European Adventures:

Switzerland and Northern Italy, 2018-2019

The train rides went smoothly, though there was only about 40 minutes in between trains in Milan, which was just barely enough time to get off one and onto the other (they’re long trains, and it’s not a small station), so Robert figured he’d get an Italian SIM card when we got to Bologna, as our Swiss one stopped working right at the border (another thing trains have going for them—no customs or passport control! The only way we knew for sure we’d crossed into Italy was the phone). But we got into Bologna just before 7:00—on New Year’s Eve—and though there were many people out on the street, everything resembling a place that would sell a SIM card was shut tight. We walked from the train station to the AirBnB, which was right in old part of the city, just half a block off Piazza Maggiore, right on the most decorated street full of festive people. Helen had remained awake for the fun-filled train rides, but she immediately fell asleep upon going up on my back when we arrived at the train station, and I had the poncho over her again (a woman stopped me, asked where I was from, laughed when I said the US, and said she hadn’t predicted that but she knew Not Italy—she said women always carry babies “that way” in Africa, where she was from, but she never sees Italian women do it. She adjusted Helen’s sleeping head and put her hat on more firmly and patted her a lot before sending us on our way).

We didn’t get into the apartment until 7:40 or so, after stopping in many places to ask about phones. We did walk past a bunch of Christmas markets, and we saw the wood sculpture of an old man—to symbolize the old year—that they burn at midnight. On the street with our apartment there was an open gelateria and a few cafes and pizza places, so I assumed we’d just drop our stuff and go back down. But by the time we had unpacked a bit, and Robert had exhausted all possible options of getting a SIM card nearby, and we got back down to the street, it was 9:15, and clearly everything near our hotel had closed, and all the streets were closed off by the police (we were just half a block from the bonfire area after all). We walked for 40 minutes, just zigzagging around and asking people “ristorante apertura...?” hopefully; unfortunately, there were tons of people but nothing open except perhaps two upscale wine bars where you could get food, though most people were drinking, and which had large crowds waiting. Helen was wailing because we had left Bear in the apartment, so as to “travel light,” and starving kids plus a wailing two-year-old didn’t seem ideal for the wine bars.

Finally we found a random only-in-Europe place—a tiny storefront, almost the size of a mall kiosk, with three counters—one was basically a to-go bar with hard liquor offering shots for people to drink right there or plastic cups of mixed drinks to take away; across from it was a lotto and cigarette counter; and in the middle was a pre-made containers of pasta to go counter. Hilarious. Totally our kind of place, right? Anyway, we got a pasta carbonara and a tortellini that we could heat up back in the apartment, and it was not terrible. Clearly not the best pasta we had that week but totally serviceable in a pinch. Walking back we found an ATM Robert approved of and a vendor selling roasted chestnuts, which somehow Robert had never had in his life, so we got those too. The kids went to bed, and then Robert went down to watch the bonfire last night, and see some fireworks. I tried to sneak out of bed but sleeping Helen was in her magnetic mode and just moved with me, so I couldn’t get out. But Robert took a fun movie of the bonfire that the kids liked, and everyone slept very soundly.

Happy New Year, Bologna! On New Year’s Day Marcus woke up with an upset stomach, so Robert stayed home with him while Samantha and I went exploring. When he was feeling a bit better, we all went down to see the plaza from the bonfire in daylight, and then to a Christmas market and a little upscale foodcourt (Mercato di Mezzo) where we had spinach handpies, broccoli focaccia, arrancini, and deep-fried polenta balls split and with sliced salami in the middle. Helen and Samantha devoured them!

We finally made our way to a special sculpture exhibit, by Ivan Dimitrov. It was great: 300+ clay nativity figures, arranged in scenes in different rooms in a gorgeous 16th century villa with period furnishings and books. Samantha was very interested in it, noticing the techniques the sculptor used and how he supported the figures. The exhibit showed paintings by Brueghel, da Vinci, and others and then showed how the sculptor included figures from those paintings in his nativity scenes. Helen sat in my sling and looked at them all—she was happy to find the baby in each one and comment on what the baby was doing, then fine the other animals. There were about twelve rooms and we walked through in about half an hour, but it was the perfect length of time. The guards looked mildly nervous as I walked around just me with Helen and Samantha (Marcus was in the bathroom most of the time, with Robert), but we were fine.

Then we went back to Piazza Maggiore where we watched some of the “Dancing Bo” (hello, corny festival name!) shows: Teen girls doing folk dances, then adults/professionals doing some ballet numbers to Nutcracker scenes, then couples waltzing in period costumes, etc., alternating on two outdoor stages. Very cool, crowded but still fun to watch, and a sunny not-too-cold day (maybe 42 or so). We met up with Gabriella, an old high school friend of mine from seventh grade who now lives here with her husband (an American music professor who used to be Cori’s roommate) and their boys, ages 4 and 6. Their six year old and Samantha immediately took to each other, talking and holding hands and walking along together.

We walked a ways to find a restaurant our friends approved of that was also open and didn’t not have a forty minute wait (at 1:30—really not much was open!). They did the European thing of sitting all the kids at one end of the table and trying to completely ignore them, and for the most part it worked—Marcus who was feeling a little better by now (he actually didn’t need to go to the bathroom at the restaurant, and he ate a piece of bread and about 1/3 of a plate of mostly plain gnocchi, which seemed good for his stomach) sat at the end reading on his Kindle (when he doesn’t feel well he likes to reread favorite books, and he finished The Call of the Wild for the 23rd or so time and then reread the second Ender’s Game again as well); our friends’ youngest, who had just turned four, sat across from him and ate bread and tortellini al ragu and colored on a page I pulled out of my bag, along with crayons; Samantha and the older son sat next to each other and talked about her wristwatch, the writing on the menu and napkins, kinder eggs, what colors their rooms are, and also looked at the two Boston-themed picture books we brought them as presents.

Lunch took over two hours. They completely forgot Gabriella’s husband’s meal, and then finally started offering him random dishes. Gabriella was just dissolved in hysterical laughter and David (mild-mannered American, blonde guy from Ohio, clearly not Italian, but by this point fluent in the language—and the gestures!) finally, after 90 minutes, with the rest of us entirely done eating, got up and strode to the front of the restaurant speaking agitatedly and making such native-Italian gestures that they clearly took him seriously. He came back with a meal for himself that he may have snatched out of the hands of someone in the kitchen, and he proceeded to eat it hungrily. Then we all went walking to a gelateria they particularly like, but that was closed, and then to a cafe/bakery, but THAT was closed too, and then just to their house, since they lived close by (at that point..) and David’s parents and sister, visiting for Christmas from Ohio, had gone out yesterday morning and bought a chocolate hazelnut cake from their favorite bakery across town. No one had cut into it yet, but we clearly helped them make some headway on the cake.

The Ohio grandparents and aunt were friendly and accommodating, so we all had cake and tea and blood orange juice, and the kids played until finally we left their house around 5:30. We walked back towards our hotel, looking at the old city walls and the leaning tower, and stopping for gelato. Marcus had hazelnut-coconut with a Nutella ribbon, Samantha had chocolate, and Robert and I split a stracciatella and an almond-nougat. The second course of the meal was pizza. Robert was thrilled with how cheap things are—two and a half euros apiece for small cups of gelato, mixing of flavors allowed and pizza slices one to two euros apiece depending on the toppings (smaller than typical American slices, but thicker, and really tasty). Marcus ate a scoop of gelato and a slice of artichoke pizza (and we’d made sure he stayed hydrated all day) and then just started looking tired, but not actively sick. We got back to the apartment, and the kids were asleep fifteen minutes later.

Robert went back out because the nice Ohio grandma had told him her favorite drink in Bologna was at a cafe around the corner from our apartment. Humorously, he ordered exactly as she told him (a cappuccino-something-or-other, where that was the name of the restaurant, so presumably a house cappuccino—or so he thought) and got a shot of espresso with a shot of amaretto liqueur and a swirl of heavy cream and hazelnut syrup and then whipped cream on top. He was not prepared for this! When he came home, he kept saying “that Midwestern grandma didn’t tell me it was an ALCOHOLIC capuccino!” indignantly. Once Helen was soundly enough asleep that I could sneak out of bed with her, I went to a different gelato place just three doors down from our apartment and got a mixed scoop of chestnut and coffee-biscotti for Robert and me to share while watching some Netflix in the living room.

The next morning we got up and out around 7:00, walking back to the train station to take a local/regional train just 20 minutes to the nearby town of Modena. There a guy met us with a van and took us out into the countryside about 20 minutes to a Parmesan Reggiano dairy to watch the cheesemaking process. We spent over an hour there, maybe even 90 minutes, watching from right next to the cheese vats and even getting to taste the fresh cheese immediately upon it being removed from the whey. Then we tasted the hot ricotta made from the whey, and then we tasted 12 month, 24 month, 36 month, and 50 month parmesans too.

The kids had a great time and all liked talking about the different cheeses. Marcus wasn’t a fan of the smell of the dairy, but he survived.

Then we drove about 15 minutes to a balsamic vinegar producer, and we got to see their store rooms and the vineyards and bear about the processs and taste some 2 year old (for cooking/supermarkets), 12 year old, and two variants of 25 year old balsamic vinegars (one aged in mixed wood battle and one only aged in juniper wood barrels). The juniper was served in little chocolate cups, and Helen woke up from a nap just in time to consume one, chocolate and vinegar in its entirety. Robert also sampled some walnut liqueur made there as well.

We drove another 20 minutes to a 17th century convent now used as a working farmhouse and sometime bed and breakfast. The owner did a pasta cooking lesson and had us all make lunch together. I don’t make pasta from scratch often, though I’ve done it maybe periodically, so I was familiar with the process but the kids were mostly comparing this process to making Chinese dumplings.

The building we were in seemed to be unheated except for fireplaces, and the kitchen, and though it has a sink with running water and a gas stove/oven and electric meat slicer (obviously a necessity for the prosciutto!), was pretty minimal. There was a fireplace in the dining room two rooms away, which had a lovely antique-look ceiling. The owner’s wife is an architectural restorer by trade, I found out—she did the painting and the fancy ceiling in by herself.

For lunch, with the driver/tour guide and the owner/chef (both named Paolo), we made potato-ricotta ravioli using wheat the owner grows himself and turns into flour, in a prosciutto and butter and shallot sauce, and also pork cutlets breaded and cooked in a Balsamic sauce with blistered endive.

There was bread made from their own wheat and local mortadella too, and wines (both a regular red and a sparkling white) made from the special grapes used for balsamic vinegar, so we were consuming the grapes in two forms, and espresso.

The kids got to go into his balsamic storeroom (he makes his own, not using the commercial producer we had just toured) and siphon off enough of the two-year old vinegar to fill a jar. I was a bit aghast that they were really supposed to use their mouths on that big eye dropper-type thing, but somehow they each rose to the occasion and managed neither to backwash all over the vat of vinegar nor to dribble it all over and waste it. This took ages and ages, but the kids had fun for all of it.

After lunch we drove just five minutes to a nearby salumi and mortadella and prosciutto museum put on (quite slickly) by the local consortium of meat producers. They had video clips of their production process and examples of tools and also a tasting of different cured meats.

After that it was 5:00 and the guide dropped us back at the train station and we took the train back to Bologna. Robert finally found an open cellphone store and got his SIM card, and we went out for dinner (tagliatelle al ragu, tortellini en brodo, plain tagliatelle for Samantha, and big veggie-stuffed pan-fried ravioli for Robert, plus another wild coffee drink—though this one wasn’t alcoholic). Then we went for gelato at the place two doors down from our apartment and got the kids in bed.

The next morning we grabbed some croissants and a jam turnover for breakfast from a bakery and went to climb the taller of the two towers in Bologna. They are a pair of towers built in the 1100s, supposedly part of the inspiration for the World Trade Center design; the tall tower is 97 meters tall. Both are leaning, the smaller one much more than the tall one and also more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and both have been hit by lightning in the past. You buy tickets online ahead of time for a set time (9:30, 10;45, 11:15, etc.— we were 9:30, first of the day) and then show up at the tower. American that I am, I expected something of instructions or an orientation, but it was just a very unceremonious opening of a door, glancing at a ticket, and gesturing toward a flight of steps. I assumed the staff might give a three-minute spiel on the history and construction of the towers and then a two-minute spiel on “take your time on the stairs; they are old and uneven. If at any point you need assistance, a staff member is at the top and bottom of the tower at all times,” etc. But nope. I didn’t realize until afterward how Italian the whole experience was. Anyway, we started climbing. Robert was carrying Helen because he said it would be too much for me, so I was walking with Samantha, jollying her along (it was a long way, and it was really steep, and obviously that is harder for her legs than ours because she’s just physically smaller), and Marcus was hopping along on his own, and Robert was holding Helen. Then it became obvious from Robert’s face that he wanted me to take her, and he admitted that his arm was cramping from holding her, so I did, taking off ahead with Marcus, and wore her for the final two-thirds of the way up. Robert and Samantha fell behind but still were ahead of this 30ish couple with a woman who seemed deathly afraid of heights and who kept stopping to breathe deeply and clutch railings, then shake her head and keep going. Everyone else in our 9:30 group was way ahead of us. At the top, we looked around and took pictures briefly, and congratulated Samantha on making it up, and then it was time to start down again.

I guess I hadn’t really figured what it would be like on the way down, but it was kind of nightmarish. I mean, it ended, and we all made it out without serious injury, but there were actual tears (Samantha) and the desire for tears (me) and it took what felt like forever. It was so steep I had to go backwards part of the way, and each flight of stairs is made of wood and handmade and slightly different height/width than the others. So you’re doing 408 steps but they’re not predictive of each other—you have to be watching every step and change strategies every flight (about 30 steps between landings). Sometimes the railings were in different positions and sometimes they disappeared entirely. Some stairs were so worn out they sloped dramatically in the middle, and others seemed basically fine. Samantha was a wreck, but Robert led, and she made it. Helen stayed in my sling because there was no other option—we just had to get down. Marcus was in front of me, and at one point I slipped. My ankle didn’t turn at all, which was good because I’m susceptible to sprains and really didn’t know how I would make it down the rest of the stairs if it were sprained. Basically I just hit a worn-out, sloped step with my full weight on the slippery part and my left foot slid out from under me. My shoe slid off and down about eight steps, my foot folded underneath me and the toes/instep got bruised bouncing down a couple steps with me on top of them, my right elbow also hit a few steps, and I slid down in a domino effect knocking into Marcus, then Samantha, then it all stopped at Robert. The kids were surprised, not hurt, and no part of Helen hit anything, and she didn’t even cry. Marcus and Samantha got right back up, Marcus found me my shoe, and I limped back down. Later that day and the next I had a big bruse on the top of my foot and an aching elbow, but no real damage done.

But as you may have imagined, we were slow going down—us, then the 30ish couple, then about random people from our group who had the bad luck to be stuck behind us—and apparently the staff doesn’t actually check to see if the stairs are clear before releasing the next group to go up, so when we were about halfway down (51 meters, the sign on the landing told us) we ran into the next tour group coming up. Oof! That made things even more fun, because now I couldn’t use both railings (when they were even there) and I couldn’t pick and choose my foot placement on the stairs to try to avoid the worn/sloped spots. We made it down, though. After I slid into him, Marcus announced he was done, and he took off at high (well, normal person with a lot of energy) speed in front of Robert and waited at the bottom rolling his eyes a lot. What an experience! It made the Statue of Liberty look spacious, relaxing, and easy to climb!

From the tower we went to the main Bologna library to see the ruins in its basement—2nd c BCE, 6th century, and 16th century. It was a very cool mishmash of stuff with nice archaeological overlay diagrams and even some English. That was just a block from our apartment, so we went back and used the bathroom and got our stuff and walked to the train station. Along the way we bought some almond and pistachio cookies, a Nutella-filled mini canolli, and some arrancini (salmone and fungi), and also a magnet shaped like a little tortellini (one of the symbols of bologna) for Sarah, who collects fun dishwasher magnets. The train was fast, less than 90 minutes, and then we were in Venice.

more. . . .

 

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Created: 1/9/19. Last Modified: 2/25/19.