June 10 - Bums and Bombs

It usually takes around 3 days for the town drunks to start to speak to me. This formula held true in bologna. I was sitting in piazza maggiore early on sunday morning watching the shandows grow shorter across the town square, the bums and beggars circling the square holding their neatly printed cards asking for money for a whole host of causes, they would come close enough to confirm their suspicions about my origins and them move away.

Three days later and a few 1c coins cast into eager receptacles its waves and tipping of hats to the wandering Mr Ziz. My favourite,.. well if i had to choose just one i wouldnt id list them all... thereùs the guy who has a very neatly presented full beard and an uncannily steven wright like delivery, hat in hand he approaches passers by and im a perfect monotone says osmething along the lines of ''help me with something for the purposes of eating'' which sounds somewhat more poteic in italian. Unlike the Roman beggars he hasnt bothered gettiong a grant to translate his plea into other languages and also unlike the roamn beggars he doesnt throw 1 euro cent coins back at you. The beggars here are very mobile, i swear they must run down the quiet lanes in order to swing back for another passage along the tourist strips, this is a opposed to the venetian beggars who think they are competing for some kind of human statue award,.. in fact there is a rather famous human statue in venice who operates only 50 metres away from one of these motionless beggars,.. he leans against a wall in a long robe which allows him to move his hands and scratch the odd nbut, whilst the beggar sits on his knees one hand stretched out carrying a heavy cup in which to receive coins... and yet the tourists are paying the busking human statue full euro coins and turning their noses up at the beggar... where's the justice.

Along side piazza maggiore is piazza nettuno, so called because of the rather large and ornate statue of neptune and attendants in the centre of the fountain... impressive... but near this fountain is the standard wall of honour for those who gave their lives to world warr 2, these are usually quite impressive displays complete with small photos of those who died either in action or in complete inaction during the war. Near this memorial in Bolgona is a smaller, less ornate glass plaque paying respects to the 80 or so people who deid in the bombing of the bologna train station in August 1980. After a few minutes attempting to translate the inscription on the plaque i was joined by an elderly local who looked me straight in the eyes, pointed at the plaque and rather angrily suggested that i had no business reading it as a foreginer because i couldnt understand the significance of the event. I looked at him, subtracted 23 years from his life and saw a man who may well have been closer to the incident than first seemed,.. i tried to be polite but strangled by the language barrier i may have come across rather abruptly.

He asked me to read the plaque, whcih was lucky for me because i can fool just about anyone with my italian pronunciation as long as they arent too many pesky letter c's... so i turned on my best exaggerated italian and read the plaque back to him. This seemed to calm him down somewhat, but also managed to attract the attention of 2 or 3 other gentlemen who would otherwise have simply passed by another tourist pretending to read something which they dont understand. They stopped and started a conversation with the gentlemen, they (obviously) held a different view to himself and believed that it was good for foreigners to come here and be interested in the history of the town and who show respect, he agreed but found something to disagree with and the hand waving increased along with the velocity of the conversation which combined to a sharp drop in my comprehension of what was being discussed,.. as the gestures in my direction grew less frequent I made my way further along the piazza.