Lots happening in Bologna

I really like Bologna. There’s so much going on! In fact, I have a few weeks off right now, and I don’t even really want to go anywhere! I’ve done a couple of cool things lately – and, naturally, a few have turned into veritable “Only Me” stories. Seriously, I don’t know if I attract these kinds of events, or if I create them, or what. In any case, I’m glad they happen while I’m around; I get a lot of entertainment mileage out of them.

This Sunday was the “Sagra del Raviolo Dolce,” The Festival of the Sweet Ravioli, in “nearby” Casalfiumanese. “Nearby,” however, understates the 30-kilometer distance from Bologna. I had written to the tourist office in Casalfiumanese saying, basically, “I don’t have a car. How do I get there?” They told me to take a train or bus to Imola, and then hop on local bus #44 to Casalfiumanese. Seemed easy enough – but, if you’re a regular reader of this blog (are there any??), you’re learning, along with me, to distrust any intuition that says “easy enough.” (I’m trying to come up with an aphorism for SEEMS . . . along the lines of You Know What Happens When You ASSUME . . . but the thing is, you don’t have any blessed idea of what will happen when something in Italy “seems easy enough”!!!) In any case, despite such distrust, I took the train to Imola, went to catch bus #44 to Casalfiumanese, and – surprise! – it actually doesn’t run on Sunday. The day of the festival. Small detail. So I turned to the nice man in the Train Station Information Window. His solution was simple:
- “Oh. Sorry. You can’t go to Casalfiumanese today. It’s Sunday.”
But I decided that I could, in fact, go to Casalfiumanese on a Sunday. I walked a thousand kilometers on the Camino de Santiago, didn’t I?! What’s ten or fifteen more to Casalfiumanese? And, what the heck? I have only a little daypack with me. Why don’t I run there? So, yep, to pull a favorite Greg Ashe term out of my hip pocket, I Hoaked it to the Casal. Where another adventure awaited me: The launching of sweet ravioli from the town’s clocktowers! Yeah, you bet, it was fantastic. The Counts of the Ravioli (there were several) mounted the three towers of the main plaza and launched two tons of sweet ravioli to the crowds below. Insane! I literally got walloped on the head by an airborne ravioli, launched from the tower behind me, while I was grasping in the air for flying ravioli inbound from the tower in front of me. Of course, there was also a competitive element to the event: a plaza full of ravioli-obsessed Italians to reckon with. I think this gave me a genuine sense of achievement: I came home with FOUR sweet ravioli. Ah, coming home. I’d had enough of that running shite. Did I tell you it rained and winded on me on the way there? So, going home, I did one of my favorite create-your-own-adventure picks: hitching. Great fun, as usual. Met a couple from Puglia, who took me to see a baby shark in a café aquarium. Classic.

Yesterday I went to a lecture on market and environmental analysis in Uzbekistan. I think it’s cool that there are events like this in Bologna, that they happen all the time, and that people actually go to them. And not just any people: interesting people. At this lecture, for example, a fight almost broke out: It was exciting! And very Italian. This old guy from Napoli just wanted to talk, so he managed to start a polemic about the Trash Problem in Napoli, waving his hands (and his cane) and looking just charming the entire time. This provoked the entire room to break into argument and shouting. Whooooo! Who knew Uzbekistan could be so entertaining!?

Today I checked out the Museum of the Risorgimento in the morning and stumbled across the Carducci library, which has all kinds of old books. Is it ever cool. It would be awesome to study in a place like that. And guess what? You can! Anyone can go in and request to look at one of these old books. And – this is another point-winner for Bologna – all the museums are free. A super policy, if you ask me. Especially since the euro now costs $1.56.

Summary Point: Bologna is an awesome, awesome city, and I am really, really happy to be here.