Setting up house in Bologna

---

Dear Max and Dominic,

It was a little bit sad to leave Barcelona at the end of last week - it meant the end of our holiday and the start of work again, and I ended up enjoying living in Barcelona very much. At the start I was a bit nervous because I was worried about stories I had heard that there are lots of thieves in that city, especially in the area we were living in, but in the end I thought we were pretty safe. I was also a bit nervous about coming to Italy because it is harder to live and work somewhere rather than just visit as a tourist, but I think we will be fine.

You can see that the streets of Barcelona's old town (where we were living) are different from the streets of Bologna's old town, but both are very old. We spent the weekend wandering around this city getting to know it a little bit. You need a good sense of direction because the streets are such a jumble that it is easy to get lost. Also, in the weekends, the main streets in the centre of Bologna close down for cars so the buses go on different streets from their weekday timetable. It's a little bit confusing! There used to be many tall thin towers in this city about 700 years ago and some of them aare still standing. The photo shows two that are close together near the middle of the city. One of them is leaning over so far you can't go in it and they had to chop the top half off. It looks as though it might fall over at any moment, but it has been leaning like this for hundreds of years and it hasn't fallen over yet!

Here is a picture of our house - Via delle Fragoli 26, Bologna (you can look it up on Google Maps and see what this area looks like). That means "Strawberry Street" in English but I haven't seen any strawberries growing here yet. It has about 4 or 5 apartments on every floor so quite a few people live here. Our apartment has three bedrooms but the lounge room and the kitchen and the dining room are all in the same space, and one of the bedrooms is actually in the basement. In the photo, you can see me standing by the door that leads to our front door insisde, and the window right by me is my bedroom window. This morning before work we went to the local market to buy some food for dinner - you can get fish, meat, cheese and fancy food, fruit, vegetables, and bakery food there. It is excellent! The shop keepers are being very kind to me because I can't always think of the right Italian word to say. I think they are pleased that I am trying.

Yesterday we walked up to a very special place in Bologna - the church of St Luke is on top of a hill overlooking the city. You say "San Luca" in Italian. Inside is a painting of Mary and the baby Jesus that is about 1000 years old. You can walk all the way up to the church inside a long covered pathway of arches - it is several kilometres long! Lots of people were going for walks up there and a few were stopping to say prayers at little places along the path where there are old paintings from the bible. You say "Buona Domenica" to people on Sunday, not "Buongiorno" - that means "Happy Sunday" instead of "Good Day to you".

It is very good to be in Bologna. Can you guess what we ate on the first night here? Pizza of course!

---