Past 2 Days

I'm going to go ahead and warn you now, this blog post is going to be extremely long. I've been so busy the past few days that I'm really only getting time just now to sit down and update the blog. Also, a lot's happened the past couple of days and they've probably been the best since I got here. So here we go. A couple of nights ago, where I left off, Nick, Brian, and I decided to head out to an Irish pub to meet up with a couple of British and German kids that they had met a couple nights before to watch the Arsenal-Ipswitch Town match. Arsenal won pretty easily 3-0, so we got to talking about the differences between the USA and European countries, and I'm pretty sure I'll be having that conversation a lot more throughout my stay here. I had one of the German kids order me a beer. I don't even know what he got me, just that it was German and ridiculously good. I'm really tempted to put Bavaria on my list of travel destinations, and maybe I can even meet up with Pete and head over there to have one of the manliest trips of all time. Anyway those kids were pretty cool, and we agreed to meet up some time to play some soccer or basketball, but I don't know if it'll happen. Either way it was a good night getting to know people from a different perspective. Outside the pub I got coerced into buying a stupid little toy gun from a Bengali street vendor for 3,50 euro. I originally offered 1 euro just to mess with him, but he got into this sob story about being poor so I eased up on him. We agreed on 3 euro by the way and he shortchanged me. I actually called him on it too but didn't do anything- I almost freaked out when he tried to sell me something else though. I now have a vendetta against the street vendors of Bologna. All in all though it was a pretty good night that ended with a late night "dinner" at the McDonald's here. I'm happy to report that it's the exact same overseas. That was my first time at a McDonald's in like 2 or 3 years, and I probably won't be back, but I let my curiosity get the best of me. The next day (yesterday) we finally got to tour some of the museums. We have a tour guide come in a couple days a week after class to take us around the city on foot, seeing all the most important historical sights in Bologna. Yesterday was a tour of Piazza Maggiore, which I think I've mentioned before, but its the main square of Bologna, with huge buildings all dating back to the 1200's and a big clocktower on one of the palazzi. We went to the nearby archeological museum, which was amazing. They had all these old statues, and a lot of artifacts recovered from B.C. years. Bologna as a civilized town actually dates back to before Christ. The history of this place is mind boggling. It puts America's short history in perspective. They had 3,000 year old Etruscan safety pins that looked like they would still work. Unreal. There were also skeletons laid out under glass, which was creepy but still pretty cool. We then headed inside il Palazzo Commune, which is still the seat of the municipal government, and the original paint is on the walls from the 1500-1600's. The last stop we made was to the library...not cool right? Yeah I was surprised too. When we walked into the lobby our guide told us to look down. The floor was made of glass and we were standing on top of 2,000 year old Roman ruins that went down about 20-30 foot into the ground. Of course, I picked yesterday to leave my camera in my room. That night me and my roommates wanted to go out and get a student card for some international exchange student club that would let us meet other Americans in the city, as well as other nations. We ended up getting lost and ended up at one of the main University of Bologna areas, even though the university is really spread throughout the city. I have no idea how old the building we were in was, but the university was founded in 1088 and is the oldest one currently operating in the world. The inside looked like freaking Hogwarts or something. I now consider Dickinson's campus to be garbage. Just kidding...kind of. We wanted to go to this international party at some club last night, so we went out but it was pretty lame so I just ended up coming back early and getting a decent night's sleep. It's still cool to do that because real class hasn't started yet...so it's like a 2 week long syllabus week and we can't travel yet. Anyway, today was another crazy day. I came back from my morning classes and got pizza for lunch from this place that I would equate to like a Jim's or Pat's. It was so busy and you had to know exactly what you wanted right away or you were screwed. I was nervous just to say "due margherite" which was just two slices. Worked out though and it was actually pretty good- better than the sit down restaurants we've had to be honest. Even in American cities sometimes the street foods are just better than anything a fancy restaurant can serve up- that's where you can judge a city's true character. The food here's awesome and I'll just leave it at that. Anyway, I grabbed a paper at a newsstand (I think trying to struggle through the newspaper is going to be good for me to learn). I've set one goal for myself while I'm here and that's to come back competent in Italian. I won't be fluent, but I want to be able to converse freely. I try to speak, and I usually fail but I've been in a couple of situations where English wasn't an option and I've gotten by ok. I'm learning a lot everyday. I took a little nap and then walked back to the center for our afternoon tour. On the way there was this crazy protest, and apparently the government wants to cut a lot of social funds. Everyone was dressed in red, and Bologna is the communist capital of Italy, but I'm not totally sure if it was a communist rally or not. Either way it looked like the whole city was walking down the street adjacent to mine. I finally got to the center in time for our tour. This time it was to the medieval museum, which was awesome. There were all kinds of statues and artifacts. This time I brought my camera. There were a bunch of ornate memorials for professors, who apparently had a lot of money and influence in the city back in the day. I'm constantly shocked at the art and ingenuity that these people had so long ago. We left the museum and checked out some signature architecture in the city, including the San Petronio (the patron saint of Bologna) basilica, which I mentioned before, and the San Domenico basilica, which is smaller than San Petronio, but apparently is actually more important historically to the Catholic church in Bologna, and is older than Petronio. We also checked out a couple of towers in the city. They used to have hundreds of them but in the middle ages, wealthy families would pool their money and build these towers that were hundreds of feet tall out of brick...1,000 years ago. You can still go up a few of them, and I might despite my ridiculous fear of heights. It's one of the things you just have to do when you're here. We then went to one of the most beautiful things I've seen in the city so far, I think. It was the San Stefano churches, which were 7 tiny churches all connected together, dating back to the 1st century A.D. It was actually the burial place of San Petronio himself, but they later moved his body. It was what you think of when you picture monks in the middle ages. After that I took another nap, and then headed to the gym to get my first workout in in Italy. It's a Squash Center actually, but the gym was fine. It was pretty much the same as the Y and even though it was expensive it was my cheapest option available. Plus, now I can pick up a great sport for when I finally make my millions, right? Ok, tens of thousands. After that, got a kebab, which is the burrito of Italy, and it was pretty good. Haven't had anything bad here yet. So, that was my past two and a half days. Sorry for making this post so long. I was trying to update only as interesting stuff happened, but every day here something new and interesting happens. I'll put up pictures soon.