For the past few months I have been telling people about a place in Italy that is named after a certain fatty meat Americans call “baloney”, and nicknamed “La Grassa” which, loosely translated, means “town of the fat ones”. This is Bologna; the food capital of Italy and home to the oldest university in the world. Prior to looking at my Erasmus options, I had never heard of this city set squarely in the middle of North Italy, between Florence and Verona, and now it is all I can think about.
This September I will be packing up my suitcase and moving out of home for the first time to live in Bologna until the end of semester two. To prepare, I have managed to clear enough storage (it’s summer, who needs Gmail) on my phone to redownload a certain irritating, guilting, green little app; Duolingo. Starting at level one, I have learnt how to say “cappuccino con latte”, “arrivederci”, and “prego” – which still takes me to go against all my better instincts to pronounce correctly; “Prayy-go”, not “preh-go”, which is a mildly insulting way of referring to a pregnant woman.
The second thing I have been doing to prepare is acquainting myself with the little yellow man on Google Maps. I hover him over the city; over Portici di Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale, and Giardini Margherita (which yes, is a real place), landmarks I have never been to and know nothing about. I drop the yellow man on a street named ‘Zamboni’ outside the university. There are trees on both sides and a blue bus is coming towards me. I’m reminded of a line from Ulysses: “through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins”. A completely apt description for this sunny, tree-lined street, except I am not in Dublin, and the giveaway is not the trees but the blue one-decker bus and the red brick porticoes casting shadows on the pathway. This is not Dublin, but maybe one day I will know this place almost half as well as Joyce knew Dublin. Maybe one day, I will recognise the names of these streets because I will have mapped my own memories onto them.
Today is not that day though. I am currently in the process of looking for accommodation. I scour Facebook marketplace, and ‘Rentola’ (neither names inspire much confidence) for apartments set on streets with names that mean nothing to me, with 30 photos on the listing each depicting the same room from slightly different angles. In the bathroom, there appears to be only a toilet and a bidet. And a washing machine beside the toilet, except it’s not a washing machine but a pop-up laundry basket posing as a washing machine?! I know a lot of students embarking on Erasmus are in the same bidet… I mean boat …. as I am right now. And that’s ok, we don’t have to have it all figured out just yet. I still refuse to wrap my head around the concept of tariffs, am nearing the expiry date of my second Learner’s permit without having booked a driving test, and black spots appear in my eyes whenever I stand up. Nevertheless, I am growing up with the bolstering if brazen sense that it’ll all work out. This age is for new experiences, for funny stories, for sounding things out. The chaos is a necessary part of it all. This is an age for being fearless. And who knows. Maybe one day in the future I’ll be walking beneath trees along a street in Bologna, the sun dancing coins between the gaps in the leaves, and I’ll click on google maps and drop the little yellow man down on Nassau Street, or the corner of Merrion Square, or on a tree-lined path along the banks of the canal, back home.
