by Desi Zavatta Musolino

Created on: August 07, 2007

The city where my soul lives

The city which I feel mine is not the one where I have always lived, it is not the small village of province where I know every single corner with closed eyes, it is not that agglomerate of a few hundreds of houses where all the people know everything about the others. In my mind my city is remained the one dreamt when I was a young girl, the one where I used to escape every time I wanted to feel like a woman, the one where I saw a thousand of opportunities, the awesome metropolis par excellence.

The link I feel with Bologna is visceral, it is an invisible thread which every time lead me to desire to spend there some hours, to look for images online almost as if I would be stoned, to detect info about the local events to be part of the active life of the city. It would be because of the red bricks, of the long porches, of the tortellini and of the lasagna, of the huge green areas which can be found midst the cement, of the niceness of its people. It would be because for the young girls the capital of province represents always the liberty, also a bit of emancipation, the endless chance and, when Bologna enter their imagination, it is hard to uproot it because it is as if it settle down in the DNA.

When people come to Bologna from the province, they are full of expectations and it never disappoint them. People get off the bus or the train and they face a thousand of choices of places where to relax, where to get more culture, where to eat, where to feel citizens of the world in some way, all the big cities promote this feeling. Only the fact of seeing all those persons walking under the porches, reflected onto the coloured shop windows, often loaded of university books, offers big palpitations to the heart, it is the life which pulses, which flows in the veins and in that moment people can feel to be part of it. And even more during the natal period when, everywhere they are, they find themselves totally dipped into the Christmas lights and into the decorations.

But Bologna is not only main streets and shining shops. Bologna is narrow streets where people can find precious treasures, hidden to the major part of people, Bologna is stands of local and foreign handicrafts, it is people who try to let their voices be heard through presidiums and leaflets, it is crowded buses of sleepily persons who go to work, it is the time beating through trains which arrive and leave, it is the place where people dream, it is light, colour, warmth, but also fog, slumber, routine.

Bologna is a city without parallel, it is a safety oasis and a perdition one at the same time. Absolutely to visit.

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