The Italian Job

It's taken a while, but after one month, a few linguistic misunderstandings, several rainforests' worth of paperwork, and the odd helpful contribution to the office, I think I might finally be getting the hang of this whole working-in-a-foreign-country thing.

I'm interning at the Goethe Zentrum, the Bologna branch of the Goethe Institut, a huge organisation responsible for promoting German culture and providing German language courses. The reasoning behind this was that I wanted to keep my German up whilst living in Italy and get some experience of work in the cultural sector, and in those aspects it's been a success. But being the only person there with neither German nor Italian as my native language, there's the danger of work that's either way above my linguistic level and therefore terrifying, or just boring as they're not sure what I'll be able to manage. The Bologna office is small with only three permanent members of staff, but fairly chaotic nonetheless, and they've not managed to find time to give me much of an explanation of what my role actually is. But after a bit of time to suss out, along with the other interns, how the office works and how we're supposed to help, I'm now being trusted with more responsible and interesting tasks - as well as the obligatory occasional photocopying sesh.

As it's the start of the academic year, the Institut is busy at the moment with all the new students signing up for the year, and we have to give them the relevant information, examine them to test their level, and fill out approximately five million forms. Although the Italian students probably don't appreciate having their German examined by an English girl with a very iffy accent, this is one of my favourite jobs, not only because I can act all teacher-y with my red pen and examiners' booklet, but because I'm hoping that correcting their mistakes is going to drill the German grammar rules into my head, something seven years of learning the language hasn't yet achieved.

As well as the language courses, the Goethe Institut organises cultural events throughout the year, from concerts to talks to film screenings, and I've been helping to get these sorted for the next few months. This has involved putting together the programme for the term and contacting the musicians or speakers to confirm details, as well as researching potential films (including the charmingly titled 'Fickende Fische') and ordering food for the Institut's open day. The latter task reminded me of Year 9 German lessons where you'd plan a shopping list for a party, but somehow evolved into a herculean task as none of the staff seemed familiar with online ordering and struggled to come to terms with the concept of a username, all of which was quite entertaining for me and the other two interns - I think we earned some serious respect from the boss for solving this conundrum for them. This weekend the Institut hosted a concert by a youth orchestra from Leipzig, so I helped to make programmes, set up the event, welcome people and explain a bit about the Goethe Institut in the hybrid German-Italian that seems to be the office's lingua franca.

There's also the inevitable deluge of admin and errands – filing, phonecalls, emails, and multiple trips to the post office and coffee bar (being Italy, it's an unpaid internship if you exclude the Erasmus grant, but coffee/juice expenses are covered, something I am taking full advantage of). Not exactly glamorous perhaps, but the post office lady, barista and I are practically besties at this stage, and I've finally got the hang of both the fiendish photocopier and my Italian 'phone voice'. The obvious benefit of a bilingual German-Italian office is that I don't hear a word of English all day, and even the more tedious tasks have the bonus of picking up exciting new vocab such as 'mark as spam' 'photocopy this front and back' and 'can I please speak to someone who knows what they're talking about?'...Only joking (sort of) but I do feel a ridiculously huge sense of achievement every time I successfully manage to give someone the information/paperwork/translation they asked for!

How it feels every time I misunderstand an instruction in German...

Familiar faces

Bologna is the sort of city where, for better or for worse, you can't help bumping into the same people over and over again. It's sort of like the bit in the Truman show where Jim Carrey realises the same cast of characters is passing by his house on a loop, although there (probably) isn't anyone filming my year abroad for a reality TV show.

Three people in particular who seem to pop up everywhere are: a German guy recognisable by his fascinatingly awful facial hair; the happiest beggar I've ever seen, who sings to and high fives everyone, regardless of the fact no one seems to give him any money; and a little man who cycles along the student streets with a megaphone. But by far the biggest coincidence happened on Friday night. I'd somewhat optimistically gone out to an apperitivo for German speakers in Bologna with Glesni, another English student - the one from Lymm - when about ten of the freshers from Lincoln, my college at Oxford, walked into the same bar. It was completely crazy bumping into them in the middle of Italy, but a nice relief to be able to abandon the floundering attempts at German (I'm already starting to have trouble speaking English properly, let alone another foreign language) and to see some people from home.

I say 'home' but I'm feeling more and more at home here in Bologna, and starting to recognise the familiar faces of the city is a part of that.  In Oxford, we have Hassan, local kebab vendor extraordinaire, Simon the Lincoln barman and master of chat, and the guy who plays the fiddle on a tightrope on Cornmarket. Here, the megaphone man is apparently quite the celebrity among the locals, and I've also been told to look out for a woman who often spends the weekend singing in Piazza Maggiore - not busking, just walking around having a bit of a sing song. Fair enough.

The start of year abroad is like a repeat of Fresher's, meeting lots of new people and repeating the same obligatory introductory questions and answers over and over, but it's much nicer now there are some recognisable characters around, like the man with the megaphone, and even actual friends, exciting. Other than the people I've met through the Erasmus programme, most of whom are fellow inglesi, I've also joined a Language Tandem group. The idea is that you meet up with someone who speaks the language you want to learn, so you each get some speaking practice and help with the language. At first it all sounded a bit weird and blind datey, with far too much potential for awkward situations, but I decided I wasn't going to meet any Italians staying in and watching the Great British Bake-Off on iPlayer (nb this does not mean I'm going to stop watching this excellent programme. Ever. I want Ruby to win) so I manned up and went along. And funnily enough, all the Italians I've met so far have been nice, normal people who have been keen to show me round their city and help with my Italian, and their polite insistence/barefaced lies that I already speak it very well is a not unwelcome ego boost. Add in the fact that they know all of the best gelaterias and apperitivo spots, and you can't really go wrong.

Bologna la Rossa

Bologna is known as la grassa ('the fat one' - because of its food), la dotta ('the learned one' - because of the famous university) and la rossa ('the red one'). The 'rossa' links partly to the city's left-leaning politics; as it is full of students, socialism and communist ideologies have always had strong support here, and the Italian Communist Party continued to govern the area for most of the postwar period.

But there is another reason for the nickname; the autumnal colours of the buildings, arches and porticoes. When you walk through the city's arcades, it can feel as though you're literally looking at it through rose-tinted glasses, the Emerald City in inverse. It's completely different to anywhere else I've visited, and the blazing reds and oranges give Bologna a warm and distinctly 'foreign' feel, compared to the grey office blocks of most large European cities. It's looking its best at the moment in the September sunshine (which I am consistently overdressed for. 20 years up north has clearly instilled in me a deep distrust at any sign of good weather and a reluctance to leave the house sans knitwear) and I've been trying to take a few photos to capture the different sides of the city.

Palio di Parma

After 2 weeks here, I'm beginning to feel more settled in Bologna, and so on Sunday I made my first foray into another Italian city: Parma. Unfortunately, this was also the day of the first rainfall since arriving here. But we soldiered on and trudged round the main sights; the park, the churches and palaces, a lot of monuments from the time of Fascist rule, and the, ahem, river, which turned out to be completely dry (unlike us). 

The highlight of the day however was definitely sneaking off from the rest of the group to find somewhere warm and dry to get food - wet feet has to be the worst feeling in the world. Four of us found a traditional little trattoria where we had lunch, and as you would expect from any Italian town, never mind the birthplace of Parma ham and Parmesan cheese, it was delicious. 

But the main point of the visit was to see the Palio, a medieval festival. It dates back to celebrations of an engagement in a noble family which brought an end to the in-fighting among the various families who wished to dominate Parma, and is a sort of friendly competition between the five areas of the town. Each area is known as a porta, named after the doors in the old city walls, and each team has its own costume. There are three races; for men, women, and children on donkeys (amazing), and then the teams take part in medieval dances, war re-enactments and rather a lot of flag-waving. Completely bizarre, but seeing as my college in Oxford has an annual ceremony of throwing coins at children from a tower, I decided to reserve judgement.

Something that took me by surprise was just how many people were involved; it seemed as if most of the village had a part to play, both young and old. The Palio is obviously quite a big deal, and the period dress was elaborate, as were all the performances - the flag-throwing in particular. At first all I could think of was Cheryl in Miss Congeniality "twirling can be a real art, you know", but, to be fair, it must take a lot of practice to be able to juggle six flags without any unfortunate flag-meets-eye incidents.

Bologna at the weekend

Having just had my second weekend in Bologna, I'm surprised how differently they do things compared to at home, where everyone carries on much the same as normal. The Italian word for weekend is 'finesettimana', and the emphasis on the verb 'finire' seems apt, as everything does seem to stop. Being a Catholic country, they take their Sundays in particular quite seriously, and many shops don't open at all, even supermarkets. The main roads of the centro storico are closed to traffic, so the city centre becomes pedestrianised, and the whole pace of life seems to slow right down. 

The uncharacteristic peace and quiet takes a bit of getting used to, but I do enjoy the novelty of crossing the road without fearing for my life. In the absence of the drivers with a deathwish who usually dominate the streets, markets spring up in many of the piazzas, selling everything from the usual rubbishy clothes to antiques to locally sourced food.

Of these, the food markets are definitely my favourite. Bologna is Italy's food capital, and one thing I've learnt is just how seriously they take their cuisine; one of the Italian students who works for Erasmus gave me a 5-minute lecture on how to cook pasta as soon as he heard my accent, because the English apparently never do it right. Something else we get wrong is spaghetti bolognese. To us, the epitome of Italian cuisine, but no - the Italians eat ragu with tagliatelle instead, because the flatter surface is better at catching the meat. I'd already been told that on my last visit to Italy, but hadn't realised the true extent of the pasta regulation; it doesn't seem at all uncommon for an Italian home to have twenty or so different varieties of pasta in the kitchen, each to be used with certain sauces only, and never ever with ketchup (like, ever). This weekend, there was a tent in Piazza Maggiore with chefs giving demonstrations of how to make tagliatelle al ragu from scratch. Seriously impressive stuff, and the smell was amazing. 

Although I'm pretty sure I'll never reach their dizzy heights of pasta success, I'm hoping to pick up a bit of Italian culinary expertise, and living with a host family has proved to be a great way of doing this. My host mum, Cristiana, showed me how to make risotto, and although the method wasn't actually that different to how I'd do it England, it tasted so much better! I think it must be down to the Italian ingredients; at the farmers' markets, there's nothing GM in sight, and Cristiana says she always asks for the ugliest vegetables because they're 'brutte ma buone'. Even in the greengrocers and supermarkets, seemingly innocuous veg like onions and carrots appear in shapes and colours I've never seen in England, definitely begging the question of what they're putting into our food.

On Saturday, I went to a barbecue with a few other foreign students as well as some Italians. Other than an awkward culture clash between the Italian host and a German guest who objected to everyone's food being shared around communally, it was a really nice start to an evening which later took a bit of an odd direction - we ended up in a very Italian, very out of the way warehouse club, in which we were definitely the only foreigners. I've also never seen a club serving kebabs before...but it's all part of the experience!

Some of Bologna's secrets

Before starting my internship on Monday, I had some time to be a bit of a tourist. I'd already spent a couple of days looking round the city on my own, but this had mainly involved locating all the places I needed to find (my work, the bus stops, Grom) and just gazing aimlessy at the pretty buildings. On Friday however, there was a free guided tour of the city for Erasmus students and interns, followed by apperitivo in one of the local bars. It was great meeting other students from all corners of the world who were all going through the same experience - including one girl from the same village as me in England, which was completely bizarre! But as well as new people, we got to know Bologna itself a bit better; the tour was given by a student from the university who promised to tell us some of the city's 'secrets'.

Piazza Maggiore

One of the most surprising things to learn was that Bologna is actually, like Venice, a city built on canals. Today you can no longer see its waterways as they are hidden underground, but when you go into the city's public library, below the glass floor you can see the remains of the original city, on top of which today's Bologna was built. This was my favourite bit of the tour, mostly because the idea of lost or underground cities is something that one of the authors I'm studying at the moment, W G Sebald, talks about in his novel Austerlitz. The main character is fascinated by them, seeing them both as a link to the lost past, and also to the world of the dead. I'm not sure what it would be like seeing Bologna's subterranean sights, but there are various tours you can do to look at the ancient baths, resevoirs and aqueducts, and it's definitely something I want to do while I'm here.

Because of Bologna's waterways, one of the symbols of the city is Neptune, who can be seen in statue form just next to the main square. The statue was built to make the central square more beautiful, and to 'serve the people', as its inscription explains; it was a pretty big deal to the people of Bologna, and is known as Il Gigante. The story goes that when it was commissioned in the sixteenth century, the Church demanded it be designed with more modest proportions in the groin area than the sculptor had planned. But our guide took us to a spot in Piazza Nettuno, saying that the sculptor decided to have a joke at the Church's expense, and he told us to look again...

Apparently, there was a convent on the corner of this street, meaning that when the nuns looked out of its windows, or walked into Piazza Maggiore, they were greeted with a rather risqué view of the statue - for anyone who's wondering, that's actually the thumb of Neptune's outstretched hand.

The existence of the canals under the city, and the racy statue, are just two examples of how there's a lot more to Bologna than meets the eye - I'm sure there'll be lots more for me to learn about it over the next 4 months!

And so it begins...

I haven't yet got over the fact that my year abroad has actually, properly begun. But somehow I managed to get myself vaguely organised; flights booked, insurance bought, and a code word agreed with Jason in case of kidnap by the Mafia. All the essentials. I even got my luggage under the 23kg limit, thanks to a few last minute sacrifices. After two years at Oxford, where the next black tie event is always just around the corner and you can never have too much bunting, choosing which of my possessions would make the cut was like Sophie's choice, if not more difficult. After all, Sophie only had two kids, nothing a quick round of rock/paper/scissors couldn't sort out...But in the end I ended up with a suitcase that was a more-than-respectable 21.5kg, and set off for my first year abroad destination: Bologna.

I was incredibly lucky in that a friend from university has family living here, who have invited me to stay with them until I find an apartment. It's made a huge difference not to have to start off the year (and my panicky search for somewhere to live) completely alone, and they couldn't have been more welcoming, so much so that I can even excuse their dislike of tea. Another bonus is that it's definitely helping me with my Italian, not to mention being the best introduction to the famous Bologna cuisine! Every meal I've had so far has been amazing, and I'm determined to learn to cook alla bolognese over the course of the year. 

Another reason I already feel quite at home here is that Bologna is quite similar to Oxford, other than the fact it has a H&M, and instead of bicycles everywhere, there are motorbikes. And instead of punting, there's... more motorbikes. But they're both historic university towns of about the same size, with pretty impressive architecture all around. Every street in Bologna is beautiful, and I've spent most of my first two days just walking round, getting used to the fact that this is my home for the next four months. One way in which it's very different to Oxford, though, is how much less tourist-dominated it seems. Two and a half days in, I've yet to hear anyone speaking English. Cristiana, my host mum, told me that the bolognesi can be lazy when it comes to conserving their monuments, largely because they don't actually want tourists, and it's a rich enough region to manage without. It's the tourists who are missing out on the city though; home to Europe's oldest university (soz Oxford), it's a fun, studenty place, plus there are sights aplenty for the more culturally inclined. As well as the ornate porticoes it is most famous for, Bologna's got towers, churches, museums - including the recently opened ICE CREAM MUSEUM, the first in the world and a part of Italian culture I feel it would be rude not to embrace.

Other than gelato-based activities, I'm going to be spending my time here doing an internship at the Goethe Zentrum – the Institute of German Culture in Bologna, with tasks like organising and publicising cultural events, assisting with German teaching, as well as secretarial and admin work. I'm looking forward to starting  work on Monday, although slightly terrified at the prospect of a job which juggles both my foreign languages - that's a few too many verb endings for my liking. But all in all, the year abroad is off to a great start, and I can't wait to see what the rest of the year has in store!