I know I haven't been updating the blog like I did the first couple of days. Bad me. Since I started meeting up with people on Saturday and school starting yesterday, I haven't had a whole lot of time (obviously). So instead of updating one really long post, I'll will show you in three installments as to how God is following me all over Bologna. At least God's a cool stalker.
Friday night I headed into the old town by myself, along with half of Bologna. I had no plan, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just found a bus that would take me down there, and when something looked interesting I hopped off. I ended up on the Piazza Maggiore, the main square in town. Medieval walls surround the square, and there is this castle/fort thing that I can picture people throwing boiling water off during the middle ages. At no time when I was downtown did I feel unsafe, but the only problem about wondering around the city alone is that I don't feel I can whip my camera out and play around with the pictures without a neon sign over my head that says tourist in bright pink letters. I walked down the street until something caught me interest. After I stopped in at a used bookstore (air conditioning!), I saw it: a leaning tower! I've got news for Pisa, they don't have a leaning tower monopoly, they just publicize the fact that their university engineering department kind of sucked back in the day. I'd been seeing signs all over town that said "due torri" (two towers--now we know where Tolkein stole it from), and all of a sudden they were right there. The straight one is twice as tall, but totally not as cool as the leaning one. There was gelateria next door, so I grabbed dinner (hey, I'm in Italy and who is going to tell me that I can't have gelato for dinner every night if I want!) and if you get a medium you can get three flavors. As much as I love berries, the strawbaby and raspbaby gelato don't hold a candle to that scoop of heaven that was the chocolate gelato. On the two towers piazza (which should be the site for my take on lord of the rings) they were setting up for some sort of street performance. Hey, free entertainment! It had a religious theme, given the fact that Father Bernardino from the chuch on the piazza came and introduced it. From what I could gather it was traditional Bolognese theatre that was meant to tell a story from the gospels. One guy was totally the rodeo clown, another was in a box, two were jugglers/acrobats, and the really tall and really cute one was on stilts. They acted out parables as they juggled, pantomimed, and did magic tricks. I think I had more fun not having a clue as to what they were saying and laughed hysterically the entire time. No one knew that I was an American tourist, and I had an amazing time being Bolognese for an evening, and that was when I think I got hooked. I sat on the piazza in the evening light, music playing, acrobats juggling, people laughing, surrounded by ancient buildings and I thought "this is Italy, and I'm a part of it."
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