Gallivanting and gadding about

As readers of my previous blog post will know, I have now completed my exams and thus pretty much finished the first half of my year abroad, a feat that seemed practically unobtainable back in the tricky days of early September. I’m in a weird transitionary period, full of goodbyes and hellos, packing and unpacking, paperwork and… paperwork. If you’re annoyed about how much I mention paperwork, think about how annoyed I must be having to complete it all. Very.

It’s a strange time. In some ways I feel like I should have already left Bologna; I have nothing left to do here, save get a few forms signed (there’s that old chestnut again!). And yet it will also be strange to leave the streets I have walked and now know so well for new, unknown ones.

I feel under pressure to make the most of my last few days here, but I’m unsure exactly what that should mean. Thanks to the bucket list I made back in those aforementioned tricky early days, I’ve done pretty much everything I wanted to do here. The major unticked box is “Go for a run in the Giardini Margherita”. Naïvely, I thought that 5 months was plenty of time in which to go for one run: a realistic goal, I thought. Not the case.

Instead, I’ve opted to spend my remaining days gallivanting and gadding about, as shrewd title-readers will have already guessed (no prizes, I’m afraid). The map below represents the journeys I’ve made in the last couple of weeks, all thanks to Italy’s wonderful, clean, efficient, relatively cheap train network, and some dodgy buses at the French border:

Part of the reason for all this voyaging was that it was my 21st birthday a couple of weeks ago, in honour of which Hannah and I travelled to Turin for a lovely weekend filled with delicious bicerin- a sort of heavenly rich mocha. On the subject of my birthday, I’d like to thank all those wonderful friends and relatives who posted cards and gifts- my mother even managed to send a banana cake over. I cannot understate the sheer loveliness of receiving these things at a time when I was worried this most important of birthdays might be a little out of sight, out of mind. It seems it was neither, and for this I am very grateful.

After Turin, Valérie and I popped over the border to stay with our friend Agathe in her beautiful house in a valley of the French Alps, in a small town called Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. The major purpose of this trip was to partake in some winter sports action, words that made me pretty hesitant but also excited. I am not le type sportif by any stretch of the imagination: I failed to go for a single run in 5 months, after all. And yet here was a fabulous opportunity to try something new, in what was to become the best value skiing holiday ever thanks to Agathe’s kind loan of absolutely all the kit I needed, no accommodation costs, and my terribleness at skiing- I didn’t even need to buy a ski pass the first day as the flat slopes were quite enough for me.

Very kindly, Agathe even agreed to teach me to ski. Living in the Alps, she has been skiing for about as long as she has been walking, and is terribly graceful on the slopes. Graceful is perhaps not the word I would choose to describe my debut. “Bambi” might be more like it. Being taught in French was also far funnier than I could have imagined. Panicked yells of ‘je peux pas bouger!’ when I was trapped in a snowy ravine (not a ravine…but felt like one) were probably terribly amusing to passersby/skiersby. I have chosen to blame my main failing (not being able to turn right) on my confusion between the similar-sounding phrases ‘tout droit’ (straight on) and ‘à droite’ (to the right). When the muffly effect of days of powdery snow is taken into account, I like to think that even a French person would struggle with this. Still, by the end of my time in France I was able to successfully navigate my way down a piste without toppling over, a feat I am immensely proud of. Skiing is an odd thing: there is so much kit that it is anything but natural, but the views from the top of those frosty mountains made it all worthwhile.

The other big highlight of this trip was visiting the Opinel museum. For those unfamiliar with the name, Opinel is an artisan producer of beautiful sharp knives with wooden handles. I am a big fan of the obscure museum. They are cosier than other museums, you learn something completely different, and you get the sense that the curators really care about your visit because they are so passionate about the subject themselves. The curator of this one was a member of the Opinel family, and appeared in the short documentary we sat and watched as well as hanging about in the gift shop. The entire museum was clearly meant to advertise the brand, and it worked; to Banksy’s disdain, I’m sure, my Exit Through the Gift Shop left me money-poorer and knife-richer.

Valérie, Monsieur Opinel et moi

My time in Italy has also left me much money-poorer, but richer in almost every other sense. An Italian film I saw here, Benvenuti al Sud, sums it up quite well, if I can permit myself the poetic license to substitute ‘al sud’ for ‘in Italia’:

‘chi viene in Italia piange due volte: quando arriva e quando se ne deve andare’

-Whoever comes to Italy cries twice: when he arrives, and when he has to leave.

Musings on learnings: An Italian education

This week marked the official end of my semester here at the University of Bologna. I still have a few last things to tie up here before I leave, not to mention some exciting travelling/skiing that just must be attended to, but my university career here is over.

My lectures ended in December, but I returned to Bologna to do my exams, something which I thought would be a relatively straightforward experience. And so, after a hurried week of cramming, praying that my reading across the semester would stand me in good stead, I headed to my first exam on Monday.

Most exams at the University of Bologna, and I believe Italy as a whole, are oral exams, which was already a strange concept to me. Of course I’ve done oral exams before, but only to test my abilities in speaking languages; they are not something UK universities really use for getting a sense of how much you know about a given subject. But it actually makes quite a lot of sense to me now, as unlike with a written exam, the professor is able to probe your knowledge and push certain parts of your argument. It’s also quite a good paper-saving strategy, and it was nice not to have to bring my usual half a dozen biros- there’s always that chance that 5 will run out of ink. You never know.

Given that I couldn’t attend the normal date for my first exam, the professor arranged a separate one for me. I waited for him outside his office, reading through my colour-coded cue cards (I’ve not changed), when he arrived, and immediately picked one up to have a look. I was already finding this really weird. I wondered whether he was already deciding what mark to award me based on the visual evidence of my revision, and was secretly hoping so as he complimented me on the little quizzes I’d written for myself.

I thought when we entered the office that that would be the end of the cue cards, but as we went in and he started tapping away on his computer I hesitantly asked how the exam was going to work. At this, he picked up one of my cue cards and asked “Tell me about Voltaire’s flair”. It was strangely like an informal chat- almost enjoyable at times, even if I often wondered whether he was really concentrating on what I was saying as he logged onto the internal system to record my exam. In the end it went brilliantly and I beamed as I walked home, a new advocate for the oral exam system, as well as more than a little smug that I had got away with doing so little revision.

But my, how my opinions changed when I attended my second exam, for which I was able to make the published date. The entire class of around 50 people had to turn up at 9:30am to attend the ‘appello’, where we were registered to be taking the exam that day. Then, we all had to wait. I was advised to return at 2pm, which I did, but subsequently had to sit for another 4 hours waiting to be called in to take the exam.

This might not sound that bad; it’s only one day, after all. And yet, one day of sitting with a group of other stressed out students, constantly reading over your notes “one last time” in case you get called in, losing energy by the second, and it’s a wonder anyone is actually able to say anything coherent. By the time I got to do my exam, at 6:30pm, I was tired, bored, hungry and had a headache. I wasn’t really in the mood.

I asked the Italian students around me if this was normal, and they assured me it was. I asked them why they didn’t all just get their own specific time to turn up, and they said it was because the professors didn’t trust them to be on time. I asked them if they minded this system, and they said of course they did, but nobody was willing to change it.

The whole thing seemed symptomatic of the relationship between Italy and its youths as a whole. Perhaps it sounds dramatic, but sitting with those students, waiting around for 8 hours for the convenience of their professors, even being told we weren’t allowed to sit on the floor whilst we waited, I got the sense that they were being badly undervalued and patronised.

Youth unemployment in Italy is at over 40%, a rate amongst the worst in Europe. Its young people are frustrated, bored and anxious, but they are also bright, ambitious and hopeful. It seems to me that their country is doing them a great disservice by undervaluing their intelligence and their dedication; and if you treat people like lazy idiots for long enough, they give up and start acting like it.

It may seem a grand conclusion to draw from a minor experience, but I think it rings true for many of the people I’ve met here. The university is in desperate need of young, inspiring academics to breathe some life back into its ancient classrooms, and its students need to be given more opportunities to do more outside of those classrooms. I know I have been utterly spoilt with my university experience back home, but I also know that Italy needs to do more for its young people and invest in their futures, or the future of the whole country will soon be in great jeopardy.

The Puffer Jacket Conundrum

It’s fair to say Italy has more than its fair share of world-class fashion designers. Prada. Gucci. Dolce & Gabbana. Versace, Armani, Emilio Pucci, and my favourite of them all, Valentino. Milan is one of the four fashion capitals of the world, and Florence home to some of the best artisan leather producers. Italians are known, perhaps after only the French, for their style and elegance, and I half expected to turn up here and be judged for my pathetic English high street wardrobe by better-off Italians, as they flounced by in a swathe of carefully matched, beautifully produced textiles, their leather brogues click-clacking on the marble pavements. And you better hope those shoes have a good tread. Said shiny marble pavements are a death trap to those of us who dare to wear otherwise.

I have thus been surprised to find myself in a world of, well, puffer jackets. It’s hard to put it any other way. I am literally surrounded by them whenever I leave the house. Like Day of the Triffids but with polyester. It would have been weird enough to see this many puffer jackets in any country, but in one famed for its style, it’s incomprehensible. I cannot get my head around it. It has reached the point where I am starting to see every other type of coat as simply a variety of puffer jacket. Are fur coats not just puffer jackets made in a different fabric? I don’t even know anymore.

Because I know it may sound like I’m exaggerating the number of puffer jackets, I have chosen to provide some photographic evidence. I did consider going out and photographing all the puffer jackets I saw in one day, but given that that would have meant stopping every passerby to ask to take their portrait, I couldn’t be bothered. Sorry. So, here comes some anecdotal pictorial evidence, and you must simply trust me, dear reader, that this is representative of normal life in Italy.

The cloakroom of a museum. Nothing but puffer jackets.

 

 

One of many sources of the puffer epidemic.

THEY’RE EVERYWHERE.

 

Even brides are into them.

Now, whatever your opinion on these things, most people can agree that style comes from individuality comes from NOT ALL WEARING PUFFER JACKETS. I’ve been trying to comprehend their ubiquity ever since ‘winter’ (if a slight wind chill can be described as such) began. I’m sure they are warm, but really it is not that cold, and a good woollen coat would keep any passing chill at bay. If the question is warmth, then why not choose one of many other ways to stay warm? I would rather see someone strolling down the high street in their dressing gown, if only for a little variety.

In good faith, I thought there would really be no other way to get to the root of this by trying one on myself. And so, off I trotted to United Colors of Benetton, where, true to their name, they have a range of colours. But not a range of styles. That’s the point. They’re all the same. Trying one on, a matte purple number, I came to three main conclusions. 1. It made me look like the Michelin man, and who needs that in panettone season? 2. It made my hair go all static. And 3. Okay, I admit it, it was actually pretty warm.

And yet I’m afraid I’m not going to end this blog with the revelation that actually I fell for its cosiness and bought one- but wouldn’t that have been a brilliant shock?! I will, however, say this: the Italian word for the puffer jacket is piumino, a word that also means duvet. If they’ve managed to create a society where it’s okay to go out in what is essentially a waterproof duvet, and not even try to deny it, I guess they’ve won. And, go on then, if Valentino ever makes his own version (and it would only make financial sense, given their popularity), sign me up. But only to try it on.

My Favourite Christmas Song, and Bologna at Christmas

A few days ago, I had a dream that I was at home for Christmas. It was a dream entirely in English, I’m afraid to say. I shall always feel guilty for dreams that are not in one of the languages I’m learning; the final great linguistic hurdle that I can’t control at all. I’ll just keep telling myself it’s because people don’t talk much in my dreams anyway.

The details of said dream are quite blurry, luckily for you, because really, nobody likes hearing about other people’s dreams. They’re pretty dull in the cold light of day. In this particular one, I had forgotten to bring home any presents, but it didn’t seem to matter: I was home, surrounded by love and food and warmth, and there were even Christmas bells jingling merrily in the background… oh, that was just my alarm.

Still, Christmas spirit seems to have well and truly arrived in Bologna and it’s infectious. I am already meticulously planning my Love Actually style return home, even if it is strictly speaking at Stansted and not Heathrow, and saving my best turtleneck for the occasion.

Hoping we can skip the part with the insults

It’s also the first time I’ll be returning home close enough to Christmas to really be able to claim that I’m driving home for Christmas, or at least being driven home for Christmas (although that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!). In previous years my terms have finished ludicrously early, so that I’m more being driven home for the start of December- and that’s got even less of a ring to it. So it is with great joy that this year I will almost be able to sing along truthfully to my very favourite Christmas song.

It’s definitely what Christmas is about- not the driving, or the traffic jams, as real as they are- but everyone returning home to their families and friends. And having been away from mine for so long, I’m more excited than ever. Not to mention that my return home means mince pies, which, try as I might, I just cannot find in Italy- if anyone wants to post me a jar of mincemeat, I would be delighted to offer you my address. It is impossible to try to search for something with such a weird, untranslatable name that doesn’t reflect its ingredients in any way. It’s the number one thing on my to-eat list when I get home. (I don’t actually have a to-eat list. Yet.)

Back in Bologna, I have been embracing the Christmas spirit (so, Christmas food) early, stocking up on panettone and buying myself an advent calendar. When I showed the calendar to my Spanish flatmate, I was shocked to discover he’d never had one. ‘No, I don’t think we have those in Spain,’ he said, only to be corrected when another flatmate, also Spanish, came in and said, ‘Um, yes we do, I had one every year when I was a child.’ His poor face dropped, and not being able to bear the idea of an advent-calendar-less existence, I picked one up for him at the Christmas market a couple of days later. Christmas joy all around.

The Christmas market is a European tradition that hasn’t quite crossed the Channel, and more’s the pity, because they are just so much FUN. Whilst it fails to reach the heights of some truly traditional Christmas markets, especially in Germany, Bologna has a couple; the Antica Fiera di Santa Lucia on Strada Maggiore, and one on Via Altabella that has not yet opened. Here’s a little film I made earlier of the delights of the first. Watch out for the model of Bolognese man cutting the traditional meat, mortadella!

A Brit Abroad: The Double-Edged Sword of Englishness

A British Social Attitudes survey carried out in 2013 saw a drop in the number of people who would describe themselves as ‘very proud’ to be British. What were we, then, if not ‘very proud’? Eight in ten said they were at least ‘somewhat proud’ to be British, a statement I really love. Quietly asserting a secret bit of patriotism in this way is just so, well, British. Whilst the whole idea of British patriotism has been rather tainted, especially in recent years, by its hijacking by certain political parties and far-right groups, most of us are happy being ‘somewhat proud’. We like to moan about all sorts of minor issues, but deep down we’re rather content with ourselves.

I’m getting nostalgic for all sorts of weird things, some of which I’m not even sure I liked that much in the first place. Things like the shape of a 50 pence piece, the word ‘juniper’, muddy fields, Bradgate Park, and the concept of a cone of chips. Are these things really that exciting? I’m not sure anymore, but I know they’re a part of my heritage. I’m somewhat proud of it.

And yet, when abroad, many of us feel quite a lot less proud when our Britishness is horribly evident in the games of Charades and Articulate that we’re forced to play in attempting to speak the language. Don’t know the word for earplugs? Don’t worry, just say ‘the things you put in your ears when you’re trying to sleep and there is some noise outside’ (a generous translation- a truthful one would have contained many more grammar errors), and the assistant will grimace and hand them over. At least it’s good practice for Christmas.

As a country, we’re pretty rubbish at learning foreign languages. The classic excuse is that ‘everybody speaks English anyway’, and whilst I desperately want to turn around to the people that claim this and say “no they don’t so get your head in that grammar book”, it’s kind of true. English is an extremely marketable language, and one that most European children now study intensely at school, so most people probably do speak at least a little bit of English anyway.

Therefore, when abroad we end up being immensely privileged. If you visit a museum in almost any other country in the world, and they have been so kind as to provide a translation of their reading materials, they will translate them into English first. Because even if a visitor from, say, France, is visiting Italy, they probably will have some knowledge of English. And so it is that everyone else has to read in a second language they are assumed to have, whilst we swan about and are spoilt with information handed to us in our native tongue.

I was talking with a friend from Germany about how much I hate dubbed films, and my struggles to find a subtitled version of the new Hunger Games film to watch. She pointed out that I probably only hated them so much because most films I saw were already in my language. A privilege I had never really noticed because I never really had to think about it.

There are lots of these privileges. Museums, films, tours, restaurant menus, signs: you name it, they’ve probably already translated it into English for you. Often quite broken, unwittingly amusing English, but a valiant attempt at English all the same. And it sounds so ungrateful to describe this massive, massive blessing as being actually a curse-in-disguise, but sometimes, when you’re really desperately trying to make the effort to actually learn a country’s language and all they seem to want to do is help you to avoid doing so, it’s quite demoralising.

Anyone who has attempted to speak a foreign tongue abroad has probably been confronted with the classic helpful waiter/waitress/shop assistant who replies to you in English, happy for the chance to practise as well as being just a little bit smug that they are doing you a grand favour. So they think. I wish I could wear a big sign that says ‘PLEASE SPEAK TO ME IN ITALIAN. I’M TRYING.’ But in the absence of cardboard and a big pen (where are all the stationery shops in Italy?), I just have to smile and keep ploughing on in the hope that they will be the first to crack in the battle of language wits.

If I have one aim for the year abroad, it is not for people to stop trying to speak to me in English. I am visibly foreign and not ashamed to be so; I am ‘somewhat proud’ of my heritage. No, the aim is thus: when I reply in Italian, and later in the year, French, they will be so struck by my mastery of the language that they will immediately revert to it. And that’s how I’ll know I’ve won.

The joy of visitors, and the pain of the elusive Erasmus grant

Last week I wrote about how important it was to your sense of homeliness to get away from a place and return to it again, kindling a sense of familiarity, a comfort in comparison to the unknown land you escaped to. There and back again. Well, it turns out that another important way to make a place feel like home is to bring people from home to it.

I don’t just mean with photos, notes and memories- though all these things are important- but actually having your friends and family in your new city is essential to homely feelings. Not to mention that you can hear them in a way that sounds like they’re sharing dry land with you (because they are), rather than that 3-feet-underwater-vibe that Skype so loves to offer its users.

Artist’s impression of Skype’s audio-routing systems.

Having visitors makes the lone year-abroader feel several nice things: important, busy, fluent and knowledgeable, because for the time your visitor is with you, you are comparably all of them at once.

Visitor wants a coffee? I have favourite coffee spots in this strange distant land! Visitor wants to see Italy but is afraid of getting lost on foreign trains (naming no names, boyfriend)? Not to worry, I always remember to validate the train tickets! Visitor cannot communicate their food order to the waiter? Fear not, I am your comparably linguistically gifted saviour! Not to mention that said food order may well be paid for by grateful guest.

Equally, having friends and family from home makes the whole experience feel much more like a holiday. Many people mock the year abroad, accusing us of exactly this- a year-long holiday, whilst they struggle on with their final year at uni and bitterly ‘like’ our Instagram photos. If it makes you feel better, the year abroad is nothing like a holiday. Unless you usually holiday alone, attend lessons in two different languages every day and independently sort out every bureaucratic, academic and financial issue that you really wish you could run away from.

Admittedly it is probably the year abroaders that exacerbate the problem; I have never written a blog post describing my lamentations about the lack of gravy in Italy, or about the fine line between independence and loneliness, or how much I cried at the well-timed capitalist genius of the John Lewis advert, and yet I’ve written lots of fun things about travel and festivals and food. In the words of the great modern philosopher Ronan Keating, ‘Life is a Rollercoaster’, and I’ve never felt that more than on my year abroad.

Some of the big rollercoaster peaks have definitely come with the visitors I’ve been lucky enough to have so far- my mum, dad and little brother/fratellino (thanks for teaching me that word, Peppa Pig!), and my boyfriend.

The fratellino of dreams

Sharing Italy, and specifically Bologna, with them, made it feel more mine, and much more like a holiday. Equally, memories of them all are rooted physically in places here; where we ate, shopped, and generally strolled about. Which brings me to another year abroad philosophy, developed with several friends I’ve stayed in contact with as we all embark on our extended holidays across Europe: do what you want, not what you feel you should be doing to have The Essential Year Abroad Experience. If what you want involves having a few friends to stay and speaking English constantly for a week, that’s FINE. Honest.

What is not fine, however, is the big hole in my bank account caused by the missing Erasmus grant. I should be getting, alongside thousands of other students on the Erasmus scheme, €400 a month during my stay, which is pretty essential to maintain a decent quality of life here. However, nobody seems to know where the money is. I’ve certainly not got it. It’s floating around somewhere between the EU, the British Council and the international offices of UK universities, but it has not yet made its way to my balance. Infuriatingly, many of these official bodies are now turning around to claim that we should never have budgeted around expecting to receive the grant we were told we would receive, because that would be a ridiculous thing to do.

A spokesperson from Sussex says: “We always encourage students to think of the Erasmus funding as a contribution towards the costs of studying abroad, rather than as an essential part of their budgeting.”

Thank you, o wise spokesperson from Sussex! Because ‘contribution towards the costs’ and ‘essential part of budgeting’ are such very different things, and a student would be terribly silly to mix them up. I’m still holding out hope that the grant may come through in time for me to pay my rent next month, but if not I will be in quite a tricky situation. A situation of quite a lot of time abroad left at the end of the money. A little more transparency would go a long, long way.

Still, the coffee is cheap, these days I shelter from the rain in ancient porticoes, and there’s a chocolate festival on in Piazza Maggiore. Take it away, Ronan:

Ellie watches telly in Italy

As the screaming hordes of fans of my other blog will know, as they sit desperately hitting F5 in anticipation of the next almost unbearably brilliant post, I’m a big fan of telly. Alright, most of that wasn’t true; apart from an errant visitor on October 19th, nobody’s reading it anymore, which is most probably colpa mia as I’m not writing it much anymore.

I see you, reader.

I shall attempt to justify my lack of posts; it’s partly that I barely manage to maintain a regular posting rate on this one, and running two blogs would take up a bit too much of my time. But mostly, it’s because Italian telly is rubbish. I hate to generalise, but it truly is terrible. I’m not one to make such a grand statement without evidence, so these are some of the average shows you might expect to find on a flick through the schedules.

Italy doesn’t seem particularly keen on making much of its own programming, so it has a huge amount of badly dubbed imported stuff from England/America. The thing is, the shows they choose to import are really of the very worst quality. It’s almost as if they’ve approached the production company about buying something to fill the schedules, been handed a list of possible choices and just gone for the very cheapest ones so they can go and spend the change on a nice cappuccino. We’re talking shows about people using fake identities on online dating, teenage pregnancies, and Geordie Shore. Really. They seem very keen on the ‘real life’ angle, even when that real life is incredibly dull. They even have a channel called Real Time devoted to it.

When it does make its own programmes, the minimum possible budget rule is generally still followed rigorously. Thus, they end up with a lot of poor ‘current affairs’ programmes, my favourite of which is the one where a man gets all the day’s newspapers and sits there highlighting parts as he reads them out. Cheap as chips, but much, much duller. They also have a hell of a lot of weirdly outdated game shows, which often involve a myriad of barely-clothed showgirls, known as veline. I’d rather not go on about how obviously damaging this presentation of women is; instead, it’s good to know that someone is doing something about it, even if the process seems to be taking a long time.

A pair of more generously clothed veline

I always knew we were spoilt in the UK with our world-renowned darling, the BBC, as well as top drawer commercial services like Channel 4. But I didn’t realise quite to what extent: there are really next to no decent dramas or comedies being made in Italy at the moment, apart from the excellent Commissario Montalbano, which itself was imported by BBC Four a few years back. I asked my Italian friend about this: surely there’s a demand for decent programming made in Italian? So why isn’t there any? The answer: in a word, Berlusconi.

Berlusconi’s media empire has pretty much single-handedly pulled the rug out from under Italian television. He started with Mediaset, a commercial competitor to the state broadcaster RAI, and won large audiences by pandering to the lowest common denominator, usually sex. A few years ago, Berlusconi also bought into RAI, and applied the same strategy again, so now there is little difference between the two networks. Add to this the financial pressure of the recession, and the lack of willingness to take risks, and it makes sense that they’re sticking to tired formats rather than pumping money into developing new ones.

Still, if someone were to stop me on the street tomorrow and offer me a job in Italian television, I’d take those risks and make better stuff. Italian television could still have the potential to go through the same cultural revolution that English television has gone through in recent years, becoming a more highly respected cultural pastime and a quality competitor to the cinema with its own artistic merits, rather than something to just have on in the background. Just make it happen before I leave in February, per favore.

Italy: Where everything (really, everything) gets its own festival

Festivals are what I call a good thing. We often forget about the pleasure of the little things in life, so having an occasion to focus on them and celebrate them can be no bad thing. The Italian word for ‘to celebrate’ is even ‘festeggiare’; festivals are in their blood, it seems.

And Italians love to celebrate. They’re famously, perhaps infamously, proud of their culture, especially when it comes to food. Not only would they laugh pityingly at the suggestion that any country’s cuisine might be superior to their own, but they are fiercely proud when it comes to regional specialties. Try asking any Italian where the best food in their country can be found, and they will undoubtedly claim their own region, and probably their own mamma/nonna’s kitchen.

Hence the endless festivals! I do not think I have been in Bologna a day when there has not been some sort of festival running. The first I actually went to was a tortellini festival, a Bolognese specialty that is now found across Italy. But of course, the Bolognese still do it best. How dare you suggest otherwise? The very idea of a tortellini festival pleased me immensely, reminding me of a friend from uni’s tendency to describe his incessant eating of Sainsburys tortellini (worryingly cheap, cooked in a few minutes; student essential) as a tortellini festival. The one I visited was significantly more extensive, but the two festivals had the same heart: a love for food and sharing it with friends.

Bologna’s tortellini festival was a popular affair, with over 20 chefs from around the city’s best restaurants stationed in a piazza, cooking up their wares to be tasted at a few euros a bowl. I had the joy of tasting the tortellini di parmigiano, carbone, funghi e nocciole (parmesan, charcoal, mushrooms and hazelnuts) from Trattoria Scaccomatto.

Okay, so I will admit it looks weird in this photo but I promise it was delicious, and entirely different to any pasta I’ve ever eaten before. Another joyous part of the festival was the availability of WINE BAGS. Along with the cupboard-dryer (see this post), we need these to hit the UK mainstream immediately. I forgot to take a photo in all the excitement, but a wine bag essentially hangs around your neck, snugly holding onto your glass of wine, leaving both hands free to eat with! This could only be normal in a country that puts the joy of food and wine above all else. I thought it was great.

How tortellini is made- from neat little squares.

Beat that, Sainsburys.

Other festivals that have gone on in the city since I’ve been here include a mortadella festival (a type of gloriously fatty ham), a water festival, a festival celebrating reading out loud, a techno music festival, and a books/art history festival. I decided to get in on the act by volunteering at a film festival, Terra di Tutti Film Festival, which took place at the Cineteca di Bologna, one of my favourite places in the city. I started by doing some translations into English for their website, and ended up volunteering at the festival itself at the weekend, earning me a very nice free t shirt and some new friends to boot.

The festival welcomes documentaries and social cinema from the southern hemisphere, aiming to bring to light some of the issues that ravage every day life for people in these regions. I was genuinely glad to have had the chance to be involved, something which no doubt improved my Italian too (I now have fun vocab at my disposal like information desk, badge and projection!). The spirit of celebrating good things can only be a good thing itself. I’m now looking forward to Bologna’s next big event: the famous Jazz Festival.

Biscuits, breakfast and the battle for toast

I’ve begun with an absurdly boring blog title, in what has actually been quite an eventful and cultural week. This week I’ve been to the opera, a music museum, out for delicious lunch and two equally delicious dinners, to see both a French and an Italian film, and volunteered at a film festival. But what’s on my mind? Biscuits. Sorry. At least there was a nice attempt at alliteration in the title.

It’s specifically these biscuits, the quite wonderful Pan di Stelle, that I’ve fallen for.

I was first offered one of these in Florence in 2013, which seems a strangely long time ago now, when Isobel and I were staying with a lovely Italian lady who offered us tea with these biscuits on our arrival. I hadn’t the heart to admit I wasn’t a fan of tea, especially because it was obvious she’d gone to a big effort to make the quiet, nervous English girls tea, so I sipped it meekly through pursed lips with a grimace that, looking back on it, probably could have been subtler. The biscuits, though, were a revelation, followed up by a purchase of at least 2 large bags during our 10 day stay. Just the right balance of nuts, cocoa and sugar. I tried to find them on my return to England but they haven’t made it there yet; I had them again in Rome in summer 2013, but they were always a bittersweet treat given that I knew I couldn’t bring them home. So I did the simple thing and moved my home to where the Pan di Stelle were.

I’m so glad we’re reunited. Even better, the biscuits are often on TV in this slightly creepy advert where the children live in a magical biscuit star world:

They’ve eaten too many Pan di Stelle and are in need of some Dulcolax, pronto.

I’m eating a lot of them. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, pre-bed supper. Often spread with Nutella on top, I am ashamed to say. But before you go judging me for eating biscuits for breakfast, you should first know that this is actually an important moment of cultural assimilation, and not just a problem. Because, in Italy, the dreams of small children across England’s green and pleasant land come true, and biscuits-for-breakfast is a perfectly acceptable status quo. You can just pour yourself a glass of milk, dunk them in (Pan di Stelle make for excellent dunking) and nibble away. In the end it’s really not much more unhealthy than a generous bowl of Coco Pops, but it still feels like a decadent way to start the day.

Other breakfast items are harder to come by, though. The concept of toasters does not seem to have made its way over to Southern Europe, and in a bizarre response to this, Italy just sells ready-toasted bread. I mean, I think it’s toasted.

How long until we get an episode of ‘How It’s Made’ on these babies?

These things are called “fette biscottate”, roughly translating to “crisp slices”, or more neatly “rusks”. Through a quick Google search, I’ve discovered we do actually have these in the UK, but here they are a staple of the diet, and my experiments reveal that they go very nicely indeed with apricot jam or Nutella. I’m trying to slowly replace my standard breakfast of Special K with them for three main reasons. 1. Special K (or its supermarket own brand equivalent) is heinously expensive here. 2. UHT milk ruins it anyway. And 3. I’m hoping that this breakfast change is a symbol of a greater attempt to integrate and live la vita italiana, starting with the little things and moving onto such heights as tonight’s task: applying for a PAM supermarket loyalty card to fill the void my Nectar card has left in my purse. Time to grab the Pan de Stelle and get cracking.

In which Italy thinks I’m male

Yesterday, I discovered that the Italian government thinks I’m a man. I know I’ve been looking tired lately, and perhaps haven’t been putting in heaps of effort with my make-up (there is simply no point in trying to put anything over suncream. It slides off like your face is made of greaseproof paper). But still, I wasn’t aware it had quite reached this point.

It was as I was sitting in a bank, attempting to open an account such that I could avoid English bank charges when paying rent, that things started to go wrong. The lady at the counter had typed my codice fiscale into her computer three times but the computer wasn’t having any of it. You can think of the codice fiscale it as a National Insurance number, but with heaps of horrific bureaucratic regulations and none of the fun of the smugly simple, proudly outdated NI card.

A stalwart of no-nonsense Britishness if ever there was one.

She called her colleague over in confusion, who spotted the cause of the error: the person that had generated my codice fiscale had written ‘M’ in the gender box. Which meant the whole thing was incorrect. Luckily they were able to calculate it themselves; apparently there’s just a formala that all the numbers follow, but it still didn’t feel too legit. Still, banking in Italy has been quite a different experience to home. The appointment to get a bank account took the best part of an hour, during which, if it hadn’t been for the standard clinical backdrop, I would have felt as if I were at someone’s house chatting over a coffee. The staff were so friendly! I have numbers to call the bank or its manager, and I know the names of individual staff I can ask for should I encounter any problems. (NatWest take note: I can’t even call my branch).

I even ended up leaving with a long list of recommended eateries in Bologna, because all the staff were so keen to enlighten the naive English girl on where the best tortellini could be found. My helpful assistant also taught me the rather charming phrase “O Kappa”, a literal way of expressing “OK” using the Italian alphabet (where K is pronounced kappa. Still not sure if this is clear). It’s a cutesy expression and probably rarely used, but I enjoyed it all the same.

The flip-side of all this unexpected friendliness is the unexpectedly high levels of security you can expect to experience in any Italian bank. I’m not sure if it’s only England’s banks that are flagrantly insecure, or Italy’s that are highly paranoid, but here they are absolutely abound with safety features. I visited a number of banks on my quest to find an account which was truly international, in the hope that I might not need to open a new one when I go to France. On visiting BNP Paribas, a French bank with branches in Italy, I was quite literally laughed out of the bank at the ridiculousness of my suggestion that it might be possible to have one account crossing the border of two countries that share a bloody currency. A girl can dream.

I digress; on my tour of the banks (expect full guide and a costly private tour to be available soon), I was greeted with airlock style sets of glass doors, a little pod you had to stand in and be scanned before entry, and security guards outside every branch. Even if you just want to use an ATM you have to scan your card and go inside so that they have a record of who’s entered in case of any wrongdoings. Now I’ve seen this, I feel that on my return to England I’m probably going to be a bit freaked out by our casual disregard for the possibility of armed robbery at the bank. And disappointed when nobody tells me where to go for dinner.