Wednesday, August 8, 2007

It looks a bit overcast today & it’s still calling for 60% chance of rain, but I’ll give it a shot. Most of the walk is covered with archways & the worst thing that will happen is that I’ll get a little wet . . . & I did. It was sprinkling all the way to the Tourist Information Center where I was to meet the tour. I was a little damp, but no biggie. Of course, that’s when the sun came out & it was beautiful the rest of the day.

Bologna is rich in history. I won’t bore you with the details, but if you’re really interested you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna Our guide, Antonella, was very fluent in Italian & English. She amazed me in her ability to switch back & forth between the languages to tell us the history of her city. As soon as I find a way to post the pictures, I’ll let you know what website to go to.

Just to give you a few highlights of the tour, the first church we went to was the Basilica di San Petronio or Saint Petronius, the city’s patron saint. There are gates & guards at the entrance of the church because believe it or not, they try to keep the Muslims out. Individual family chapels were built within the church depicting each family’s history & beliefs of worshipping God. One of them has a painting on the wall showing heaven & hell. It’s quite detailed & dates back over 600 years. It’s pretty well preserved & clearly shows in hell, the devil not only devouring a condemned human but also the broken body of Muhammad on a rock next to the devil. It’s a pretty disturbing display, but you can imagine why they keep the Muslims away. The church itself, however is magnificent in its structure & décor although never finished in construction. Apparently, Rome halted the construction of the church because the goal was to make it larger than the church IN Rome. Well, you know they weren’t going to have THAT. So it remains unfinished to this day. They still have mass there & the sight of it (especially compared to what it looked like from the outside) took my breathe away. The pictures don’t do it justice. You could literally feel the history in the church.

We also went through different parts of town that I didn’t even notice before. There are so many side streets & small hallway-like passages throughout the city. A few of them reminded me of what you see in the movies with the open market places of produce & meats. It was amazing to seemingly go back in time & experience life in a simpler period.

As for the 2 towers, they were basically built to watch over the city. The smaller tower was never finished because it didn’t have a good foundation & started to lean. The taller tower has over 500 steps in it & would be a challenge to climb, but there are no windows or any kind of ventilation, so the air would be rather stifling. No I didn’t attempt it! I may be a little nuts at times, but I’m not CRAZY!

The 2nd church we visited was the Basilica di Santo Stefano. These are just 2 of the 7 churches that were built in Bologna. If I’m saying this correctly, within the area of the 2nd church to another point in the city where a symbolic replica of the tomb of Jesus is displayed is approximately 42 meters – the distance of the journey of the Passion of Christ. So the religious can take this path instead of going to Jerusalem. Our tour group simultaneously let out a sigh of respect & almost a feeling of honor to be part of such a defining moment in history even if only a reproduction of it.

The whole tour was just so amazing & informative & I felt like I was a part of Bologna understanding some of what it’s all about. I can see why people would fall in love with a place such as this. At first glance (as I experienced myself), she’s not much to look at & even a bit disappointing. But seeing beyond the exterior & understanding what’s behind the old looking city truly brings to mind, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

Something else that’s really interesting about Bologna . . . American music is played everywhere! Even now while I’m writing this, I have MTV on (believe it or not) & they’re playing American videos. They also play old shows like “Murder She Wrote” & “Fame”, but dubbed in Italian. Pretty funny.

George’s school is plugging along. I keep telling you about his daily lunches because I find it so funny that they serve these guys this kind of food, while the instructor gets some sort of hot pasta dish. What’s up with that? ToDAY’s cuisine – I believe it was strips of either pancetta or proscuitto from George’s description, some sort of vegetable, a not so ripe nectarine & nope, no mozzarella ball, but a slice of some sort of cheese that none of the guys could identify. It’s a good thing we go out for a nice dinner, cuz that lunch is pretty bad.

Still no word as to whether or not the guys have class Friday. Guess we’ll find out tomorrow.