Bologna

10/31/2009

Happy Halloween! Unfortunately, Halloween happens to be my least favorite holiday, so I am very glad I spent the day taking a train back to my favorite country. Yes that’s right, today I had my last extremely long train ride. The ride from Munich to Bologna was 7 hours. After my Eurail experience on this trip, I have decided that trains are only worth it if they are under 4 hours and are cheaper than flying. Also I noticed on this trip to Munich, because Oktoberfest was over, people were not dressed up in traditional clothing anymore. I kinda liked it when they were better.

I probably took too much of my sweet time this morning getting out of the hostel. I woke up, took a shower, got ready, and packed the majority of my pack in record time. I wanted to get out of the room fast because the dread locked couple that I saw in the same bed yesterday were there again and I noticed it was two guys! Needless to say I did not want to be there when they wanted to have their private time. I had another nice breakfast and then went to the lobby to check my mail and book a hostel for Cinque Terra. This is where I got side tracked because I couldn’t make my computer charger work. The cord is starting to fray in one part that I have attempted to protect for the time being with a bandaid (how cute right). It ended up just being the outlet, but between this fraying and the fact that the charge sparks often when I put it into the electric converter, I am praying that my computer set up makes it through the rest of this trip. Then I had to finish packing up my pack and take the sheets off my bed. By the time I made it to the train station, I realized I wouldn’t be able to buy lunch at the grocery store there and would have to suck it up and make due with over paying for things on the train.

Today’s train ride was a rather pleasant one. Once again I got onto the train in perfect timing. Im getting so good at this it is starting to scare me. I should probably work on being earlier just to ensure that I will make my train. The cabin that had my seat reservation in it already had four people sitting in it when I walked up, so I decided to set up camp in the empty cabin next door. I had another successful pack lift. Only one other girl joined me in there for the entire morning. Because there were only two of us, I could lay down across the seats for the first time ever and take a solid nap. I slept for the entire morning portion of the train ride, which totaled to be about two hours. At one point, I had a wacky dream that she was singing to me…Im still not sure if it was a dream, but regardless it was nice. From the announcements made on the intercom, I have decided that German takes way longer to speak a message that English does. It is either that or they are saying way more in the message in German than they are saying in English.

The train ride went on. I wrote blogs, emails, listened to music, and just hung out in general. At one point a woman came into the cabin and told me I was sitting in her seat. So I moved over a seat to one of the four other empty seats in the cabin. I guessed she wanted to sit by the window, but then she promptly fell asleep. Really, she couldn’t have slept in any of the other free seats and not made me rearrange for her. Its funny how serious some people take seat reservations, while others don’t really care if there are other open seats.

I had had enough of sitting in the negative energy, so I gathered all of my belongings and headed to the food car. I had brought along a roll and honey from breakfast as a snack and at one point in the early afternoon I bought a Fanta to quench my thirst, but I figured I would have a beer to hold me over till dinner. Beers are surprisingly filling. The restaurant waiter was a little nutty and made me lock my pack in a random closet, but later on he warmed up to me. He served me some crostinis with my beer and watched me play solitaire for a while. I ended up spending the rest of the train ride in the food car because no one else was there and I was enjoying the solitude. I also had another beer to help pass the time.

When we arrived in Bologna, I hopped on a bus to the hotel and had minimal problems finding it. When I was looking for hostels in Bologna, none were really striking my fancy. Since I was only going to be here for one night and was coming to have a nice dinner and it was Halloween, I thought I might as well treat myself to a nice hotel too. It wasn’t outrageously expensive either and I can reason paying it 100 different ways, so I went with it. The hotel is very nice, offers a free breakfast (hopefully it is a good one), and its nice to have privacy in my own room again. It doesn’t have free Internet, which is lame, but I can make due.

I unpacked and got organized for a while and then went out in search for a good place to have my delicious Bolognese dinner. I took a bus back to the train station and then started walking around Bologna from there. It was nighttime and I was only in a little part of the city, but I determined that Bologna is a pretty dirty city. People were out and dressed for Halloween. It took me a while to find a restaurant because the one I wanted to go to didn’t open until 7:30. I walked around until then seeing if I could find another restaurant that looked as good, but alas around 7:45, I found myself back at the original restaurant I wanted to go to. The place was called The Truffle (but in Italian obviously), and I got a good vibe as soon as I walked in.

They sat me at a table that was in a room where an animated Halloween movie was playing on a TV. Being a single diner, I appreciated the distraction. Since I had come to Bologna to eat, I decided to go for the four course meal. I started off with some excellent taglitelli Bolognese (which had hints of truffle in it), followed by a savory balsamic steak ( Ilove how Italians prefer their steak on the rare side) and some not so good sautéed spinach, all with Chianti wine, and a very good tiramisu (surprise surprise, I just love it so much) to top it all off. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and would definitely choose to spend another Halloween doing the same thing.

I was able to catch the bus right outside of the restaurant, but was an idiot and didn’t get off at the stop that I thought I should have. At this stop I needed to cross the street and catch the same bus, but going in the opposite direction. I realized this as soon as we pulled away so I got off at the next stop and had to walk a block back to the place I thought I should have made the connection. Luckily the second bus hadn’t come yet. I got off the second bus at the right stop, which is tricky in the dark of a place you have only seen twice. On the bus rides I noticed that the streets of Bologna were popping off with Halloween festivities. Entire streets were blocked off to car traffic. People seemed to be loving the holiday. I was very glad to get back to the hotel and relax in some peace and quite for the first time in a while.