Day 24 - Start of The Last Week of School

# Campari & Soda: 0, # Gelati: 0

I woke up this morning feeling a bit blah.  Not actually sick (yet) but with the scratchy throat and stinging eyes that suggest a cold is on its way.  One of the pharmacies near me sells COVID tests in a 24 hour vending machine outside the shop.  I guess I should get one and check.  In any case, I'm not doing either hike tomorrow or visiting any other city.  I'll just putter about my apartment or stick to wandering around outdoors.

This week is the last week of classes.  We are still working on when and how to use the congiuntivo tense.  One other person in the class got very cross when the explanation for why you use this tense in one particular case is "because you do."  As if English spelling and grammar followed consistent rules, without any exceptions.

In our "conversation" class the teacher handed out those free magazines that real estate agents put out with listings of houses & apartments for sale.  We each had to pick which one we would buy (assuming money was no object) and explain why to the rest of the class.  Most of us (including me of course) picked apartments in the historic centre with a view although one person wanted a house with a garden.  The apartment I'm staying is up for sale but so far no-one has been to see it.  This exercise made me realise why.  He is asking 330,000€ for it, which to my Melbourne-tuned eyes seemed not excessive, but actually is way too much.  The magazine had similar apartments in similar locations for closer to 200,000€.  Even allowing for real estate agent exaggerations, his asking price is optimistic.

Bologna is heaving with tourists right now.  I think a lot of people are taking Monday off so they can have a 4 day holiday as tomorrow is Liberation Day.  There is going to be a massive parade.  I've been told the street the parade goes down gets so crowded you can barely move.  I think I will happily miss that event.

One consequence of the tourist influx is that the queues of people at some sites have gotten just ridiculous.  Bologna has quite a large network of canals but almost all of them are covered over these days.  However, there are two that are still visible in parts.  Recently, for one of them a window has been cut into a wall so you can peer through a see the canal as it passes behind two rows of houses.  Here is the queue of people waiting to see

this view

 while completely ignoring the view from the bridge on the other side of the street.

I took my photo of the view through the little window late one evening after the day trippers had left, but the other two were taken at the same time.

People are strange.  Two people in my class had gone to Venice on day trips last weekend.  Both hadn't enjoyed themselves as the city was just too crowded and you could only see other people and not the sites.  I made the right choice to visit Parma instead.