Day 5: I Get More Friends

Today this party loses one man and gains two more. I left Matt in Italy on his way to class when I grabbed the 9:45 Aerobus to BLQ, Bologna's airport. Once there, security was a breeze and I had some time to hang out before my 11:30 flight. When I left Bologna, it was sunny with no clouds in the sky, a big change from the days of rain before. However, when I landed in Berlin, it was at least 10 degrees Celsius colder and raining once again. Was leaving the wrong choice?

A quick cab to the hostel brought me face-to-face with my girlfriend Maddie and my friend Chris! They had flown in at 12:30 and had spent an hour walking around. Our hostel, the Hotel4Youth, is situated on e road, Bernaur Strausse, one of the walls the Berlin Wall ran along. The museum and walking portion began only a block from our hotel, so we dropped our luggage off and walked around the memorial. Because the wall has been mostly dismantled (though some pieces still remain up for posterity's sake), red poles stood where the wall once stood. It was crazy watching a young girl roll her backpack through the poles on her way home from school while imagining that her parents could never have done that even 22 years ago. We walked the whole length of the outdoor exhibit, like 4 or 5 blocks worth, and learned a lot about that divisive time in Berlin's history.

Afterwards, we went to Berlin's Museum of Natural History which was INCREDIBLEEEEE. They have the world's tallest dinosaur, which stands 42 feet tall, and the worlds largest wet collection, over 90,000 jars of dead amphibians, fish, and reptiles. The wet collections were all in a big glass room that looked like the prophesy room from Harry Potter. The museum also had very interesting rooms about dinosaurs, the solar system, minerals, evolution of species, taxidermy, and display making. The collection was enormous and it was well worth the 3 Euros.

Our next stop was dinner. We chose a German restaurant and each ordered a different item: goulash, ribs, and bratwurst. The food was delicious and we had our first beers there too. Afterwards, we continued to explore the city in the rain by walking a couple miles. We started from the restaurant in Oranienberg Tor, walked down to Unter den Linden (the main boulevard), walked over to the Brandenberg Gate and the Reichstag, walked the other way up Unter dee Linden to see Humboldt University, Museum Island, a cathedral, the NationalHistory Museum, and two Christmas markets, and the all the way back to our hostel on Bernaur Strausse. We didn't enter any of the buildings but just admired the way they were lit up. Dead from our long walk, we turned in early for the night by like 10 pm.

Day 4: Bologna Day 2

Matt didn't have class until 1 today so we slept in until 10:30. At this point, we were disheartened to discover that it was still raining. Though we had chosen to sleep through breakfast, we stopped for lunch on the way to Matt's 1 o'clock class. We each had two courses, with a pasta dish first. He then got some bad tripe (we believe it is the intestine if sme animal but since neither of us is a chef or doctor, don't take our word for it) and I ordered what we though would be fried zucchini. It ended up being boiled zucchini and was not any more fun than the tripe. When Matt was in class, I visited a store called Scout, Bologna's answer to Urban Outfitters, and Footlocker. Scout was basically the size of a small KMart but was segmented into small rooms so it seemed like the store never ended. If I had no fiscal restraint, I wouldve dropped infinity euros on the great clothing they sold, but I walked out of both stores empty handed. I did however find and purchase a deck of cards have a picture of Bologna on them from a tabbacheria (general store).

I spent some time hiding from the rain in the library until Matt got out of class. Then the two of us and two of his friends went to a Santa Lucia market in search of Christmas ornaments that said Bologna on them. We struck out. Afterwards, Matt and I went back to the apartment and relaxed. At 7:15, we met two of the girls on his program for dinner at a pizza place that one of the girls had gone to more than 20 times since she had arrived in Bologna! My pepperoni and peppers pizza was delicious. This was followed by a visit to an Irish pub, where happy hour went from 7:30 pm to 10:30, and then to a gelateria called Grom's, which is also in NYC. After a visit to another bar, we went back to our apartment and fell asleep.

Day 3: Spaghetti Bolognese

Today, we started our day at 9:30. The woman offers breakfast to us between 8 and 10 so we each took fast showers and then had some breakfast. Matt had drama class at 11, so we left to walk over there. Though we had walked around the area last night, it was much nicer to be able to see everything with some sun on it.

As I learned today, Bologna is famous for three reasons. Firstly, it is the place where tortellini was created. Secondly, the city contains thousands of porticos. For those who do not study architecture, a portico is a porch supported by arches. All of the porticos are connected in Bologna so all of the sidewaIks are covered and you can walk from place to place without getting wet. Bologna is home to the worldest longest portico, but more about that later. The third reason why it is famous is because of the 300,000 people who live here, 100,000 are college students.

When Matt left for his theater class, I began to wander around the Plaza Maggiore, the city's central square. They had put up a 40 ft Christmas tree in the middle of it today but it was rather ugly undecorated. There is a famous statue of Neptune in the square as well as a huge Basilica and the public library. I walked down some of the side streets and visited a book store. I also stumbled upon an ancient university for physicians, now a library, and an anthropological museum. The museum had a ton of Egyptian items in the basement, including sarcophagi and mummies, plaster casts on the first floor of many famous Greek and roman statues, and on the second floor, tens of thousands of artifacts from Bologna's history between the prehistoric and Gallic eras (when occupied by the Gauls, or Germanic tribes, after the fall of the Roman empire). The highlight for me was a visiting exhibit about the history of counterfeiting currency called Il Vero e Il Falso. It was sponsored by the Italian Guardia di Finanza and covered 2500 years of counterfeiting. They had set up huge displays of currencies with their counterfeit copies right next to them.

Later I met up with Matt after his class and we took a taxi up to the monastery of San Luca that looks over the city. The bad news was that it was raining, the monastery was closed, and so was the pizza restaurant at the top. The good news was that we walked down from there in the worlds longest Portico. It measures over 2 miles and has 666 arches. We had a delicious lunch at a restaurant near arch 44. Afterwards we visited the basilica. It was massive. We walked around Bologna for a bit in the rain and visited a place called San Sebastien (maybe?) that had seven churches all crammed together and connected to one another. After we went back to the apartment to rest.

For dinner, we walked back to the center of town and met two of Matt's friends for apertivi and dinner. Apertivi is this cool thing Italians do where you pay for one drink (like 6 Euros) and then you pay a Euro or two more for access to a buffet of appetizers. The place we went had at least 9 different dishes including couscous, two pastas, and some salads. You hang out for an hour and then go get dinner. We went to a different restaurant for dinner where I had some tasty lasagna and we drank some wine. After an hour and a half of dinner, we traversed the city for good gelato and then traversed the city again to go to a bar. Although the city was kind of dead (it was Tuesday) it was fun to be in the bar. All the places we went to tonight were playing a channel called mydeejay which was incredible because it was a commercial-free music video station that seemed to only play good music. Afterwards, we went home and got in bed by 11:30.

Day 2: In Transit Part 2

The 20 hour trip wasn't over when I got to Dusseldorf; there were still 11 hours left beginning with 4 hours of sitting in the airport. Unlike some people who were drinking beer at 8 am, I chose to read and sit in a coffee shop. The highlight of the airport was definitely the Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar I found in duty free for only 15 Euros. The next flight was an hour and a half to London. You are probably thinking, "Wait. Why did he fly to Dusseldorf to London? He's flying one time zone backwards and an hour and a half further away from Bologna?" There is no good answer to this question so I just won't answer it. ingot to London at noon, so I had 4 hours to kill before my flight. I didn't want to sleep in a chair at the gate in Heathrow for fear of missing the plane or getting robbed, so I spent the time trying to figure out my phone situation. I bought a sim card for 20 GBP but it wasn't working in my unlocked iPhone so I spent the next two hours sneaking in and out of an electronics store in the terminal using the macs to both look up information and to connect my phone to iTunes. I finally got asked to not come back to the store again that day, but at that point I was hungry for lunch. Next thing I know, I'm sitting on the airplane with a belly full of Wagamama. I fell asleep before we left the gate and then woke up in Bologna!

My bag made it fine and customs was a joke. A quick cab ride took me to Bologna's central train station were my buddy Matt was waiting for me. Matt has been one of my best friends since 7th grade and has been studying in Bologna all fall. His dad is from Italy so he is trying to connect with "his roots". I reminded him that he was born in Miami, speaks minimal Italian, and wished him good luck with that! We are staying in an apartment that he found on airbnb because he lives in a dorm room with 4 Italian guys and it would've been tight. The apartment is super nice and the woman gave us half of the apartment. We have a room with a double bed, tv and lots of outlets. We also have a bathroom for our personal use right next door that has a shower, bath tub, toilet, bidet, and two sinks. It's massive! After settling in, we walked to meet two of Matt's friends from the program at a grocery store. We went back to one of their dorms and cooked what they call "family dinner," Matt and like 5 friends cook in one of their rooms and hang out for like 3 hours. It was fun and the tortellinis and green beans we made were delicious. Afterwards, we went back to the room and fell asleep after some face booking and blogging.