After our arrival late on Friday we had to go back to Campogalliano on Saturday to retrieve the remainder of our possessions. Once the van was emptied, we thanked Massimo, wished him luck for the repairs and headed back to Bologna. We parked up at the air B&B again and ran in and out with our belongings.
Our bedroom 
The living space 
Al’s domain 
Our outside space
When we returned to the car park, we found it was full and backed up the road with entry on a one in one out system. We drove around and found some on street parking nearby. This had all taken longer than we had anticipated so we walked into town to grab some lunch in the centre and then headed for the Irish pub so we could watch 6 nations rugby. We found a good table at the Cluricaune, which was advertising that it was showing the rugby, but it was currently showing English premier league football and we were not sure if the Rugby would be put on after. A group of annoying English people came in and sat at a table nearby. From their ever so audible conversation they clearly lived and worked in Bologna. To be fair only one of them was really annoying but she was loud and ignorant and seemed to think we all wanted to know. We anxiously looked around as it was only 5 minutes to the start of the six nations match but the TV was still showing football. We were relieved when the barman changed the channel, but he didn’t turn the volume up. We heard Rugby pre-amble coming from another part of the bar and on investigating we were delighted to discover in the next section that a projector screen had been pulled down and the room was full of rugby fans. We managed to get a space at a table but we felt frustrated that when we arrived this had not been set up so we had sat by another screen, however, now we knew this was the place to be. The atmosphere was great, we couldn’t hear the annoying English girl anymore and we were rewarded with a win.
It has occurred to me that I have not really explained what Bologna is like. One of the names by which Bologna is known is “the red one”. This is for two reasons, the first is because it was communist until quite recently in an otherwise conservative right-wing region, the other is because the local building materials give the old buildings a red colour. It is known for its many miles of porticos which line most of the streets. Bologna, like many other Italian towns, used to have a canal network through the centre and many of the roads cover the old canals. It is presumable that some of the upper stories were originally built to “overhang” the canals, being extended and supported by pillars once the canals were built over, but we have also been told that there used to be a building tax that covered everything built at street level, which meant that people built bigger at the second floor and then just had supports built on the street below. There are probably a lot of reasons, but the result is pavements protected from the worst of the weather and with various levels of ornate support structures for most of the centre of town.
Bologna has a number of gates or “porte” which used to provide access to the old city and prevent marauders from attacking. One of the questions you get asked is if you are staying inside the gates or outside. Our apartment was just outside the gate of San Mamalo. Bologna has one of the oldest universities in the world so there are many campus buildings and hoards of students kicking around all the time. When we first arrived, it was graduation season, so we kept seeing groups of students with one of their number with a literal laurel wreath on their head (the graduation season is called “Festival of laurels”).
We spent Sunday settling in and unpacking. Al set up the stereo, speakers and printer. We unpacked our suitcases and toiletries and ventured out to local shops to get basic food and drink. There is a fresh homemade pasta shop at the end of our road, but we did not have the confidence in our language skills to brave it. We had signed up to an intensive language course for the next week and we wanted to get settled in and have an early night ready for that.
Monday morning saw us struggling to get up. We had put our own bedding on the bed to make the environment more familiar, but we had difficulty acclimatising. We ensured we left early enough to get a coffee in Aroma before our 9am start at Madre Lingua school. Usually we like to have their speciality coffees but today we needed the pure coffee fix. We arrived at the school, paid the balance for our courses and bought a text book. Several teachers came and introduced themselves, in Italian. (Boring factual bit – language is measured by 6 levels, A1 – complete beginner, A2 – Beginner, B1 – Intermediate, B2 – advanced intermediate (can understand a news story), C1 – fluent speaker, C2 – Native speaker). We had been sent and completed an online test before we set off and told we would be tested again when we arrived. We were pleased to discover that we were not to be tested again, we were going in to a B1 class as we expected and in line with our level of reading and writing. However, being fully immersed in a class where only Italian is spoken and where all the other students have been learning at the school for at least one or two weeks, it quickly became clear our listening and speaking skills left a lot to be desired.
Our class consisted of two retired teachers from Germany, two Brazilian students, an American student who seemed to have lost all trace of her accent, an American man whose wife was an Evangelical missionary in the more advanced class with their daughter and a priest from Benin, who was working for the local diocese. We found the actual assignments ok and once we managed to work out what we were being asked to do, knew the grammar, but we struggled to understand what we were being asked or to respond to questions. The others were better at listening and speaking but had less grasp of the grammar.
Our school days were laid out as 2 hours of grammar, followed by a coffee break (organised in a local coffee shop by the teachers and with the idea of the school all socialising together in Italian), followed by 1 hour of conversation. For most of the school that was the end of the day, however as we were booked in for the intensive course, we had only 30 minutes for lunch followed by 2 hours of conversation class. This group was for all the people doing the intensive course, so it was mixed ability, but this meant us, one of the Brazilian students, the American student and an American woman from the advanced class whose grasp of Italian was good but who seemed to be completely unaware of her heavy New York accent. There was no trace of an attempt to say any of the Italian words in an Italian accent. She used the word “Cellulare” which is an Italian name for a mobile phone, but when she said it, I thought it was two separate words “Cellu-laaarrray”.
While in school we kept being asked if we had struggled to get an apartment and this had led to many discussions about how hard it was to find somewhere. This alarmed us a little as we had not thought about whether this might be an issue and while we were in an air B&B for the month our plan had been to get an apartment after that. We decided that we had better start looking sooner rather than later although we didn’t have jobs yet.
We were completely exhausted after our first day so we went to the nearby Mercato di Mezzo to get a drink and do our homework, but we ended up eating our dinner out too as we couldn’t decide what to buy. The Mezzo is an old market building, off the Piazza Maggiore (main square). It is an indoor food stall complex with a central bank of chairs and tables. You can go to the beer stand to get beer, the pizza stand to get pizza and the sit at a table and eat. There is seating upstairs and some of the stands have additional seating for their customers. It is good if you all want to eat and drink different things and still sit together. It also has a bread stand, a cheese stand and a butchers so you can get your shopping in too. We ate at a restaurant in one of the nearby lanes, where we both had the lasagne, a regional dish for Bologna. We went home and suffered from a night of broken dreams and Italian words spinning around our heads.
On Tuesday we had our classes and went through our homework. We had not received a call about the van, so Al sent an email to Massimo asking for an update. Al and I spent the week with one or both of us completely unable to understand what was going on in class. On Tuesday I was more on the ball, On Wednesday it was Al etc.
We had signed up to a visit to a local Enoteca (wine shop) after classes, poor us, but we were really exhausted. The visit to the Enoteca was good as we were a small group with no Italian teachers, so the Italian only rule was quickly thrown out the window. We met someone from the WI we could talk about Brexit with and an amazing woman of 23 who had lived in 5 countries and spoke about 7 languages. It is difficult to understate how the on-going non-movement and lack of clarity on Brexit was punctuating our experience and exacerbating our fears for the future but more to come on the Brexit effect in future posts. The Enoteca was one we had stumbled on by accident in our last visit. They sell only biological wines. These differ from organic wines as the whole process must meet certain standards as opposed to solely organic grapes being used. The Proprietor told us about each glass of wine while she was pouring them and brought us what they call “tagliere”. This means slices of meats and cheeses. You get them everywhere here, served on slate or wood boards. Mortadella, Parma ham, parmesan and pecorino are all local products. Parma (for the ham and cheese) is nearby (where we stopped for a break just before the van broke down). This area is a centre for pork and pork products. Each cured meat being made in traditional ways from various parts of the animal.
On Wednesday we heard from the AA that Massimo thought that the van was saveable and needed a part, so they asked us to approve the quote. It was around £400 so we were quite relieved and agreed. After school we went to the herb market to get our dinner and returned home with our purchases. 5pm is quite early for Italians to be around about and looking for food as they generally take a longer lunch and work later so we went home to refresh ourselves and do homework before heading back into town looking for Aperitivo. We found a place that was recommended and although it served great wine, we were disappointed to be served “only” crisps and nuts as complimentary snacks instead of the finger foods synonymous with the Aperitivo experience we were looking for. We knew at this point that we were going to need more Italian schooling, so over drinks we agreed to sign up for an extra week. Unfortunately, I was committed to two more weeks at work so we would not be able to attend more classes until April.
Thursday morning brought us to another coffee shop near the school. For those not acquainted with Italian coffee bars, these are usually fairly small with counters and high stools. Coffee is served in a tiny cup and most Italians drink them at the “bar” served with a small glass or water, sometimes fizzy. These shops often sell a range of “brioche” which is a classic Italian breakfast, these consist of croissants with sugar sticky outsides and cream of pistachio, almond, chocolate or custard inside, or fruit jam for the health conscious or there are a multitude of cakes. Terzi sells incredible coffee in exquisite tiny cups, with a tempting range of breakfast pastries. In a beautiful counterpoint to Starbucks which failed to find a foothold here, genuine coffee professionals sell you beautifully made coffee in real cups to drink in for 1 euro 10 cents and this is a high-end retailer. We were beyond exhausted by this point so burned the coffee off in no time. After class we went to a pub to do our homework before heading home to make ourselves some dinner.
It was finally Friday and we decided to treat ourselves to dinner out. The AA had called again to say that the part would arrive today or on Monday, but we had not heard anymore so we knew we were not going to be going to collect the van today. We finished at 4 and even after we completed our homework it was too early in the Italian evening for dinner. We didn’t want to walk back to our apartment and come out again, although in hindsight we should have, so we lingered about looking for Aperitivo. We were a little demoralised by our school week. We knew we had improved but it had been unbelievably hard. We felt self-conscious going into bars and restaurants. As I wrote when we made our victorious arrival against the odds, Bologna is alive in the evening and especially at weekends. Every restaurant was heaving with people and we felt like outsiders. We were exhausted and could not think clearly or decide what we wanted to eat. We ended up choosing at random and had a good meal, it is still Bologna, but felt a little disappointed that we were not in the swing of things yet.
Something that we had been vaguely aware of about ourselves was becoming more apparent: we are not very patient. We are not patient with ourselves, we are not patient about how long it takes to learn a language, not patient about how long it takes to learn the ropes, not patient about how long it takes to find an apartment or jobs etc. However, one of the reasons we chose Italy and Bologna was for a different pace of life here, for a different attitude to time. Patience is something that we have come here to learn, and it won’t be quick, and it won’t be immediate, and we will find it hard at times, but we will learn.
“Have patience with all things, but, first of all with yourself”
Saint Francis De Salles