Settling in and moving toward some of our goals

This is Nancy picking up the blog today. 
We have now been in Bologna for a week and a half and are beginning to feel settled. It’s been cold and damp here, and very gray. In fact, there has been so little sunshine since we arrived that our body clocks have remained stubbornly stuck in Massachusetts, and sleeping has been far more interrupted than we experienced in our earlier travels. But this has improved a bit the last few days.

Our apartment is chilly by American standards. The furnace that serves the entire building is turned off from 11PM to 6AM. This is not a problem since the winters here are less severe than in Massachusetts. But when the outdoor daytime temperatures were in the 30s the week we arrived, the indoor temperature only reached 62, which feels cold if you are just sitting, so I have learned to appreciate long underwear. We also indulged in a few small new comforts:

• warm slippers! (for me),
• a “paraspifferi” (a draft-blocking fabric “snake” to put against the bottom of the French doors to the balcony), and
• two small space heaters for our feet (only 500w to avoid overloading the electrical system).

I came to Bologna this time with four personal goals in mind:

1. to live a balanced life with simple food, regular exercise and time with friends, a style of living that seems impossible in Danvers
2. to edit the Prayers from the Ark (a group of 27 “art songs” I wrote years ago that lack only a few details to make an official “final” version)
3. to improve my spoken Italian, which lags way behind my ability to read
4. to make side trips to other regions of Italy

Charles shares most of these but of course has his own creative projects.

We are doing pretty well with goal #1. We have walked into the center of town nearly every day, which is a minimum of 3 miles round-trip, and we have seen many of our friends here and made plans to see the rest. We cook simple meals with fresh vegetables and very little meat.

This was the display of winter vegetables that greeted us when we entered our local grocery store (Coop, via Repubblica) the other day. We bought the big green cabbage.

We took the big first step toward goal #2 by buying a digital piano, which came on Tuesday. It has a nice touch and good headphones so we can play at any time of the day or night. I have organized my manuscripts and am eager to start reviewing and editing.

The new piano is in the living area (which is also the kitchen). The tiny new space heater is also visible at the bottom.

Goal #3, speaking Italian is problematic. Most of our Italian friends speak English, and my Italian is so SLOW that using it makes conversation boring and unnatural. So I am now looking into other ways to improve without depending on meetings with friends. 
​
We haven’t yet begun to plan side trips (goal #4) but there is time for that as the weather gets warmer. For the time being we are enjoying discovering interesting new corners in Bologna, like this little restaurant, hidden off a back street, whose portico dates from the  1300s.

Bologna is known as the "red city" because so many of its buildings were made of brick rather than stone. I found it surprising at first to see pointed gothic arches carried out in brick and to realize that they were really 600 years old, not Victorian imitations.