A Little More on Bologna

I'm starting learn more and more about this city the longer I am here. I think I've thrown in some tidbits already, but I don't remember exactly what I have included (and frankly, I'm too lazy to go back and look), so my apologies for any repetition.

One of the first things I heard about Bologna was that is called "la grossa, la dotta, la rossa" or "the fat, the learned, the red." The fat for the obvious reason that it has amazing food. It is known for Bolognese sauce, for tagliatelle noodles, for pizza, for delicious prosciutto and other meats, for cheese, wine, and gelato, and for the espresso (as with the rest of Italy). I can attest to all of it, except for the meat. It is called the learned because it is home to the oldest university in Europe, established in 1088. There are about 400,000 residents in Bologna, and 100,000 of them are students. And it is called the red, not for the red roofs (although the majority of the buildings in the old city do have red roofs), but for its communist roots. There are some famous bars in the city where communists used to go and have long philosophical debates - so the story goes, at least. One, in particular, has no sign and they only serve drinks...it's bring your own food.


The red roofs

Bologna is known for its towers. Think leaning tower of Pisa only square and taller. Traditionally, wealthy families would build these towers as a sign of prestige and power. At its height, there was something like 60 towers in the city. According to Wikipedia, which we all know is authoritative, there may have been as many as 180 towers at once during the middle ages. Today there are only 6. Because they were built so long ago, I just assumed that the majority of them were long gone by the 20th century. Apparently not. I saw a model of the city as of 1919 and there were still tons of towers! It then occurred to me that they were probably destroyed during WWII.

In any case, there are still a few left standing, including the famous "two towers." They are right next to each other, I think built by the same family, and one of them was leaning so much that it had to be shortened. It sort of looks like a stump now. People can climb the taller one. It is 496 steps to the top. The view is amazing - you get a panoramic of the city. I thought I had a picture of the towers, but I guess I didn't take any, but here is the wikepedia page. I got some amazing shots at the top and inside the tower:


I'm actually in a photo for a change!


One of the many views from the top. I'll put up more on facebook someday...


On my way back down.


I have a long way to go.

The Piazza Maggiore, the town square holds a unique statue. I won't do the story justice, but from what I understand, a pope commissioned a statue to be built as a complement to another one in Rome, and the artist produced this one. When the pope saw it, he was disgusted and had it sent to Bologna (see below and you'll understand why). It certainly says something about how the rest of Italy thinks of Bologna. I also wonder what the artist was thinking and what, if anything, happened to him as a result of this piece.






Yes...that is a mermaid with water spouting from her breasts.

I think I already wrote about my trip up to the Cathedral de San Luca, a beautiful cathedral a few kilometers outside the city center whose path is covered by porticoes the entire way. Here are a few pictures from it:


On our way up.


At the top. It was a really rainy day, so I don't have good shots of the view.


And going back down.

And I shouldn't have made fun of my guidebook after all. There was a strike today by the bus and train workers, and Al Italia is striking from July 19-21. That is the weekend we leave - fortunately most people are flying out on different airlines.

Americano? You're a capitalist!

I ultimately decided not to go to Venice this weekend. I have been feeling really exhausted and run-down, and the thought of so many tourists in oppressive heat was too much for me. My plan is to go this coming weekend instead. I still managed to take advantage of the weekend in Bologna, though. My dad said to me right before I left that one of the places I need to make sure to see is Bologna. And he is so right. We don't really get the opportunity to do so during the week as we are in class all day, so the weekend is really the only time for it.

It's amazing how rich a cultural tradition there is here - not surprising given the long history and enormous pride, and therefore, effort that has been put into preserving it. I only scratched the surface this weekend even though I did at least five "cultural" things.

Every year there is an outdoor film festival in the Piazza Maggiore, the town center, where they play movies every night on a huge screen. The movie doesn't start until 10 pm, which is already late by my standards, but they were playing Metropolis on Friday night - the 1925 silent film - with a live orchestra. It was so impressive! I had never seen the movie, so that in itself was great, but the orchestra was incredible. I kept forgetting that they were performing live...it was only when the microphones picked up the rustling of sheet music that I remembered.

Saturday was relatively successful in terms of hitting our points of interest. We first went to the outdoor flea market, which is only open Fridays and Saturdays. I was looking at some sandals and one of the merchants came up to me and said, "Americano? You are a capitalist!" Um, thanks? Not the best way to get me to buy your things. After that we tried to go to the anatomical museum where they have old remains in jars and the equipment they used to use for autopsies. The university in Bologna has one of the best medical schools in the country, and has for a long time, so this is apparently the place that they used to perform autopsies and anatomy labs for the medical students. Supposedly there was always a priest present during these events to ensure that the students did not disrupt the soul of the body they were working on. I don't actually know what's in the museum as it is closed on weekends. I'm hoping to find some time to go before I leave.

We went to the Music Museum, which was open, and saw some amazing instruments and manuscripts dating back to the 1500s. Mozart applied to the conservatory here, and some say he cheated on the entrance exam. I'm skeptical, but it makes for a good story. It was fascinating to see the evolution of both the instruments and the way the scores are written - the notation has changed pretty significantly, but not to the point that the early works are unrecognizable. Here are a few pictures:







We were hungry by the time we had finished, but Italians have prescribed hours for eating, so all of the restaurants had shutdown their kitchens by then. After all, it would absolutely ridiculous that someone would want to eat something after 3 pm. We were all starving by that point and started to feel pretty desperate, but managed to find a cafe with pre-made sandwiches. We couldn't even get food at the Swine Bar a "Soul's Food" restaurant. Very disappointing.

On Sunday we went to the Jewish Museum. There is still a small Jewish community in the region, but it was obviously decimated with WWII. I was underwhelmed by the museum as I was hoping that there would be more artifacts or something. But it is important that the history is remembered, especially since there has been a Jewish population here since the 13th century and the fact that the first ghetto ever established was in Venice. There is also still a synagogue here, something I hope to get to for services one Friday.

And then Sunday afternoon I went to one of the national art museums. There is an entire museum devoted to Girgio Morandi, a famous Italian painter from Bologna. I don't actually like his work very much. He is famous for his still life paintings of bottles and vases - but I just felt as though I saw 40 years worth of his painting the same set of jars over and over. I don't consider myself well-versed in artwork, so I can't comment with any authority, but that was my initial impression.

So, it's been a weekend full of culture in so many forms. Now it's back to reality...well, sort of.

The Symposium

If anyone is interested in the content of the symposium, the staff has setup a blog for participants to make comments and write about the speakers. Here is the link: http://www.ipsinstitute.org/blog/


Ciao!

Glass Harp

I went to an amazing concert last night. I was a little skeptical about going to see Mozart, Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Grieg performed on a glass harp for 15 Euro. Don't get me wrong, I love classical music (it reminds of my previous life after all), but I'm also on a budget and really cheap. Fortunately, my Aussie friends talked me into it.

What is a glass harp, anyway? It's essentially a piano made of wine glasses. The duo that performed last night has the biggest glass harp in the world with 57 glasses. They commissioned a glass company to make them 2,000 wine glasses of various sizes and they chose 57 of them to get the right pitches. The couple plays on the same instrument and it's really incredible how coordinated they are - it's not surprising given the amount of time they practice together, but it's not that big an instrument and one could easily get in the other's way. In fact, in one of the pieces they kept rotating positions, so one would be on the left and cross over to the right. It reminded me of figure skaters and how magical it looks when they are able to seemlessly move together.

The instrument creates a very unique sound. Some of the pieces they played could have been part of the Harry Potter score. It has that fantasy-like quality to it.

To top it off, the venue was perfect, being performed in the courtyard of Santo Stefano. I am unclear on the history, but there is a cluster of 7 churches (it might actually only be three, but locals call it sette chiesse or "seven churches"). Regardless, it is a beautiful brick building from the 5th or 8th or 13th century (or a combination thereof).

Here are few pictures of the performance:


From afar.





So cool!

Ravenna

I've been delinquent for the last week as I've been settling in. Between 6 hours of lecture and discussion every day, nightly readings, socializing, and minimal internet access, I haven't had much time to provide updates. As you can imagine, I've been busy!

I'll start with my weekend, since that spares you the academic, conflict stuff. I went to Ravenna with my roommate, a small town about 75 km east of Bologna. It is famous for its mosaics, and it certainly lives up to the reputation.

To back up for a minute, though, I want to say how amazing my roommate is. Her name is Sophie, she's from Australia and is currently at "uni." I LOVE her. I've never had such a good roommate on these shorter-term programs that I've done. My internship at the RAC in DC was a disaster initially - my roommate would smoke pot in our bathroom every night so everything in our room wreaked. It worked out in the end because she was kicked out of the program, but initially it really sucked. I guess things were ok when I was in Jordan, but my roommate slept all the time and took ridiculously long showers despite the severe water shortage facing the country (to the point that water trucks came around weekly to deliver additional water as we would run out otherwise). Israel made for another interesting experience because my roommate was so obviously miserable sharing a room that it was just really awkward. Ultimately, I suppose that also worked out because she moved into a different unit and I got the room to myself. But, in this case, I really like Sophie, we have similar living styles (she goes to sleep early, too!) and interests.

And since I'm talking about Australians, I may as well run with it. There are 7 Aussies here and I seem to be spending most of my time with them. At this point I think I have learned more about Australian culture than Italian. Obviously an overstatement, but I certainly know a lot more about their political system - they have a new Prime Minister, the first female ever, and she has red hair - and have learned about their education system and have picked up on some of their lingo. For example, they say "op. shop" (short for opportunity) instead of consignment shop or thrift shop. They say "do you reckon?" The lobby of the hotel is "the reception," something my roommate has commented on because she has started calling it a lobby. "How are you going?" means "How's it going?" or "How are you?" Something is rubbish if it's ridiculous or weird, and so is a trash can. There are many others that I have noticed, but can't recall at the moment...more to come.

Back to Ravenna. It was absolutely beautiful. It's a quaint little town - we decided quaint was the most apt word to describe it - and we went specifically to look at these famed mosaics, which were naturally all in churches. It really hit home to me while I was there how surrounded I was by churches and all things Catholic. It clearly should be no surprise that I would encounter churches wherever I turn, or the fact that I have seen numerous nuns, and even a monk wearing flowing white garments (while talking on a hands-free phone, mind you), but I was just struck at how omnipresent it is.

So these mosaics were amazing - I took pictures but have yet to upload them so they'll come in a later post. A lot of them had gold leaf so the sun reflecting off of them were fantastic. And the other colors were so vibrant. All of them depicted Jesus and the apostles in some form, but one of them depicted the binding of Isaac and another Christ's baptism. All of them were built between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. The buildings are surprisingly modest on the outside, and one would never guess that such intricate and painstaking work was inside. Since I don't have pictures, here is a link to the Ravenna Tourist site: http://www.turismo.ra.it/contenuti/index.php?t=arte&lang=2
. It doesn't do justice to its beauty, but hopefully I'll have pictures uploaded by tomorrow.

A few other interesting facts about Ravenna: Dante's tomb is there. Unfortunately I didn't get to see it, but that's kind of cool. It has been the capital three times: for a period of the Western Roman Empire, of King Theodoric of the Goths and of the Byzantine Empire in Europe. And, as can be expected, the gelatto is delicious.

Pesca

Bologna is decidedly lovely. With its porticoed walkways, old buildings, and "Bars" (more like a cafe and bar in one), there is a charming mix of old and new; the modern buildings juxtaposed against the original; and the vespas bumping along the cobblestoned streets. And Italian is such a beautiful language that I am content just people watching and listening to conversations that I don't understand.

I am finding Italian easier to pick up than Arabic, but I certainly have a long way to go. I bought an Italian phrasebook at the last minute, and not surprisingly, it only has limited value. It has been helpful for looking up individual words, but at this point I'm jetlagged and getting my bearings, so I don't seem to be retaining much. Plus, under the travel section, the phrasebook tells you to listen for "there is a strike" when asking about train schedules. Ok, I know Italy is famous for worker strikes, but really? Is that the first thing I shold listen for? And while it explains that Italian pronunciation is intuititive once you learn the rules, I haven't gotten very far. I mean, am I really going to remember when a "c" takes on a "sh" sound? Apparently it would be helpful.

I finally got some gelatto, which was amazing by the way. I walked into the gelateria with my new roommate (an Aussie) and semi-confidently ordered "pe-she y fra--la." The server, while very nice, started laughing and asked if I meant "pes-ca y -go-la." Yes. That is what I meant: peach and strawberry, not fish and strawberry, thank you.

My first day of exploring I happened to find all of the shops where noone spoke English. Everyone was very kind, but it was painfully obvious that I had no idea what I was doing. Ordering espresso, I was asked if I wanted American coffee...I did not come all the way to Italy for American coffee. Plus, Italians are serious about their espresso. Capuccino or caffelatte is a breakfast drink. One does not order it in the afternoon. The cream is too heavy apparently. Straight espresso or espresso macchiato (with a dollop of milk) is acceptable, but no more. And everyone has coffee of somesort for breakfast. You're just weird if you don't.

Other cultural differences: hotels don't provide shampoo, but we do have shoe polish in our room; there is no iron available, you can only have it sent out; you had better be hungry during the prescribed meal times (and dinner is served late by American standards), otherwise you're out of luck as most restaurants close between lunch and dinner.

A New "I"

I was encouraged to start writing in my blog again about my upcoming (which is now upon me) trip to Italy, France, and Ireland. I was initially reluctant thinking about how the focus of my experiences in Israel centered on the physical, emotional, and spiritual journey that that country promised to provide for me. Italy couldn't possibly do the same...right? I obviously don't have the same personal connection to it, nor do I tie up any of my identity in it (not that I necessarily do with Israel, but teasing that out was part of the point of going and remains something I grapple with). I was thinking that I couldn't possibly write anything as thoughtful or meaningful about my upcoming experiences as I did about my time in Israel. It took me some time to realize - yes, it is sad that I actually had to realize this - that a) my conclusion is very likely just not true, especially since the majority of my time will be in a conflict management seminar with 50 others from 30 different countries, and b) even if I don't have anything profound (if I should be so bold to use the term) to say, who cares?

In my preparations over the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about what I hope to get out of the summer. And, as with most of my adventures, I haven't really been able to articulate what my expectations are. I have settled on a few things, though. First, I fully intend on eating my way through the trip. It's a good thing I'll be in Bologna, aka "la rossa, la grossa, e la dotta" or "the red, the fat, and the learned." But given this goal, it's somewhat unfortunate that I'll be ending my trip in Dublin...not exactly known for its cuisine.

Second, and admittedly, this can't happen on this trip, but I've decided that it would be fun to visit every country that starts with the letter "I". Why? you may ask. Why not? I've been to Israel, and I'll knock out two more this trip - Italy and Ireland. So that only leaves Iceland, Indonesia (cool!), India (exotic), Isle of Man (I'm not sure if this is technically a country as it is still under the British crown, but it's between Ireland and England, so I could theoretically take a little detour and check it out), Iran (this one could be a bit tricky - a friend of mine did recommend that I leave Iran for last - you know, in case they detain me and I can't finish the list or something. and Iraq (my brother's been there...I'll say that's close enough). Michael is taking care of all of the continents and I thought I needed something to work towards. And, frankly, nine seems like a manageable number of countries.

Third, I'm just looking forward to exploring a new place. I'm taking the next six weeks (43 days to be exact) to escape reality and to immerse myself in something completely different (ok, not completely different...I'll be learning about all sorts of conflict-related things). It may be transformative on a level that Israel was, or it may be an opportunity for me to rejuvenate so that I can really engage when I return, or it may just be tons of fun. Stay tuned to find out...