9/30 Monday
We
travel to Bologna on a high-speed train, taking just over 30 minutes, hardly
enough time to get comfortable. The ride is strange, maybe 80 percent is in a
tunnel under the mountains. We get a brief flash of light, then dive right back
into the hillside. We arrive at a huge, new station, three levels underground.
There’s hardly anyone around. It’s like being at an airport at four in the
morning. This is disorienting after the train ride in the dark. We’re happy to
get out in the daylight of the city. We have directions to our apartment, so we
start hiking. We go a few blocks, when our host, Davide, comes up to meet us,
joined by his mother. They escort us the rest of the way, not far at all from
the station. We have a nice, open and airy place, on the second floor. The
private terrace is bigger than the living room. It is free of most of the knick-knacks and unusable furnishings that drive us nuts, and Davide has
a bookcase full of brochures and information about the city. Very nice!
We
arrive so easily, early in the afternoon, we actually have time to explore the
city a little. Bologna is a city of porticos, where the second floor of the
building extends over the sideway to create a roof, held up by pillars or
columns, sometimes quite elaborately decorated with faux sculpture, tiles, or carved
beams. It gives the city an elegant, orderly feel that’s very pleasing. It's also a university town, with lots of students walking around, and is, in fact,
home to the oldest continuously operating university in the world, the
University of Bologna, from 1088. The faculty here includes Dante, Copernicus
and Durer. Not at the same time, though.
We find historical library building on
our tourist map and wander through the halls. We can see the 15th
Century Anatomy Theater, completely walled in beautifully carved wood, unlike
the typical marble or plaster. We sit on the student benches around the
marble table on which the subject of the day would have lain.
In
one hall, there’s a small exhibit of books from an historic printer, Tallone.
There is a video of the current Tallone, son of Alberto Tallone, the founder.
He, the father, worked in Paris for the company of Maurice Darantière, who printed the original 1922 Ulysses for
Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Co. Alberto eventually bought all the equipment,
brought it to his family home in Italy, and established the Tallone press,
which makes exquisite books today, typeset by hand, printed on the same
presses, folded and sewn by hand. The process is demonstrated on the video, and
the results are displayed in the library cases. It’s awesome. You can see the
subtle indentation of each letter on the pages, with not a speck of bleeding
from the ink. Every book is a masterpiece.
Our
host has recommended a taverna in the city center, La Tamburini, and with a
little exploring, we find it. Their specialty is big platters of what the menu
describes with great understatement as “cold cuts.” Parma ham, mortadella, prosciutto,
beef carpaccio, and cheeses. It is very popular, crowded early in the evening,
but we get a couple of seats at a big table at the front where we can watch al
the action. An American couple joins us. They start talking loudly and name dropping all the Italian cities they’ve
been to, contemplating their next tour. “Would you like to go to Corsica? You
know, Jeffrey’s going to Crete.” “Jeffery in Crete?
I thought he was going to go to Sardinia.” On and on like that. Rather than barf
on the table, we order a bottle of wine and a dish of Bolognese lasagna.
1 Video Included
Train Florence to Bologna
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