Getting There
The flight from Athens to Bologna was a mixed bag. We were right up at the front in the second row, and oddly one of the seats in the first row wasn’t present so I actually had leg room. But, being Ryanair, the boarding was significantly delayed and people were cranky. Amber also felt unusually nauseated on the plane. She gets motion sick pretty easily, and we were glad to hit the ground in Bologna.
It was hot when we got outside and found a late taxi. By this point it was a little after midnight, and we showed the driver our address. He shook his head. “Sundays, the center of city is closed. I can’t drive all the way there.” Nervously we agreed for him to take us as close as he could manage, imagining as we did schlepping a kilometer with our three big bags in tow over cobblestones. Fortunately, it turned out to only be about three or four blocks from where the Sunday only-walking zone kicked in to our apartment.
Interesting language choices for programmers
We buzzed in and very tall, old looking wooden doors swung open to us. Amber had received a PDF file with multiple pages of instructions in colorful text and separate numbered boxes. We managed to find the cabinet of lock boxes to get the key, but for several minutes couldn’t figure out which one was ours. Tired, hot, and frazzled, it felt like an escape room puzzle box. Eventually we reviewed the sheet again and found where the lock box number was listed after trying the code unsuccessfully on about half of them.
The elevator up to our flat was painted bright red. Unlike almost any elevator I’ve ever been in, the instant you pressed the button for your floor, the doors started slamming closed. This proved to be a fun game for us throughout the time pretending we’d shut the door on each other.
The flat was up on the fifth floor, with a nice open plan and wood floors and the bed up on a loft. The appliances were all new, and it looked pretty apparent that this was a pure rental, not someone’s actual apartment. Also it was rather steamy being on the top floor and exposed to sunlight during the day. The instructions asked to keep AC use to a minimum, but it was hard to keep the temperature liveable at all as it turned out Bologna was facing a heatwave that week. So much for cooling down a little post Crete!
The apartment
The artwork in the apartment was an odd mix. There was a large painting of an angel who looked either in ecstasy or about ready to pass out. Beside it were a couple of prints that looked to be from Alaska. Nice bookshelves lined the walls with a healthy selection of travel related books and random Italian volumes.
Art in the place
We flopped down into the bed as soon as it got cool enough, glad to have arrived at the next stage of our journey.
I <3 Bologna
Cooking Classes
As anyone who knows us is aware, food is our jam. Given that, a major component of our time in Italy was local cooking classes. We scheduled these through the excellent Cesarine website and could not have been happier with the results.
Our first full day in Bologna was a class with Maurizio. We took breakfast at an outdoor cafe in the plaza across from our apartment where sadly they refused to make Amber’s cappuccino iced (“No freddo!”) Then we walked the fifteen minutes out towards the edge of the city walls for the class at 11am. It was already hot enough that we were second-guessing whether the walking had been a good idea, but we arrived with a subtle glow about us.
Cooking with Maurizio
While we’ve taken classes before in spaces that are designed for classes, we love this style which just takes place in people’s homes. Maurizio had a lovely apartment with an unfortunately blazing porch, filled with eclectic furniture that perfectly suited it. We also got to enjoy his little dog, Dante, who constantly wanted to chase after the ball.
Dante, ever vigilant
With logo-emblazoned aprons on, we set into making pasta from scratch of two different types – a ravioli and a fettucini. This being northern Italy, these were made with flour and egg.
Ready to cook!
One time in the distant past we had made fresh pasta ourselves, but this turned out to be much easier than our memories. You make a little hill of flour, then with your fingers in the classic Italian pose form a crater or volcano into which you crack an egg. 100g of flour, more of less, work for one egg. You then slowly whisk up the egg, pulling flour into the mix until it turns to a ball of dough.
Once the dough has come together, with sprinkles of extra flour if it’s still too sticky, you knead it out by hand for a while. This mostly involves folding it over in half, then squishing it before repeating. As someone who doesn’t like getting my hands messy this stage was mildly stretching, but I went along.
Pasta rests, but we don’t
Once the dough had reached a texture that Maurizio could tell was right, we left it to rest for a half hour in plastic so the gluten could develop. While we did that, we prepared the filling for our ravioli, with fresh ricotta cheese and sauteed spinach. I enjoyed seeing Maurizio’s kitchen where he had a full on electric slicer for salamis and other meats. Standard issue in Italy apparently.
Filling prep
After the filling was ready and the dough sufficiently rested, we got down to rolling it out. This again was more to Amber’s skill set than mine, but we got things out into a thin enough layer. For the ravioli it was then a matter of spreading the little balls of filling and folding over before cutting between them with a specialized tool.
Keep it rolling
The fettuccine, while possible to slice by hand, was better served with a custom tool called a “chitarra” (aka guitar) where you simply set the rolled pasta over wires and press down to make even cuts.
Perfect fettuccine
The end results were delicious, even from our amateur preparations. The local wines helped out I’m sure.
Ravioli served with thyme and a little Parmesan
Our second class, also through Cesarine, was with Paola. We learned from our first experience and taxied there, as it was equally hot and her apartment was even further out from the city center.
Paola’s sunny kitchen
This class covered a different slice of foods with a little overlap in pasta making. We made piadina, an Italian flat bread. It made a delicious start.
As you knead it
Paola showed us the tricks to make tortellino (a specific size of tortellini). Much of the initial part of the pasta was familiar now, but she disagreed on a couple points, such as folding over and oil in the water for pasta. Controversy of the cooks! In any case, we learned the easy technique for sealing up the tortellino.
Perfect tortellino
The meal concluded with tiramisu, prepared pretty easily in small cups. We dined on Paola’s back porch in the shade by her garden, and all was well with the world.
Food Tour
Along with the cooking, we also had the opportunity to take a day long food tour to see how three different Italian classics are made – Parmigiano Reggiano, balsamico tradizionale, and prosciutto. Our guide picked us up from outside our apartment and had a car to drive us to the various locations, along with arrangements pre-made with the providers for our visit.
Welcome to the home of Parmesan
The first stop was where real Parmesan is made. Like all of the foods we experienced that day, it’s a DOP product, meaning that it’s restricted by not only location but process and ingredients. The dry white cheese in a plastic bottle this is not! Each location is controlled and tracked, with its own number so you can trace back the product you bought to the very spot it originated.
We spent quite a bit of the tour dressed up in paper gowns with foot covers while the workers went about their tasks with the huge copper vats. Although some amount of technology has been allowed into the process (witness the cleaning video below), it still includes some very manual steps. The judgement of when things are ready is also a facet where humans have yet to be replaced.
Here are a few too many videos of the process in action.
Cutting the cheese
Hoisting Parmesan
Retrieving the Parmesan
Cleaning up
A byproduct of the process is ricotta, which is made by recooking the whey that’s made in the vats. This was being packed as we ventured through the factory.
Ricotta packing
Once the fresh cheese has been retrieved and sat a while, it gets put into a metal container before going to spend a few weeks in a salt bath (not pictured here). Then comes the long wait.
New wheels before heading to aging
The factory includes a large space with row after row of shelves, running up several person heights towards the ceiling. Here the cheeses age anywhere from 12 to 36 months before they are ready.
Fresh on the shelves
Older entries, still aging
Things don’t always go to plan for every wheel. You can see some of them puffing which indicates something went off in the fermentation that gives Parmesan its unique flavor. Other wheels show cracking. The wheels are frequently checked with a little hammer, the sound enough to tell the master cheese makers what’s up inside the rind.
Something’s wrong here
Crackin’ up
Our next DOP item was on a private estate where they made real balsamic. I wasn’t fully aware, but nothing I’d ever had, either in Europe or in the US was the traditional thing. The aging process for traditional balsamic is laborious, with the end product taking either 12 or 25 years, minimum, to be ready.
Not that long in the past, this product was only available in the region, and traded or gifted between families. Only late in the last century did they begin to expand production enough to be able to sell some of it at a rather high price point.
The process starts from grapes grown either on the estate or nearby. The juice is squeezed and cooked before being ready to go into the barrels for aging. The balsamic is aged in the highest floor of the house, the room packed with barrels. It’s important for the development that it be hot there in summer – and it was! – and cold in winter. The balsamic needs to breathe. Each line of barrels is where the vinegar progresses through it’s aging process. Once a year they move liquid from the bigger barrels to the smaller.
Balsamic lines
The oldest line at the place we visited was started in 1888 and has been in continual use since. While the barrel leaks a little, they don’t mess with it for fear of screwing up the magic.
The oldest line, started 1888
The final product has to pass inspections that only allow through 1/5 of the candidates, even from the very rarefied set of families that are in the business. A meal was served after this tour, with free access to bottles of their product. Quite a genius selling device that. We bought home two tiny bottles for a hefty price.
A real Lamborghini
The last visit was to a place that makes prosciutto. As big fans of jamon, it was interesting to watch how this was done and contrast and compare the flavors of the product. There were a lot of cold rooms here, and a lot of places where they were aging varying grades of product, often with differing colors to the fats they use to seal it and different stamps depending on quality.
So much meat
Heresy to the Italians but I still appreciate the funk of the Spanish style cured pork legs better, but I have a deeper appreciation for the time and care that goes into prosciutto after the tour.
Eats
Needless to say, eating in Bologna was also a highlight, even when we weren’t in a class making it ourselves.
The first night we rocked out with no reservations, just to see what we could do at a couple recommended spots nearby. The first place we tried it was a really weird interaction – they said they didn’t have any, but then were having conversations with other folks who plainly didn’t have a reservation right beside us.
We wandered off and found another spot that looked busy and had a small cluster of people lined up. When we asked, apparently the line was for those without reservations, and it wasn’t too long so we joined the queue. The food was okay, though the pasta more al dente than I expected. We tried a fried zucchini blossom, but it mostly tasted of cheese and batter. The waiter switched between vigorous Italian and a shockingly British accent as people constantly maneuvered in and out.
Rolling pasta
We learned our lesson there and did better research and reservations for most of the later nights. The exception was Simoni Salumeria, which was more of a deli sort of place we took a chance on to great success. The great charcuterie and cheese came with perfect bread beside. I learned there to appreciate the mortadella, which I’d always viewed a little suspiciously as too much like baloney to be that good. I was wrong. Completely wrong. It’s luscious and fully deserves its standing in the meat counter.
At a recommendation from one of our guides/teachers, we got a reservation at Vicolo Colombiana. Tucked down a tiny street after which its named, we got an early slot easily which worked great for us. Here we had tortellini in brodo di cappone, perfect little pastas in a savory broth, and guancia di manzo, beef cheeks so wonderfully tender.
Another favorite was Trattoria da Me. I was expecting this for some reason to be a super traditional spot, but it turned out to be a very modern take on the cuisine. The waiter was boisterous and friendly, lighting up the room whenever he came in and full of suggestions. Here we tried again with the zucchini flowers and unlike our first night now I get the allure, the subtle flavors and textures of it. The waiter was extremely excited for us that they had the lasagna, which was normally only on Sundays, so we obviously had to go for that. We also did the rabbit and a side of fresh tomatoes that sang of summer. Truly an awesome meal.
And of course we can’t talk about food in Italy without Amber’s favorite, gelato. One of our spots in Portland is a gelato place run by an immigrant from Italy, so it was a thrill to go back to the source. I can’t give you the blow-by-blow because of how many times we would stop in for a little frozen treat. Whether on the way to an activity, or just popping out at 10pm across the plaza by our apartment, sweetness was never far away.
Gelato
More gelato
About Town
Bologna is a beautiful city. I honestly wasn’t too sure what we were going to do there, but it proved to be a perfect introduction to Italy for us. One of the most recognizable sights in the city were a pair of towers – one of them significantly leaning, take that Pisa! – and it was only a few blocks down the street from the apartment Amber found for us.
Garisenda and Asinelli – Bologna’s two towers
The city is very walkable near the center, and its architecture was a joy to explore. In Athens there were many landmarks which made an impression but the overall sense of the city apart from those spots was “generic European” to me. In Bologna on the other hand, there was an immediate sense that you were in Italy, similar to how you could land me in any corner of Barcelona and I’d know where I was. I could imagine myself in an Umberto Eco novel, criss-crossing the city alleys after dark.
A key component of that feeling of place was how the walkways and paths were built, the arching covered paths that you took from place to place.
Arched walkways
More arches
So much of the city was clearly built before the advent of cars. The narrow ways, the cobbled stones, the sense of winding your way through a maze made even the walk with Google maps to a restaurant something of an adventure.
Delightful little sidestreets
Shade down the way
A fun little side note, at least in downtown Bologna, pertains to the various grocery stores that we visited. Where normally stores are mostly a single open space, everywhere we went instead we found the places obviously carved out by connecting multiple rooms across what had to have been different apartments or shops previously. Now they were strung together in a winding maze. It made hunting for supplies extra adventurous, as you never knew what the next room would hold.
I’m not lion to you
Our days were often shaped around the excursions and classes we were taking, but there was a heatwave on which also sapped the remaining energy out of us. Most days followed a pattern of waking, doing an activity, then crashing at the apartment in the hottest part of the afternoon, maybe even napping, before emerging to dinner in the evening. Rough life.
We did some shopping in the city. An outpost of the sporting goods store Decathlon, which we frequented in Barcelona, was around and Asher dearly missed some of the swim trunks we’d gotten him there. Unfortunately it turned out to be a tiny one in Bologna so no trunks there.
Amber’s other obsession was to get some supplies for making pasta at home. We went to several locations looking for the right type of rolling pin like we’d seen in our classes. It took us eventually to a kind of cluttered, bazaar-like shop with narrow walkways down the aisles that two people could barely pass by, but we found the roller she was after. A chitarra proved impossible to find oddly enough, so Amazon it was.
Last but not least, at the balsamic place the meal had ended with an aperitif of homemade liquor aged on walnuts called nocino. I enjoyed it enough that we started asking after it at a few wine spots around, and while what we found wasn’t nearly as good, it was worth taking home.
We saw two other major sights in Bologna. One was the Basilica di San Petronio, a church bordering one of the plazas near our apartment. Only part of the front face was finished. Legend has it that the Pope of the time wasn’t too happy with it approaching the size and majesty of some other cathedrals, so he put a halt to the project and it remains unfinished to this day.
Outside the Basilica
Inside the Basilica
In a room off the main space of the cathedral were a series of really cool looking old choir books. These volumes were huge to be visible to folks from a distance while singing during services. Even so, the margins were decorated lavishly.
Choir book at the Basilica
It was a constant amazement too, throughout Bologna, all the little touches where things were decorated and gilded, painted and finished in style. The level of detail was so far past what I’m used to in the States, it’s really hard to imagine the world in which the work was done.
Such fancy decorations
Even the ceilings are fancy
The other big destination in Bologna was a set of sculptures of various figures from the Gospels, grieving over the dead Christ. Apparently these terracotta figures may have been painted and arranged different back in the day, but the exquisite way in which their emotions were captured was moving to see.
Some screaming
More screaming
SO MUCH SCREAMING
Our apartment was right across from the Piazza del Nettuno. As the name suggests, this plaza featured a massive statue of the god Neptune.
Neptune in the Plaza
Our cooking instructor Maruizio told us a story about this statue, though. The legend is that the artist originally wanted Neptune’s, well, manliness, to be rather more in keeping with his stature as a god. His patrons, though, refused and so Neptune was crafted in more modest proportions.
The artist, however, got his revenge. If you stand at just the right angle behind the statue, Neptune’s outstretched hand… well, look and see for yourself.
What the artist intended
In the States at least, we often view the past as being some more tame and bland time. I believe the facts of the matter are quite different than that impression.
Ahem
What I read along the way
- Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction - Various
- The Great When - Alan Moore
- Smiley’s People - John le Carré