Monthly Archive

You haven’t seen comedy until you’ve seen Italian policemen rolling by on Segways. The moment I caught sight of them at Bologna train station I wanted to take a picture so badly, yet didn’t for uncertainty over what they might take offense at. Committing a crime is one thing, but embarrassing and personally getting on the bad side of a policeman is another! Especially in a foreign country. Two weeks later at Florence train station I came across a sight that made me realise that I needn’t have worried: a pair of policemen sitting up straight in their little indoor police cart, the driver with his hands held just so on the sides of the steering wheel, both their faces held in a pleasant yet commanding expression and torsos angled to face the tourist who like all true tourists, seemed to require an inordinate amount of time to get to the point of button-pressing. What a blow! Not only could I have safely gotten my very own photograph of Italian policemen on Segways, but there had even existed the possibility of having them pose for me! Scheisse. The tough lessons you have to learn in life eh?

It appears to me then that a key characteristic of the Italian police (at the very least the city Italian police) is their eagerness to please the tourists, demonstrated not only through their posing skills but through the amount of time they are willing to spend explaining directions with a smile. The rest of this post covers another thing I’ve observed about them. Looking at a general scene in which the police are present, you can see that there is some intention behind having them there. Looking at the individual police officers in the scene, they themselves don’t appear to be engaged in much besides spending time with each other. Maybe this outcome is inevitable given that they only seem to be allowed to leave the station if they have enough passengers to take up all the free places of the vehicle. Read the rest of this entry »

In an eatery in the Berlin central railway station an older American couple were carrying their trays of food and searching for somewhere to sit. They put their trays down on the table next to mine on the opposite side and drop a hat onto the place directly beside me. I’m sitting at the end of a long table next to the wall made out of glass.

“Now we’ve claimed our places.” The older woman declares with some sense of achievement.

However they remain standing appearing still unsure of themselves until their third member comes along. As he does so, the two Germans who were sitting further along at the middle of the table get up and leave.

The Americans take this as an opportunity to move their trays up to the middle of the table, where the Germans had been, the older man’s pack still at the end of the table opposite me.

“Great, now we can spread out and not have to sit one atop the other” the older man chirps happily.

Bag on the end, clearly claiming the seat opposite mine. The table beside me with its two facing chairs are empty, except for the small bag the younger man has placed on the one that sits beside me. The hat that had been beside me as well as various other handheld items have now been placed on the other side of the couple, spread out over the places at the free end of the table. Read the rest of this entry »

• They really, truly expect you to walk in a perfectly straight line. Nowhere else have I had bump-ins because someone was trying to pass by me very narrowly from behind and I’ve made a step to the left just at that same moment. Even when we don’t collide it’s unnerving how closely they pass. I’ve been scared shitless a number of times to find someone walking silently beside me just over my shoulder.

• Wow. The socks with Birkenstocks or jandals. It’s horrific. It’s only observable on older men though, as if it’s their way of saying “no way should I have to care anymore!”

• They are afraid of being fined for jaywalking, except for those in Berlin as there are so many parts of the city that have absolutely no arrangements for pedestrians. Sometimes no arrangements even for cars! Ah to see people co-operating because they have no other choice… a strange romance in that. A couple of Germans know of someone who happened to be fined by the police one evening on an empty street when they made a start towards the red man… Possibly the only place in the world where police make formal road-crossing a priority?

• The children here are incredibly free. Some in a cute way, some in a bratty way. I wonder if this is a reflection of the changing mores of German society or if it’s much later on that they are taught to be reserved. Examples of freedom include dancing and playing in fountains for a long time; dancing and clapping their hands to the music of street musicians - unless the act is especially unique or bizarre the adults tended not to stop or glance much at the musicians; bashing flowers meant to beautify the city with their balloons; running around unhooking the velvet rope in queues. Kids are kids everywhere, but I dunno, many kids in Germany seemed to live with a comprehensive and unquestioned abandon. Read the rest of this entry »

Bologna pictures are now up!

You have to check out this post, currently the hot post on wordpress.com :

Top 10 Halo Pick-Up Lines

Now this sort of creativity, intelligence, nerdiness and cheekiness I can appreciate. I particularly like the grenade one :)) Actually, also the access to the base one.

Hello,

So, in Italy at the moment. I’m no longer in Emilia Romagna (where Bologna is), and have taken it easier since the first day. Have had encounters with nicer variety Italians and found myself taken with the town of Parma. You know, lame confession time - one, but not the entire, reason why I wanted to go to Bologna was because the main character in the bad John Grisham novel I read in Switzerland when I was sick was sent there for his witness relocation. I’d heard about Bologna from some other sources too, but the book described it as a citta’ of beautiful food every three steps, of magical porticoes (which truthfully, yeah for me they were I heart porticoes!), and of unusualness. I mean, it reportedly has a history of communist and socialist sympathy; and an anti-pope temple was built, a sort of civic temple for everyone. Of course, it was never completed…

Ironically, there was a brief reference to Parma in there too, I think the main character was threatened with being shifted on to Parma… and main character wasn’t keen because oh no, it’s a small town!

Parma is not a small town. It’s a large town. And it feels on the whole much easier to be in than Bologna. The colour scheme is much gentler, the lanes and walkways seem clearer, and there is a feeling of more space there in general.

But most importantly of all… my curiosity while there led me to a wonderful, magnificent discovery.

JOGOLA!

Jogola is a store located on Borgo San Biagio. Has everyone written that down? It is…oh… a store that starts out with a cute plastic cup, puts spoonfuls of fresh fruit of your choice in the bottom (I chose strawberries and mixed fruit), then puts the yoghurt of your choice on next (I chose frozen yoghurt), and then puts toppings on top to finish it off (I chose almond slivers and these sweet oaty clusters). Other orders may be possible too, for some people had fruit on the top. It is… absolutely the best thing for summer. It’s healthy, and cool, and tasty, and looks so damn good! Oh it’s like owning a springtime fair.

New Zealand needs this, now, or soon.

Anyyyyway. I have taken pictures and really planned on uploading them while I was writing the last entry. But, luck would have it that the CPU of this computer is old, and probably wont voluntarily accept my USB. I could try to shove it into the floppy disk drive…

I want to do it somewhere soon though. Some of the pictures accompany the last entry, and this one (you get to see my jogola creation!), plus I need all the space I can get on my extremely limited memory cards.

Okay. Status report over. Ciao!

This post was written on the 4th of August, the day after I arrived in Bologna, Italy.

This morning and early afternoon I spent wandering the area of the citta’ west and to the south of the main square, Piazza Maggiore. Walking like this I let myself be guided by my curiosity, which reliable as always, led me to narrower alleyways crammed with stalls, the overflow from the small produce, cheese, meat and fish shops they were attached too. It’s completely mind-boggling the array of vinegar, oil, tomato, preserve, and various canned special vegetables they have in their stores. I was so out of my depth, so completely inadquate in my knowledge of Italian cooking that I didn’t even feel bad… I’m just an alien visiting from another planet!

I learnt that there is a lot of variety in the porticoes that the city is famous for - some airy, some gloomy, some old and elegant, some old and crumbly, some that go straight and some (my favourite!) that go curving ’round the bend of a building. I also quickly learnt that there are a LOT of churches and otherwise religious places. Again, my knowledge here is entirely inadquate. But be they church or sanctuary, I found them all beautiful in their own way. There was the tiny sliver of a sancutary wedged between shop buildings, which I really really wanted to visit but couldn’t because you know, even religious workers need to take their August vacation. There was the hulking construction that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the street, unmistakeable for its outer wall decoration which comprised of sharp stones jutting out like daggers diagonally in one section, and then round stones laid in normal horizontal lines in another section. Even the slightly less unique churches were unique, whether they were decrepit with neglect; or swanky-looking and obviously much-loved by a well-to-do congregation.

I love the colours here. They’re warm and inviting, yet also contain a sort of bite that induces a surge of adrenaline just to look at them. Rounding practically every corner I relived the thrill of catching sight of these colours, combined with the complex arrangement of light resulting from the extreme strength of the summer sun being held at bay and only allowed to fall through the porticoes at particular angles and in particular designs. My confession is however that at a certain point I had to admit that it was too much. There were so many streets that were intensely beautiful to me, and through so many of the little details as well. The autumn leaves on the tree that seemed to gently brush up against and merge into the orange of the house, the light fitting of the fierce phoenix clutching onto a crystal orb (the light) with its claws, the chimney stack that was a triplet of miniature houses stacked one atop the other in descending size… Wow struck me at every turn and I had great difficulty controlling it, it wasn’t too long until I realised that I had overloaded.

I breaked for lunch. Read the rest of this entry »