The Road to La Serenissima (Not a Bing Crosby Movie)

I must apologize for the lack of posts over the last few days. I've wandered off on another of my scholarly jaunts around Italy, this time up to the Po River Valley and the old terra firma of the Venetian Republic. I've seen Parma's French streets and Austrian spires. I've heard a brass band blast away Guantanamara and then go eat Malaysian food in Modena. Today I visited the tomb of St. Dominic in Bologna, a rainy city dear to us Whapsters, as some of you already know. Dominic is still very present here. At Vespers, I heard his friars chant the Salve as we went to venerate the relic of the saint's skull. A transcendent moment.

But there's plenty of normal Italian lunacy here too. Bologna's a college town. A college town which is home to one of the oldest universities in the world, where the students hire and fire their own professors at will. Hmmm. Well...never mind. Moving right along. The city's nicknamed dotto, rosso e grasso, "learned, red and fat," which I think sounds better in Italian. The learned bit, well, duh. The red is because, well, Italy invented the angry young pinko sympathizer (NB. He later turned into Benito Mussolini). The fat part is also obvious as Bologna, home of lunch meat and everyone's favorite spaghetti sauce is the seat and heart of Italian cooking, or so they like to claim. Given the meal I just ate, hey, it works for me.

And tomorrow, we're on the road again. We'll soon be on our way to the cities of Verona and Mantua, famous for the doomed love of Romeo and the dooming lust of Rigoletto's lecherous Duke. And then, off to Byzantine Venice with its bulbous domes and watery lanes. Venice is a place which is also very dear to the denizens of the Shrine; it was the home of Renaissance composer Giovanni Gabrieli in addition to being the setting for part of the last Indiana Jones movie. Naturally, one brings to mind the other. Anyway, expect to hear from me again after All Souls' Day when I will be sure to fill you in on my numerous adventures and even more numerous meals.

Don't worry. All this walking helps ward off me bringing a bit of the grasso home with me.