Final Destination: Bologna, Italy!

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We are finally in Bologna and after a little over 1 month are starting to get settled. We found a great 1 bedroom apartment right in the historic center of the city so we’re a close 5 minute walk to the main piazza where many of the Bolognesi hang out—drinking coffee, eating gelato, and of course people-watching, which is especially fun in a highly fashion conscious city like Bologna. This city is also highly “food” conscious which has earned it the nickname “la grassa,” meaning “the fat one.” It’s a very appropriate nickname because Bologna is the culinary capital of Italy and the birthplace of Italian favorites like tortellini and tortelloni, lasagna, ravioli, and the ragu sauce (meat sauce). So as you can imagine, the food here is amazing! We are enjoying eating out once in awhile but mostly doing our own cooking which is so much fun when you have the finest ingredients at hand. The specialty food shops off the main piazza sell the most delicious (and local) cheeses, cured meats, produce, fish, etc and grocery shopping has never been so fun.

Most things about living in Bologna (and Italy in general) are lovely, but we must mention we’ve been frustrated a bunch too. Anthony has his Italian citizenship but getting Melanie’s paperwork to establish residency and legally work here has been a huge pain and even after 7-8 different trips to various government offices around the city, we’re still getting the Italian bureaucratic run-around. When Melanie went to buy some stamps, she waited on line at the post office for one half hour only to find out that stamps aren’t sold at the post office in Italy. To them it was obvious—you buy stamps at a tobacco shop, silly American! We also are still getting used to the different schedule over here where everything is closed from 1pm - 4pm for lunch and a siesta, which can make it hard to run errands when you have other stuff to do in the morning.

On the work front: Anthony landed himself a job teaching English and so far that is going well . Melanie is still job-searching but has some good leads and will likely end up teaching English also. There are many language schools in Bologna and it seems to be the most popular job route for foreigners.

Overall, so far so good and we’ll continue to update our blog as we get settled in here…

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