Dog Days

It’s gotten suddenly very hot and sunny here. Considering that only a month ago I was comfortably wearing my winter coat, this weather change is kind of disturbing. But after the damp, foggy Bologna winter, it’s nice to see flowers blooming and people spending time outside. Starting in late afternoon, I can’t even ride my bike down the streets near the University. They’re absolutely packed with people. (It helps that it’s legal to drink on the street.)

Last Saturday I went to an outdoor concert in the main piazza. We didn’t realize that there had been an open-air pillow fight earlier in the day (also sponsored by the city). In order to listen to the music, we literally had to trudge through piles of discarded stuffing and torn pillows. Sometimes it seems as if Bologna is owned by students.


My friend Celestine playing his drum at one of our choir concerts.


This is a photo I took at an outdoor concert we had last week. Not the best photo, but you get the idea. The bright spot that looks like a fire is one of the citronella candles. Actually, it was more like a bowl of burning oil.

Yesterday (Wednesday) was a holiday. I went with some friends from my choir to the Festa della Zuppa. Basically this is a soup-tasting free-for-all. It doesn’t cost anything, and after trying some (or all) of the 50+ soups, we could place votes for our favorites. The soup-makers stood behind tables with big metal pots, ladling their creations into plastic cups and bowls. I liked the pepper soup (from Cameroon) best. It was extremely spicy. The most unusual soup I tried was an almond milk soup from Spain. It was so heavy that no one could finish it. The only real disappointment was the borscht. New York does it better!

The soup festival itself, which was laid out along a closed-off street, was full of dancers, singers, and performers. Perhaps the only downside of the free soup extravaganza was that it was very, very homemade. We each found at least one hair in our various soups. But there’s always a price to pay for good food!


(Blood orange juice. Usually it's even redder than this. Or purple.)

Now that I’m not occupied for full days as I was before, my copious amounts of free time are starting to drive me crazy. I never thought I’d actually wish I had something to do – like a job – most of all in late spring, the best time of year to be outside, but I do. I continue to look for a new job or occupation here, but I find that I’m thwarted by the fact that I still can’t wrap my head around the way that Italian professionals operate. Few people make appointments in advance, the definition of “afternoon” seems to run up until 7 pm, and there’s no forum in which people can’t answer their cell phones – this especially shocks me. This is definitely the land of cell phones.

Aside from my disappointment about the way this experience has ended, work-wise, I’m finding that Bologna is a much more cheerful place to be in springtime. And the strawberries are really good.