First Day in Bologna

After a long, long 10 hour flight I finally arrived in Bologna for the semester. I barely slept on the flight, only about 2 hours especially because they played The Social Network as the in-flight movie. Italian people definitely dress differently than I'm used to, and I saw a grandma on the plane with gold Nikes on her feet. When we got to Rome it was pretty overwhelming. There was farmland as far as the eye could see to the East, and to the West was nothing but water. Everyone was generally friendly and there was a lot more English than I expected. Also, the airport was tiny, about the size of Harrisburg's. I was worried about my bags getting to Bologna, but mine were the first off the flight. We took a bus to our apartment in the outside of the center of the city, and there was something vaguely familiar about the urban sprawl. I purposely came into this trip with no expectations, but the city atmosphere definitely surprised me. It reminds me a bit of New Orleans, or if Philadelphia was 1000 years old. There's a bunch of students here at UniBo (which I'm technically enrolled in, but won't attend any classes at). We got settled into our apartment and got 100 euro each as an advance on our stipend. I bought a water, took a shower, and then immediately passed out for 5 hours because I was so exhausted, but woke up just in time for dinner at Cafe Rosso, I believe it was called. We had prosciuto and salami on crescenti, which is basically a fried kind of dough. I didn't really think the food here would be that much better, but there must be a reason they call Bologna "La Grossa" (the fat), the pork and salami were unbelievable. I don't even know how to describe it, except that if they made sandwiches in America with this stuff I would have played o-line in high school. After dinner we went down to Piazza Maggiore in the center of town with a famous fountain and castle. It was crazy to think how people could build something so huge back then, and probably much better than we could today. I grabbed my first beer in Europe with a couple of my roommates at a grocery for 2 euro, but it was probably about 30 ounces. We checked out all the apartments, then headed back. It would only be about 7 PM at home, but between the jetlag and the nap, I'm hoping that my sleep schedule becomes normal pretty fast. Everyone wants to become assimilated into the culture immediately it seems like, but I realize it will take time. I struggled to communicate because I was so tired, but I'm hoping that it gets better fast and I can shake the rust off my Italian in the next couple of weeks.