The Elusive Lia
Friday, July 20th, 2018
I’ve been back from my spring jaunt to Bologna for almost two months and have not written a blog post for what seems like ages. Other than my usual laziness I do have have something of an excuse which I’ll explain in a post before long. But right now the subject is my friend Lia.
I met Lia at the central library, the fantastic Biblioteca Salaborsa. She is a volunteer in the same way that I do. She has a conversation in her native language (madre lingua – mother tongue) which is, of course, Italian. We kind of hit it off and to my surprise she accepted an invitation to join me one evening for aperitivo. She’s too young for me, 19 years is too much of an age differential, but we enjoy each other’s company. During this last winter period we exchanged emails almost daily, an exercise which was a great learning experience for me and really improved my Italian. Since we’re both unattached we hung out together quite a bit. We went to a couple of movies at Cinema Lumiere where they show movies in the original language with subtitles. We’ve had meals at each other’s houses and met for “aperitivo” and even went to a location where there were people dancing tango – a surprisingly popular activity here. She dances, I watch. She staunchly resisted my attempts to photograph her as you can see from the photos that follow.
At a bar in centro
At another bar for aperitivo – almost got a decent photo
At a gelateria – foiled again
And again
Aha – a least I now have a profile. She REALLY likes gelato. This is her second one.
Finally, the diminutive Lea center and another good friend Liu’
Lia loves an active life. Born and raised near the Dolomiti mountains she is really a mountain girl at heart and likes to be always on the move. Her activity was curtailed some years ago (3 or 4) I think when she fell from a climbing wall in a gym in Bologna and fractured her ankle and a bone in her calf quite badly. It never completely healed properly after surgery so she had to give up running and long distance hiking – things that she really loves. So this summer she is have remedial surgery which will hopefully restore much, but not all, of the activity to her life. The cast just came off today and after another month she should be fully recovered.
A gift from Lia before I left. A doll made of napkins and kitchen towels for when I stay in Bologna. Very thoughtful and cute.
I’m looking forward to seeing her when I return in September.
