10.2.12 Bologna

I slept miserably last night. Around 4 a.m. I woke up because I was completely frozen. I put on a bunch of clothes and was still freezing. Then I realized I left the window about three inches open so I got up and shut it.

About 40 minutes later I woke up again frozen. The window was open again. Turns out to shut the window you have to pull down on the lever to actually lock it and just shutting it does about nothing.

At 9 we left to go walk to the top of a hill to go see a church. It was much more painful than that sounded.

First we stopped in for a cappuccino and a pastry, this time I got one with chocolate filling, which was really just Nutella. Needless to say, it was pretty awesome.

Then we started our walk. So I guess the story is this church, St. Luke’s Basillica, has a festival where they carry down a painting of Mary into the city and they were worried about the painting getting wet in the rain so they build a super huge long portico up the hill just for this purpose, instead of like investing in umbrellas. There are 666 arches on the walk up the hill. It was worse than Yosemite, the walk is very steep. And add in the slick steps from all the snow and it was quite an adventure.

It probably took us 40 minutes to reach the top. The church up there was very underwhelming. It would have needed to have been Norte Dame or something for me to still be wowed by it. The view was nice, but with the clouds and the snow the visibility wasn’t great. But I’m glad I did it. Going back down is significantly more fun too.

We went back to the apartment so Luke could grab his stuff so I went out to wander. I was able to call mom for a couple minutes until an Italian recording interrupted the call and ended it. I have so many problems with phones over here. I also managed to walk into a courtyard that I’m pretty sure was private because a bunch of old women looked at me very strangely.

I went out to the university area down Via Zamboni. Once you leave the city center a little bit the atmosphere changes a lot. The people are obviously younger by the campus but a ton of graffiti is on the buildings out there. This is sort of a Communist center and there was a not of ant-capitalism and pro-anarchy graffiti.

I came back into the center and tried to get into a couple churches but this being Italy, they closed in the middle of the day. So I went to get something to eat at a little café. I got a slice of pizza, which was surprisingly light and nothing all that special as well as a pastry with cream. It’s a little cold for gelato today and a lot of the gelato places were closed too. Business hours here aren’t really regular, they’re more whenever they feel like being open. Which in theory sounds great, except when you want to go there.

The first church I went in was San Petrino in Piazza Maggiore, the biggest one in the city. When it was planned, it was going to be bigger than St. Peter’s and this apparently was a major factor is making Martin Luther turn against the Catholic Church. Whoops. The churches in the city are strange. While they’re all at least 500 years old, they’re very bright on the inside because of the light colored materials that makes it seem sort of happy almost. And that’s not what I look for in my old churches. I like old atmospheric places that make you think of people hundreds of years ago going there by candle.

The church was quite large, very high ceilings. They had a cool canopy in the middle too. One of the other interesting parts was a astronomer man back in the 1600s traced the meridian line in the church, so that’s cool. I definitely wasn’t supposed to take pictures in it. But I did.

I walked around the two big towers from the 1100s but they were closed. I was really hoping to climb the taller one, maybe it’ll be open again next week.

So I ended up going into the Archiginnasio which is now a library but was the first building used to house University of Bologna. It’s covered with paintings and monuments from the 16^th and 17^th centuries, including coats of arms from students. I would have liked going to school there. Upstairs they had a wooden room where they would do anatomy lessons with wooden statues of famous doctors. Unfortunately, the Americans accidentally bombed half the place so half was rebuilt completely. There were some other tourists there and they were upset at the Americans for doing such a thing. I kept my mouth closed.

I next went into the San Domenico where St. Dominic is buried, the guy who started the Dominican order. He has a pretty cool tomb with angels carved by Michelangelo on it. The church was huge and pretty much not lit at all and I was the only person inside. In various rooms a motion sensor would make a loud click and turn on a light. It scared me insane amounts. I guess this is payback for taking all the pictures in the churches.

Finally I went into which pretty much had a cool blue sheet thing in the altar. There were a bunch of people praying so I felt awkward looking around too much. I was already sort of churched out.

I went into a café just around the corner. I got a chocolate pastry and a cappuccino and looked at my guide book. I had seen almost all of the stuff in Bologna so I was looking at other places to see in Italy. I was getting pretty cold at this point and the snow was coming down pretty fast so it was nice to get inside and get something warm for a little. One of the cool things about coffee here is when you order it they gave you a little glass of water and with carbonation. I’ve finally learned when to pay and how that sort of works, so I’m feeling better about it all.

I went back to his apartment since I was really frozen and the snow was getting worse and worse. Luke called and I met him and his girlfriend over at the two towers and we walked over to her place to drop some stuff off and then on to dinner. It was their friend Mark’s birthday so five of us went out for it.

The dinner place was great, they spoke pretty much perfect English there and they had soccer jerseys all over the ceiling. We all got bruchetta (pronounced brusketta as we all discussed) and I got a gnocchi and Luke and I split a margherita pizza. The gnocchi was very cheesy but in a good way. When I had gnocchi last time it was really cheesy and awful. But this was great. We had a good time hanging around the place. I like the guys and I like Luke’s girlfriend a lot too. Seems like they have a lot of fun here.

We went over to an Irish pub and bunch of their other friends were there. I was pretty tired at this point but it was good to hang out with everyone for a little, despite me feeling guilty about being in an Irish pub in Italy.

I walked back in the snow and Skyped mom. Luke even got to say hi. Then we planned our trip for tomorrow, which can only be used in the loosest terms. Our goal is to get to Bled, Slovenia by tomorrow night. But we’re not sure if that’ll actually happen or not. So it’ll be exciting to say the least. We’re taking an 8:10 a.m. train to Trieste. After that, who knows. Usually I have people telling me what I’m about to do is probably a very crazy thing to do. Unfortunately, to Luke these kind of things are equally exciting. Over the next three days, we hope to visit Bled, Ljubljana, and Zagreb. If you don’t know where any of those cities are on a map (or even what countries they’re in) don’t worry, I didn’t until a few hours ago either.

I finished up a column and went to sleep. I have no idea what'll happen tomorrow.