And so today marks probably the last day I will be in Bologna for the academic year.
I am leaving in a few hours to stay at my friend's place overnight at Florence before I take a train to Oriolo Romano to stay at my aunt's place for about two more weeks. Then, finally, I fly back to Manila.
Bologna is a charming little Italian city. It's unfortunate that it is surrounded by Florence, Milan, Venice, and even Rome so that it is usually skipped by a lot of tourists. But among the advantages of living in this city is the fact that it is surrounded by all these other great tourist cities. You can always do a day-trip to so many places around Bologna. Other than what have already been mentioned, there is Verona, Rimini, Ravenna, San Marino, Cinque Terre, Siena, and Pisa, just to name a few.
The city itself is full of history. Nobody here will fail to mention that the oldest European university is the Università di Bologna. The place is smothered with little treasures--the whispering wall at Piazza Maggiore, the Palazzo Comunale, San Luca, Piazza Nettuno, Santo Stefano, the porticoes, the Due Torri, the mouthwatering food, the coffee, and most perhaps most importantly, the young, cosmopolitan atmosphere of a student city (the nightlife starts quite late, at around 1 am). With a student population of a little less than 100,000 (comprising about 30% of the entire city population), one can be sure that there is alway something going on.
Bologna is then, perhaps, enjoying the fact that it is in the center of all these tourist cities in northern Italy. There is hardly any loud, annoying group of American and British tourists walking around drunk at night here (compared to Florence or Venice, where the loud, annoying, and drunk group walks around the city in the morning as well). Of course, the catch is that hardly anybody speaks English here so getting things done can be quite frustrating. But as a tourist, I think Bologna should be among the places to visit in this region of Italy.
Italy, for all its faults as a massive and dysfunctional bureaucracy, is saved by these pockets of beauty.
And I wonder why I rarely see fat Italians.
I found this delectable cake at Zanarini in Piazza Galvani. The caffè marocchino is their specialty and it's well worth the visit. Otherwise, just get yourself a nice cup of caffè (what they call the espresso here--anyone who orders an "espresso" betrays that (s)he is a non-Italian) and just watch the beautiful people in beautiful suits come in and out of this place.
Here's an excellent guide to Italian coffee from that wonderful publication, The Economist. Coffee is like a religion here. Notice how The Economist describes the cappuccino (more commonly called the cappucio, though):
[Y]ou will rarely see frothy cappuccino ordered at any time other than breakfast. Ordering a "cappuccio" after lunch or dinner smacks of Anglo-Saxon ignorance.
I keep telling everyone that Bologna is the food capital of Italy and that nobody should come here without expecting to gain somewhere between one to two pounds per week. The Guardian has an article from way back in 2000 that aptly describes how to experience Bologna.
The single most important thing not to be in Bologna is on a diet. Breakfast may be optional, but all other meals are compulsive, eating between meals is compelling, and lunch is compulsory.
...
The knock-out blow is a large ice cream, after which I remember nothing.
I seriously need to lose weight.
I like having my picture taken with the police (not by the police). The only time I was declined was when I had asked for a photograph with the German police in Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. Germans! When I come back to visit Germany, I'll have a picture taken with at least one of them.
Being in a foreign land does not mean losing sight of who one is.
And imbued with firm confidence in Divine Providence, we hereby mutually bind ourselves to support this Declaration with our lives, our fortunes, and with our most sacred possession, our Honor.
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On 01 October 2006, I will leave Manila on a Cathay Pacific flight with the following itinerary:
MNL-HKG
ETD 2005H
ETA 2205H
HKG-AMS
ETD 0005H
ETA 0645H
At Schipol International Airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, I will take a train to arrive at my final destination, the port city of Rotterdam, where I will begin my life as a student of the program "European Master in Law and Economics". My term allocation is as follows: Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands), October to December 2006; University of Hamburg (Germany), January to March 2007; and University of Bologna (Italy), April to July 2007.
Useful links:
My travels and other relevant events will be documented here as best as I can.
