That's Bologna!

Dateline, Monday, May 31st, 2010. Labor day in America, but just another day here in Italy. It was the third day of Alee's visit, and we had some big plans for the afternoon. Classes had recently ended for my schoolmates and I, so we were eager to get out and celebrate the good weather during the day. Saar, Birgit and I organized a little picnic in the public gardens so we could get out, get some sun, eat some food and show Alee what it's like to be a lazy Italian student drinking in the park. While the others were bringing wine, cheese, and meats, I was tasked with finding a certain kind of bread to bring to the party. I was told where to find it and how much to get; it sounded like a lot (five kilos, about ten pounds), but I had no idea how freakin' big it would be until we got to the little store that sold it. This GIANT wheel of bread was so enormous, the guy had to cut it into four pieces just so we could carry it with us out of the store. We lugged the darn thing to the gardens, set up our little picnic area, and waited for the others to arrive.

On the way we stopped by the little creek that runs through the gardens to feed the turtles in the water some of our bread (we could spare a few bites).

But there was a duck armada bent on intercepting all our bread torpedoes, and the poor turtles were too slow and dumb to get any of the crumbs.

The others were operating on Italian time, so Al and I sat there chitchatting for a while by ourselves. Little did I know, Al is a sneaky, sneaky girl. She kept my attention away from the footpath that circles the park as her plan unfolded behind me; and to my complete and utter surprise, in the middle of our conversation I hear a giant backpack plunk down next to me and it's owner, Ryan Burch, exclaims "You know how hard it is to set up a surprise like this from 6000 miles away??" Completely unbeknownst to me, he and Alee had planned this whole thing out weeks before. I was so shocked I could barely say anything for about half an hour! I was totally taken aback, but in the best way possible. That moment definitely ranks up there with some of the coolest stuff that's ever happened to me. They filled me in on the whole plot, and what he'd been doing recently - after graduating from MBA school at ASU, he went to Vegas with my other friends back home (which I knew about), but then flew directly to Croatia from there and spent a week backpacking around that country until he came Italy to hang out with Al and I. He recanted his adventures there as my buddies from class slowly trickled in to our little encampment. Pretty soon we had claim over a sizable portion of the park, and we dug into our provisions with fervor. Birgit showed up with a few friends of hers, a Danish girl and an American guy; at that point, with the four of us from the States, we outnumbered all the other nationalities represented. America for the win! Here are some photos of the day:

That's about 1/8th of the giant wheel of bread, for the record. We only ended up eating a quarter of it between about twelve of us, so I took the rest home, froze it, and ate it for another month! We had quite the afternoon there in the park, drinking, chatting, and playing games. Once we were good and lubricated, we somehow developed a game wherein fresh grapes are hit with a paddle towards a group of hungry participants, who then try to catch said grapes in their mouths:

Nothing like some good clean fun in the park. Afterwards, we decided to head to an aperitivo at a nice little bar that's located halfway up one of the hills that surround Bologna. It was a bit of a trek (especially with Ryan's travelling backpack!), but it was such a cool place it was worth it. Through the trees you could see most of Bologna's rooftops, with the famous towers and churches dotting the skyline. Very cool. And Riccardo managed to knock another wine glass off the table at that place, breaking it into a zillion pieces, just like a few nights before. Like I said, some people you can't take anywhere!

Here's me hamming it up at the bar with some of the leftover bread:

We stayed there fairly late, having a couple drinks to cool off after a warm sunny day in the park, until Saar's boyfriend mercifully gave us a ride home. Ryan's backpack was heavy, and we were nowhere near my place, so that was a godsend. Tomorrow would be the start of a big trip for us, so we hit the hay fairly early to get up and start the adventure the next day. Stay tuned for the next installment when the American Invasion heads out of Bologna!

So sorry for the massive length of time between updates! I know you've all been curious what I've been up to. Ever since Alee arrived in late May, it's been one crazy thing after another! I've had virtually non-stop guests, adventures, tests, schoolwork, eating, partying, travelling, and altogether too much fun. Now that I've got some time to really sit back and relax, it's time to get some pictures and stories of adventure out there for you guys to see!

WELL

Where did we leave off? Ah yes, anticipating Alee's arrival...
It was early one warm afternoon, Friday, May the 28th when I finally got to see one of my best friends in the whole world after eight long months of American-less contact here in Italy. I skipped classes that day to go pick her up at the airport, got there a little early and waited with immense anticipation for the plane to land and disembark. I realized too late that it would have been really funny if I'd brought a little sign to hold up that said 'Ms. Nelson' and stood there like an idiot at the gate; I managed to find some napkins to write on but no writing utensils, so I just waited there like all the other (normal) people. The plane landed on time (it was a German flight, not Italian, of course) and I gave Al a great big hug when she stepped out the doors. Like any good airport, there was a big stand selling hunks of Italian meats and cheeses which we passed on the way out, which quite impressed her. On the bus ride back we went over all the words she learned in German from reading her English/Italian/German dictionary, but that she hadn't bothered to learn in Italian yet.

We headed straight home on the bus to get her luggage and such situated and so she could relax a bit after her long flight. I'd already rustled up some plans for us for the evening, so we took it easy for the day. I let her chill out at home while I ran out to get some groceries. I had meant to stock up before she arrived, but at first I thought her flight was coming in at 4pm, not 2pm, and I was going to go shopping in the meantime. Good thing I double checked the itinerary! So off I went to the store for a bit. Alee said she could use some vaseline as she hadn't packed any, so while at the store I searched and searched but couldn't find it. After about ten minutes I finally asked one of the guys working there (and I use the term 'working' loosely). At first he didn't understand what I was asking for, but then the light bulb went off and he said "Ah! Olio di vaselino!" (vaseline oil). He seemed to think they had it, but after another five minutes of searching he couldn't locate it either, so he suggested that I go visit a pharmacy. That's what I did, so on the way back I stopped by one right near my place. There wasn't any out on the floor of the store (the pharmacies are a lot smaller here, like little one room apothecaries, not a big Walgreens or CVS), so I went up to the counter and asked for a small bottle using the same phrase the guy at the grocery store used, ie 'olio di vaselino'. The clerk happily obliged and came back after a minute with a little box with the name of the stuff written on the outside. It wasn't the little blue-topped Unilever jar like I was expecting, but I figured it would do. So I got home and opened up the box for Al, only to find that it was some crazy liquified version of the stuff in a little glass bottle. It obviously wasn't going to work for her, which was fine because we couldn't figure out how to get the damn cap off the bottle anyway. We tried everything short of explosives, but the damn thing wouldn't budge. Italy must know something that I don't.

We relaxed and chit chatted until it was time to go out that evening. Some friends from class were having a little dinner get together at a house, so we went and joined them for some good ol' fashioned homecooked spaghetti with an interesting sauce of tomatoes, onions, and toasted breadcrumbs. And lots of wine, of course.

After that we headed out towards the city center, where we ended up in our favorite little piazza (Santo Stefano) having some more wine and shenanigans.

From the piazza, we went to a quiet little place nearby that's less like a pub and more like someone's house that just happens to have a bar in it. There we played pickup sticks and had, you guessed it, some more wine.

It was a fairly tranquil night, especially compared to the rest of the nights to come while my friends from home were here in Bologna. The only break in the tranquility was when Riccardo managed to break one of the wine glasses by knocking it off the table... a party foul which he would inadvertently repeat a few nights later. You just can't take some people anywhere! When we were done drinking and playing, we headed outside. Alee immediately fell in love with a little yellow labrador standing guard outside the bar, who did not return her affections at all. She didn't have much success with getting the attention of dogs for most of the trip. We determined that dogs here in Italy are so used to living in densely populated areas that they just don't give a shit about people trying to come up and pet them. After the dog gave us the cold shoulder, we headed home and stopped at one of my favorite late-night food joints, which happens to serve a magnificently greasy and satisfying hot dog. It's deep fried in a sort of indian-frybread bun with a layer of french fries inside, and covered in ketchup and mayonnaise... mmmm mmmm, it always hits the spot around 3am! I wish I had a picture of its gloriousness, but I guess I'll just have to go back and take one.

We slept in the next day (obviously!) and moseyed into the city center in the afternoon to do some sight seeing. I took Al on a tour around the campus where my college is, then up the street to see some of the old porticoes and the famous two towers of Bologna. Then we walked through the old part of town, just checking out the buildings, the Neptune fountain, the old seat of the city government which is now the public library, the war memorials, and the main square. It slipped my mind when we left the house that she couldn't wear a top with exposed shoulders when seeing the churches around town, so unfortunately we didn't get to go inside those on that day. But while wandering around we found a really quaint little restaurant in a secluded piazza at the foot of another ancient tower (since converted into a bookstore) where we had dinner.

We had some really good pasta there, and a few bottles of wine, and a really good dessert of zuppa inglese. Half the fun was watching Alee order in Italian with a Chicago accent. We went out after dinner with my friends from class to a little dance club, and had some adventures there to say the least. We were out pretty late and didn't leave til about 4am, at which point I thought it would be a good idea for us to try to take the one night bus home instead of making poor Alee walk all the way back to where my place is. Usually I just go home on foot at that hour, so I've never taken the night bus before, and as it turned out we would have been better off hoofing it. When we got to the bus stop in the center where it picks people up once an hour, we saw that we'd just missed the previous bus by about ten minutes so we decided to find a quick bite to eat. We got some pizza, then made our way back to the stop to await the bus which would arrive a little after 5am.

As you can see, the sun was already coming up before the bus even got there... Well, eventually the bus shows up, and we were off. There were a bunch of others on the bus as well (mostly young folk around our age - go figure), and slowly our numbers startled to dwindle stop after stop. The bus went on a route through various parts of the city I wasn't familiar with, and after a while I started to get concerned as we seemed to be getting farther and farther away from where we needed to go. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, in my inebriated state I had misread the bus stop map. Eventually the bus stopped at a place in the middle of nowhere, with a field on one side and some kind of industrial building on the other, and the driver announced to us and the other five riders that this was indeed the end of the line and we all had to get off. Well, ain't that a kick in the pants... The driver shooed us all off, and started driving away while we poor disoriented passengers looked at each other with that 'what the hell are we supposed to do now' face. I looked at the bus stop map that was posted there to try and figure out a) where the hell we were and b) when the next bus would come. This was a bit of a laborious task for me in my inebriated state, but thankfully after about 45 seconds the bus driver made a u-turn, came back down the opposite side of the road, stopped, and told us all we could get back on. More confused than ever, but not wanting to miss a ride, we hopped back on and rode the damn thing in the opposite route from where we'd just come, right back to where he picked us up. By the time we got back to the center, it was already past 6am and the regular buses had started running, so we took one of those back home and finally called it a night (or is that morning?)

The next day, waking up was not really an option. It was pretty late by the time we rolled out of bed. Late enough that I decided now was the time to introduce Alee to the amazingness that is the aperitivo hour. We got ready and headed out to a nice little inexpensive place in the city center that had some good aperitivo food. We weren't going to have a lot because we had dinner plans (like any good Miller vacation does). But I got a call from some friends from class who were meeting up at another place for an aperitivo, so we headed over there as well to make it a two-aperitivo pre-dinner day. The place we ended up at is right on the main piazza and is usually pretty sweet, but with the weather being nice it was jam-packed with people and every time they put out a new plate of food it was like a piranha feeding frenzy. We didn't end up eating too much there as a result, which was just as well, since dinner would be pretty nice.

After that, my friends headed home but Alee and I stayed out. Dinner here in Italy is usually pretty late; most restaurants don't even open until after 7pm, and typically the Italians head out to eat around 9 or even later. So, we had some time to kill. There was some big to-do going on the piazza with a stage set up and some band playing, so we grabbed a cheap bottle of sparkling wine from a nearby convenience store and sat on the steps of the church to listen to the music and do some people watching until it was time to go to dinner. People watching is always an entertaining activity here in Italy, and that night was no exception. The biggest treat for Alee was when they played 'Sweet Home Chigaco', which was pretty surreal to listen to from the steps of a giant church in the middle of a medieval piazza. And as we witnessed, Italians are either confused on what kind of music it is or when it is appropriate to perform certain dances, as about 30 people in the square formed a big line and proceeded to line dance to the song. That was the icing on the cake. We probably could have called it a night then and there, but our food adventure awaited us so after a little while we headed towards the restaurant.

I took Al to eat at the Osteria Sette Chiese, a place I'd been once before with my friends around Easter time. Their specialty is a big (and I mean BIG) platter of sliced, cured meats and cheese on top of a bed of arugla, served along side some slices of bruschetta topped with cheese/sausage and cheese/marinara, fresh bread typical of the region, and melted brie wrapped in raw prosciutto. If your mouth isn't watering right now, you may want to check your pulse. Anyway, that was the centerpiece of the whole evening; we spent hours there, stuffing our faces with cheese, meat, bread and wine, and capped it off with some dessert (my favorite - vin santo with biscotti for dunking). We didn't go out and do anything crazy that evening like the night before, but we had enough wine and red meat to make it a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Here is a picture of the food platter to make you jealous:

And one of Al just being silly. Wine'll do that to ya.

We headed home after the restaurant as we had some plans for a picnic the next day, which would turn out to be far more exciting than originally anticipated. Stay tuned for the next installment of American Invasion 2010!