After breakfast, Hohei and I caught the bus to the city. The bus was late, but so was the train to Reggio nell'Emilia, upstream from Bologna on the Po. While we were in the waiting room, I pointed out the bomb memorial to Hohei. I can feel a great sadness in this room, he said.
I'm too weary to go for a sit-down dinner so I bought a takeaway pizza and ate it in the hostel's refectory. After dinner I entertained myself reading a trashy crime fumetti (comic book, literally little puffs of smoke, referring to the speech balloons) I found in the dorm. Good language practice. I can now say things in Italian like: That car is tailing us. Could be very useful.
It rained all the way to Reggio and didn't let up when got off the train. We looked around a bit, walking under porticos, but eventually took shelter and lunch in a by-the-slice pizza parlour. The town looked affluent from the contents of the shops but I think most of its inhabitants lived outside the city and were staying indoors on this gloomy Friday.
Hohei went back to Bologna and I waited until 1530 for the hostel to open. The hostel is in a large villa and the corridors are huge and echo-ey. The hostel would have felt even more forlorn if some young Italians on a weekend jaunt hadn't turned up later.
A washout of a day, really. Into each journey some rain must fall, to misquote the old saw. The only picture I took was of this quirkily named fire hose reel. Oh dear, I'm going to be bored in Reggio in a day if it's this small. Well at least Parma and Modena are within commuting distance.
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