Bologna

This weekend we went to Bologna. There was a train strike which kept us from being able to leave on Friday, so first thing Saturday morning we took the regional train to Firenze. We barely managed to work the ticket dispenser fast enough to catch the train though, as the instructions and everything were in Italian, and the cancel button didn't work so we ended up being stuck with one extra ticket to Arezzo that we didn't mean to buy. We headed out from Castiglion at 8:38 and arrived in Firenze about 10:00

When we got to Firenze we realised that there was no Regional train heading to Bologna, and our tickets were only for Regional service, so we had to upgrade to either Eurostar or Inter-City. Because of that we missed the next two trains and ended up waiting in Firenze an hour. We finally managed to upgrade our tickets and then took the 11:30 train from Firenze to Bologna.

When we got on the Inter-City train we found it was WAY overbooked, standing room only. Also this kind of train is designed with cabins that can be reserved in advance (for an extra fee of course) so the overflow space was a very narrow hallway. People were literally standing on top of eachother, and it was very uncomfortable. Thankfully the train ride was only about about an hour. The entire time I was sitting there thinking, if there was any kind of accident on this train there would be no hope for anyone who couldn't get a seat. Seriously, the train was probably 15 or 20 cars long and there were as many as 100 people crammed into the hallways of each car. None of those people would survive any kind of accident. All of that makes me think again how great it is to live in the US where we have safety codes and trains like that wouldn't be allowed to be so over-sold.

Bologna was a very modern city with lots of brick buildings

Our first steps out of the train station in Bologna were just after 12:30 in the afternoon, and what we saw was really pretty different from Firenze and the rest of Tuscany, which I hadn't left until this trip.

Most of the buildings in town are made of various colors of bricks, as opposed to the plaster walls found in most of Tuscany. The effect of this made the city of Bologna seem more American to me, it reminded me more of the old downtown type of buildings you still see hanging on in Dallas or St. Louis. One of the guys on the trip, Dave, said it looked a lot like San Francisco, but I've never been there so I personally couldn't say whether he was right.

One of the waterways through town, despite the visual appeal the water was very polluted

One of many cool buildings in Bologna

There were streams and fountains all across town which were pretty nice. Unfortunately the city was very very dirty, covered in litter and grease. Because of this most of the water looked really gross. Bologna had a lot of parks, and more open space than most of the other cities we've seen, but a lot of the parks were filled with trash, offsetting the niceness of the greenery in town.

We had lunch the first day at a restaurant on the east side of town, not too far from the Universita Degli Studi Bologna - the world's first Law School. After exploring for a while we went back toward the town center and caught a bus to the city Hostel.

Kate, who is about 5'3" standing next to a "smart car," very common in Italy

Buildings like this really reminded me of the "old downtown" in larger US cities

Figuring out the bus schedule was a big hassle. Our travel guide had a bus number in it but didn't make it very clear where exactly our stop was and how we should get on or pay for the bus. Fortunately we met some people (who we had earlier bumped into in the restaurant) who were also headed to the hostel, and they knew how to read the bus schedule etc. because they were Italian.

It turns out the Italian guy who helped us read the bus schedule was an Architect, and I talked to him for a long time about his career and whatnot. He told us that he had worked in New York with Peter Eisenman for about three years, and talked a lot about different projects he had done.

The girls were having too much fun at the Hostel. Maybe the paint fried their brains.

We got to the hostel and everything was fine except that Dave forgot his passport so we couldn't check in until his mom faxed it to the hostel. The ladies at the hostel were also pretty rude to us because we didn't really know what we were doing, and one mouthed off about how she hated Americans (in Italian, which she didn't know I could understand) and how she wished we would just stay in the US.

After we got settled in we went back toward the town center and found "the two towers" of Bologna, one of which is leaning over at an extreme angle. We went to the main Piazza in town and found a statue of Neptune with four women beneath him who were squeezing their breasts and water was shooting out of them. It was a little odd.

Dave sitting underneath the fountain of Neptune, with the afformentioned naughty mermaids to the sides

The main Piazza in Bologna

When it was time to head back we spent nearly an hour frantically searching for our bus stop, but it was the night bus and we weren't sure where it was we were going. I asked several people if they knew which bus went to the city hostel, but hardly anyone knew. Finally I asked one of the bus drivers who was driving a different route, and he explained where we could get on. Ironically the bus stop was the same as the stop we had used earlier, but the travel guide told us it was a different stop so we hadn't checked that one.

Jim thanking God for helping us find the right bus stop just in time to get back before the Hostel closed

The next day we resumed our touristing around town, spent some time in the big church (which was HUGE, bigger than Florence Cathedral but not nearly as nice on the outside) and a lot of time exploring the city center. Sorry, no pictures were allowed to be taken inside the church.

Caitlin pointing out one of many absurd signs written in English which we found throughout Bologna

One of the old towers in Bologna

We headed back to Castiglion Fiorentino Sunday afternoon, and finally arrived back home about 6:30. All in all Bologna was pretty cool, very different from what we'd seen before but definitely a good enjoyable trip. Now we have to finish up our second studio project (my group is already done but others are just now finishing) and get ready for probably the second biggest trip we'll be taking while we're here - Roma.

We're heading out to Roma on Wednesday morning and we'll be there until Friday. I'm not 100% certain where we will go after Rome, but right now it looks like we'll be heading to Napoli and Pompeii. Look for this to be one of the biggest updates of the vacation, probably online next Monday or Tuesday. I may also post some other rambling thoughts before we leave, supposing anything interesting happens.

Ciao!