Ok! It’s been a while since I last updated this… sorry! Here’s a quick cliffnotes version of what I’ve been up to…
-Julia left us to go home to Virginia and to attend UVA Law in a few weeks- so even though Anna and I were so sad to lose her, she’s going on to good things. This also meant that I lost my shepherd as Julia had been guiding me around Bologna. Happily, she did a good job and I have yet to get terribly and hopelessly lost… knock on wood…
- Stefan, our other roommate, left the next day to return to Germany, so then there were two. Anna and I have settled into our now single rooms and suddenly spacious apartment.
-The boys left for a three week trip to Guatemala and Belize, no doubt to be eaten by jaguars and the like.
-We’ve taken a couple trips to the nearby beaches, such as Riccione, that are accessible by train. The Italians are a little dismissive of the Adriatic beaches but, as one put it to me, “It’s not wonderful, but it’s our only sea…” Personally, I’m just thrilled to be at a beach.
-Teaching is going well so far. I’ve had a couple frustrating experiences with potential students contacting me and then falling off the face of the earth (or having impossible to reply to email addresses!), but all in all, it’s not bad considering we’re in the middle of summer holiday time.
-Anna had her birthday and we celebrated by eating at a delicious Greek restaurant near the University here in Bologna. My gift was tickets to see Carmen at the Arena in Verona on Friday, which brings us to…
THE WEEKEND OF TRAVEL!!
So we left Bologna for Verona on Friday morning, bringing along our trusty Let’s Go! guide book (remember this. It will come up again.). After arriving in Verona, we hop on a bus to get from the train station to Piazza Brà and from there to our hotel… eventually. It turns out that Verona is a thoroughly charming Italian city, filled with charming and, if you don’t know where you’re going, confusing side streets. After finally checking into our hotel, we fell upon lunch like a pack of hungry wild dogs and, much restored, went off to do some sightseeing before the opera.
Verona is well known as the “fair Verona” where Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet, but people tend to forget that those characters are, while somewhat rooted in an historical family rivalry, pretty much fictional. Such a small detail did not get in the way of some enterprising Veronese though! Our first stop was to “Juliet’s Balcony”- actually quite lovely, and despite the hordes of tourists (and amazingly and wonderfully tacky souvenir shop…) we kinda loved it.
From there we went to nearby Piazza Erbe, still filled with vendors. It was absolutely lovely and, as we scampered about taking pictures, Anna, losing a bit of her skepticism, noted “Ok, Juliet totally would have lived here.” And it’s easy to feel that way- even with the crowd and the modern additions, one got the feeling that not a whole lot had changed in the last few hundred years.
We realized then that we would need to hustle back to the hotel to get ready for the opera. After scaling the Arena to get to our seats we realized a few things: 1) Even though we got a great center spot… we were way early. 2) The people around us were way more casual… like shorts and a t-shirt casual… 3) They had brought snacks. We had not.
Luckily, we had brought books to read, so we passed the time people watching and reading (and eventually succumbing to the guys selling drinks, much like at a ball game). The opera finally started and, since it wasn’t amplified, it took a couple minutes to adjust to the sound (and the fact that there were no supertitles…), but it was staged beautifully- and on a grand scale, including horses! The drawback to such fantastic set pieces was that it took a while to change scenes… so that meant about 4 intermissions… of between 15-30 minutes. All in all it was a wonderful experience… but now we know that next time we should bring a picnic basket.
The next morning we checked out of the hotel and decided to hit the rest of the sights (carrying our bags…) before heading home to Bologna. Each block was even more charming than the last, and, after finding the Duomo and a few other sights, we arrived at the river. The break in the buildings allowed us to see the hills surrounding the city and the rest of Verona across the bridge. We decided to cross over and investigate some interesting buildings we could see (turns out, it was a church and the archaeological museum). At this point we’d been walking with a couple heavy bags for a while, so we decided to rest on a shady bench before making our way back to the train station. We pulled out the guidebook while we gave our feet a break and started to flip through and bookmark a couple other cities we wanted to visit before we move to Rome. We flipped to Bolzano, a city in the Alps which, according to Let’s Go! is full of a charming blend of Bavarian and Italian cultures, beautiful mountain views, a crystalline river, and Otzi the Iceman (a mummified man from about 3300BCE found in the icy mountains by some hikers in 1991). “Humm,” Anna begins, “That’s actually not too far from here… we’re already so far north…” A pause as we give each other a “are you thinking what I’m thinking?” look
… “Let’s go to the Alps!”
We get to the train station with about thirty minutes to spare before the next train to Bolzano, grab a bite to eat, and we’re off, thrilled about our spontaneous journey. The train ride is absolutely beautiful- the mountains get taller, covered with evergreens, churches and houses perched precariously on their slopes. We chug past the occasional castle, the promised crystalline rivers, and watch as the secondary language on the signs in the stations switches from English to German. We’re happily reading our books, comfortable in our relatively empty train car when I feel a looming presence to my left. I look up and the train employee in charge of checking tickets is leaning against the partition by my seat, staring at my feet which are happily perched on the seat across from me. I think he just wants to see our ticket so I nudge Anna as he shakes his head, points at my feet and says something along the lines of “…piedi… non… 7 euros…” (my Italian is improving… but not perfect…), and at first I think he’s joking (because who fines someone €7.66 for putting their feet on an empty seat… as is common practice in every single train I’ve ever ridden in Italy…), but then it becomes clear that I am indeed being fined. He returns with my change and a ticket (a ticket!!), and then moves on to harass the girls in the seat ahead of us because their tickets, though valid, are not standard issue… or something. At this point, I’m torn between being a little shocked at that encounter, amused, ticked off (because where is this rule posted? Nowhere. harumph.), and then deciding that I’m probably better off just going back to my book… feet on the ground.
A castle from the window of the train
We arrive in Bolzano, of course without any reservations, and make our way to the youth hostel (said to be shiny and new)… where there is no vacancy. No problem, we’ve got our trusty guide book which, unfortunately doesn’t have a map of this city, but no matter! It gives directions to the next hotel on the list! So we begin to walk… with our bags… through tunnels and far away from the center… at which point we decide that even if we DO find this place, we don’t necessarily want to walk there in the dark. So we turn around and head towards hotel number 3… keep in mind, we still do not have a map… it’s still pausa so no stores are open and the streets feel a bit like a ghost town. We are lost, using pure instinct to try to find our way towards the main Piazza (”Well… we came from that general direction, so think we need to go maybe straight for a while then take a left… ish.”)… things are not going well. Finally, after a very kind woman pointed us in the right direction, we realize that we are never going to find hotel #3, so we grab a coffee in Piazza Walther (home to the lovely Duomo of Bolzano, as well as the most formidable waitress I’ve ever encountered… I think she threw us off at first by speaking to us in German…), call another hotel from the book (which is, of course, directly across the street from the train station- we saw it when we arrived), get a reservation, and finally, after some wrong turns (because, again, we have no map), arrive. I swear that I have seldom been so happy to get where I’m going. We figure that we have the entire next day to go to the nearby castle and museum, so showers and food are in order. Happily, though our guidebook made some glaring omissions (most notably… A MAP), they had some good restaurant suggestions, including a great cafe and a Bavarian-style ale house and restaurant, complete with amazing beers that they brew on site. By the time we finish eating and manage to flag down our waitress (no mean feat), we’re pretty much ready to do a little laundry in the sink (hey, we’d only planned on being gone for one night…) and to watch some bad Italian TV in our hotel room before going to sleep.
The next morning we made our way back to P. Walther, had a cappuccino and an apple strudel (did I mention the very very disconcerting blend of German and Italian?), and, no thanks to our guidebook, found the bus that takes us to the Castle Roncolo. Sadly, both our camera batteries had died, so we picked up a disposable camera and headed up the hills. The castle has some well preserved wall paintings, including one of the oldest depictions of King Arthur’s Round Table, and (unusual for the time) one of the most extensive secular illustrations of its kind, the story of Tristan and Isolde. Luckily, there was a cafe and osteria in the castle courtyard because, by the time we had gone through the castle, the complimentary bus was on lunch break… for about another hour. So we grabbed a coffee and enjoyed being stranded in such a scenic place. After we returned to town, we had lunch and headed off to visit Otzi at the museum (along with, it seemed, every single German child on the planet). Otzi is, I must admit, a little creepy in his refrigerated room
, but the museum was pretty neat and offered a nice history of the region. By the time we made it through, Anna and I were flagging. We realized that the next train to Bologna, leaving in about 40 minutes (we were on the other side of the city) would be the last one for about three hours… so if we didn’t take it, we’d be getting into Bologna at about 10:30 PM… For a few minutes we entertained the idea of maybe lingering in the green space around the river… but then better judgment prevailed and we booked it back to our hotel where we had left our bags, dashed across the street to the station, and bought our tickets with time to spare.
We had a great adventure in a beautiful part of the world, but I can’t even describe how comforting it was when we realized that the voices around us were speaking Italian again… It’s good to be home!
