That's a Bunch of Bologna!

You may remember that Whitey surprised me by showing up in Bologna on our way to San Marino.  So we spent our last day together in Bologna, so that she could catch her flight back to the US out of their airport, and then I could hop the train back to Torino.  It's a really interesting city (to me), with hardly any tourists at all...which made it so much more awesome.

Many of the buildings are built with porticoes, so that you can walk along and not worry about rain or sunshine beating down on you.  They were beautiful and really did make for walking around the city a pleasant experience, even in the rain.

Of course there were some pretty windows and doors along the way...

One thing I really liked was that the buildings were painted pretty colors, which made it look like what I imagine Italy to look like in my mind.  (France is much more concrete, and not painted, and Torino looks more like France than Italy to me...)

The center of the old town is under major construction, so there were several buildings that I couldn't really see.  But through all the construction, I spotted this awesome streetlamp.

So apparently, during the Middle Ages, families with wealth built towers to show off their status.  The higher the tower, the more money they had.  It's possible that Bologna had over 200 towers at one time in it!  (Click HERE to see a drawing of what a medieval skyrise-building Bologna may have looked like!)  Today, only 20ish of those towers remain, of which two are really famous.  The Due Torri are the most famous.  They're side by side, and both are leaning.  I read somewhere that the one leans even more than the Tower of Pisa, but I can't remember where I read that, so don't quote me.  (And since I usually quote Wikipedia, maybe you should never quote me...)

It wasn't until after I'd left Bologna and was reading more about the city that I learned where to stand to get a photo to show how much they lean.  Such a bummer.  You can find pictures on the internet, which you're using, since you're reading my blog.  Anyway, the tall tower...it was so tall I had a hard time getting a good picture of it.  

Whitey and I paid the 3 euros it cost to climb it.  Despite my fear of heights, I thought it would be a cool/fun thing to do.  Up and up we went...up the 1000 year old wooden stairs in a leaning tower.  They could have rotted through and I plunged to my death at any moment, but I climbed them anyway, all 497 of them.  Here's a view looking down at the other tower.

And out over the city.

Confession: Whitey had to take those other photos, because I pretty much had to stand in a corner to look out, where I felt the most safe.

Even though there were bars to keep me from falling.  I tried to look more natural here, instead of freaked out.  But trust me, I was freaked out.  Glad to have made the climb, but freaked out.

Whitey wanted to show that she'd climbed the 20 flights of stairs.  (I think it was more than that, but whatevs.)

Now, I should say that going up: I didn't freak out about heights at all until we were at the top.  Coming back down...totally different story.  I sort of wish I'd taken a photo to show the stairwell.  But since I could see down as I walked down, my brain freaked out more.  I'd talk sense to myself and keep going down and down and down.  Sometimes I had to go down backwards, so that I couldn't fall head first, or imagine myself falling head first, or see what was coming as I plunged to my death.

About halfway down, I got trapped in a corner by a group of Asian tourists.  (I know I said earlier that there were hardly any tourists in Bologna, but I must have forgotten about this group when I wrote that...)  I stood safely in my corner as I let some pass.  But they kept coming and coming and coming.  The longer I stood there, the more my anxiety increased about the height of that tower.  Eventually, I decided they were going to have to wait because I had to get out of there.  I started down the stairs in my near spazz-out manner, but much to my chagrin, an Asian man revealed that he didn't care about me.  He started up the set of stairs as I was already about halfway down.  By that point, I was so crazy I was muttering to myself.  I said something along the lines of, "Just keep going.  Throw him over the rail if you have to, but you need to get out of here.  Right now."

Asians have a different perspective on space than we Americans do.  Since there are so many people over on their continent, they just don't have that idea of a bubble of personal space like we Americans.  My experience with them (and remember, I lived over there for two years) is "shove or be shoved."  So in this battle of the wills cultures on the stairwell, that Asian man didn't think twice about both of us being on it together.  He didn't think it was a big deal to be up in my space on a three-feet-wide stair with a twenty foot drop below us.  However, I DID.  He kept marching toward me and I kept mumbling more and more like a crazed woman.  Finally, some of the other Asians saw that I was about to lose it on him, and began telling him to stop going up and let me come down.

So he stepped aside.

Towards the wall and not the rail and thus, forcing me to step towards the rail (and the twenty-foot-or-more drop below).  Not gonna happen, buddy.  In my freak out, I mumbled something that let everybody know he needed to move and quickly.  I won the show down, and he backed down off the stairwell until I could escape to safety.

Let's just say, I caused a little bit of a scene.

Back on solid ground, I looked up.  Goodness me, I climbed that thing!

Whitey and I walked around and looked at more of the city.  Here's a famous sculpture.  I won't show you the close up, but it's a little bit dirty-minded.

We had dinner and headed back to our hotel.  I told my family that I didn't get to eat any bologna while in Bologna, and they were shocked.  I explained that it's not called "bologna," but has some other name (that I didn't know), and it's not labeled with Oscar Myer to make it clear what you're getting.  However, at breakfast the next day, I had some!!!

And just like that, the end of my surprise visit with Whitey was done, and I headed back to Torino.