Appartment Hunting: Part 2

Before Saturday, I had visited maybe 8 apartments around Bologna, and I couldn't see myself living in any of them. With some of them there were glaring problems. The first one I visited had five chain smokers living there, another had one bathroom for 6 people, and another had a kitchen that was literally 6 ft. by 3 ft (just enough room for one person to slide between appliances). For others, there were other, smaller problems like the price, the camparra (deposit - usually two months rent), timing (could only rent for 12 months, etc.), or the roommates didn't seem friendly to people who couldn't speak Italian well. So before I made my visits on Saturday I made a list of conditions that the apartment had to meet before I would accept.

(In case you can't read it)
1. Friendly Italian roommates
2. < 320 Euros/Month
3. Live with Students
4. No smokers
5. Close to campus
6. Don't have to find my own replacement to get my camparra back

On Saturday, my first meeting was canceled, my second had mostly Spanish roommates, and my third meeting was close to what I wanted, but I needed to find a replacement before I left. So by the time I was on my way to the last meeting, I was feeling very discouraged. Luckily the last apartment I saw was awesome. I was met at the door by five Italians and they made us (my roommates at the hotel and I) feel right at home. They gave me a quick tour and gave us all drinks. I knew right away that this was the right place for me and I took the posto letto (literally bed spot, a place in a double room) on the spot. The only one of my conditions that my apartment didn't meet was that it was close to campus - but my roommates were so friendly that it was worth the concession. Below is the flyer where I found the contact info for the apartment.

Afterwords, I went to Osteria d'Orsa to celebrate finding an apartment. An Osteria is a traditional Italian Restaurant where you can find authentic Italian food (I don't think there's a good translation into english). I tried four different kinds of bruschetta (none were as good as my mom's), and spinace and ricotta cheese stuffed ravioli with sugo di parmigiano. Below is a picture of my hotel roommates Jesse (left) and Brandon (Right) from University of Minnesota. The second picture is me finishing the last bite of pasta.


On Sunday I payed the camparra (deposit). I only meant to stay for five minutes or so, but I ended up eating cake, tea, and watching the second half of Rambo in Italian. As I left, I took some pictures of the outside of my new apartment and the street that it is on. The first picture is my apartment's facade, the second is some typical buildings on my street Via Delle Lame, and last is the old church one passo (block) away.


There is almost no green in the centro storico, so having a park close to my apartment is a real bonus. I walked through it on Sunday and discovered that it is actually a memorial to September 11th.

For some reason this was very surprising and strangely flattering. Here are some more pictures of the park, which I have been told is bellissimo (very beautiful) in the spring and summer, but a bit downtrodden during the winter. There's a somewhat creepy merry-go-round as well.


One more random thing about Bologna is that there is graffiti everywhere -surprising because they never show graffiti in pictures of Bologna. When I think of European (especially Italian) cities, graffiti doesn't come to mind at all, yet it covers almost every wall in the centro storico. Here are two of my favorites.

That's all I have for now! I think my next post will be about my apartment (the inside) and my roommates.

Ci vediamo dopo!