American Invasion, Part Twelve: The Final Chapter

As the hot summer days carried on, I had to try harder and harder to find things to fill my time. It was approaching mid-August, and the city was practically vacant. Even my housemates had been gone for the summer, but one of them, Maria, returned from her trip to Spain and Morocco around this time. I don't have much desire to visit that part of the world, but the pictures she showed me and the stories she told really did make an impression. It's always fascinating to see and hear how other people live.

One of the many amazing photos Maria took in Morocco

One night after she came back, we went together to meet some of her friends and see a pretty unique exhibition. It was the 30th anniversary of the Ustica Massacre, when a commercial jetliner that left from Bologna mysteriously exploded in mid-air above the Italian island of Ustica, killing everyone on board. To this day the exact cause of the disaster is unknown, and theories range from terrorism to getting caught in a dogfight between US and Libyan jet fighters in the Mediterranean. There is a museum dedicated to the disaster here in Bologna (not far from my apartment, actually), and on this special occasion there were a bunch of memorial showings of music, poetry, art, etc. Almost the entire plane had been excavated from the ocean floor and reassembled, and it is housed at the site of the museum in Bologna. We walked around the plane for a bit, but I had no desire to linger. To me it seemed like a really creepy exhibition - like staring into an open grave. There was definitely an eerie feeling in the air.

The recovered plane inside the memorial/museum [photo from Wikipedia]

After the exhibit, things took a decidedly lighter turn. It was the part of the summer when the Perseid meteor shower was going on, so we all wanted to go out of the city to the hills and catch the show in the sky. With all of Maria's friends, we ended up having a convoy of three or four cars. We had to meet up on the main road that circles Bologna's city center, and Maria's car was closest so we arrived at the rendezvous point first. Ridiculously enough, the rendezvous also happened to be another kind of rendezvous point altogether - that is to say, there were some female, well, 'professionals', hanging out at the same spot where we pulled over. One of them looked at us pretty confused as a car full of twenty-somethings pulled up and stopped right next to her. There were a lot of laughs and 'roll up your windows!' kind of jokes going on as we waited for the other cars in the convoy to arrive. The poor working girl only got more and more confused as car after car pulled up next to her, um, place of business. I was half afraid that some Italian pimp was going to show up and yell at us to quit ruining his business, banging our cars with a pimp cane. Things only got funnier when an actual customer pulled up. We couldn't believe our luck (if you can call it that) at being able to see such a once in a lifetime interaction - er, that is, negotiation. After a few minutes they took off in his car, presumably for the real interaction. We felt sorry for the poor girl, as he definitely looked like the kind of guy that would be paying for a good time. Ah, romantic Italy!

Finally, all of the cars arrived, and we could set off towards the hills for an unobstructed view of the meteor shower. It was really cool, aside from the fact that we were all being eaten alive by mosquitoes, and I actually saw quite a few meteors that night. Even better, it was significantly cooler out in the hills, which was a welcome reprieve from the stifling heat of the city.

Nothing much happened for the next week or so, when my other housemate Alice came home. She'd been gone most of the summer so we hadn't hung out in a while, and we went out with a friend of hers for some drinks and food at a Greek restaurant in the city center. It was good food and a nice change from all the pasta and pizza I usually eat.

Housemate Alice and I. Via del Fico means 'Fig Street', but it's also slang for 'really cool' - hence the theatrics

Then another week went by with not much else, until I was contacted via Couchsurfing (a social networking website, kind of like Facebook) by a German student who was coming to Bologna to study in the same business college I am at. She asked if I could show her where the campus is and some of the town, so I was happy to oblige. We hung out that day, and also the next day as I offered her the use of my computer because she was staying in a hotel and trying to find an apartment for the time she would spend in Bologna. It was kind of a crazy day because we met up in the morning so she could surf Bologna's apartment websites, then I had to leave around noon to meet up with an American girl that I encountered on the same Couchsurfing website. She was coming to Bologna along with a few other American students to study at the Johns Hopkins University campus here in Bologna, and likewise she asked if I could she her around the town a bit. Of course I was glad to help again, and it was really nice because I got to meet several of the other Americans that came with her to Bologna and I hung out with them a bit in August when none of my friends were here. One day we even went to play basketball at the big park in the city, but it was a bit depressing; after a year of not playing, I was quite noticeably less skilled (not that I was particularly good in the first place). I ended up going out to dinner with them all one night, which was kind of cool as it was the most number of Americans I had been around at the same time for about a year. I of course was giving out lots of advice about Bologna, and I even ended up playing electrician and helping out one of the students who couldn't figure out why the lights wouldn't come on in their newly rented Bolognese apartment. Amidst all this American activity, I even noticed quite a few American cars on the road - probably since I was walking around all the time with no classes yet and not much else to do. On different days I encountered a new Chevy Camaro painted like Bumblebee from the Transformers movie, an old K5 Blazer that I see around town from time to time, and even a Dodge Ram 2500 Dualie that I would never have imagined to show up in Europe.

It was quite an American end to an American summer, but towards the end of August I decided that I'd had enough of sitting around on my butt here in Bologna. I started feeling the travel bug, and I began looking into places I could visit on the cheap. Even though I really didn't have any cash to spare, I knew I would always regret it if I stayed a whole summer in Europe and didn't travel outside of Italy. Thankfully, Ryanair, the European low budget airline, flies out of Bologna's airport quite regularly, and by staying in hostels I was able to plan some places to see that weren't terribly expensive. I spent the last part of August putting together these trips. My adventures would begin in mid September, but first I would have some more fun in Bologna.

Every year in the first part of the month there is the Festa dell'Unita, or Unity Festival, which is kind of like a local version of the state fair. There are tons of booths and kiosks set up on a fairgrounds outside of the city, with everything from car dealers to local breweries to ethnic foods showcasing their goods, and of course lots of live music. I guess the big difference is that there are some late night music/dancing/drinking venues that are open at the festival as well, so you can party after you are done stuffing your face with greasy fair food. I went once with my housemate Alice and her friends, and another time with some friends from class, just before I left for my big European adventure. Both times we ate, drank, and partied pretty well. That would be a recurring theme over the next several weeks  as I made my way around Europe.

Playing with our food at the Festa dell'Unita

Even though I am writing this update of August contemporaneously in December, the updates I will post from my summer European travels were written just after I returned. I simply wanted to  first catch up with all the other elements from the summer before posting them - which I will do in a few days, after you gentle readers can digest this update, and after I return from my next big adventure which I undertake tomorrow: a trip to Belgium with some of my classmates to attend a business seminar at the European Parliament! It should be exciting and I'm really looking forward to it, so get ready for some more awesome updates soon!