Woke after a well earned night of sleep, got ready quickly as the checkout was at 10h this morning, and then I found a very cute bakery in order to get breakfast for Yaneev. He is a friend from Brookline high school, we have not seen since graduation and he is hosting me in bologna.
Moving with the bike in the city is a little bit more of a challenge, to buy things, climb the stairs at the hotel with bags, but we two people it is easier as someone can watch and the other carry.
Walked around bologna, enjoyed the city, entered churches, ate pizza again for lunch. I will probably stay for a few days (ended up eating a lot of pizzas). We then drank coffee with Adam (Yaneev’s roomate), and then went to the park with some newly met friends in order to play Frisbee.
Went out at night for a few beer next to this church, with Italians friend that Adam had met a few months ago, two Italian university student, an American traveler, Yaneev and Adam, and two italians roommates met that day, Adriana and Sofia.
Bologna is somewhat chaotic but a beautiful city in Italy, there is a lot of energy and noise, young people, bars, music, you can really feel it is a student city even if students are in exam period. The food is incredible and cheap, paradise.
The mission in Bologna was to visit, enjoy, drink, party and eat, especially after weighing myself, 69kg (I was at 74kg in beginning of August). So I spent the next days relaxing into parks, reading, shopping for a few missing pieces in my bags. We played Frisbee, board games, worked out, and had philosophical and funny conversations…
Thank you Yaneev and Adam for hosting, the great discusions, dinner, adventures… I hope we see each other again (maybe in Greece).
Some interesting history learned among the way:
Until the end of the Middle Ages, about one third of all cultivated land in the region, from Bologna to Ferrara and Venice, had been used for the cultivation of hemp. The traces are still found in the countryside today. Scattered between Bologna and Ferrara you can find the remains of artificial lakes that have been used to macerate hemp stalks. Italy was the second largest cannabis producer in Europe, behind only Russia.
The Bologna countryside produced dozens of different varieties of hemp used to make ropes, dresses, and linens; Italian fibers have been praised as the best on the world market.
Production disappeared after the 1950s, due to multiple competing factors: the affirmation of synthetic fibers (rayon, nylon), low degree of mechanization of the crop with high labor use, competition from more profitable crops such as sugar beet or specialized orchards and other vegetable crops.
Copy pasted from here: https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/how-bologna-became-the-hemp-capital-of-europe