Pizza

Before going to Bologna, Italy I really knew only two things. One was said by a source that right now I cannot recall, that Italians like the Spanish do not speak one word of English. The other was "Bologna es preciosa!", a statement proclaimed by my current history professor, Antonio. So, I went to Italy to find out if these things were true. (In reality I went to visit my former housemate and dorm buddy, Evan who is living and studying there for a year.)
I arrived in the city late on a Friday night after a much too long flight on RyanAir. While I was listening to the constant, and I mean non-stop advertisements for lottery tickets, children's toys, and crappy cheeseburgers for a much higher prices than the market in three different languages on the flight I just kept thinking about how much I just wanted to get there! Anyways I got there at midnight, and was met by Evan at one of the random bus stops in the city. We walked to his apartment, catching up of course, dropped my stuff off, then immediately went out. Seeing him was like a breath of fresh air, especially since i realized that for over a month the only familiar face I had seen was my own. Now here we were both transplanted to two crazy places, together. At about one in the morning we arrived at the strip with a whole bunch of bars where all the college students pile out into the streets and partay. My favorite of all of them was a place named "bar college", a bar, that gave us one euro beers in plastic cups, I thought it was pretty funny. Evan ran into some people he knew, so we stayed and talked to them for a while. (He is in an immersion program, which means that most of his friends are Italians.) I tried very comically to talk to some of these people. My first attempt was in Spanish, with the logic that a lot of Italians would of course know Spanish because it so similar right??? Nope they just looked at me like I escaped from a mental institution. I tried to see if any of them spoke English, but that was of course a lot cause. They ended up just speaking to me completely in Italian, and then Evan had to answer for me; from then on I became the mute friend. That night I met all of his housemates as well, who only spoke to me Italian. As the weekend went on with my still somewhat limited knowledge of Spanish I was able to translate what everyone was saying. one cool thing I understood was that one of his housemates would be one the whole weekend so I got my own bed..SWEET.
The next couple days we walked a lot around the city. Evan just told me he was going to take me to places he liked to go, instead of to random museums or churches, which I was completely fine with. I completely fell in love with this place. The architecture was so completely different from the south of Spain. Compared to narrow cobble stone streets lined with white buildings and yellow window sills, Bologna excelled in the terracotta colors and the grand piazzas.(Piazzas are basically just sidewalks but with huge roofs over them, so you have constant protection when you are walking.) I literally freaked out the entire time we were walking through the city. Evan took me to a couple really nice parks,(typical Santa Cruz students) which I of course loved. The first day for lunch we ended up stopping for pizza. Can you say whole pizza, and best pizza you ever ate for 3.50 euro? I can (Evan had to order for me of course) I love food, and I love pizza, but I had never tasted pizza like this until October 9th, 2010. It is a day I will never forget. Yeah I ate the whole pizza, what of it? The next day for lunch we ate at an actual sit down retaurant where we ordered sage raviolli, fried zuccini, and a spinach fritada thing. Yeah I am not even going to comment because I could go on for pages. Also I think I had gelato like four times. You all know how much I love ice cream, I really don't know how ice cream stores in America can stay in business.
Sunday night we really did not do much because Evan had school the next day,and I had to leave the next morning. Saturday night, however we ended up meeting up with one of my friends from my Cordoba program, who has a friend that is also studying in Bologna. We went out for "apperativo" which was basically the Spanish equivalent of "tapas", but not as good of food. Whatever free cheese with the really awesome margarita that I ordered, I was DOWN. Later we went to my friend's friend's apartment, drank some more then went prancing around the city once more. I realized that I chose the right place to spend my first long weekend away from Cordoba. Bologna, unlike Florence or Rome or Venice was a student more than a tourist city, so it had a good night life and things were cheap. Plus i got to see a good friend and eat some really good food. So it was written that Bologna was "preciosa."