Maybe I shouldn't visit any more of this country because the more places I visit, the deeper my love for this country becomes. It's well and truly in my blood now; I've definitely passed the point of no return, and I love it!
Bologna is an amazing city. It's vibrant and buzzy and full to the brim of young, beautiful, achingly trendy students. It's down-to-earth and infectious and interesting. It's full of culture and history and stunning, varied architecture. And people go everywhere by bike – it's lovely! I was advised against going to Florence to study Italian for two weeks because it's so full of tourists; more like a living museum than a real town. Bologna is a real town. It's Glasgow, not Edinburgh. Maybe it has something of Newcastle about it too. As is often the case, Lonely Planet hit the nail on the head with their description of Bologna, "If you've ever puzzled over how to combine haughty elegance with down-to-earth urban grit, come to Emilia-Romagna's fat, red, learned city where suave opera-goers waltz out of regal theatres into graffiti-embellished piazzas full of boozing students. Sometimes stylish, often scruffy, Bologna is a place of many monikers." I feel right at home here. It's somewhere I think I could live and be happy which isn't to say that's what I'm going to do, but I don't always feel that connection with places.
The school where I'm studying is great. It's very well managed and the teachers, on the whole, are good. We study from 9:30-11:30 when everyone – teachers and students from the various classes – heads to a nearby cafe for a coffee break. You sit in your group, with your teacher, and you all speak Italian. It's a good discipline because you quickly get into the habit of speaking Italian with your classmates socially, which is sometimes strange when they're English too, but it means you're maximising the time you spend speaking the language. Then we go back to school and have a conversation class until 13:45. I'm making good progress too. On day two I was told to go up a level in my conversation, which I did, but unfortunately the teacher wasn't great so I've gone back to my original class. I think I learn more there anyway, just because of the group dynamic. The school has a DVD library so I've watched a couple of films in Italian in the evenings, and they also organise four social events per week, which is another good way to maximise the Italian you speak, meet other students and learn more about the Italian/Bolognese culture.
On Tuesday afternoon one of the tutors took three of us on a guided tour of the music museum here. I wasn't that interested in the museum itself (shame on me, I know), but it was good to have another couple of hours of Italian immersion and the building where the museum was housed was worth seeing. Then on Wednesday afternoon a group of us went for a boozy cookery lesson at the house of the chef, a lovely lady called Patrizia. We made bruschetta, polenta with ragù (which is traditionally made with white wine and pork belly and is never ever served with spaghetti – spaghetti bolognese only exists outside of Italy!), pork steaks cooked with herbs and garlic then wrapped in prosciutto and served on a bed of baby leaves and parmesan, and finally ice-cream with fruit and a balsamic vinegar reduction. And the obligatory coffee, dark chocolate and a bottle of limoncello (to help the digestion you understand). Going out afterwards to help celebrate someone's birthday was a bad bad bad idea but was fun at the time.
Fortunately, Thursday was a public holiday to celebrate the patron saint of Bologna, San Petronio. I gave thanks to him that day, I can tell you! I couldn't have managed school but did somehow manage a trip to the modern art museum that I can see from my window, then into town to see what was going on there. There were various religious and cultural things happening and they closed the roads to cars so there were lots of people just sauntering round the city. In the evening I met up with a couple of classmates and went to see an amazing fireworks display in Piazza Maggiore. Then yesterday afternoon a group of us headed off into the beautiful Emilia-Romagna countryside to visit a dairy where they make parmesan cheese. It was really interesting to learn more about how the cheese is made, and why it costs so much.
This particular dairy make between 15 and 20 cheeses per day, between three people. The cheeses are then left to stand before being put in a salt-water bath. They are finally left to ripen and mature, de-moulded every week or so. Then the people that determine whether the cheese is up to the high standards required by the EU come round with a little hammer and test every single cheese to decide if it's up to scratch. The sound tells you whether the cheese is good or not. It was fascinating and great for our Italian too. Then afterwards they arranged a tasting (three different parmesans, ricotta, salami, prosciutto, bread, wine, water...) so we left feeling well and truly replete. The countryside was stunning too – lots of lovely rolling hills and green valleys. It was nice to see a little bit more of the region.Yesterday there was another birthday so after a little nap we met up in town for a few beers. It was a good night and nice to have people to socialise with.
Today I visited Parma and Modena. Both are beautiful towns with fabulous architecture but I much preferred Modena. Parma was like a ghost-town and is so pristine it was like being on a film set. I found it a bit soul-less. But I did manage to eat Parma ham in Parma, which was one of my goals, and it was delicious. I washed it down with a glass of Lambrusco and followed it with tortelli alla zucca (pumpkin). I didn't enjoy being in a restaurant on my own much, especially because the couple next to me were having a bit of a domestic, and I really don't think food tastes as good when you're not sharing it with anyone, but that's just the way it goes. Modena was lovely; a thriving, energetic little city that felt more real than Parma and, like Bologna, was full of people on bikes. It's hard to imagine what it must have been like for the people of Modena this summer with the devastating earthquake and subsequent tremors they experienced. I know at least one person who slept in his car every night for a long period of time because he was just too scared to sleep at home. I didn't see any obvious signs of damage, although I did notice that a lot of buildings were under scaffolding, including the cathedral. I ended my day with a lovely ice-cream, possibly the best ever, fior di latte and toasted almond, then a quiet night at home.
