A Sneeze and a Smile

Writing from Bologna, where the keyboards are erratic at best, much like the busses. My hostel is located slightly outside of town, and there is a special bus that runs to the center of the city every two hours. When I took it this afternoon I was the only person on the bus and the driver kept trying to make friendly conversation with me. I appreciated the sentiment, but as he didn't speak any English and the only Italian I know comes from a passing love of Opera and four long ago years of Latin, we need to resort to pantimime to communicate. He kept turning around so he could look me in the eye, and I divided my time between trying to parse his sentences and looking nervously at the road, which he was completely disregarding.

So far Bologna has been great, but most of the sights were closed by the time I got to town. I have a full day tomorrow, though, and plan to make the most of it. The train ride here was fun, though, I shared my aisle with two very nice Indian men. Neither spoke much English, so we communicated with sentences that went subject\verb\hand gesture till I asked if they were here for holiday. One man said yes, but the other said he was coming here to live. He had to flee India because his brother was in trouble with the Indian mafia, and he feared retribution. This was shocking to find out, but even more shocking to see in pantomime.

And now for something completely different.

Verona was lovely. A small town compared to Venice and Bologna, but it had two things that Venice lacked: Cars and Italian People. I was not as productive as I might have been in Verona, choosing to skip the Opera arena in favor of sitting in cafes with a book and watching the people go past. I did manage to make it to the Casa Giulietta, however; a seventeenth century Veronese house done up as the house where Juliet Capulette lived. To tell you the truth I thought the whole thing was a little hokie. I appreciate that Shakespeare set his play in Verona for a reason, but there's no way Shakespeare could have ever seen a postcard of Verona, let alone the city itself. Still I had to respect the city's love of the play. The walls of Juliet's house were covered in graffitti from young lovers writing their names all along the outside, and the love lorn would write messages for Juliet which they would leave on the walls or by her statue. I much prefered the piazza outside the casa, which was an old town square and was covered with vendors selling fruit, food and souvenirs. In the center of the piazza there was a raised platform where I sat to eat my panini and coca light. I noticed a pair of ominous chains hanging from the platform and consulted my guidebook, which informed me that prisoners used to be chained to the platform and the townspeople would pass by and pelt them with garbage. Charming.

After the casa I walked around the city for a bit, and decided to cross the river away from the tourist attractions. The other side of the river was dominated by a steep hill, and I found a cobblestone street that lead up it. I enjoyed the walk, but eventually had to stop because my eyes started welling up, and I began to sneeze. It's been so long since I found myself in the middle of nature, that I've forgotten I usually have allergies this time of year. They haven't been much of a problem in London, seeing as it still rarely gets about the fifties (there were about two weeks of sunshine, which I have since begun to fear might have been total flukes) but the Italian sunshine caused the verdure to bloom, which in turn caused me to sneeze. I've learned not to mind the hayfever, but as I walked back I began to notice that I was getting the oddest looks from people, and I realized just how striking bright red eyes can be. I figured I must have looked like I had been crying, so I tried to counteract it by smiling broadly at people. This just seemed to frighten them even more, so I ended by simply keeping my eyes glued to the pavement.

I ducked into a cafe to recover, and ended up getting dinner there. The cafe had a fabulous view of Verona across the water, and it was the ideal place to watch the sun set behind the duomo. Italy is filled with mosquitos (I had shared my room with one the night before, as well as with three charming Australians,) and at sunset swarms of swallows came out to feast on the bloodsucking pests. Watching the birds swoop in the twilight, and feeling the day begin to cool I sneezed, and, however horrific it may have looked, I smiled.