Bologna La Dotta

Bologna's second nickname, "La Dotta" refers to her university, whose origins date back to as early as 1088 and which is considered to be the oldest in Europe. We did go and wander round the university quarter, and I know there are some very interesting museums there (waxworks of medical oddities and deformities, anyone?) but because we didn't acutally spend a lot of time in the area, I'm going to cheat a little and steal the title "The Learned" for the most educational experience I had while we were there: a visit to the seven churches, or Sette Chiese di Santo Stefano.

The Sette Chiese are, as the name says, a complex of seven churches, supposedly built on the inspiration of San Petronio, copying the idea of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, on a site that dates back to Roman times. One of the churches was big enough to be holding Sunday mass when we were vitising, but others were just little chapels.My favourite was the one built up from the ruins of the old temple of Iside, where you could still see the Roman pillars standing next to the Vth century columns of the church.

I also liked the intricate patterns in the brickwork here:

And even I could tell that the nativity scene in the Chiesa Santa Croce was very, very old. Carved out of wood, with statues the size of a small real-life person, it is in fact the oldest Christian crib sculpture in the entire world, dating back to the thirteenth century.

I was impressed.

Bologna la Rossa*

If I was mildly frustrated by the experience of being a tiny dot in the hoardes of tourists in Florence, Bologna was the perfect antidote. Not only were we visiting friends, and therefore slightly less "touristy" ourselves, but even when we did go touring around the city's many sights, we didn't have to queue for anything. Not once.

The most obvious buildings to visit are the Two Towers, which were built in the 1100s and are the symbol of Bologna. There used to be many, many more, but they either they were demolished or they (gulp!) collapsed. Both of the towers lean, although the one that you climb, the Torre d'Asinelli less than the smaller Torre de Garisenda.




Small Tower from Big Tower



Climbing the (very old) wooden staircase.



Another interesting building is the Basilico di San Petronio. It is the fifteenth-largest church in the world, but would have been bigger than St Peter's in Rome if the money for its construction hadn't been spent on the building the university instead. It does hold one record though: laid into the floor is a 66.8m meridian line that is part of the largest sundial in the world.

 

One quirky attraction in the city centre is this arcaded walkway, where you can speak into one side of arch and the sound echoes so that you can be heard perfectly on the other.

 And finally, for perfect views of the main square, you can't beat climbing the stairs in the Palazzo d'Accursio (the town hall) and looking down at what's going on below:

 


* Bologna is often called "la rossa" or "the red" for two reasons: the colour of its bricks and the colour of its traditional politics. The political red has faded somewhat in recent years, but the bricks, as this post proves, remain red (dish brown) as ever.




Queueing with the Carabinieri in Florence

When Understanding Frenchman and I went to Italy back in October, the 27 hours we spent in Florence were something of an afterthought. Our main plan was to see friends in Milan and Bologna, and Florence just happened not to be too far from our planned itinerary.

Turns out, though, that it's not really a place you should try to visit as an afterthought. Or in 27 hours. Because in Florence, to visit just about any place when you haven't reserved days in advance tends to involve spending several hours standing in a queue. Also, you have to pay (a lot) to visit absolutely anything, including churches, so wandering in and out of places just to see if they're interesting isn't really an option.

The most impressive waiting we saw was when we lined up for half an hour in front of the Uffizi to book a slot to visit the following day. The massed queue was managed by the carabinieri, (one of Italy's many police forces), but that didn't stop some brazen souls from jumping it. Once inside, we were informed that all the times up to three o'clock were already full and, with a train to catch at 5pm, we were forced to give up. I was also sad not to climb up to the cupola of the cathedral or the bell tower, but again the queues were so long that both times we tried, we would never actually have got to the front of it before either the place closed or we had to be somewhere else.

Nevertheless, we managed to have a good time, mostly by strolling around and admiring all the gorgeous architecture from the outside:

View of the Duomo from La Rinascente department store. A sneaky look at the view from their tiny terrace is FREE!

Ponte Vecchio. Also free, but better enjoyed from a distance, especially if crowds scare you.

 

Santa Croce church, with a massive piece of public art in the piazza.

The Campanile. I would have loved to climb it, but even just getting this shot made me happy because it's so tall, it was hard to fit it all in!

 

We also visited the interior of the Duomo, which is free, and where the highlight is definitely the cupola, which everyone stands underneath straining their necks to see this amazing work of art:

 

 You just look up, and up and up!

 

 Eternal fires of hell

 

I particularly liked this cheeky skeleton.

 



 In such a touristy city, I was surprised by the friendly service in nearly all the places we ate, particularly from our lunchtime pizza seller who made the effort to check that the temperature of our slices was just right, and the charming waiter in the little trattoria on Borgo Pinti. And on our last walk back to the hotel after dinner, we came across a mime artist doing an old fashioned performance that kept us and the rest of the audience amused for at least half an hour... and there was no queueing involved!

 

 

My Milano

After our sodden first evening in Milan, we were delighted to wake up to a dry day the next morning. Clouds and smog were still sitting low on the rooftops, the city as normal, rather than at its best, but that was what we were there for: so that I could show Understanding Frenchman the city I lived in for a year, just as it really was.

We started out by walking from our hotel through the Giardini Pubblici, one of Milan's prettiest parks, to the Quadrilatero d'Oro, where all the designer flagship stores are. Other people might go there to buy luxury clothing, but we just got harassed by a dreadlocked bracelet-seller and enjoyed gazing at the window displays. We had planned to visit La Scala next, but a combination of the odd opening times of the museum and the fact that you could only see the auditorium from one small vantage point put us off, and we continued through the Gallerie Vittorio Emmanuele, pausing to wonder at the number of people who were spinning on their heels on the testicles of the bull in the floor design for luck. What immediately strikes you in this most ornate of shopping centres is the expensive shopfronts and the gilded arcades, but I happen to know because I've been there that overlooking the galleries are some very ordinary offices with people going about their everyday business inside.

After that we climbed the 200 or so steps up to the roof of the cathedral. A large part of it was unfortunately being refurbished, and the Alps were in hiding that day, but we did get a glimpse of the newest features on the Milanese skyline.

From the duomo, we walked over to the castle and strolled around the Parco Sempione, then took the side exit out to Cadorna station. I was hoping to baffle Understanding Frenchman with the riddle of my favourite sculpture in Milan, but that too was covered in scaffolding, so we jumped on the metro and headed out west so that I could show him the slightly scary street where I lived in a gorgeous apartment instead. It was lunch time, so the dodgy blokes, drug dealers and carabinieri were all on their break and there wasn't much to see, so we took one of the ATM's middle aged (long and orange, with plastic seats) tram back to De Angeli for lunch. My favourite restaurant there seemed to have closed but we managed to find some pasta and do some shopping.

In the afternoon, it was on to the Porta Genova for a walk along the Navigli (currently being drained and therefore with an even larger quantity of rubbish on show than normal, but the atmosphere is still there), then back up past the Roman columns to the centre again.

For dinner, I was excited to be taking Understanding Frenchman out for aperitivo and the lively bar in the Brera that we found didn't disappoint. For nine euros, we each had a gorgeously adorned cocktail and about three plates of nibbles, which was probably more than enough to keep us going, but we couldn't resist an ice cream on the way home anyway.

And that was my tour of my old city. I don't think Understanding Frenchman was blown away by it all, but he did get a feel for the place, and I got to nosy round all my favourite haunts again, so it wasn't a wasted day.

Wet Socks and Fine Dining in Milan

When Understanding Frenchman and I made our first trip together to Italy, the aim of our two days in Milan was for me to introduce him to the city I lived in for a year and give him an insider's peek into la dolce vita alla milanese. On our first day, however, this plan was neatly scuppered by the fact that we stayed at completely the opposite end of town from all my old haunts, coupled with the wettest rain ever to fall on the city. As a result, we spent our first evening hiding under porticoes, darting into shops and peering out at the soggy blackness from underneath a shared umbrella (how romantic ... ).

And so it was that when we pitched up at our friends' house for dinner after waiting for half an hour for a bus, that the first thing we did was ask them to lend us some dry socks.

The evening rapidly improved however, as the prosecco was cracked open and we enjoyed a delicious hot dinner of roast lamb, risotto and caramelised onions, and an even more heated discussion about the correct points to eat bread during a meal and whether it's irritating to correct your other half in the middle of a sentence when they're speaking your mother tongue and not theirs. (My friend, a former colleague, is Irish and her boyfriend Italian, so needless to say, he and Understanding Frenchman put up a united front of Mediterranean solidarity, while she and I defended our right to eat carbohydrates and speak uncorrected.)

The quality of the food, though, was not in question. After the lamb, we had burrata, which is a bit like a giant mozzarella, but much runnier, served with olive oil and cherry tomatoes, and another new experience for me fichi d'India, or Indian figs. These are crazy looking fruits that come in pink and yellow and have hints of spines on the outside. You peel them and eat the inside, which is closest to the seedy part of a kiwi fruit that to anything else I can think of, but as with a pomegranate, you have to be careful not to crunch the seeds, which taste bitter.

I thought I was fairly familiar with most Italian foods, so it was nice to discover there are still delicious surprises out there!

Trilingual Travel in Italy

It's an endlessly occurring experience for Anglophone travellers. You go to another country, bust out your best phrases in the local language, and the serveur, cameriere or Kellner speaks straight back to you in English. "It must be my terrible accent," you think. Or maybe you got a gender wrong. Or quite possibly, it wasn't language at all, but the socks you wore with your sandals, the flaming sunburn or the way you counted on your fingers that gave you away. Either way, Antoine, Giulio or Hans-Peter knew straight away that you were English, American, Irish, Canadian, whatever. Actually, scrub that. Depending on the whiteness of your teeth, he assumed you were either English or American, but that's not really the point. He guessed your mother tongue, so no more speaking foreign languages for you. Or so it seems. But I have often wondered whether the distinction between nationalities is not more a case of "from here/ not from here" and whether people who address me in English are either trying to be helpful or delighted to practise with a native speaker rather than being horrified by my massacring of their beautiful mother tongue. Which is why, travelling in Italy for the first time with my Understanding Frenchman and speaking mostly French, I was intrigued to see what effect my masquerading as a francophone would have on the way people reacted to us. Here are the results: Staff of a multinational hotel chain: mostly Italian, but occasionally English, especially when I was alone and they had seen my passport (and also the time I embarrassingly confused the numbers 12 and 200). None of them spoke French to either of us. Assorted shop staff in Milan, Florence and Bologna: entirely in Italian, even, on occasion to UFM (who speaks no Italian whatsoever) when he was alone. Charming older waiter at a local, non-touristy restaurant in Florence: spoke to us the entire evening in slightly hesitant French. Grumpy waiter in Milan: thought we were Spanish but spoke to us in English anyway. Jumped-up twenty-year old waiter on the main piazza in Bologna: insisted on speaking in English, but his attitude was worthy of a Parisian. Waiter at a Neapolitan restaurant in Bologna with a group of English-speakers: English to the group, camped up French to Understanding Frenchman, and, inexplicably, to my English friend who speaks fluent Italian, large amounts of German. African bracelet sellers on the streets of all three cities: every language under the sun. The conclusion: in Italy, you can get by with English, it's worth trying out your Italian, and if you go to Bracce restaurant in Bologna, the food is amazing and you can speak whatever language you like!

The Lagazuoi Tunnels

The last via ferrata of my Italian trip was the easiest, but the beginning was almost as dramatic as the day before. Having decided not to take the cable car from Falzarego, we were coming to the end of what should have been an easy hike up to the top of the mountain where the via ferrata started when the voices of the gods roared, the heavens opened, and we were caught in a mighty thunderstorm. We were only about 20 minutes away from the refuge, but with the path turned into a small stream and rivulets of water streaking down the mountain, 20 minutes was plenty of time to get soaked.


It was perfect timing for the owners of the refuge, however, as we weren't the only ones that took advantage of it being lunch time to order a hot meal and dry out before making our way out across the ridge to where the via ferrata started.

It's hard to tell amongst the jagged stone of the Dolomites, but an enormous chunk of the mountain above Falzarego is missing, not because of natural erosion or disaster, but because during World War One, the Austrians were dominating the ridge from the top and the Italians were lurking lower down. Neither side was making much progress until the Italians, who had created a network of tun.nels in the mountain below, used explosives to blow away a giant section of the crest. The tunnels have now been turned into an outdoor museum and you can rent an audioguide and read information pannels as you make your way along the iron cable to the bottom.

The via ferrata was only a level 1 and we didn't use harnesses, but we were glad of our helmets, torches and fingerless gloves for holding on to the cables. Spending an hour inside a mountain in dank tunnels isn't exactly pleasant but it does give you some inkling of what life was like for the poor soldiers who carried not only all their provisions but tonnes of explosives and weaponry up the steep paths, then slept in the stone caves in inadequate clothes for the subzero winter temperatures. What is harder to understand, of course, is how these men were able to put up with such circumstances for so long, especially with the hindsight of knowing what a terrible waste the whole war turned out to be.