Italy

Last Wednesday I flew to Bergamo, a small city in Northern Italy, on Ryanair, a budget airline, and took a train to Bologna. I met two friends there, Chris, who is studying in Milan, and Matt, who came to Italy five days earlier from Madison. I met them at our hostel where we hung out for a bit and caught up on everything. They had been to Milan, Naples, Pompeii, Sorrento and Rome earlier.

We went to a little pizzeria and got a pizza and calzones to go and ate in a park across the street where kids were playing basketball and soccer. We walked around the city and later watched some Italian TV in our room. The next day we walked all around Bologna and saw the Basilica and the two medieval towers that have survived. The University had a really cool feel, there were tons of little bookstores, cafés and art shops and the campus was made up of beautiful red buildings like the rest of the city. It’s the oldest university in Europe; it was founded in the 11th century. I had a really good falafel near the University and later had a curry lentil soup at a Pakistani restaurant.

That night Chris went back to Milan to go to some classes the next day and Matt and I stayed in Bologna for a second night. The next day Matt and I went to Verona which was a nice town but overrun with tourists. We walked by a long dark archway that was full of people so we went inside to check it out. The walls were covered in graffiti and notes scribbled on scraps of paper were stuck to the wall with chewing gum. The wall was covered in markings and notes, despite the plaque clearly stating, in five languages, that “it is forbidden to deface the walls... offenders will be faced with imprisonment with up to one year or fined up to €1032.91.” I have never seen more graffiti before in my life. I guess the ban is very loosely enforced.

We walked along the river, had a picnic lunch in a big piazza and then got on a train for Milan. We checked into our hostel and then walked to Chris’ dorm. There were a lot of people out and Milan was very big and dirty and had a lot going on. It was very Italian – lots of Fiats, nice ristorantes and pizzerias and high fashion Italians. We cooked dinner at the dorm. The dorm building used to be a hospital and there were old oxygen hookups in the walls of the dorm rooms. There was a mix of Italian and foreign students there. We watched some soccer on TV and used the internet before going out.

We went to a street along a canal (Milan has two unused canals for some reason) and went to a bar with live music – an Italian guy who sang covers of American rock songs - and we each had a pint of really good beer. Matt and I took the subway home. We went one stop and transferred to another line only to find out that we missed the last one. It was 12:30 a.m., we were too late. So we ended up walking most of the way back.

The next morning Chris met us at the hostel, we went out for cappuccinos and croissants and then Matt took a bus to the airport to fly back to Madison. Chris and I got on a train for Bergamo, which is about one hour east of Milan. We dropped our stuff off at a hostel and then took a bus to the Citta Alta – “the high city” – the old part of Bergamo up on steep hill overlooking the Citta Bassa – the new part of the city. The old part was really beautiful. We walked through the narrow old streets and went by a lot of pastry and pizza places. We stopped at one place and ordered a slice – I got a veggie pizza and Chris got a potato pizza. It wasn’t a normal pizza – it was made on top of thick and flaky olive oil soaked focaccia bread. It was the best pizza that I have ever had. I then got a frozen yogurt chocolate sundae.

We went to a museum that had all kinds of animals and birds that are found in Italy and few exotic animals from around the world. There were also lots of rocks -- not as interesting as the animals. We walked to the city wall at the edge of the cliff – there was a great view of the city and you could see Milan’s skyline on the horizon. We walked around the new part of the city and then to a bowling alley that we had seen earlier. That was the first bowling alley I have seen in Europe. Earlier that day I saw a golf course from the train – another thing that I had never seen in Europe before. The bowling alley was really expensive so we skipped it and went grocery shopping for lunch the next day and then went to a pizzeria and had a tuna, artichoke, caper, black olive, and mozzarella pizza fresh from the wood fired oven. I learned that “pizze” is the plural of pizza and the word means pie in Italian. I also learned that what we call bowtie pasta, also known as “farfalle,” means butterfly in Italian. Pizza is everywhere – we would count the number of pizzerias we saw everyday. We counted a couple dozen each day.

The next day we took a train back to Milan. The trains in Italy are really cheap and run frequently so it was really easy to get around. We walked from the train station to the Duomo – Milan’s giant Gothic Cathedral. Along the way we walked by the finish line of the Giro d’Italia – a month long bike race that is the most important bike race after the Tour de France. The last stage of the race was going to take place later that day. People were busy setting up the course, the stands, stages, advertisements and TV cameras. We walked around some shopping areas, including the Galleria – the oldest shopping mall in the world, and the huge piazza in front of the Duomo.

It was the only place in Milan where I saw tourists and there was a ton of them. I thought that the Cathedral was cooler than Sevilla’s Gothic Cathedral. The Duomo is made of marble and the outside is covered in statues. The inside had tons of huge paintings suspended from the ceiling – not hanging on the walls, and lots of stained glass.

We stopped at Chris’s dorm and then headed out to see the Giro. We walked along the course until we got to the finish line. There was a huge screen near the finish line showing the race live as the bikers made their way to Milan. There was lots of Giro gear and other companies selling stuff, lots of ads, and a lot of free stuff being given away. We had no idea how long it was going to take for the race to reach Milan so we stuck around and picked out a spot near the last turn, a block from the finish, and right behind a fixed TV camera.

We waited there for about two hours. The course wasn’t totally sealed off so lots of people were walking through the course and equipment cars and trucks drove by. Every once in a while a random person who happened to be on a bike would go down the course and everyone would cheer. At one point people started making some noise further down the course and cars started to drive by. We thought the race was coming but it was just a long line of cars and trucks plastered with ads honking their horns. The parade of advertisements made a couple laps.

The course was finally cleared and the street was empty and quiet for a few minutes before dozens of police motorcycles roared through in pairs, and then a few official cars and camera crews on motorcycles came and then the racers in one big pack, followed by all the team cars carrying spare bikes. It was the last stage and the Italian Ivan Basso had a seven or eight minute lead so there was no race to the finish. They stuck in a group and did about ten short laps around the city. Like the last stage of the Tour de France in Paris, it was anticlimactic. But we got to see the race go by several times. We moved to a less crowded part of the course and stood right next to the barriers. The bikers were really close, just a foot or two away from me as they went by and I could feel a blast of wind from the pack. Are you jealous, Charlie?

Back in Bergamo that night the town was celebrating a win by Bergamo’s soccer team with fireworks and singing in the streets. Since it was a Sunday, almost everything was closed and I had a hard time finding food. On a quiet street I found an awesome Chinese restaurant and got takeout – fried wonton and spaghetti curry (it was rice noodles, not really spaghetti) and ate in a park where police in riot gear were gathering because of the soccer celebrations but I don’t think anything got out of hand. The next morning I shared a taxi to the airport with a German guy who was on my flight to Sevilla. It was really easy to get to Italy – just a 2.5-hour flight. I love Italy – some of the best food (and espresso) in the world, cool cities, mountains and cultural sites, and the same laid back lifestyle as in Spain.

This week I have been studying a lot for my final next Tuesday. I’ve also started to pack. My family is taking in an American student who will be here for a summer program. He moves in tomorrow so I may be in a different room for my last four nights here. So things are really finishing up fast. I can’t believe that I will be in Milwaukee in just five days and at camp in ten days. Its weird to even think about being in O’Hare or Whitefish Bay or in my bedroom. Just over 100 hours left in Spain…