Ravenna

This weekend my friend Christen and I took a night bus from Aix-en-Provence to Bologne. The bus left aix gare routiere at 10pm thurs night and arrived in bologne 11 the next morning. Yeah, it was a long ride, and not very comfortable, but i managed to get a decent amount of sleep. I came up with some creative leg formations that im pretty sure could be yoga moves. also, the bus driver corrected my pronunciation of bologne when we got on the bus ( not bah-logna, boh-logna). after that he said BOH-logna to me every time i got on or off of the bus at rest stops.

When we collected our bags from the bus belly they were rather damp and muddy. eh. we realized that we had no idea how to get to the hostel from the bus station, so we bought a map at the gas station next door and asked for directions. well, neither of us knew any italian. so we just said the street name while looking as confused as possible. they got the idea.

turns out the hostel was only a ten minutes walk away. dropped off our baggage, got train times from the front desk (they spoke english!) and went to catch a train to ravenna.

Ravenna was the seat of the byzantine empire in the 6th century but is now a small town whose only real tourist bait is byzantine mosaics. I took a class on byzantine art back at IU and studied several bascilicas in Ravenna, so I was pretty pumped to be there.

after another hour of sitting we arrived at ravenna. we got lunch, debated over whether or not to tip (you dont in france, but we had no idea for italy) and ended up leaving some change just in case.

We started with saint apollinare nuovo, a bascilica plan church with a long mosaic on each side of the central aisle. The mosaics show a procession of virgins on one side and a procession of martyrs on the other. there is also a mpsaic of the palace of theoderic. there used to be figures in the niches between the columns, but they were replaced with decorative curtains during the iconclast controversy. you can still see a disembodied hand on one of the columns though.

Then we walked to San Vitale. By far one of the most beautiful things i have ever seen. its a cross in square plan with a painted central. the paintings were beautiful, though from a much later period. lots of flowers and cherubs and trompe l'oiel. that part of the church was dimly lit, i assume for conservation reasons. the real stunner however was the apse. Every inch of the walls and ceilings were covered with mosaics. There were biblical scenes, flowers, geometric patterns, random urns and peacocks, and the famous scenes of justinian and theodora. It was like being inside of a jewelry box. I am a big fan of the byzantine gold background. I took an embarrassing amount of pictures.

Just outside of san vitale was the mausoleum of Galla Placidia. I had seen pictures of all of these mosaics, but i had never realized just how small it was. It was a much more intimate and personal beauty, the mosaics were so much closer and compact. it was almost refreshing after the overwhelming splendor of san vitale.

christen and i then walked back to the train station, getting lost and rained on en route. we got there and waited for the bus to saint apollinare in classe. we could take either the 4 or the 44. We stood at one bus stop and watched both buses pass us and stop at the round about across the street. and of course the minute we crossed the street to that bus stop the bus pulled up the stop we'd just left. so we ran back across the street and almost missed the bus a third time.

Saint apollinaire in classe was not as stunning as the others, though still impressive. large, less detailed and ornate, gold background and some very odd looking sheep. i think at this point i was getting basilica fatigue. It was still interesting to see the mosaic in person after studying pictures in class.

We ended up having to wait for awhile in the cold before the bus came. We got off at the train station and rushed to catch the 7:35 train, only to find that it didnt run on weekends. so we hung out at a café until the 8:35 train. some confusion at our transfer stop, we asked the man behind the desk for help ( again, this was just me holding up a ticket and looking confused while mis-prounouncing bah-logna) and he ended up talking politics with us. it went kind of like this:

train conductor dude: america?

us: oui (wrong language)

train guy: obama! good?

us: si (right language this time)

train guy: bush, not good!

us: si!

it was odd.

anyway we got back to bologna at ten and still hadnt had dinner, and we were too tired to walk into town in the rain. so we asked the concierge for a good pizza place and he said there was one just around the corner.

we went, and it was FANTASTIC. the prices were good, so we ordered 2 pizzas expecting small personnal pizzas. what we got were huge. one with eggplant and ricotta, the other with wild mushrooms, ham, and artichokes. complete with cute old italian waiter who gestured wildly while using his entire english vocabulary to tell us that america is big and italy is small.

i ate an entire pizza. im pretty proud.