#002 27/05/2024 6pm Ghetto Ebraico, Bologna

I am finally out on the other side of exams at UniBo, moved into my fabulous Bolognese apartment, and ready to start working on my summer research project and any other personal fun projects I choose! Here is a rundown of the last week or so as I stumble around trying to figure out how I want to format these blog posts. The week was spent quite frivolously, which is good and ok, but also boringly because I was doing exams/papers. It was the last week of my program here and I had to say goodbye to some amazing people and an entire way of structuring my life. Some of these entries were written the day of and some written later, excuse my clumsy meshing of past and present tense.
the 18th, the day I moved into the apartment

Apartment! Beginning of adult life, sort of. In a cool adult move, a dear friend (Ruby) helped me move in. My landlords, Fausto and Tiziana, are adorable and Ruby charmed Fausto into giving her his home address so we can have Sunday lunch in Modena together. The apartment is fun-sized (studio). I have a double bed (!), a kitchenette with the tiniest moka pot known to man, a little antechamber before my bathroom, a dishwasher (!) buy no washing machine. In the afternoon, light comes in, reflected from the Bolognese-orange-red buildings across the way so the apartment is filled with a perpetual diffused warmth, a constant sunrise/sunset.
Cherries, magnificent. The first cherry in the apartment felt seminal. I want to keep the pits for safekeeping. Bought nectarines too because this warm red apartment needs warm red fruits. My dinner is simple, spinach and eggs made in olive oil that went out of date in 08/2022. Charlotte came over with a pizza and a tall and thin bottle of wine which was not particularly cold or crisp. We watched YouTube videos of child prodigy singers and of Kyle Mooney and I ate more cherries.

the 19th

My first day in the apartment is a Sunday, so I spend the morning eating muesli and being serenaded by church bells. Really a cacophony of a million bells being played at the same time coming from all sides, then one authoritative tune coming from one particularly confident bell that lasts for what seems like days and starts to become grating. The apartment gets DIRECT SUNLIGHT in the morning, so I am lying on my bed trying to come up with an essay structure on Gianni Celati’s Verso la Foce while being warmed by the sun. The neighbourhood seems to be relatively noisy in the evenings, sandwiched between two pretty big going out neighbourhoods, but in the mornings before about 10 there are long pauses of perfect silence.
Basically didn’t leave home all day, partially my choice and partially it’s a Sunday so all my favourite spots are closed. I went out before lunch to the Asian supermarket and the COOP. I was so excited about being pretentiously cherry-eating yesterday that I forgot to buy butter.
For lunch, Catrin came over and I made fried chicken cutlets and pasta and tomato sauce. My first time semi-deep frying anything, other than a vague memory I have of trying to fry chicken with Fiona at school and it going badly. This time, a massive success! and feeling very grown up about it. Ran the dishwasher for the first time. I spent the day writing 5 pages of a fever dream essay on Celati, for which I am very well prepared after reading some really interesting (written in English) criticism on nuclear imagination and toxicity by Lawrence Buell, Ulrich Beck, and Cynthia Deitering and some others, but writing in Italian is so hard and my ideas get jumbled and every paragraph takes me over an hour. Leftovers for dinner and a little passeggiata after dark then more essay writing then bed.
the 20th

Wrote more essay accompanied by dear Ruby and Jonathan at the Biblioteca Amilcar Cabral on Via San Mamolo. Funny hot sun and then intense rain weather, which continued then for the rest of the week. In the evening, an aperitivo at Bar Maurizio with Ruby and Róisín and then a long dinner, bountiful with friends and food and drink and drink, at Osteria Broccaindosso, which is a perfect venue for a rainy day. Ruby, Róisín, Jonathan and I, later joined by Beck and Charlotte for mascarpone and wine. Charlotte leaves early tomorrow for Paris, so we hug. Cycling home in a downpour, I almost swerved and ate shit twice, once almost into a car. But angels were watching over me and also I’m pretty good at biking and I made it home and got into dry clothes and felt warm.
the 21st

Submitted the paper and did some more studying at Ruby’s home further down Via San Mamolo. Shakshouka for dinner before a bittersweet final aperitivo with 2L of spritz misto SHARED BETWEEN MANY at Freud e Squisito, a bar synonymous with UniBo student aperitivo vibes in Piazza Verdi, in the center of the University neighbourhood. Ruby, Róisín, and Teddy came over for wine and strawberries at the apt and we listened to music and had fun before they went on to Cortile Cafè for their last Tuesday night “Jam Funky.”

the 22nd, feast day of Saint Rita

On this day, I am paralysed by my own anxiety of doing the oral exam tomorrow. I can’t be productive, unsure of what I need to prepare, but I can’t let myself be fully relaxed either. I got a panino with Teddy at La Prosciutteria on Via Oberdan and we walked around Centro looking for gifts for his friends and family at home and for the directors of our program, who we are saying goodbye to this afternoon at the farewell aperitivo (I promise, I do more than aperitivo). We get them some Bolognese wine and flowers at Drogheria Gilberto and Frida’s.
Walking around Bologna, everyone seems to have roses and as we walk West we approach the Basilica di San Giacomo Maggiore where there is a long line of chioschetti selling €1.50 roses and banners that read S. RITA. At the entrances to S Giacomo, very Catholic priests (probably have a more specific name in this context) stand outside in their very Catholic ceremonial outfits. Inside, people are bringing roses and candles to a statue of Saint Rita of Cascia, who lived 6 centuries ago. Two people were employed to take people’s offerings and set them around Her sidechapel, and they had to start putting the incoming candles away in a corner because there were already so many. We paid our respects–though after buying an expensive bouquet at Frida’s I didn’t buy Rita a rose–and I asked Her kindly for help with my exams. Further along, we pop our heads into the little Chiesa di San Sigismondo, a particularly university/academic-orientated church.
Then, on a balcony on Via Belmeloro, we had our final (non-alcoholic) drink + gelato as a full program cohort (minus a couple people). It was slightly awkward and quite jovial and people across the street kept graduating. By the end, because of the sadness of saying goodbye, the awkwardness of hanging around at a party too long, and the feeling of dread I have about my exam, I’m feeling nauseous.
After some agonized unproductive hours at home, I resolve to need people around me so I make Jonathan come over for dinner. He goes out to get tortellini and gets caught in the football celebrations for Bologna FC. We talk about how being here seems to be a series of getting caught up in things, like me getting drawn in by the roses to see Saint Rita this afternoon. Delightful heirloom tomatoes and squac cheese and tomato sauce and tortellini, but I am still feeling anxious so have little appetite. Then Beck and Olivia came and we had a really pleasant wine and music and reminiscing moment, which doesn’t sound like much when written down but was everything. Olivia reads aloud the John Berger passage on Bologna’s portici, from the book The Red Tenda of Bologna that by now we’ve all read and delighted in:

For those living here, the arcades are a kind of personal agenda, made of stone, brick and cobbles. You can visit your creditors, your secret love, your sworn enemy, your favourite coffee shop, your mother, your dentist, your local office of unemployment, your oldest friend, or a bench where you regularly sit down utterly alone, adjusting the elastoplast you've put over a sore wart on your index finger — you can keep all these rendezvous without ever being exposed to the sky. And what difference does this make to the facts of your life? None. Yet under the arcades the echoes of those facts sound different. And in the evening Pleasure and Desolation take their evening stroll along the arcades and walk hand in hand.

Some of us cried. Jonathan read the guestbook for the aparment, which has entries from people who’ve stayed here since 2008, and he cried. I finished the day feeling warm and calm, asking myself why I’d get so worked up about an exam when there’s much more important loveliness going on in the world and it’s all going to be ok.

the 23rd, the exam and the final day of the program

Woke up feeling refreshed and happy before realising I was late to my exam and realising it’s the kind of oral exam where there are other people in the room with you so obviously I flipped right back to intense anxiety and feeling horrible. Being late wasn’t a problem, the second group of people were told to come back in two hours time, so I had more time to freak the fuck out about everything. After an excruciating wait, being the last one that day to take the exam, I stumbled over an okay Italian explanation of my essay and got a 28/30! Danced through the streets. And doubly special: my dear Josh arrived from Cambridge to stay with me over the weekend. So we danced through the streets together.
It’s almost better if I don’t go into the details of our final day of the program, because the experience was a lot more than I can or want to describe here. I will list the places we went for the rest of the day as an illustration of some of the things that needed to happen on our last day.

Caffè Rubik (macchiato)
Panini di Mirò (prosciutto cotto, squacquerone cheese, arugula, sundried tomatoes)
Piazzetta dei Servi di Maria
Bar Maurizio (aperol)
Home
Giardini Margherita, immediately rained out
Dea’s place AKA Casa delle associazioni del Baraccano (ginger beer and patatine)
Marsalino (tagliere and lambrusco)
Gil e Bert (aperol)
Caffè Rubik (mint julep)
Trattoria da Vito (ragù, bistecca and wine and lambrusco and wine)
Cafè Paris (the most horrible shot that I can’t stop ordering, a Sex Bar, and another that I had for the first time, a Nesquik)
Soda Pops AKA the most horrible nightclub that I can’t stop going to
Home

Parting is obviously such sweet sorrow, and we all had a hug and a cry. Most of my friends are leaving in the early morning tomorrow.

GEORGE’S LET’S-NOT-GO-CRAZY BLOG SUMMER TWENTY TWENTY FOUR