(La Strada Del Jazz, Bologna)
Since living here I have heard from many Italians that "Italy is a strange place... you'll soon understand"... Now I get what they mean ...
There is public transportation here, but you can't exactly rely on it. They have "trip planners" to figure out which bus or train to take, but who knows if it will actually come? There is no station in my town to buy bus tickets, you get them from tobacco and candy shops, and often they don't know the bus schedule! Shops close for 3 or 4 hours in the middle of the day so everyone can go home for lunch, they don't post hours on the doors and who knows when places will open back up?? Despite all of that disorganization, the food and wine more than makes up for it, so they just deal with it.
The food is seriously AMAZING. All of the the food I've had while here is out of this world. Lots of cheese, bread, prosciutto, pasta, coffee, wine, fresh fruit, etc. They way the cafe's are set up is really nice too: small shops who put out tables on the street so you are literally sitting in the street and can watch folks walk by.
(Statue of Neptune, my 1st Pizza of the trip & scenes from the Jazz festival)
This Friday I went to 2 different tobacco/candy shops to try and buy a bus ticket to Bologna, they didn't have any, so I had to go to the neighbouring town, Vignola, to purchase one. Luckily my bus arrived right on time! The bus driver was really nice, I asked him how to get to a specific intersection (where I planned on meeting a fellow couch-surfer) and he dropped me right off at the intersection!
Bologna is amazing, a HUGE student/university town, a lot like Austin actually, but more metropolitan. I saw tons of shops, will definitely have to plan an entire day just to window shop there, lots to explore. I met up with my new Greek friend from couchsurfing.org, Dimos. We walked around, grabbed a pizza (HUGE & Scrumptious!), and met up with his flat-mate. I had intended on going to see a show for the Fringe Festival that was in town, but instead we happened upon the Bologna Jazz in the Streets Festival, it was fantastic!
(Video from the festival!)
After the festival my new friends walked with me to the train station where I had planned to buy a ticket to go to Castelfranco (the town with the closest train station to Spilamberto, where I live) so the father of the family could pick me up. I succeeded in buying my ticket, but then when looking for which train platform I needed to get to, we found that the trains got cancelled!!! Luckily we were provided a replacement bus, but it was all very unorganized, no one knew what was going on, not even the bus drivers. Luckily I found a group of young Italians, one guy was half British and helped me out (he went to Uni. in the same town my dad is from, Portsmouth, how crazy is that?!) After a lot of confusion and waiting around, I did get home. A great end to a fantastic evening.
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