Making Pasta & Eating Gelato

This past weekend in Bologna I learned how to make traditional pasta by hand with the rest of my classmates. I can’t wait to take this knowledge back to the states, because it is so delicious and so much fun. Here are some of my photos from that day condensed into a video in order to save space and help me procrastinate studying for my midterms.



Yes, the music in the background is Carla Bruni. Yes, the Carla Bruni who is the wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France. And yes, she is speaking in French. I realize this doesn’t fit well with the Italian theme of this video but I have yet to find an Italian artist I like as much as I like Carla Bruni.

Here is an assortment of things that have happened lately in my life:

I met the most adorable two-year-old Italian boy in my coffee shop.

Also in my coffee shop an older woman sat behind me and started speaking very loudly in Italian about foreign women (I was the only one in there, it’s a small place) and something about the amount of food we do or do not eat. She spoke too quickly for me to understand. But, when I turned around to look at her to see if she was really speaking about me or if I was just paranoid there was a long period of awkward silence. Later, when I paid for my café late my barista said to me, in Italian, “So you speak Italian?” and I said “yes I do.” (even though I couldn’t really understand her) and he laughed for a while then smiled and asked me questions such as how long I will be in Italy, etc. It was the most friendly he’s ever been to me. The whole thing was strange and I’ll never know if I should be offended by what she was saying or not.

This one is for the Timmer relatives, I met a Dutch-man yesterday who told me I definitely look more Dutch than American. He did say this only after he asked what my origins were and I said, “mostly Dutch” but I still think it counts.

I began to meet with my language exchange partner. He is a 27-year-old chemist.

I ate the world’s best gelato in San Gimignano. And when I say “the world’s best gelato” that is a fact, not an opinion because this gelateria has actually won the world cup of gelato, which apparently exists, multiple times. Because this opportunity might not come many times in a lifetime I ate two cones of gelato one after the other instead of one. The first was champagne grapefruit with rosemary raspberry. The second was cinnamon and pistachio. I also tried someone’s gorgonzola gelato. I can’t describe how great they all tasted.

Also in Bologna, I visited the world's first university. It blew my mind. I am so excited right now that I live on part of the route of the Via Francigena and fascinated by how many institutions were developed due to that route.