Bologna is a civilised city, whose elegance is upkept by the legacy of the city’s academic excellence – “La Dottoressa”.
The city is clean and maintained. People are kind, but not overbearingly so, and the quality of life is evidently high. So it is a very nice city to live in. When one lives in Bologna, one lives upon the foundations of intellectual prowess, political history, architectural impressiveness, and gastronomical excellence.
Bologna is perfectly sized – big enough that you can easily lose your sense of direction as you walk around small, windy Italian roads, but small enough that you get to know the city’s skeletal map and soon feel like a part of Bologna’s collective identity – forza Bologna, insieme!
The centro storico is romantic in its grand Italian architecture. The slanted towers – le due torri – mark the city centre and all roads lead to them like a spider's web. A stone’s throw away, the Basilica of San Petronius, along with its half-decorated façade (Papal politics) dominates Piazza Maggiore and adjacent state buildings. I really like going to sit on the steps of the basilica to hang out with friends and take in the wide view of the piazza. Dolce Vita.
Coming to Italy as a Spaniard has been a kind transition. As kings of the Mediterranean, the culture is very, very similar, if not exactly the same and so I have not found there to be a ‘culture shock’. Just like us, the Italians enjoy outdoor spaces – piazze – to convene and enjoy life, which is mostly accompanied by food. Similarly, food is a ritual, we talk loudly, and act vivaciously. So coming on my Erasmus here to Bologna is like coming to an extended home away from home. The two cultures are highly outgoing, proud, and incapable of being on time to places. Even the languages are sisters, daughters to the mother of European romance languages, Latin. Now, I am not an Italian student. I study Classics; Latin galore for 8+ contact hours a week. So between my in depth study of Latin, and my native tongues of Spanish, and Catalan, I came to Italy perhaps on my linguistic high horse. The linguistic similarities are deceiving and during the first weeks of me arriving in Italy I found myself hiding behind my Spanish comfort blanket which is not wholly passable Italian. The first hurdle was having to unlearn my years of native Spanish to relearn Italian. This was harder than it seems; in fact, it was infuriating. But, with a couple of weeks and much enthusiasm to put what I had learned in my language classes into practice, I was picking it up fast and things started to go my way. Boom.
I live with Italians in private halls where there are about 60 other Italians I can practise my Italian with, other than the 3 girls I live with in appartemento 17. This has actually been a great way to improve. The WhatsApp group chat is naturally all in Italian, so I am getting to grips with some slang (‘raga’) and my corridor mates have been very accommodating and will converse with me and correct me, so it’s safe to say that I am immersed. My Latin and Italian tutor in England once told me “If you don’t speak the language, you don’t eat!”. I can confirm this is true, but I am yet to prove my Spanish aunts’ theory and dying wish that “getting an Italian boyfriend is the fastest way of learning Italian”.
I am, in a way, slightly jealous I am not studying MLAC at university. Being in Italy, I can completely understand why any student would want to formally study Italian. I did actually have a “degree crisis” in my first week of class in Freshers, but I am glad that I have at least managed to dip my toes, as it were, into this Italian realm and Classics has been a solid historical introduction to this, as Italy was home to the Roman Empire. In a way, it helps understand the European mindset. I am a sucker for derivations and etymology and am satisfied daily connecting Italian words to their Latin origins. Bologna is not the obvious destination for an Erasmus classicist, but one does not have to look very far to imagine how the ancient Romans would’ve been – observing their Italian descendants is a good way to start and a pretty good indication. Outdoor markets, recreational time spent in piazza (modelled off of the ancient forum), and the importance placed on family are just some of the cultural pillars which are still upstanding today.
A funny observation I noticed about Italian is the phrase “Ha il prosciutto devanti gli occhi”. This literally means as “you have the prosciutto in front of your eyes” but is loosely translated as not seeing or not wanting to see something obvious, and that you have blind love for someone! The image of a tall, dark, and handsome Italian being almost hypnotised against his beautiful ragazza by a mouth-watering leg of D.O.P prosciutto is entertaining and charming. Another one which amused me is “rendere pan per focaccia” (give back bread for focaccia), which is the Italian equivalent for the concept of “an eye for an eye”. This conjures up an image of two old Italian men, wrinkled by years of being under the Tuscan sun, fighting in the outdoor market over the last crispy warm focaccia at the bakery or something similar which is equally as endearing.
Naturally, it is hard not to love these cultural quirks and I have found myself growing fond of the Italian culture in the two short months of being here; the country’s rich history along with its unique cultural heritage is fascinating and I look forward to exploring it more deeply while attempting to live my fullest dolce vita over this next year.
Goya Verity Gelabert
