As you all would expect this week has progressed much like the others in the now established pattern of Lockdown. Good Friday marks one month in and we don’t know when it will end. Technically it could be lifted on 13th April, but we all expect to see an extension, with some level of restrictions on travel and non-essential services continuing for some time even when lockdown is lifted. The good news is our numbers finally seem to be taking a turn in a more positive direction, no matter which measurements you are using for comparison. To be blunt the daily death count here has started to drop but is still in the hundreds. Italy has lost almost 18,000 people and so far more than 85,000 worldwide have died (source WHO). I know that the UK is about to enter its most difficult period in terms of numbers of infections and deaths and our hearts are with you. I hope our improving numbers offer hope that an end is in sight, but we are by no means out of the woods yet.
It’s impossible to calculate how many impacted families and friends there are with lives completely altered. It is an appropriate time to think of others: those still fighting the virus, those who may continue to have complications long after and those providing medical and other essential services. These are very sobering thoughts and any frustrations I might feel about being cooped up are easily addressed by remembering how, by staying in, we are helping to minimise the number of people who will be affected by this event.
Yada yada
On Tuesday I taught my last class for at least a week. We take it in turns to go to the shops only when we really need to go. We have been eating well as you’d expect from us. If you follow Al’s Instagram you have already seen the chocolate buns, but I’m still going to share them again. They were amazing. Today we had doughnuts but I may have forgotten to take any photos before we ate them. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any raspberry jam at the shop, so we had to settle for strawberry, but that’s hardly a complaint.
Chocolate buns
Meat and cheese piadina
Campari spritz
Some food highlights
The temperatures have been building all week with today hitting 22 and 26 expected by Saturday, so we have been spending a lot of time outside. There have been times when we have wondered if we would have been better off if we had tried to return to the UK at the beginning of all this, but its hard to see how that would be an improvement on our current situation. We think the Italian government at a local and national level have been doing a great job. I think we both have a lurking fear about something going wrong and us having to deal with Italian medical or social services and not understanding what we need to do or ask for. However, we have an amazing landlord who is in contact to make sure we are ok and if we need help (with Italian) or if we have any concerns he can help with. Luckily, we don’t, but it is a comfort to know that help is there (albeit in Venice) if we do.
Strengthen our communication
Last Friday we had our first virtual pub experience courtesy of some friends with a zoom account and it was so successful that we will repeat it this Friday. It was great to catch up with people and exchange experiences of this crazy time. There were differences in what would really happen at the pub for example, everyone has to be in the one conversation rather than breaking out into separate ones. You can’t read body language or account for slight delays so you inevitably spend some time interrupting each other. However, it’s a pretty good stand in and the drinks range is perfect.
On Tuesday morning I attended a Pilates class thanks to Chrissy of CMdance . I can’t usually get to it because it’s in Southampton, however it has moved online for the time being, which is lucky for me. It was good to see and talk to people while adding a change to my exercise routine. There seem to be no end of activities you can join in with online now, which I think is fantastic, but I have to be honest and say this is the first one I have done.
It’s great to be able to keep in touch and talk to people face to face, albeit not in person. We are so lucky to have the technology readily available in our homes and we would do well to remember that we have it all the time, not just in the time of a global pandemic.
The Everyman crossword with my ham fisted notes
Cryptology
When the lockdown first began, we printed out the guardian quick crossword and every day would start with coffee and the crossword. It’s not the most difficult crossword though and we started to finish it a bit too quickly. We decided to have another crack at Cryptic crosswords, which we have attempted before but pushed into the too hard pile. We even had a cryptic crossword as a wedding present which we really enjoyed doing, but we just found them difficult to do on an on-going basis. So, now seems like the ideal time to be looking at them again.
This week we have printed an old Everyman cryptic from the Observer every day, so that we can also look up the answers when we give up, which we have to do, a lot. We haven’t finished one without assistance yet, but we are enjoying trying to work them out and learning how the clues work. Some are fiendish works of genius; some are tenuous stretches. Today we only had to look up four, which I think is pretty impressive.
The bit at the end
I wanted to ensure I ended this on a positive note as I felt the start was bleak. Possibly this aptly sums up where I am with it all. I start with some hard and disconcerting facts, move onto some life minutia then try to focus on the positive. Something which I have seen emerge as a kind of sign off on messages and emails is “stay safe” or “stay well” or both. I like this as a kind of subtle identifier of a time before as well as a time after. It’s one of many changes in the way we speak and relate to each other. We have a renewed experience of our power as a community and the importance of everyone in it. The world will be different after this and we have the power to make it better, if we want it.
Although I was aware of the Venice carnival, I was not aware of its connection to Lent or the fact that not only was this an Italian wide festival, but also quite a lot of the rest of Europe too. For around two weeks, certainly in Italy, there are Carnevale events culminating in a parade of some kind on Shrove Tuesday or Fat Tuesday as it is known in other places e.g. Mardi Gras in Spanish, Martedì Grosso in Italian. I had noticed carnival masks and coloured streamers going up in shops, seen signs for Carnevale as well as event specific delicacies in the Pasticceria windows. However, I was not sure what the celebration was for as it seemed too early for Easter. I asked someone who told me it was the festival before Lent. This information turned our Shrove Tuesday into the limpest of pancakes. WARNING! This is my understanding of Carnevale almost certainly containing wild inaccuracies, baseless assumptions and misunderstandings. Anyway, Carnevale is understood to be from the Italian word for meat Carne and vale which means without. This makes sense as a description for Lent or any other type of fasting. The English word Carnival is derived from this. There is something reassuringly human about that fact that around the world, in all cultures, any period of organised fast start and end with a bit of gluttony.
We had looked online and Bologna was holding its Carnevale dei Bambini (Carnival for children) parade on Sunday at 2.30, which was fortunate as Al had the day off. We decided to go and headed out with a plan to grab a slice of pizza or a piadina to eat while watching the parade. When we arrived, we noticed that there was a lot of confetti and streamers on the ground and we worried that we had somehow missed it. We walked up to where the parade was supposed to be and although there were loads of families with dressed up kids walking around no one seemed to be massing for an event or waiting for one or getting a good spot or any of the usual signs of imminent events happening. We walked the length of the road and at 2.15, having seen no sign of parade or parade watchers, we decided we must have made a mistake about the time and decided to get some lunch.
It can be difficult to get lunch after 2.00pm because many
restaurants close at 3 or don’t open on Sundays. I had a mild cold so I was
keen to sit down if we weren’t going to get a parade. We were close to Mercato Delle Erbe (The herb market). This usually
has vegetable stalls in the centre with cafes, shops and bars around the edge.
Because the market itself and many of the restaurants do not open on Sundays, those
that do can extend into the unused space of neighbouring restaurants for the
day.
Polpette e Crescentine is one such restaurant that doubles in size on a Sunday. It is often very busy so you might want to think about booking, which you can do through their website on this link. The staff are very friendly and the menu is available in English if you need that kind of thing. The menu also lists their suppliers and the traditional nature of the food. For the uninitiated Polpette (meatballs) and Crescentine (small roughly square bread pieces fried so they puff up and can be stuffed) are local specialities.
Affettati Miste e Crescentine
Close up of Crescentine
We ate here when we were newly arrived in Bologna and they
introduced us to the delights of Friggione a local dish of tomato and onions
that is usually served at room temperature. I’m not one for side dishes but I
will make an exception for this, it is fabulous. More recently we had our first
Crescentine here which for some reason we had not eaten before, although they
are Bolognese. We had decided to start with a selection of local cooked and
cured meats called Affettati misti (mixed
slices) and to have the Crescentine
with it. A colander of freshly fried Crescentine arrived with our meats and the idea is you break into
the puffs and fill them with bits of meat, refolding them into bite sized
pieces. They smell and taste similar to a savoury doughnut and were a delicious
accompaniment. It was a fantastic discovery and something you probably can’t
enjoy outside Bologna.
After lunch, and disappointed that we had missed the parade,
we went to an exhibition we wanted to see. This temporary exhibition is at the Bologna Museum of Modern Art (Mambo)
and was part of Bologna Art Week, which I have written about previously. It was
curated from the work of multiple international artists, but by far the stand
out piece for me was “Bonjour 2015” by Ragnar
Kjartansson. I was about to describe it and then I remembered I have the
power of photos so here it is.
“Bonjour 2015”
Yes, those are two real life people in the “set” who perform
the same set of actions on a five-minute circuit. It is both beautiful and
terrifyingly nihilistic at the same time. You are able to walk around the whole
set, so the “performers” can be seen at all times. I have to be honest I
admired their commitment to the performance although I was distracted by
wondering how many hours they performed this for.
When we left the museum, we were disappointed to see even more confetti and streamers littering the place and it became clear that we had missed the Carnevale festivities for a second time in one day! I thought I might try and catch the Fat Tuesday events before work instead but this was not to be as unfortunately, even the lavish festivities of the Venice Carnevale were cancelled due to the sudden spread into Italy of the Corona Virus. Although Venice itself had no cases, it was deemed wise to avoid mass gatherings of people. The central and regional Italian governments took a robust approach to containment with Emilia Romagna, where Bologna is situated, deciding to close all schools, museums, churches and cinemas for a week as a precaution. This meant that there was no Carnevale parade on Fat Tuesday and MamBO, along with other museums, galleries and cinemas, was closed to the public too although they have made the exhibition available on a streamed service.
Italians love food. This might seem a bit of a “bear shits in the woods” statement but I really want to impress on you what this means on a daily basis. You can’t seem to avoid talking about food with Italians at some point. Even Italian idioms and proverbs are mostly based on eating and drinking. The greatest thing about Italy is that you can buy good food everywhere. Step into any café, bar or restaurant and you will eat something freshly prepared, simple and good. Eating out is something that happens at least once a week because it’s relatively cheap, given the quality of the food available. There are multiple butchers, grocers, fishmongers, Pasticceria (cake and pastries shops), Sfogline (handmade pasta shops), Pane (bread shops) Salumeria (cured and cooked meats and cheeses) as well as markets and various speciality food shops over and above those.
Salumeria in a small mall
Sfogline (pasta) shop at Easter
A corner café bar. Breakfast and lunch
Specialty food on every street
Italians simply wouldn’t stand for it if great produce
became so unaffordable as to be elitist, but also recognise the value (and
cost) of food produced slowly with skill, care and tradition and are willing to
pay more money for it. As Italy has retained its specialist food outlets and
market shopping culture people tend to eat seasonally and locally so food miles
are largely irrelevant. It’s hard to buy out of season here. If you want to eat
sausages from Sicily you go to Sicily. In western countries we can have a lot
of food waste because people want the premium cuts, but not the other meat that
is left once they are removed which has led to the rise of “Nose
to tail” eating. In Italy they eat most of the animals they butcher. They
have built food industries around the inventive and delicious ways they
transform the less preferred parts such as the Florentine speciality Lampredotto
(cow’s stomach sandwich) etc.
Tagliere (local meats and cheeses sliced) from Tamburini
Often people we meet are really surprised we have moved here.
People usually move away to places like the UK for work and to progress their
careers. This reversal makes them curious. When we say “for the food” they
spread their arms warmly, smiling and nodding because it’s obvious and it makes
sense to them. Even people who have initially seemed hostile melt when they
know we are interested in their food. They know they have great food. They will
start advising you on what’s best to eat, where and when. They want to know
what you have eaten already, where and what you thought.
If we have to generalise* and for reasons of space and humour we are going to, Italians are hyper regional. Everyone you meet is likely to tell you where they are from, as in which specific part they were born in as soon as tell you their name, because in Italy it’s a really important part of your identity. Tied to the regional identity is a sense of pride about whatever food that region produces for example a Neapolitan talking about pizza is an obvious one, but they will detail the dough, the mozzarella and the tomatoes. You will get the same from Florentine talking about beef steak, bread and olive oil and Bolognese talking about tortelloni, or tagliatelle or Ragu etc.
A very brief history of Italy
To put this into some context you need to remember that
Italy has only existed as a country since 1861, the same year in which “Great
Expectations” by Charles Dickens was released in book form, HMS Warrior the
first completely iron ocean going ship was launched, Abraham Lincoln became US
President and the American Civil war started (84 years after the start of the
American war of independence) and Tsar Alexandra emancipated Russian serfs. Before
this time Italy was a set of city states which occupied the same peninsula, often
at war with each other and many of which were variously occupied by foreign powers
and empires. Even in 1861 not all the city states joined immediately with some
joining after 1918 when Italy defeated Austro-Hungary in WW1. While others like
Piedmont were broken up with Nice given to France in return for their military
support. San Marino still hasn’t joined and retains its independent status.
The result is that those regional identities and traditions are very strong and many people speak the dialect of their home region with some older people only able to speak dialect and not modern Italian at all. This accentuates the things that the regions have in common as part of a communal identity; such as their dedication to their food. Much of the history of Italy that we know is centred on the History of the Roman empire, the Holy Roman Empire (dissolved 1906) and the Roman Catholic church or the powerful families such as the Medici’s who ruled city states, with the rest of what is now Italy only being included in historical reports as geographical conquests by various others. ‘Italian Unification’ (En.wikipedia.org, 2019)
Map of italy
Regionality and food
Each region has a set of speciality products because of the
unique geographical and agricultural features of that area. I’ve been told that
the Island of Sardinia, contrary to what you might imagine, does not enjoy a
coast that is particularly good for fish, except in one specific area. However,
it is quite mountainous so it’s famous for its sheep products. Apparently, Bologna
does not have olive oil because all the olive trees on the surrounding hills
were killed in an unusually prolonged spell of very cold weather a couple of
hundred years ago. The oil produced had not been great whereas the olive oil in
nearby Tuscany is so instead of replacing the olive trees they planted Sangiovese
(red) and Pignoletto (white) grape vines to create the wines which the region
is now famous for and used butter for cooking.
As well as being proud of their home regions food, Italians have
extensive knowledge about the produce from every region and understand where
the best examples of each kind of food can be found and when it is at its best,
by breed, by species and by season. They believe in the “terroir” of food. Someone
gave me the example of a Neapolitan chef making pizza at a high end place in
New York who had taken to shipping the pizza ingredients from Naples to New
York, everything from the flour and water to the tomatoes, mozzarella and herbs
in an effort to get the pizza to taste as good as it does at home. It still did
not taste right so he bought a machine to recreate the exact humidity too
because it all matters.
Bologna is in the region called Emilia Romagna, but this is comprised of two regions that have traditionally fought each other, so you hear a lot of arguments about where Emilia ends and Romagna begins depending on with which one your allegiances lie. Emilians don’t rate piadine as these are Romangnola, but swear by crescente, which to the less discerning eye are incredibly similar flat breads you fold food into. Generally, I have found that when I am recommended something as the best tomato variety for a summer salad with mozzarella and basil everyone will agree where you go to get that tomato. There is a generosity in recognising the superiority of another area’s product e.g. the Bolognese for example will all happily agree that they are rubbish at any other types of bread and recommend the bread of other regions.
Thankfully Lasagne is Bolognese
Food fight
Of course, with this much everyday passion and knowledge about food for Italians they don’t really understand that this is not usual for everyone or why we make mistakes with their food. Part of the problem for the rest of us is that our cookbooks and TV chefs have continued to provide inauthentic recipes for Anglicised or Americanised versions of dishes, but kept the Italian names or given them Italian names that they don’t deserve or suggested that they are somehow Italian when they aren’t. No one has any issues with adapting dishes, but when you have spent centuries cultivating your produce and the resulting dishes to their optimum its galling to have someone present something entirely other and say it’s the same thing. We don’t have that same kind of repeatable food culture, ours is much more of a make do and mend approach to cooking. If I can’t find what I need for the dish or don’t have what’s on the list, I will substitute it for something else. That’s fine, it makes sense, who hasn’t done that, but it’s a different dish. Bearing in mind most Italian dishes are very simple and only involve a small number of ingredients, any substitution is a significant change. Perhaps we should take more credit for our inventiveness and give our dishes new names. If we really feel the need we can always say Inspired by and then name the dish we didn’t quite make. While it’s true a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, you would be annoyed if you paid for a dozen red roses and some badly sprayed daffs turned up.
An example of this food adaptation is “Spaghetti Bolognaise”. This dish is neither Italian nor from Bologna. Italian people even tell me that it doesn’t exist. Why, I hear you ask? Firstly, it uses spaghetti, right there in the name. Spaghetti is a dried pasta from further south and does not contain egg. The Bolognese specialise in fresh egg pasta such as tagliatelle or stuffed egg pastas like tortelloni and tortellini. Everybody knows spaghetti is not from Bologna. Secondly, the sauce is not one that Italians recognise. There is a Bolognese meat sauce called Ragù. Indeed, a traditional Bolognese dish is Tagliatelle alla Ragù. Ragù is not the same as the meat sauce in most of the “Spaghetti Bolognaise” recipes you see in UK and US cookbooks and definitely not related to anything you can buy in a jar. It is often made from veal and pork rather than beef mince and is closer to a kind of stew. So even if the Bolognese sauce being referred to was Ragù, there is no way it would be served with spaghetti. There are restaurants in Bologna (and elsewhere in Italy) that cater to the tourists’ insatiable enthusiasm for an “authentic spaghetti Bolognaise” by putting it on their menus and, like the locals, we avoid those places.
“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”
Miles Kington
Italians are proud of their pizza too and something which
comes up in my classes all the time is putting pineapple on pizza. They think
this is disgusting and want me to confirm if it is true that other countries do
this or not because they are not sure if it’s a kind of urban myth. There are
only a handful of truly original pizzas which includes the margherita and the
marinara. This has been extended to include other Italian products such as
salsiccia and friarelli (sausage and a kind of broccoli), the four cheese and four
seasons pizzas etc. However, they have not extended into adding any non-Italian
foods such as Pineapple. In fact, many will tell you they never have fruit on
pizza, but it is possible they don’t recognise the fig as a fruit (tomatoes not
withstanding).
At other times the pitfalls can be harder to miss for a non-native. The other day I was running a conversation class, where a small group of English language students are given a topic to discuss in English, when as usual we moved onto food. They were trying to describe something called Arrosticini to me, which in my defence they described as meat on sticks cooked over a flame, so I said innocently “Ok, like a kebab” and wrote Shish kebab on the board. There was a collective sharp intake of breath followed by some vigorous head shaking and furious declarations that these were not the same at all. One woman said to me “You must not say that again. It is not like a kebab. People will be offended”. I obviously erased the words and moved the conversation on, hoping that they were writing it off as my English ignorance about the culinary world. I know people in England can get upset about the correct content of a Cornish pasty (as well as the crimp), or whether you should put cream or jam on a scone first, but these people are few and far between, so the depth of the reaction I caused came as quite a surprise. Anyway, for the uninitiated arrosticini is meat or fish and vegetables on a skewer and then cooked over flame, which as “any fule kno” is not like a kebab at all, ok?
Arrosticini
If you would like more information on how we get Italian food wrong or how passionate they are about it there is a Facebook account for that: Italians mad at food
Artisanal food production and modern life
You only need to go to nearby places like Parma (Parma Ham and Parmesan cheese) and Modena (Balsamic vinegar) to see that tradition as well as place is a big part of the Italian attitude towards food. Often eschewing modern production methods which might increase yields but would damage quality the artisanal nature of the product is respected. It is the price required for the quality of the resulting product. Processes and recipes largely unchanged for generations. Handmade pasta is the preserve of the Nonna, with pretty much everyone telling you about their memories of their Nonna making pasta by hand for special occasions, like Christmas and Easter (something which is dying out if you are to believe www.pastagrannies.com). Pasta is made on a more commercial scale now in shops full of experienced Sfogline hand rolling, cutting and stuffing pasta to fill seasonal orders. The artisan is a figure revered in Italy and while modern life is eroding this to some extent it is still very much in evidence in all aspects of Italian life. Apparently people used to cook at home every night and then buy food at the weekend because they were busy, now they buy ready meals or eat out in the week because they are busy with work and only cook at the weekends because then they have more time.
Parmesan
Balsamic Vinegar
It is not just in terms of when they cook and who is cooking that Italians attitude to food is changing. I noted that the students in my school were very excited because a KFC had just opened. Now in Bologna this may have had a little extra frisson because Chicken is not a local speciality so it isn’t on every menu and not all of the city super markets (express supermarkets) sell whole chicken or unprocessed chicken, but it might be because these are brands they have grown up with in the cinema or on TV but didn’t have. Certainly, the McDonalds I pass by twice a day in the centre of Bologna is depressingly full. I hope they know that is not how good burgers should taste.It is not just in terms of when they cook and who is cooking that Italians attitude to food is changing. I noted that the students in my school were very excited because a KFC had just opened. Now in Bologna this may have had a little extra frisson because Chicken is not a local speciality so it isn’t on every menu and not all of the city super markets (express supermarkets) sell whole chicken or unprocessed chicken, but it might be because these are brands they have grown up with in the cinema or on TV but didn’t have. Certainly, the McDonalds I pass by twice a day in the centre of Bologna is depressingly full. I hope they know that is not how good burgers should taste.
I heard that Starbucks was going to open a branch in Bologna
and it made me sad. Italy. All of Italy, everywhere. Makes excellent coffee. An
espresso in an artisanal coffee place where you can pick your beans costs
£1.20. A perfect cappuccino £1.70. I have never had a Starbucks that was a
patch on any coffee I ever had in Italy, although to be fair my Starbucks
experience is limited to two branches. However, I was heartened when I spoke to
someone in one of my business groups and he explained that, for them, Starbucks
was not about the coffee. It was somewhere to hang out, somewhere to have a
meeting. In Italian coffee bars you go to get an espresso, drink it and leave.
Customers are rarely in the shop for longer than it takes to eat a brioche.
Starbucks would not replace Italian coffee bars but did offer something else.
Two students were completing an activity where they had to
discuss the available options on their pre-printed hand outs and decide where
to go for dinner. At the end of the activity they revealed they had picked the
fast food restaurant. I explained that with all the great produce and food in
Bologna I was surprised and disappointed. They argued that they had wanted to
go to the seafood restaurant, but fish is expensive and they were only students.
Then they pointed out that there wasn’t any other choice as there wasn’t an Italian
restaurant on the list!
Italians and new food ideas
There is a side effect from all this history and local food
pride that we had not expected but that probably was inevitable. Italians can
appear unadventurous when it comes to food. Don’t let me be misunderstood, they
will eat every single bit of the pig, tripe is a speciality of the beef region
(Firenze), meats are often cured not cooked, some fish and meat are best served
raw, etc. Italians are not squeamish about food, but they know which of their
foods go together and so the idea of trying anything outside of their, as I
already detailed, encyclopaedic knowledge of food seems unnecessary. This isn’t
to say that every family doesn’t have their own secret nonna recipe for the food
of their region, but it will be variation on process and possibly varieties
rather than key ingredients.
There are some Chinese restaurants, there is in increase in appetite for Sushi (often served by Chinese restaurants) and now Mexican too. Mexican might seem odd in this context but given that a fajita or burrito is not that dissimilar to a piadine, being that it is round flat bread with something folded into it, is not all that surprising. Aside from the occasional Arabic Kebab shop with the trademark Doner slowly turning behind the counter, and the usual usurping fast food chains, these are the only foreign food establishments you are likely to find with any regularity. Most of the Italians I have spoken to in Bologna have eaten in one or all of these and enjoy them however, it must be stressed that Bologna is a famously cosmopolitan University city so there is possible more appetite for opening up to new cultures and food ideas here than in other parts of Italy.
Italy is not preserved in aspic, it has not been cut off from
the rest of the world for generations, they just don’t really think of food
outside of what they are familiar with. There is a certainty that this is the
way to do it. They are really good at what they do and it leads them to produce
some of the best products in the world, but this rigidity to what can be eaten
with what and when can also seem to be its limitation. For example, there is a
three Michelin starred restaurant in Modena, called Osteria Francescana with an
Italian chef Massimo Bottura, who has also worked in the US. He had upset the
locals of Modena by changing Italian classics for example by producing a pesto
recipe that does not use pine nuts. While he is happy to celebrate and present
the fabulous food and produce of Italy, he is also not afraid to change and
challenge, which has not always earned him fans here. However, I note that his
name often comes up in class as an example of the international recognition and
acclaim for Italian food and, especially amongst the young professionals, the
restaurant is suggested as a goal for a once in a lifetime food experience.
Italians and the future
To sum up there is a strong, embedded and enviable food
culture that honours and promotes the history, geography and skill of quality
food production and which generates an unprecedented number of unique,
fantastic products. Its value is passionately felt at all levels by Italians as
a source of regional and national pride. It’s possible that the rigidity which
has preserved these processes, skills and ideas about food could also stifle
creativity and innovation. This could be especially problematic given the
current socio-economic situation, Trump’s EU trade tariffs and the
environmental impacts of global warming on the conditions that allow some of
these products to be produced here. Each of these issues could be incredibly
damaging for the diversity and volume of production. However, it should be
remembered that Italians have been cultivating their produce in largely the
same way for centuries, despite numerous wars, the rise and fall of empires, occupations
and invasions, floods and droughts. It might be a different kind of challenge
but with passion for food being part of the Italian identity, I think they got
this.
*disclaimer: this article also includes suggestions, anecdotes and explanations repeated verbatim that may not have any bearing on reality and with which other Italians will strongly disagree.
References
‘Italian Unification’ (En.wikipedia.org, 2019) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_unification#Background> accessed 29 November 2019
Last Friday was one of the rarest of all days. A day where both Al and I had the whole day off. We decided to celebrate by getting into the car and travelling out to one of the nearby towns. Since we moved here we have explored the city but not the nearby countryside. Often when we asked people where was good to go, they would reply simply “colli” which means the hills and refers to those that surround the dip in which Bologna sits. We had received recommendations for the various highlights, panoramas and not to be missed food spots but we had not managed to get to any of them.
For our unexpected trip Al chose a village between here and Imola so that we would not spend too long travelling, but we would have a chance to enjoy the scenic countryside, which was not disappointing. One of the things that stands out for me is how open the land here is. I was aware that hedgerows were a feature of the English countryside but I had not really thought about what farmland without hedgerows looked like. There are vast fields wearing the colours of their various harvests and states of cultivation, like patchwork, with houses and farm buildings dotted about, stretching all the way to the horizon with only the occasional tree or patch of woodland. Here you might find any combination of agricultural activity side by side such as a small vineyard next to a freshly ploughed cereal field with only an irrigation ditch to separate them.
We have been lucky with the weather with temperatures reaching into the twenties in the day but dropping to a more comfortable sleeping temperature in the evenings, largely fine sunny days, with about one day of rain a fortnight. We have been told these high temperatures are not typical for this time of year and are above the seasonal average. On this particular day it was relatively warm (20c) but it was cloudy and rain was forecast.
What we knew about Dozza
All that we knew about Dozza what was on the Taste Bologna site recommending the visit, so we knew that it was a small medieval town at the top of a hill, with a castle called Rocca Sforzesca and an art biennale (festival every two years), which had been running since the 60’s, when artists are invited to contribute. We knew that the castle had a winery in the cellar that was run by the local wine promotion board. We also knew that there would be good food.
The Rocca Sforzesca at Dozza
What we found when we got there
The biennale is called “Muro Dipinto” which translates as “Painted Wall” but this does not adequately describe what you see in this incredible place. We arrived just before the castle and used the local free car park, walking to the crest of the hill on which it sits. The ancient village consists of a few streets behind the castle and as you make your way through you see that every wall has art on it, full scale pieces that take up the entire side or frontage of buildings or a series of smaller pieces all completed over the decades, thus creating an open air art gallery.
Each piece has a small plaque detailing when the piece was created and by who. As you can imagine, different paint and application techniques age differently left open to the ravages of time and weather so there is a combination of murals from the 60’s that look as though they could have been painted in the September biennale just gone and others over more recent years that have almost completely faded away. A full list of all the artworks is available from their official site (see link above).
We have read that this is still not a known tourist spot despite being only 35mins drive from Bologna. This chimes well with our experience as there was only us and a couple of girls taking selfies when we visited and you do need a car to get there. There aren’t any tourist shops, just the usual small independent shops, such as coffee bars, pasta shops, butchers etc. Probably there are a few more galleries than your typical village of less than 10,000 residents, but otherwise it is remarkably typical of the area.
Gallery of photos from our visit
I have included the photos from our visit but I have haven’t tagged whether they are mine or Al’s. As usual just assume that the well framed ones in focus are Al’s.
Where we ate
Obviously, being us, we managed to time our visit with lunch. We had spent the previous three days eating and drinking well while we showed Al’s parents around Bologna so we had vowed that we would only have something light, like a sandwich or simple bowl of pasta. We were hungry and looked at a few menus and picked a recommended place that was perched on the side of the village so the terrace, where you were seated to eat, had views across the valley. The restaurant was Cané
The view was breath takingly beautiful and the service formal and old fashioned, but also friendly and welcoming. The waiter brought the standard menu and the tasting menus and, quite frankly, we thought why not? We did not regret it. To eat in such an incredible location, with such expertly cooked local produce was a joy and the price was reasonable too.
The Meat tasting menu
Local wine by the half bottle!
Carpaccio of beef with tomato and rocket salad
Cané’s house tortelloni
Grilled lamb with Sicillian tomatoes
Dessert
It is hard to overstate how amazing this piece of lamb, expertly cooked and accompanied only by a wedge of lemon, piece of lettuce and some incredible grilled tomatoes was. Its emblematic of what I love about Italian food. Great produce, simply cooked.
As we were here it would have been rude not to check in on the winery so after lunch we headed back towards the castle. The winery is in the extensive cellars and there was a lot to choose from. It was a great venue and had a beautiful tasting area/restaurant, although this was not open when we visited. The most famous local red grape is Sangiovese so we decided to take this opportunity to pick up a good bottle. I picked one purely because it was called “You’ll never walk alone” while we were more scientific with our second choice, having researched good years for Sangiovese and agreed a ceiling price. This bottle will probably form part of our Christmas table this year so I’ll keep you posted on whether we chose well or not.
Given everything that we have learned about Italy and how things work here it was probably inevitable that finding somewhere more permanent to live would not come from the shoe leather pounded on the streets as we went from rental agency to rental agency, or from being in the Facebook group for people looking for/offering rentals (which has become an increasingly desperate place and is very one sided) or replying to every new apartment listed for rent on an online portal as soon as the advert goes up. It would come from knowing someone, who knew someone. So it came to pass that I was sitting in a park, relaxing with two English teachers* I know and, as usual, lamenting the apartment problem in Bologna when one of them mentioned she had just looked at a place that might suit us that her friend was going to be renting out. She hadn’t taken it because she felt it was “too far out” being just outside the porta San Mamalo and she prefers to be in the centre, cue an immediate flurry of Whatsapp message exchanges and introductions and an agreement that we would meet up with the homeowners when they returned from their honeymoon.
Giardini Margherita
In a further typical Italian fashion the homeowners, who are a lovely couple, wanted to ensure that both of them met both of us which given that they work more 9 to 5 weekdays and we work evenings and weekends was a little bit tricky. In the end we went there to see the place and meet them on a Sunday about a week after they returned. We felt nervous, as if we were going on a date. With this kind of thing are we wrong to feel there is an element of popularity contest about it?
The apartment was lovely. The entrance hall/lounge provided access to two double bedrooms and bathroom (with bath) or right into the kitchen. It was a big, airy kitchen (and utility space) which opened onto an amazing garden, part decked and with sun sails to keep the direct sun off when required. The apartment was also at ground floor level at the back with enormous windows so you could get a car (or van in our case) right up to the 2nd bedroom window, which would be useful for moving in and bulky shopping items.
From the garden you could see into the hills and the apartment building backed onto a private park. Apparently wild boar and deer had been seen from the windows. Obviously, we loved it. We went through why they were looking to rent it out and how long for as well as why we were in Italy and what our goals were. They loved that we were making such a big change and as they had previously lived abroad they understood the challenges. We were given advice on language courses and local festivals. We were told the price and, unbelievably, it was in our budget, at the top, but still in it. The fly in the ointment? There were 5 other interested people and they had not even advertised on the internet.
News of these other interested parties was a blow but did not come as a surprise to us because we had first-hand experience of how tough it is to get a place in Bologna, nevermind one as lovely as this. We ended the visit with them telling us they would put us down as one of the people interested in the apartment and let us know once they had shown it to everyone. We were a little down cast as we felt sure that other people, who were Italian, or had permanent contracts, or who they knew better or all three, would certainly be interested and would be preferable to us. We tried not to get our hopes up, but this was as close as we had come to getting an apartment.
We exchanged a few messages with the homeowners during the week, as follow ups to some of the other things we had discussed and then received a message to say that they were hoping to make a decision after the weekend. On the Sunday we received a further message to say that two of the viewers had, had to delay their visit and so could we be patient until the following Friday? I wrote back that of course we could, but we hoped they would not like it as much as us and then I hit send. I was immediately filled with remorse and thought that this could come across very badly, but it was done now so there was nothing I could do. When Al called I confessed to him and he said “Good, I think that was a perfect response”, he was calling to tell me that he had the rest of the day off. We decided to head into town and see what was happening. The centre of Bologna in the afternoon and evening is very chilled out and there are always plenty of people around, just soaking up the pleasant atmosphere. We had a little mooch around the shops and had a drink in a bar.
When we were in the bar contemplating what to do for dinner we received another message from the homeowners. They had been offered more money by two students who also wanted to use the kitchenware, bedding etc. We were their favourites, but could we go slightly higher? We discussed this whilst continuing to enjoy our drinks and while my phone buzzed with additional messages from them. As we finished I responded to say we had considered the issue and agreed we could. They said they would cancel the future viewing and start to put together the contract and would let us know what they needed from us and when. They also suggested that we get together for a toast!
On one of Al’s next days off we found ourselves on the decking of the apartment, with the homeowner, enjoying apertivo while he talked through the contract. He was very keen to explain how these things worked in Italy, not just for this transaction, but also for any future transactions we might make. He also wanted to ensure we had time to read and translate the contract so we could ask him any questions or get any advice we might need. He sent us everything by email and we were able to translate and understand it. Two days later we met up again in Al’s break to sign everything.
Our current breakfast spot
After 5 moves in 6 months we are finally in an apartment we can call home. Everything has been put away and has a place to live. Eagle eyed readers will recognise the San Mamalo location as the same area we stayed in at our first air B&B when we arrived. The apartment building’s back exit opens onto the same road that the original apartment was on, so we have walked past it a few times now. We are only a 15 minute walk from the centre and there is a good bus service, albeit in the number of buses not their adherence to the timetable, so you can be in the centre in 5 to 10 minutes traffic depending. My work is now only 30 mins walk away although Al’s journey is taking a little longer.
It’s totally legit, honest!
As we have a contract for the apartment we were able to register for residency here, which means we have an official address. A quick recap on how residency works in Italy, we need an address at which we are registered so we can get health cards, insurance, post, contract mobile phones, a whole multitude of seemingly normal things. This means that we will fully enter into the world of Italian bureaucracy but, given that we have been living without a recognised address for six months, this seems like a small price to pay…watch this space to find out how long that lasts.
A butterfly (silver washed fritillary, apparently) in the Park near our apartment
*As in usually qualified teachers who teach English as a subject to English speaking children at the international school, rather than the likes of me with my internet qualification**, teaching English as a foreign language to adults. I am not sure why I think it is important to stress this distinction, but I do.
** At the time of writing the internet qualification has
been completed but the certificate has not yet been received and the online
portal is both showing my course as being 76% completed and not displaying my
final grade, so am I qualified?
When thinking about what would happen work wise in Italy our assumption was that Al would easily find work as he has a trade and useable skills that are not solely reliant on language. Everyone is always desperate to get hold of good chefs because the work is hard, the hours long and anti-social, and many people don’t stay in the industry for long. Our concern was about what I would do given my skills rely almost totally on my ability to communicate, in English, and I do not have anything like the comparable level of Italian. In the event both Al and I managed to get jobs quite quickly, however both of our interview experiences were quite different.
It’s unfortunate that in an interview sometimes things can seem so black and white.
Gisele Bundchen Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/interview-quotes
Al’s interviews
Al’s first interview was at an out of town hotel which specialises in conferences and weddings. Al had been applying for jobs in Italy before we left and although we had only been in the country for three weeks we were a bit surprised to have had no responses at all. He had sent emails to many places and trekked across Bologna to personally deliver his CV to a couple of others he thought would be good to work at. This was the first response he had so although the Hotel did not look all that great, and the cooking not really his thing, he drove out to it with a great deal of concern about his level of Italian and how it would stand up in an interview.
Italian textbook
When he arrived at the Hotel and went to reception, he discovered that the person interviewing him was a manager not the chef. Not something he was used to, but it is a different country so who knows what else is different, perhaps the chef would join the meeting. The previous candidate told Al to go through and he met the manager who did not get up from her desk to greet him or shake hands. Most of the exchange was completed in Italian, but from the beginning it was clear that the manager had deep suspicions about the idea of a British Chef. Her interview style can best be described as adversarial. She wanted to know why he was in Italy and why he could not get a job in England. He told her that he could get a job in the UK but wanted to learn Italian cooking. This incensed her more. They needed a chef who could already cook not one that needed training. He told her that he was a qualified chef with 10 years of experience. She wanted to know what he could cook, for him to actually describe all the things he can cook, the ingredients used and the methods deployed. She delighted in telling him that she had eaten in Italian restaurants in England many times and they were all bad. As Al began to lose his temper and if you know him you know that this is a fairly slow burn, the Italian slipped and he spoke more English to express his anger and frustration. He left the interview confident that even if he had somehow miraculously got the job, he didn’t want it. We are still not sure why he was invited to interview in the first place, unless she wanted to see a British chef with her own eyes or just used arguing with potential candidates as a stress reliever.
Al delivering CVs to all the restaurants in FICO
So, it was with a natural increase in trepidation and concern that he set out for his second interview. He had been invited to attend the interview at FICO, which I have talked about in the Stuff and Things post. It is a “food centric theme park featuring eateries, pop-stores, demonstrations & hands-on exhibits” (Google search result for FICO, 2019). This invitation followed a weekend where he had handed out CVs at every restaurant on site. He met with the co-owner of the restaurant and discovered it was the sister restaurant of another, Michelin starred, restaurant in Rimini. The Head Chef joined them when he could, service permitting. The interview was conducted largely in Italian and about 15 minutes in Al was offered the role. English was only used when they were talking about contract specifics as it turned out the owner lived in London for a couple of years and spoke excellent English, but thought Al was doing so well in Italian that there was no need to interrupt him! The Chef at the restaurant does not speak English and the fact that he was able to do the interview in Italian helped him get the job. He has been working in an Italian kitchen where none of the Kitchen Staff speak English (the waiting staff speak good English) for 5 months now and has learned a lot in both cooking and language terms.
One of the argricultural zones at FICO
Jennie’s interviews
As I mentioned previously, when we told people we met here that I was not sure what I would do for a job, it seemed to them obvious to them that I would be an English language teacher. I have no experience of teaching, but as a native speaker with a degree the feeling seemed to be that it was natural I would do this and so I enrolled in the on-line Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course and set about researching English schools in Bologna.
When you are trying to get a job in a new field obviously you
must tailor your CV to bring out the relevant experience and remove anything
irrelevant. I have designed and run multiple training courses and workshops and
presented on complex topics many times so I was able to draw those elements out,
as well as working with and managing teams which were located in different
countries and for whom English was not their first language. However, it was
hard for me to remove my other achievements which were hard won with some of
them leaving (metaphorical) scars. Ultimately, they would mean nothing to
someone looking for an English language teacher. Just because I had removed
them from my CV didn’t mean that they had not been achieved nor that they would
not make a reappearance on a future CV. I pacified myself that if I was able to
shoehorn one or two of them into any competency-based questions or examples in
an interview then great, but otherwise it was time to let it go.
I sent CVs to the top English language schools in Bologna and two weeks later I received a call from one of them to come in for a chat. English Language Schools are looking to assess your level of English and your ability to communicate clearly so my phone calls and interviews were in English, which is handy for me. I received the call to the second English school a week later. Both of my first interviews were at the Bologna branches of two different nationwide English Language school for adults and had a number of similarities. For both I was super careful not to make it sound as though I thought that because I had provided training and had other educational related experience, I would automatically be able to teach. They both agreed that the skills I had picked out in my CV were transferable and would be useful for me as a teacher. They thought that having me teach English at a business client’s might be the best fit. They had other people to interview so they would let me know if I was going to go onto the next phase of recruitment. Initially I thought they went quite well, but obviously both times I got back to the Air B&B I had convinced myself I had stuffed them up however, both schools invited me for a second interview.
We found time to celebrate Liberation day
There were also a few differences in the interviews at the two schools. While the first interview at the first school was over in fifteen minutes, I found the Programme manager at the second school much easier to talk to and the interview took longer but mainly because we were talking about Trump and music. The two schools also diverged in the later stages of their recruitment processes. I don’t know how regularly English speakers blow into Bologna looking for work, but certainly often enough for some healthy competition.
At the first school, during the second interview, they invited me to come back and to do an example lesson. This was the first I had heard of this kind of thing, but apparently, it is quite common in education. This does make sense but given that I had confessed to having no experience, had 2 weeks of the professional online course under my belt and had checked that the school provided both full training and lessons plans, I was a bit flummoxed. They wanted a 15 minute lesson on “anything I liked” and their staff would “play” my students. I am not a gifted actress. While I have no issue delivering training, running workshops or presenting, this is because I am an expert in what I am training or presenting. I felt that delivering a class I had made up, with no experience to two people pretending to be foreign students, was a performance. I must admit, I even curtseyed at the end glad to have survived it. I left the example lesson feeling confident with the good feedback I received, but once again by the time I had walked home I was full of “shoulda, woulda, coulda”.
I bravely managed to continue eating between interviews
For the second interview at the second school I was not alone. Another candidate called April was there and this was also her second interview. The Programme leader was quick to say his school did not do Example lessons. He would provide training on how the English language course worked and then we would discuss the next steps of recruitment. He told us that he had two roles available, but that he had more people coming in for interview. He was hoping to set up one larger training course so we could all do it together, presumably as part of the selection process. When he stepped out of the room, I introduced myself to April and we had a chat. It turned out she had done an example lesson at the first school on the same day as me but, had already been told she had not been successful. At the end of the interview April and I exchanged phone numbers so we could swap tips about the job and living in Italy generally with each other.
I don’t know if there were ever any other candidates or not, but on the scheduled training session it was only April and I. We learned all about the levels and the course material. We observed different lesson types and I was not sure when the training would end and the getting paid for our time would start. At the end of every training session there was another training session scheduled and we didn’t know if we were even going to get the job at the end of the training. Finally, when we were being told about yet another training session I just came out and asked when we would know if we had the job? It turned out we both had the job provided we successfully delivered an hour-long class, with real students, while being observed! We had a weekend to prepare and I opted to go first because my nerves did not need more time to undermine me.
We also managed another move
During the lesson the Programme Director and the Centre Director observed from behind a class divider screen, which meant I couldn’t get Shakespeare’s line “…behind the arras.” out of my head through the whole thing. I had a great student and the feedback I received was very positive indeed so I went home to await my first week’s classes (5 hours the first week and rising until the end of the month). I am not going to go into the many weird vagaries of Italian contracts, partly because it is really boring and partly because I am not sure I understand. Anyway, I had it, a contract for a job in a completely new field!
Post script
On the first day of work April and I were due to be teaching at slightly different times so the Programme Director could be on hand. When I arrived he asked if I had heard from her, and I hadn’t. Apparently, she had messaged him to say she had to return to the UK immediately. I sent a message wishing her well and asking if there was anything I could do to help and have not yet had a reply. There are an infinite number of things that could have happened ranging from the mundane to the sinister and I will probably never know which. I would just like to say wherever you are out there April, I hope everything is ok?
So far in our Italian adventure we have not been able to get
a permanent apartment. Like many other cities in Europe the rate of house
building has not kept pace with the rise in population. Although work can be
found, accommodation can be more difficult. Also like many other European
cities the supply available to rent to ordinary workers and residents has been
hit by air B&B and other holiday let websites. This means we find ourselves
in a paradox, using the available holiday apartments to rent for short periods
on a strictly no residency basis, while we search to secure a permanent
apartment from which to base ourselves. The holiday apartments are more
expensive than ordinary rentals and we can’t afford to keep staying in them
forever. Add to this the fact that we have no official residency, because we
don’t have an address. The address is an incredibly important part of your
Italian identify not least as it enables to have post delivered to you. We are
not able to have post or parcels delivered, buy a car, moped, get phone
contracts, unlimited wifi etc. Many people find renting with Air B&B favourable
because as well as the increase in rental value presumably the legislative
requirements for holiday rentals, if they are declared, are considerably less
than those required for residences, and if they are not declared, fairly non-existent.
Everyone here is looking for an apartment, or that’s what it
feels like. Agencies rarely have rentals in the windows because they go too
quickly. We have been told you have to call as soon as you get the notification
to your mailbox. We have personally visited multiple agencies who have never
contacted us and had nothing to show us when we were in their offices. We have
seen notices pasted to lamp posts by people also searching for apartments. We
have joined Facebook groups and watched other people posting adverts almost
identical to ours. We have told everyone that we have met that we are looking
for apartments and they have promised to let us know if they hear anything.
Some people have told us we will not be able to rent while we are on temporary
contracts, but initial temporary contracts are standard for new jobs in Italy.
Others have said we will not be able to rent without references; how will we be
able to get references when we can’t rent. Still we are searching.
In the meantime, we have lived in 3 very different air B&B in 3 beautiful parts of Bologna. The first was just outside of porta San Malmalo. It had a good-sized entrance hall, a reasonable sized double bedroom with lots of built in storage. The living space was nicely separated into kitchen dining and lounge zones. We had a set of French doors leading onto some private outdoor tiled space. It was smaller than we were used to but, in all honesty, there are only two of us and we need to be more disciplined about use of space so it was encouraging us into good (tidier) habits. The apartment was only 30 minutes walk from the centre of Bologna (as are most places). The only downside of this apartment was that there was no guaranteed parking and we were using a public car park nearby which charged by the day. However, it became apparent that a month would not be enough time to secure a permanent apartment. We could not extend the apartment we were in as they had another booking, so we looked for another air B&B. We found a place that had a 50% discount for booking for a month and we took it.
Apartment San Mamalo
The new apartment was considerably bigger than the first and this one had loads of storage. It had two large bedrooms and two bathrooms. It was on the 7th floor and offered incredible views of the city. The floors were marble everywhere except the bedrooms which were wooden parquet. The kitchen was in a separate room and there was a separate study. We were certainly living in luxury and the apartment included a garage under the apartment building. We had a balcony that could be accessed by the French doors in either the lounge or dining room areas of the open plan living space. This apartment was close to the portes of Santo Stefano or Maggiore in the Murri district, a very popular residential spot, so we had alternative walks into the city each with their own pros and cons. Maggiore, for my money, was the prettiest walk in and led directly into the main high street in Bologna. It has porticos almost the whole way along it’s length so from where we joined the road from the apartment all the way into the centre of the city. Santo Stefano has porticos from the porta into the centre and the shops were more interesting. The end of this route brought you through the square of the 7 churches or if you preferred onto the designer stores of Piazza Cavore and via Farini. We loved the area here and the walk was a similar 30 minutes in. There were more shops near to our apartment, so we were spoilt for convenience. This is a very leafy area with tree lined avenues, and it’s close to the Giardini Margherita. Sadly, as we realised that we would not be moving into a permanent home any time soon we also had to leave this apartment, knowing we would probably never live anywhere so luxurious again.
The new apartment was considerably bigger than the first and this one had loads of storage. It had two large bedrooms and two bathrooms. It was on the 7th floor and offered incredible views of the city. The floors were marble everywhere except the bedrooms which were wooden parquet. The kitchen was in a separate room and there was a separate study. We were certainly living in luxury and the apartment included a garage under the apartment building. We had a balcony that could be accessed by the French doors in either the lounge or dining room areas of the open plan living space. This apartment was close to the portes of Santo Stefano or Maggiore in the Murri district, a very popular residential spot, so we had alternative walks into the city each with their own pros and cons. Maggiore, for my money, was the prettiest walk in and led directly into the main high street in Bologna. It has porticos almost the whole way along it’s length so from where we joined the road from the apartment all the way into the centre of the city. Santo Stefano has porticos from the porta into the centre and the shops were more interesting. The end of this route brought you through the square of the 7 churches or if you preferred onto the designer stores of Piazza Cavore and via Farini. We loved the area here and the walk was a similar 30 minutes in. There were more shops near to our apartment, so we were spoilt for convenience. This is a very leafy area with tree lined avenues, and it’s close to the Giardini Margherita. Sadly, as we realised that we would not be moving into a permanent home any time soon we also had to leave this apartment, knowing we would probably never live anywhere so luxurious again.
The third and current Air B&B is in a very exclusive location. Located outside the porta Castiglione, which is between San Mamalo and San Stefano. The area is known as Colli, which means hills, and the road to San Luca (an important local site) runs up from porta Castiglione. The apartment buildings here are generally old and can be entirely private homes. I like to see how many mailbox names are listed as this indicates the number of households’ resident in the building. All the apartment buildings here are accessed by gates, usually automated. It is leafy and private. The apartment building, we are in has 7 households in the main building accessed through an imposing front door. We are down the gravel track around the back of the building in an apartment next to the garages. Many apartment buildings here include a custodian flat where the custodian’s family would live, looking after the maintenance of the building and grounds. We believe our apartment is the converted custodian flat. We have beautiful big windows and high ceilings. The owner has converted it tastefully with carefully selected antique furniture and light fittings. We have a private outside seating area and look out over the garden of the apartment building which itself looks over the tennis court of a neighbouring building. It is small so we are back to self-discipline and space management, but it is a truly beautiful apartment and location. Once again, we are 30 minutes’ walk from the centre along a new route, with new shops and sights to learn. We have been incredibly lucky and there is virtually no chance that we will be able to find or afford an apartment in any of the locations that we have stayed in so far. We have been very privileged to be able to stay in these places and have these experiences and we are just trying to relax and enjoy them while we can.
I didn’t want this blog to become a kind of diary entry and I am pretty sure no one is interested in a blow by blow account of everything that we do. For that reason I have put together a few bits and pieces of the things we have been doing and some things which I think might be of general interest.
Modena
Modena is a small town close to Bologna, which is famous for its balsamic vinegar. Proper Balsamic vinegar is nothing like the product you can buy in a supermarket or what you have had on your salad. A small bottle of properly produced balsamic vinegar will set you back at least £60 and will be used by the drop mixed with oil. What you can buy elsewhere are usually let down “ready to use” versions. The ancient process involves specific grapes fermented over a number of years with the product being transferred to smaller and smaller vessels as the ageing and reduction takes place, until the final product is available in the small glass jar with the ball base, which is unique to Modena. In our story it is also the town from which we had to hire a car when we broke down. As we knew the van was not going to be fixed until at least Monday we decided it was more cost effective to return the car, which we did not need to use during the week and was costing us a fortune in the local carpark. When we hired the car, it was late on a Friday, we had spent two hours at the side of the Italian motorway by our stricken vehicle and we just wanted to get onto Bologna, so we had not spent any time in the town. Returning the car gave us the opportunity for a little visit, although it would have to be brief as there was more rugby to watch.
Saturday morning we headed out to the car park to collect the car for the last time. As we drove to the Avis rental office, we appreciated the relative luxury of the Kuga. The inbuilt sat nav and in car charging etc. We handed the car over without pre-amble and a very minimal review of the returned condition. We consulted google maps and planned a route to the station via the centre of the town. Modena is much like other Italian towns, we have visited, a great mix of old buildings through time and modern commercial architecture. There was a flower and herb market taking place which made wandering around the streets and piazza even more delightful. Eventually we wended our way to the station, where it appeared the whole Modena orchestra was waiting to get on a train. The automated ticket machine was broken so we waited in the queue, unfortunately missing the cheaper regional train, but we did not want to wait another hour for the next regional service, so we opted to pay the extra for the Freccia Rosso. These are clean, pleasant, fast, modern trains, but they are double the price. As we have mentioned to just about everyone who asked us why we have chosen Bologna, one of the reasons it that it is a central location from where it is really easy to get to multiple other places. It has the largest station in Italy with 27 platforms in use. Florence is 35 minutes away, Milan an hour and a bit, Rimini (nearest bit of coast) 1 hour, Venice 1 and a half hours etc. You can even get a direct train to Berlin! On this occasion the train was slightly late, but we were back in Bologna within 20 minutes so plenty of time to pick up some lunch before heading to the Cluricaune for more Rugby, where Wales delighted us with yet another win, setting up the possibility of their achieving the Grand Slam, which of course, they did.
Tandem (language) dates
We have retained our weekly Italian lesson with our usual Italian teacher over Skype to help us settle in. In our first lesson after we had been to school for the initial week, we were keen to show her how much we had improved as well as to discuss our concerns about what we were struggling with, namely listening and speaking. Elena had a great suggestion which was to see if there was a Facebook group for what she called “tandem” meet ups. This is where someone who wants to learn a language meets up with someone who wants to learn their language. The idea is that it is conversation in two languages so you can both improve as well as being social. We had never heard of this and were pleased to discover that there was indeed a Bologna tandem Facebook group, so Al put a message up. We were completely taken aback by how many people wanted to meet up and speak Italian/English with us. We had so many responses that Al spent a whole day composing Italian replies to each one. Within a day we had meetings set up on most available evenings and weekend days for two weeks starting from the first meeting scheduled for the following Saturday. As we were still fairly new to the city, we allowed the tandem partner to choose the meet up location. This way we get to see places that locals like and go to and improve our list of places to go to. We had already noticed that we were starting to go to the same places because we knew where they were and how they worked.
Our first Tandem, it is fair to say, did not go well. We felt very nervous as we had no idea what to expect. We worried about what to wear as if we were actually going on a date. We met the person who will remain nameless, because I have forgotten her name, at the feet of the two towers, a famous landmark in the centre of Bologna. She did not seem to have a plan for where to go but she just started walking and talking. It was hard to hear and speak while walking along busy city streets and when we asked her to suggest somewhere to go, she picked somewhere on the other side of the city near to our Air B&B. She could not hide her extreme disappointment that we were not American. She had an obsession for Americans and America and had put on her Facebook profile that she was from San Francisco, but she was born and bred Bolognese. She told us later she found our English accents very hard to understand and was critical of our Italian. We found her very impatient and unwilling to listen to what we were saying before talking again so she often misunderstood what we were saying in either language. When we made our excuses to leave it turned out she needed to walk back into the city too and so walked with us, it was quite awkward. She told us she was an Italian teacher for immigrant school children which made her slightly condescending manner make more sense and I felt quite sorry for them. She told us she would be able to help us a lot as we were like those children. As we left her, we said we would be in touch and as soon as we left her we agreed that we would not. We had two weeks of meetings to come and we began to think we had possibly made an error.
Our second meeting was much better. We met Myriam at Caffe Zamboni where we were going to have Aperitivo. The food was plentiful and included hot food trays as well as cold. Myriam was very interesting, she translates and adapts the vocal scripts for television and films in English. Obviously, her English is excellent, but she wants to keep her speaking practice going which is why she was looking for a tandem with English speakers. We spoke mainly in English and broken Italian. She was very patient and helpful. The meeting felt relaxed and social. At the end we were happy to meet with her again. Our following Tandem meetings have been similarly successful and all the other people that we have met we are planning to meet again, although we have not met with everyone who replied to the message yet!
Talking Italian (Robert De Niro is not waiting)
While I was glued to my laptop for the last two weeks of work in the old career with JP Morgan, Al was using MO bikes to tear around the city trying to get us “legal”.
This started with something called the Codici Fiscali which is the Italian equivalent of the National Insurance number. You need this for just about everything, but luckily it is listed as one of the easier Italian bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. MO bikes, as you might have guessed, are city based rental bikes like the Boris bikes or other local equivalents. While the van was still in the garage, they were invaluable to Al for getting to the various far flung civic offices he needed to visit. His trip to the out of town office to get his Codici was difficult and he struggled to pull his Italian together. He was interrogated by a rude civil servant about why he was in Italy and why he couldn’t get a job in his own country, once Al managed to explain that he was able to get a job in England, but he wanted to learn Italian cooking the atmosphere thawed considerably. Italians generally and Bolognese in particular, love their food. The next day Al was able to go and collect the van so when I went to get my Codici we were able to go in that and the office was less busy, the receptionist told me which bits of the form to fill in and the civil servant was lovely, he even made a little Brexit joke.
Al was desperately trying to get us on a more permanent footing with the original 29th March Brexit deadline looming over us. We had been given the idea that we needed a permesso di soggiorno, which could be submitted to the Post office for processing. The form required could also be picked up from the post office, however not all branches had them and the branch that did would not let Al have two. Eventually after much blood, sweat and Mo biking Al managed to score two forms and we set about completing them. We needed to copy the Codici, bank records to show we could support ourselves and every page of the passport. Al went to submit his first as I was still working and you needed to present some of the documents in person as well as provide copies. After a lengthy discussion with the woman at the post office he was able to submit this and he was provided with an appointment at the Immigration office. When we went together in my lunch break the post office would not accept mine because as we are EU citizens, we don’t need the permesso. They understood our Brexit concerns and apologised that Al’s application had been accepted but insisted I could not submit an application. They directed us to the civic office in the city centre for a different form. The next day we went there and were directed to the Immigration office, we went there and spoke to a lovely policeman who told us not to worry, we didn’t need anything right now, we were EU citizens we had the right to stay and if a no deal Brexit did happen, something would be arranged. We went home a little confused and despondent. On speaking with our Internations EU friends we discovered what we needed was residency. Residency is granted by the local council where you live, but in order to get this we needed an address, so the hunt for an apartment was stepped up. Luckily about this time the Brexit deadline was extended to 12th April, giving us a little more time, which has now morphed into sometime before October 20th.
The bank provided Al’s next language challenge. He had
researched on line and identified that there was a non-residents account which
foreigners could get, however the bank agent Al spoke to originally didn’t know
how to open it, so she made an appointment for him to come back. It took two
hours for them to go through all the paper work, but he walked away with
account details and a cash machine card.
Getting an Italian mobile proved to be the least difficult
of all Al’s herculean tasks. He was able to get a basic contract fairly cheaply
and they were not bothered about an address. Al bought a really old phone (8
years vintage) from the Bologna branch of CEX and we have had much hilarity
remembering a time before touch screens when all sites look like text messages
and you had to use the scroll bar to navigate the, limited, options and there
are no apps. However, it has meant we can put an Italian phone number on our
CVs and documents rather than our UK ones, although we are terrified of someone
calling us because our Italian listening and speaking skills are not great.
Santa Stefano
Internations
Internations is an online ex-pat community, they have branches in 432 cities worldwide where people who have relocated to an area can meet each other and locals. They provide online guides and help with the issues new arrivals might face. The Bologna branch is quite active and has at least one social event per month at different venues in the city. When we went to the first meeting we prepared as best we could, learning some sentences to describe ourselves and why were in Bologna in Italian as best we could. Luckily there were a number of English-speaking people there and at this initial meeting we mostly spoke English. Some of the people at the meeting had been in Italy for decades and others for only a few years. The ability to speak Italian varied a great deal with the English speakers, some were fluent, and others had less Italian than us, which gave us a degree of comfort about our language skills. We were speaking to an American who teaches English as a foreign language and he thought I would not have any problems getting a job as an English teacher. This became a theme at many of our meetings, indeed at the next meeting an Italian asked me why I wasn’t an English teacher, I explained that I had not completed the qualification, but she thought my degree would be enough, so the next day I enrolled on the online course and started applying for jobs.
Basic membership is free but does not give you full access
to the site so we decided that Al would take the subscription membership and I
would stay with basic. It means I pay more when we go to events and I don’t
have the same access to messages and to invite others into my network, but
otherwise I can usually see events and accept invitations. Event fees usually
include your first drink and a buffet, but you need to be quick with the food
as it soon goes. One of the Italians we met told us that she looks up the
nearest branch when she goes abroad on holiday and if they are having an event
while she is visiting, she goes along to get local top tips. There is a Southampton branch if you
want to check it out. It’s been so useful for us I am going to upgrade my
membership.
These events are definitely helping us to get settled in a set up a new network as we have met many interesting people from all over the world that live here. People are interested in our story, our desire to make such a big change and are really supportive. We are getting a core set of friends we meet up with at the events and then go onto other venues with. Everyone sympathises with the apartment situation and give us what advice and contacts they can, but the cold fact is it is hard.
Where we have been visiting
Giardini Margherita
We paid our first visit to the Giardini Margherita on the Sunday before I had to return to work (alright working from home). For Southampton residents the Giardini is like a slightly smaller version of the common with a cafés and bars scattered across it, a basketball court and there is also a beautiful set of buildings converted to artists working space with a restaurant and bar. The park is surrounded by some of the loveliest old apartment buildings in Bologna
MAMbo
Mambo is the name of the Modern Art Museum of Bologna. Each city has a regional code which you need on all official documentation and for Bologna it is BO in the same way that Southampton uses the SO post code as an identifier. This gallery has art from 1945 to the present. We only visited the permanent collection as the temporary exhibitions cost extra. We also ate brunch in the Gallery restaurant before we went it, this was our first experience of a brunch buffet and we nearly managed the whole thing in Italian but let ourselves down when we were not sure where to pay.
FICO (Eataly World)
Fico means fig in Italian, but it is also the name of the Eataly world food park. Eataly is an Italian produce chain that specialises in finding and selling excellent examples of regional sustainably produced foods at prices for everyone. They seek to retain the link between the produce, the production process and the producers (Italian agri-food biodiversity). FICO is the physical manifestation of its desire to keep these concepts together in the mind of the consumer. It’s hard to explain what FICO is, but it has a sort of derogatory nickname of the Disneyland of food, which does mostly cover it. It is on the outskirts of Bologna and includes livestock and agricultural zones on the outside and produce zones on the inside. At the entrance you can hire tricycles that have large food baskets on the front and back or you can just get a trolley. Entrance to the park is free and when you go in, there are large signs to show what each produce zone is and they have production areas or “factories” with glass walls and schedules of activity so you can watch pasta being made, the production processes for mortadella, Parma ham and parmesan etc. You can also attend courses and workshops if you pre-book. Each zone has one or two restaurants or outlets where you can get samples or buy taster sets or full meals. There are also shelves of produce available to buy. While you pay for the ready to eat food at each outlet, produce is bought from the giant store at the end of the complex. So, like all other modern museums and spectacles you exit via the gift shop, although in this case it is a massive Italian produce store, but don’t worry you can buy branded merchandise too.
Apples
Say cheese
Where we’ve been eating
Mercato Delle Erbe
This is an indoor food market with stalls selling fruit and vegetables and even real balsamic vinegar in the middle and then more permanent stalls/shops around the interior walls with fresh pasta makers, cheese shops, butchers. There are two sort of wings coming from the main market area, these both contain food and drink outlets, restaurants and seating, it’s a great place to eat and relax with friends as well as to pick up some food to take home. The area around the market is buzzing with restaurants and bars in the evening.
Tamburini
Bolognaise speciality: lasagne
I have included information on Tamburini before, but now we have also discovered the delights of their self-service restaurant inside. You have to walk through the delicatessen to get to it, then get yourself a tray. You slide your tray along counters where there are salads and other first course goodies, fridges with water and bottles of beer, past the wine on tap (a spina) which is available in quarter, half or full litre carafes, to the hot food counter where you can choose from the options available, which will always include the bolognese specialities; lasagne and tagliatelle a ragu, but there will be other options to, on to the deserts and then to a till to pay, before finding a table to sit at. It reminds me of the old cafés in Bhs stores but about 1000x better. The staff are well used to tourists, but it can still be a little daunting.
Caffe Zamboni
Already referenced above in our Tandem dates section, but a
great place for a large quantity of aperitivo/aperacena at a relatively low
cost. It is also in a great central location in a lively area of Bologna.
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.
Good result for Wales!
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”).
Porta(l) Maggiore
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”
The morning view from the balcony in Bordighera was a real treat and we were able to see through the trees and houses down to the sea. We had not realised how close we were. The garden was filled with fruit laden citrus trees. We headed out on the coast road in the direction of La Spezia. We had thought we would stop for lunch in Genoa but the timings did not seem to work out and as we drove past the outskirts, of what is an undoubtedly industrial city, we did not see anything condusive to taking a break and enjoying the view.
View from our balcony
The coast road did not follow close enough for us to see Portafina except in outline. During the dash across the country we had used many toll roads and I had a very lovely bruise on the underside of my left arm from leaning on the rolled down window, stretching out of the passenger window to pick up tickets or insert the payment card. The journey around the coast had avoided the tolls and offered us fabulous scenery but was adding considerable time and physicality to our drive. We drove through Rappelo and then, after a quick calculation of how long it would take on the coast road vs the toll roads, we decided to go for the toll roads to save 2 hours and Al’s aching shoulders. The toll roads here, while less winding than the coast road, are either long tunnels down into and up out of mountains or they are valley spanning bridges. The views were fantastic, but you were afraid to take your eyes off the road. The barriers in some places seemed very insubstantial and there were large stretches of road works that meant traffic in both directions was running in the same tunnel or area of bridge at 110km with little to separate them but the lane markers.
We arrived in La Spezia, another town about which we knew nothing, as the sun was beginning to set. Our last coastal stop before heading in land. The hotel NH La Spezia was central and the most expensive of the trip. Our room was great and although it did not have a balcony it did have an enormous picture window over the harbour. As we were on the 6th floor and not overlooked we left the curtains open so we could wake up with natural light.
We went on our nightly sojourn for food and found a lovely bar called Odioilvino which did excellent aperitivo. We stayed there for a few drinks before going for dinner which meant that we were already quite full when we left.
Aperitivo
We ended up in an Irish themed pub, which had a massive restaurant on the corner showing sports and a really intimidating old man style more traditional pub to the side. It is worth noting that we have found at least one Irish pub in every single place we have stopped in both France and Italy. The restaurant was noisy but it was getting late so we ate there before retiring to the hotel to prepare for our final day of driving and our arrival in Bologna.
