Blogs from Emilia-Romagna, Italy, Europe - page 28

I came up with this hypothesis in my seminario di greco yesterday afternoon, when i was staring , mesmerised, as one of the boys in the front row, perched keenly on the edge of his seat, hanging on every word the professor said, continually ran the metal ball from his tongue piercing in a gliding motion across his lips. I just about managed to tear my eyes away for long enough to notice he also had one eyebrow and one ear pierced and perhaps resembled the punkabestia slightly more than the others. I looked at the other students in the front row, almost all boys, almost all liberally pierced, frowning beneath their floppy raven hair at a blackboard speckled with digammas. It is not usual for Italian students to call out in lectures, however, aforementioned boy ... read more

Once again, I'm writing this in the future, but i really want to try and remember the highlights "for posterity" (as Pliny would say). Not that I am like Pliny, god forbid no. The best thing that has happened to me in Bologna so far was meeting two of the most wonderful girls I have ever known on my second day in our CILTA oral "exam". This exam was actually just a chat with the other students in the class (arent all italian exams?), and it wasnt until afterwards and people were milling around outside that i met Edie and Lotje properly. Edie is German, a law student, and Lotje is Flemish, doing a masters in Ancient History. I could never begin to describe them because it would be impossible to do them justice, i will ... read more

Hello everyone! We are finally here. I arrived on Friday and so far things have been great! Friday and Saturday night we stayed in a hotel in Ferrara because there was no availability in Bologna due to a big Trade Show going on here. We went to a great little restaurant on Friday night in the centre of Ferrara that we just stumbled across because it was hidden called "Osteria della Campana". It had traditional food of the Emilia-Romagna region that we are in. Saturday we decided to adventure into the grocery store and mall to see what we were getting into in our new life here in Italy. Supposedly I'm going to be the cook in our family now so I had to see what I would be buying! All the fresh food was amazing. ... read more

The first stop after check out was one of Lui's most anticipated attractions. The Ducati factory and museum. I finally get to see where my bike was made. yipeee !! I won't bore you with the details that i thoroughly enjoyed, but Dot had a full time job mopping up the pools of drool left over after each section of the tour. After the factory we were shown to the museum and allowed to take photos of some of the historical as well as recent racing bikes. After Dot had gotten Lui's tongue back in his mouth, and coaxed him out of the museum with a Ducati T shirt, we headed north east toward Venice, in our bland little reliable Fiat (no scarf flying in the breeze....) The country side outside Bologna is flat as a ... read more

17 Sept 2008 Today the aim was to visit a mosaic studio southwest of Ravenna called Studio Akomena, then proceed through Faenza to Bologna, ending up with dinner at Bologna. The day started off poorly: we couldn't find the studio despite having reasonably good directions for it, and the Faenza Museum of Ceramics was actually (from our perspective) rather dull. I guess we're not really ceramics people. The small display of new works were quite interesting, but that was at the end of around half an hour of the kids already being bored from the long drive there. So we headed off and down a few blocks, aiming for the central area and some lunch. For some reason we kept striking out today: we struggled to find a 'decent' lunching spot, and eventually got back in ... read more