08-11. There were lots of shops with American insignia, and then we ended up in the historical center after a 10 minute walk. We didn't know what to do, and one of my roommates was starving, and we tried going to a location in the Fodor's book but it was closed so we ended up at a Roberto's cafe. I read that cured meats and cheese, and tortellini's are a big thing from the Emilio-Romagna province, so I decided to eat that. It was delicious.
After that we decided to climb the Torre degli Asinelli. One of the two towers cited in Dante's Inferno. It is 500 very narrow wooden steps, and you ascend 320 feet. You get an excellent view of Bologna and can see the grid of how the city was laid, and you can see the new modern part of the city on the other side. After this, we went to the Basilica di San Petronio, and saw the main cathedral in Bologna. The art was absolute awe inspiring, and I imagine Rome is going to blow it out of the water. After this, I had to use the bathroom so bad so we ended up at McDonald's to use the toilette. After this we ended up rushing to the San Domenico church, which is dedicated to St. Dominic. The art here was amazing as well. After it closed, we ended up back in the Piazza Maggiore. Where there was a referendum speech in front of the Palazzo Re Enzo, where King Enzo of Sardinia was imprisoned. After this we walked towards where the University of Bologna is, which I later found out on Wikipedia, is the oldest University in the World, founded in 1088. And people such as Dante, Copernicus have studied there. We then walked back to the train station, and went back to Florence satisfied. This one was an awesome day-trip that started out of nothing. It was way less touristy, not many signs were in English, but maps in Italy tend to be straight forward.

In class this week, we have been talking about ethnography, and understanding how people are living in their worlds. I watched as disappointed tourists walked by the closed Uffizi, how those guys selling umbrellas appeared out of a car as soon as the rain came. You can see how tourists take a picture of a statue, then go along to the next statue in the Piazza della Signoria. I'm one of those tourists too though, haha. I watched as locals pretty much just watch everything going on, probably annoyed of the tourist, but proud as their city has so much history. It's just interesting people watching, and looking at lost tourists with maps to hurried locals trying to get out of the crowded places as quick as possible. We never got do any picture taking on Wednesday's class, because as soon as we got to the Baptistery, it started dumping like crazy on us. Me and Chris were absolutely drenched, and had to change before we went to the class room. We learned about different perspectives of taking pictures, and it makes me want to take a better picture that gives me a better understanding of what I am looking at. In our wine tasting class, I was tired and kinda dozed off during the lecture, and during the tasting, wine just takes like wine too me. We talked about regionalism and Campanilismo, loyalty to the bell tower that each Italian has. Italians connect to their city/region, rather to Italy itself. Florentine's speak the closest thing to modern Italian, since Dante was a big proponent of the Florentine dialect. We also learned about how much the northern provinces hate the South, and wish to form their own thing called the Lega Nord. We also talked about how much people identify with their local soccer clubs, and hate people who wear opposing club's colors. ACF Fiorentina is the viola. The two teams I like the most in Italy, Inter Milan are the "Nerazzurri, the black and light blue ones." And AS Roma, the " Giallorossi (The Yellow-Reds)." It's interesting how just wearing clothing these colors, regardless of what is it, from a plain hat to plain t-shirt, identifies you with the club. I would probably confuse the hell out of the Italians, because I come from a support my favorite players, rather than clubs approach, and don't have this deep connection to the teams.
We go to Rome today, and I'm sure it will be whole blog of epic-ness. Arrivederci