The fat red one

Bologna has several nicknames. It's called la grassa because of the good food, and la rossa because of the red bricks and tiles, but also because most years since WWII it has been a bastion of left-wing governments. And today being May Day, I correctly guessed that there would be street parades. But the real action was in Piazza Maggiore. Socialist and humanitarian groups were staffing solidarity stalls there. A heavy metal band on the stage started playing Smoke on the Water.

Bologna lies in the fertile Po valley of Emilia Romagna and is one of a string of cities linked by the ancient Via Emilia, which still runs straight as an arrow through the cities, changing names. Near the piazza it was called Via Rizzoli.

What looks like three panels of mosaics surrounding the Italian and European Union flags in this picture, turns out to be many tiles, each tile bearing a photo of a partisan who died fighting the fascists and the Germans in the later part of WWII. Losses in this part of Italy were heavy. It is from this tradition of resistance that the leftist leaning of Emilia Romagna emerged.

This book fair, near the station, drew a lot of browsers. Bologna has the oldest university in the west, established in 1088. I explored the University area on foot for a bit, and then found lunch in a cafe. It was cannelloni with ricotta and ragù, and a salad sprinkled with balsamic vinegar. Incidentally there is no such thing as spaghetti alla Bolognese in Italy. The closest thing is pasta al ragù, and tagliatelle or lasagne are more likely to used in the north. For desert I picked two flavours at a nearby gelateria: due torri (two towers, hazelnut with black and white chocolate bits), and pistachio. The pistachio was incredibly fresh tasting, might even have been roasted that morning.

Here are the real due torri. They are the most famous of many towers constructed in Bologna in the 12th and 13th centuries. They seem uselessly tall for that era. I think it was basically a case of: My tower is taller than yours; Oh yeah? Watch this. Today they are a well-known meeting point.

An iron steed that had seen better days.

Since the hostel didn't serve dinner, the day's plan was to wander around until late afternoon and then have an early dinner before catching the bus back to the hostel outside the city. I browsed in some book shops (part of the reason was to peek at travel guides to get an idea of whether I had enough time to see a bit of Apuglia before catching the ferry to Dubrovnik in Croatia). I also sat at an Internet cafe catching up with email. It seems that all Internet cafes in Italy are required to record the identity of customers; this one took a photocopy of my passport details.