Dreaming In Italian

I have rented a bicycle from the school at the wonderfully low price of 10 euros a week and I store it in the garage. I ride to and from school, to the gym and to the Coop to buy the few groceries that I need for the week. Riding through the center of Bologna to and from school is a bit of an adventure.

The streets inside the walls are almost all cobblestones in one form or another and as you might imagine it is a rather bumpy ride. Today I rode to the center to meet Barbara and Vittorio for lunch and rode through the piazza Santo Stefano which is closed to traffic other than feet and bicycles. There for a stretch it’s not just cobblestones but actual stones, i.e. roundish things and that is REALLY bumpy. The traffic is really not bad since the drivers of every sort of vehicle from other bicycles to trucks are very aware of cyclists and provide adequate margin for safety when passing. I must say that once I did get a bit of an adrenalin rush when a bus passed me with no more than a foot to spare. 

The final challenge on the bike is to go up the hill on via Orsoni to the palazzo. I’ve yet to make it more than halfway up the hill even in the lowest gear and even then I am pretty sweaty. The rest of Bologna is pretty flat so while it is reasonable exercise it’s not all that strenuous. Today I did the hill halfway so I need to shower before I go out for aperitivo tonight.

Late breaking news; as I am writing this I have read that there will be a sciopero (strike) of the bus drivers (and perhaps other workers for the bus company) on Monday. This happened once before, about a month ago but that strike was only for 4 hours, this one will be almost all day. The strike starts at 8:30 and ends at 4:30 this time so traffic will naturally be bad and once the bus service restarts the buses will be so packed with people that it will be impossible to board one if it has been in transit for awhile. So thank God for the bicycle. It should be a nice day so it will be a great alternative.

One of my favorite teachers at school, Davide, had a great story. As a bit of background, there are a LOT of bicycles in Bologna. Not only are there lots of students but people well advanced years ride them as well. Both Cesarina and her husband Roberto regularly ride bicycles around town. The inevitable result is much the same as almost any U.S. city. Lots of bicycles get stolen. It is rare here as well as in California to see a bike not securely locked. Anyway Davide bought a bike that he loved. He then bought a really big strong chain that he described as almost more expensive than the bike. He locked it and then…. he lost the key! Now he just looks at it fondly.

Last week I decided to send an email to Graham who is subletting my apartment in Oakland. Just checking in:

“How are things going, any issues, are you liking the place?”

“I love it here, more than I could have imagined, it’s close to BART, convenient to downtown and Whole Foods, etc. If you would like to stay in Italy another month I’d be happy to rent it for another month.” he responded.

Hmm,tempting, but I wrote back. “ It is tempting but you know it would cost at least $400 just to change the flight.”

Again he responded “I like it so much that I would be glad to split the cost.”

Wow, now it is really tempting so I called up Lufthansa (using Skype) to see how much it would really cost. It costs $250 to make any change to the ticket and another $250 because the airfares are higher in the summer.

So I wrote again and he was still willing to split the cost so I decided to stay another month. My Italian is improving to the point that I can “almost” understand a lot of the conversations now. In something of a breakthrough I can sometimes understand better than I can speak rather than the other way around. I would really miss the dinners out with the gang of Italians organized by “Il Principe”, Vittorio – his friends,with tongue in cheek, call him that “The Prince”.

Thank God for Skype. I called the gym in Oakland and continued the suspension of my membership by another month. I called the place where I am storing my car to notify the guy there that I was extending by another month and called the New Yorker customer services to keep the delivery of that wonderful magazine on hold for another month.

Now there is the question of lodging. I was thinking that perhaps I’d change lodging for the last month to get some experience in another neighborhood if I could find a place with Wi-Fi and an elevator. However today Cesarina said that she would be sad when I left so I think that I will stay here. Besides that, I love the neighborhood and can extend my membership at the gym for another month. I can always explore other nice neighborhoods on the bike.

So now I am just half way through my stay in this wonderful city.

As I previously explained, a house (in Italian) really translates into home rather than a physical structure “house”. So I live at via Osoni 30 on the 2^nd floor – equivalent to the 3^rd floor in the U.S. The school is also on the second floor so I get a fair amount of exercise just going up and down stairs. The apartment is really a rather generous size for Italy. It has a living room all to itself rather than a common room that combines the functions of living room, dining room and kitchen. There is a separate small dining room and a TINY kitchen. Then there are three rather generously sized bedrooms as well as a sunroom. Rather luxurious for Italy. There is a balcony which has a lot of plants because Cesarini loves gardening in every form. When you add the stendino (the clothes drying rack) there’s hardly any room left on the balcony. Very few people have a clothes dryer, air drying is the rule rather than the exception. Really the only thing that I wish were different is that there is no internet in the house so rather than wi-fi I had to buy the chiaveta to access the internet through the cellular network.

The lady of the house, Cesarina, is a real sweetie although a little tight with money. That’s natural since she is retired and has a passion for music. She saves money to to feed her music habit which see indulges 2 or three times a week.  She has a lot of interests other than music. There are plants on almost every window ledge and the balcony has plants everywhere. There are books on a variety of subjects all over the house. We’ve developed a comfortable relationship. If we have a load of clothes in the washer and she is out of the house when they are done, I put them on the rack and bring them in when they are dry. She has repaired some socks of mine and a couple of pair of underwear as well.

From the balcony you can see San Luca, which is one of the major landmarks of Bologna along with the twin towers.

 

 

 

Not a place where chickens live. It’s the name of a supermarket chain in Italy. There are several of them in Bologna. The ones within the walls tend to be fairly small for a supermarket and I don’t think much of them. There was a big one near where I lived last year and one about a half mile from where I am living now. Cesarina says that it’s nothing great and she prefers by far the Esselunga but it is a LONG way from where I am living.

Last Saturday I rode my bicycle that I have rented to the Coop. I arrived fairly early so that there wouldn’t be a million people inside since I wanted not only to do some grocery shopping but also to take some pictures. So I took a few pictures and then was approached by a woman who was obviously an employ of the place.

“ You can’t take pictures inside the store unless you have authorization.”, she said.

“Come, scusi? (What, excuse me?)”

“ You can’t take pictures without authorization and since it is Saturday there is nobody that can give you authorization.”

“But I’m an American and I only want to take some photos to show my readers what a great store this is.”

“Sorry that’s the law.”

“Law or regulation?”

“Well, maybe it’s just a regulation but you cannot take any more pictures”

If my Italian were better I could have had a really good argument with here although it probably wouldn’t have mattered. But after all arguing seems to be the national pastime here and I was sorry to miss such a great opportunity. So I did what any Italian would probably do; I waited until she was out of sight and took some more pictures. I was a bit intimidated and so didn’t take as many photos as I would have liked.

In the photo of the fish section below note the orange basket. It has wheels and a handle that lifts up to drag it around. A really nice alternative to the hand basket that one find in stores in the U.S. Of course they have grocery carts almost identical to ours as well.

I’m sure that I mentioned in another post that you need to weigh and label your produce before putting it in the basket. This is actually a pretty good system since then everything in your basket has a barcode and the checkout goes quickly. There are also self-checkout stations with both english and italian options for instructions. Since the lines can be quite long they are very useful.

I didn’t take a picture of the beer section. It’s quite modest in comparison to my favorite supermarket or for that matter most american markets. Also I’ve yet to see cold beer for sale in a market here. In addition to a few Italian beers there were German ones and Heinekin -which seems to be quite popular here. That says something about the Italian beers. There were only two beers from outside europe – Corona and Budweiser. That perhaps also says something about Italian beers.