56 Restaurants in Bologna – Diner Beware!

One reason for selecting Bologna is that it is famous for its cuisine. Well, I didn’t find it so. I was later told that Bologna’s reputation for good food lay more with foreigners than with the Bolognese. Perhaps many, many years ago there was truth to this myth. I was also told that if I wanted good Bolognese food I would have to go outside the city walls into the countryside. So, divest yourself of this myth. What Bologna does have, are some restaurants that are far from honest!

Bologna has several Southern or Sicilian owned restaurants, and you will more likely find these charging you more than they should. I first went to the Regina Marguerite, S.Stefano 40 for a fixed lunch and enjoyed the food. So I decided to go back for dinner. When I went to pay, I looked at the bill, trying to understand it when my waiter, “Guido” told me that he had made a “mistake” and deleted 7 euros that he had overcharged me! I went back again, and this time he found that he had made another “mistake” for 1 euro. I discovered that this restaurant is notorious for making “mistakes”. I took a friend to an upscale Sicilian restaurant, Panne e Panelle on via San Vitale 71 recommended by a fellow student for its fish dishes. When the bill arrived there was an item Varie [“various”] for 5 euros, but for the life of me I can’t think what this charge applied to.

Still, none of my experiences can equal what happened to my friend. He had found a restaurant just up from Piazza Verdi in the university area. It too was a “southern” restaurant, [the name escapes me, but one room serves also as a store] and according to the owner serves a cuisine from Lucca, Sicily. When my friend received the bill, he was quite amazed to discover 10 euros charged for two dolce [desserts] which none of our party had even ordered! To add insult to injury, the owner was less than graceful when my friend asked for the charge to be removed.

It was not Sicilian/southern restaurants that alone were guilty of such sharp practices. For example, my instructor took a school party for a farewell dinner to a modest looking trattoria named Il Cantinone at 56a via del Pratello. The food was good and prices reasonable and so I decided to go back on my own. I ordered “lasagne Bolognese” which is lasagne with meat in white sauce. All pastas were listed as between 7 to 8 euros. When I went to pay, the waitress screwed up her face in an unctuous smile and asked if I had enjoyed my dinner. I said yes, and was charged 13.50 euros for the lasagne! I paid this price for lasagne only one other time, at a much fancier and famous restaurant. On another occasion I invited my friends to dinner at Alferico, S.Stefano 33a. The waitress-- we suspect was an Eastern European-- served us with a smileless face, and when the bill arrived I noticed that she had charged me 51 euros for 4 main dishes. I knew that two of the dishes cost 12 euros each. Later I discovered that all four were each 12 euros!

The moral is check your bill and know what the dishes cost! There are, of course, honest restaurants in Bologna where waiters and managers do not indulge in sharp practices, but unfortunately, the dishonest ones leave a bad taste in one’s mouth. Such treatment will only harm Bologna’s efforts to encourage tourists to visit the city.

Before I give a list of restaurants and their charges, I will describe in my next blog a typical Italian meal and what I usually had for dinner.

55 Bologna

For me to go to Italy involves a lot of time and money. So my goal is both a learning experience and a holiday. What a school offers in terms of extra-curricular activities forms part of my vacation, as does the city I choose. I chose Bologna because of its reputation as a University City, its cuisine, and its geographical location.

Bologna is certainly a beautiful city, famous for its arches or porticoes that are omnipresent. In fact, you don’t need to bring an umbrella. I used mine once, after which I decided it was a waste of time. Bologna is also known as the red city, both because of its red sandstone and its left-leaning politics. I don’t know how “left” the city really is these days, and I suspect that its political inclination owes a lot to the fact that it has a large body of university students. As a cynic might say, students can afford to vote left, until they graduate and find their first job. Whatever its political stripe, Bologna has a lot of very expensive stores, so there must be a lot of rich people about, and the city even has an office for the Lega Nord, the right-wing, separatist party.

Perhaps because of its left-of centre ambience, the city has an enlightened approach to its museums and galleries. Nearly all are free, and there are many galleries – so many that I didn’t get to visit all of them. Of course, this being Italy, not all are opened all the time. So if you go, get the latest schedule and it may help. I tried several times to visit the Museum of the Resistance, but even when the brochure stated that it would be open, it was closed.

The city is also rich in music with many free concerts. My musical highlight was the finals of a singing competition for future opera stars. The Music Conservatory also sponsors free concerts by their students. Many of these student musicians will be the future professionals, and I for one, will look forward to following the career of the cellist I heard at a recital.

Bologna was, historically, the Pope’s second city, and unfortunately, Bologna is like Rome in its worse aspects. Cars are everywhere, even in the centre, and they drive on their horn, and you play “dodge’m” with them. [Actually, Rome closes the centre to cars on a Sunday.] By my third week I had a dry cough caused by the pollution in the air. Unfortunately, pollution comes in several forms: foul air from the cars, noise from the cars, and dog shit on the streets. To feel the difference, take a trip to Ferrara or Parma. The people of Ferrara have embraced the environmental culture and bicycles are the order of the day. The air is fresh and tranquillity pervades the city. And in Parma -- unlike Bologna where you cross when you can -- the pedestrians actually wait at the stoplights!

I found the people of Bologna very friendly and polite. Don’t be afraid of the evening crowds that gather outside a bar or at Piazza Verdi, the university centre. I found everyone polite and considerate whenever I had to walk through the crowd. Striking up a conversation is not difficult. Of course, many, especially the younger ones, will want to try out their English as soon as they suspect that you are English speaking. Waiters will nearly always try to speak English to you, but if you look hard enough, some restaurants and waiters still respect their own language. But, and this is a big but, I found many restaurants, especially those run by Sicilians downright crooked, and in my next blog I will go into detail on the several bad experiences I had.

54 –Selecting ARCA as My School of Choice

In describing my search for the “right” school, that is, the school that would best suit my current needs, I am hoping that you will extract something to help you in your choice. Bear in mind that a school that suited you when you were first learning Italian just may not be what you want now at a more advanced level.

Twice I had used the web site it-schools.com to find a school and each time I had been satisfied, but the other times when I didn’t use this site I had been disappointed. I was even reluctant to return to Italy after my experience at Scudit. So when I decided to try again, I went back to the it-schools.com web site. I had decided that I wanted to study at Bologna because it was famous for its university and its cuisine. Moreover, I didn’t want to go south of Rome, and Venice was too touristy. Also, from Bologna I could reach many interesting cities in a short time.

From it-schools.com I found several schools and wrote to them, explaining that I was looking for a school that emphasises conversation. I also suggested that they peruse my blog if they want to understand what I was seeking. All came back with their stock replies – you can recognise this because they don’t answer your questions! Two schools did make reference to my blog – ARCA and another one.

I had also asked the members of my Meetup Italian Conversation group for recommendations, and someone had recommended Cultura Italiana because she had studied there. Normally this should have been a green light, but what is good for the goose may not be good for the gander. I wrote to Cultura Italiana, and it replied that if I wanted conversation I should take their individual lessons. In short, they weren’t interested, and so I dropped them. My rule is that I avoid schools that don’t go beyond their stock response. I decided to focus on ARCA because it was prepared to engage in a dialogue and it was in Bologna.

After my experience at Scudit I had decided that I would not decide until I had explored all avenues and could feel tolerably satisfied that I would find what I wanted. I asked for references and they gave me the name of a fellow Canadian student who had studied there. She gave the school a glowing recommendation and explained what they had done. Normally I would have been satisfied, but I still had reservations. After all, she was a senior university student studying Italian and probably had a level way beyond mine. If you are an advanced student most schools won’t throw grammar at you but, I hope, conversation. And I didn’t think I could classify myself as an advanced student. Based on class tests I took at ARCA I would be classified as an Advanced Intermediate [2B].

I had many exchanges of email with Serena who runs the administration, and I am grateful for her patience. Following a conversation with her on Skype we agreed that I should speak to Michael Cotton the Director of the school. We spoke for over an hour, and I discovered that he was English and that ARCA had originally been a school that taught English to Italians. I believe you can get a good feel for the school by talking to the Administration. Besides, if they are prepared to speak to you for over an hour on Skype it shows that they care. Compare this to Cultura Italiana’s response! Michael sensed that I was still uncertain so he suggested that I speak to one of the teachers, which he arranged.

I spoke to Mauro for an hour and a half on Skype, and I asked him to give me an example of a typical lesson, which he did. At that point I felt comfortable that if I went to ARCA I would receive the type of teaching I wanted, namely one that emphasised conversation. In short, I would find the type of lesson where the student played an active role rather than one where the student sat passively and the teacher poured into him volumes of grammatical rubric.

So I recommend that you choose your city or area, and use it-schools.com to find the schools. Next contact them, first by email, and then when you have narrowed down your choice speak to the people running the schools. But first make sure that you know what kind of school you want. As I have been stressing, Italian-run language schools stress grammar sometimes at the price of conversation. The best of these, like Leonardo at Siena also have a reserved time for conversation. But for me, at my intermediate level, I wanted and want the emphasis to be placed on conversation, which is what ARCA gave me.

In my next blog I will discuss Bologna.

53 ARCA – Reservations

To give a balanced assessment of ARCA I would like to share with you two minor disappointments I experienced with the school. I certainly can’t blame it for the first one, which is more a product of the student body or me, or both of us. The first disappointment is the feeling of isolation I experienced over the four weeks. The second was the disappointment I felt with my first day of what was meant to be the start of a four-week course.

At all the other schools I attended, I never felt out of place despite being so much older than the other students. They ranged from 19 and up, but no matter their age, most were “open” to meeting and sharing with others. It is really not a matter of age but of maturity. I never felt an age difference, and we often joined in non-school activities. Not so at ARCA. I did not make any friends of whatever age. It could have been because in my class I was the only new student in a group that had known each other for a long time. Nor was there anyone else outside of my class with whom I could share activities. My compensation was that Bologna had a lot to offer in terms of free museums and concerts, and I had a very fine landlady with whom I held long conversations. But I was very happy when in my fifth and last week at Bologna my friends came to visit me.

This sense of isolation is not a fault of the school. It has no control over its student body, and being a small school, it has a limited spectrum of people. You will probably encounter a different set of students when you attend. Or, you may not care, especially if you are attending for a shorter period, or you may like being alone. Of course, if you are younger you won’t experience, I hope, the isolation I had felt.

My second reservation has more substance. When I signed up for the 4-week course I expected that the course would have a start date and an end date. It certainly had those in the on-line calendar. In fact, these dates seemed to have no significance, at least from the student’s perspective. It seems one can join in at any time, stay as long as one wants, and leave. I found the same problem at all the commercial schools I attended in Italy. For more honest advertising the schools should inform potential students that there is no start or finish and perhaps indicate what will probably be taught in any given week.

Perhaps because there was no true start date to the course, ARCA had no welcoming reception. ARCA does not need a reception in the form of a social gathering because it is small enough that new students can be introduced to those already attending at the long coffee break or pausa. But the school should have a welcoming procedure for all new students and it should introduce the administration and most of the established instructors. It should not rely on any one instructor but should be a policy of the school. The purpose of this reception is to give an introduction to ARCA, Bologna, and more importantly, to such important information as telephone numbers for police, hospital, and immigration. Ideally, it would also contain a current list of recommended eating-places.

In my next blog I will describe how I arrived at selecting ARCA.

52 ARCA: Extracurricular Activities

ARCA offered a good selection of extra-curricular activities. Once every two weeks we had an out-of-town excursion. During my four weeks we visited Ferrara and Ravenna. On the non-excursion weeks we were taken on tours of specific locations in Bologna. In terms of excursions and in-town visits ARCA was equal to both Leonardo at Siena and Linguait. However, ARCA interspersed weekly outings to a local bar. We also went out for dinner twice during this time; once as a farewell for some students and the other time during the Notte Bianca, a night where everything stays open all night, or at least very late. I certainly have no grounds to complain about the amount of extra-curricular activities. Compare this to Scudit, where we had one tour and one visit in four weeks!

My reservation is not with the amount of extracurricular activities but with the kind of activities. There was too much emphasis on drinking at a bar for my liking. Doubtless this appealed to the younger students and instructors. Since they comprised the majority, I presume one should not complain. I recognise that the student population defines the kinds of activities held. Nonetheless, there were also older or “mature” students to whom sitting around a table guzzling wine or beer while being deafened by the noise of voices and music is an unsatisfactory way to spend an evening. It’s not that I don’t like a drink – I enjoyed the evening spritzes at Verona where we could talk and be heard. I also enjoyed the two dinner outings although neither could compare with the dinner Leonardo at Siena arranged for a group of us.

My impression, and it is only an impression, is that unlike ARCA, Leonardo at Siena had put a lot of thought into what they wanted to offer to their students. We had the customary out-of-town excursions and visits to points of interest within Siena. However, the school also seemed to have a goal, which was to introduce their foreign students to Tuscan culture. This meant, besides visits to churches and to other towns, an introduction to Tuscan food. Thus we had a lecture one afternoon on authentic Tuscan cooking. We also had a “Tuscan dinner” outside the city walls, and oh, what a dinner! Five years later and I still remember it with great fondness. It could be that Leonardo at Siena had a larger student population with more mature students, which facilitated such a dinner, but as I mentioned, ARCA was not devoid of mature students.

Bologna, besides, is famous for its cuisine, rightfully so or not, and I would like to have had some introduction to Bolognese cuisine. Although at ARCA I did have an instructor teach us how to cook several dishes during the first week when the regular teacher was absent, this was more an impromptu response to a request by the class rather than a school project. True, one could sign up with a separate culinary institution, but Leonardo at Siena took it as part of its mandate to introduce us foreigners to Tuscan cuisine as part of their introduction to Tuscan culture. I would like to have had ARCA do something similar for Bolognese or Emilia Romagna cuisine.

In my next blog I will discuss two minor disappointments I had with ARCA.

51 ARCA: Beyond the Classroom – Instructional Activities

For most of us the reason for going to Italy to study the language is the belief that we will be able to practise it outside the classroom. In Bologna I found that people [but not waiters or the young] would reply to your queries in Italian. And here ARCA offers something that I had not found at the other schools: the possibility of connecting with an Italian student to exchange English for Italian.

Since the school also teaches English to Italians, it has, or could have, a wonderful resource to help us. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until my last two days that they found someone for me, because the university was only just starting in September. As it stands, the student attending ARCA has to make a proactive effort in order to link up with an Italian from the school. I firmly believe that if ARCA were to have a bank of past and present students who would like to practise their English in exchange for Italian, it would strongly enhance its attraction as a school to attend.

What I did have was an excellent landlady with whom I had long conversations. Four out of my five times in Italy I have rented a room with a family, and my stay at Bologna was by far the most rewarding. ARCA did a wonderful job by placing me within walking distance of the school as I had requested. Aware that my grasp of Italian was limited, my landlady spoke at a measured pace with me, and we had interesting, long conversations. I couldn’t have asked for more even if I had signed up for private conversational classes! But generosity was not limited to her time and patience. She also taught me to cook, made me coffee in the morning, and invited me to dine with her on more than one occasion. As there were also two Italian tenants, I certainly found opportunities to converse. Thank you, Cristina.

Speaking well means pronouncing correctly. Unfortunately, a surprising gap in ARCA’s armoury of pedagogical tools is its neglect of pronunciation. It seems to be a common neglect, because of the five schools I attended, Leonardo at Siena was the only school to work on our pronunciation. It sponsored an hour-long extra-curricular class in the afternoon where a drama teacher ran us through a set of pronunciation exercises. It was a hilarious hour, lots of fun, and educational. I would like to see something equivalent featured at ARCA since it is a school that emphasises communication. Combine this feature with accessibility to Italians for an exchange of language practise, and ARCA could boast a really unbeatable programme.

In my next blog I will discuss the extra- curricular activities I found at ARCA.

50 Is ARCA the Right School for You?

Before you decide on a school you need to ask yourself what kind of school do you want. Do you want a school where you sit more or less passively and receive instruction for most of the lesson? Call this approach the traditional approach: highly structured, and intent on teaching you grammar. This approach you can find at most Italian language schools. You can also find the same back in your hometown.

Italian-owned language schools from my experience, and from what I learnt from others, focus on grammar. For example, when I tried to explain to Robert Tartaglione, the Director of Scudit, that grammar should not be the major emphasis, he launched into a tirade about the importance of grammar, and that one could not speak without knowing it. If you attend this type of school, and are lucky, your mornings will be broken into two hours of grammar and an hour of oral work. At Scudit we didn’t even have this hour of oral work. If this is the approach you want, then I recommend Leonardo Da Vinci [Siena] or Linguait [Verona].

If you judge your “money’s worth” by the quantity of information received as manifested by the notes given and taken, you will certainly come out from a four-week course at one of these schools with a substantial amount. But I doubt if you will be able to speak nor will you remember much of what you were fed. And being “fed” is an apt description. At all three of the schools mentioned above, the instructor spent the last days giving a list of words that we might find “useful”. If they had been given at the beginning of the course and we were then led to use them they might have proven useful. But as such, they were indigestible, and soon forgotten.

On the other hand, if you want to speak the language, then I recommend ARCA’s communicative approach. If you are used to the traditional method you may feel uneasy that there appears to be little structure and minimal content. Don’t fret that things seem so slack. As Polonius might say, there is method to their madness. You are receiving what you need in order to communicate, which should be your goal. Relax. Learn what grammar they give you in class, and embrace the many opportunities to speak. Don’t be afraid to try out what you have learnt in the school’s relaxed atmosphere. You will improve, which is all you can expect in four weeks.

In my next blog I will start my discussion on features, or the lack of, beyond the classroom.

49 ARCA: A Typical Lesson

Although we had up to eight or nine students in the class, we rarely had more than five or six, for most had been attending for almost a year, and many had developed a life outside the classroom – Bologna has many student bars! In fact, in my class I was the only “new” student. I had signed up for the four-week course that started in September.

Although our instructor had a pre-determined grammatical content that she brought to the class, for example the futuro, condizionale, etc. she started by asking if there was something we wanted to practise. Someone had asked for the congiuntivo and so we worked on it. She gave us a sheet that explained its major guidelines, that is, what we would need for general use in conversation, and not an exhaustive treatise on the congiuntivo. I learnt very quickly that I had overstudied my grammar because for the past years I had studied on my own from a Grammar Review Handbook for university. What I needed for communication was a lot less than what I had studied.

We would do a set of exercises from handouts, and then she broke us into groups for discussion with the goal of using the congiuntivo [or whatever the grammatical subject we were studying]. Homework would be to complete the drills, which were reviewed the next day.

We read articles, which we had to explain, and this was followed by mini debates, where she encouraged us to use the congiuntivo [or whatever grammatical subject we were studying]. However, it was never forced on us. For example, we may discuss without using the congiuntivo. She might rephrase what we said, or she may add something to the debate, in which she would use the congiuntivo. And as we got accustomed to hearing the congiuntivo used, some of us began using it. If we misused it, as I did, she corrected me. The best analogy I can give for her approach is that of shaping a figure from plaster: no major wrenches, but just gentle contouring – adding the use of the congiuntivo where we found it comfortable to use. These exercises and discussions were repeated over the week and beyond. What this approach does is gently ease us into using the grammatical point until it became second nature – at least for some of us.

The pausa [coffee break] took place between 11 to 12 in the morning. The entire school adjourned to the predetermined coffee bar on the piazza Santo Stefano where we all sat around little tables, and of course, chatted in Italian. To a superficial onlooker, this long pause might appear as a waste of time, but on closer observation one would notice that the instructors always mixed with the students and generally distributed themselves about the group. Anyone who was left out either from apprehension or timidity would be soon roped into conversation with one of the teachers. This would also ensure that Italian was generally spoken and thus the long coffee break was transmuted into an hour of casual conversation with no pressure on the speaker.

After the pausa we returned to class where we continued where we left off, or sometimes on Fridays we played a word game where one person on a team had to explain a word without using it – a practical way to improve one’s vocabulary.

In my next blog I will discuss whether ARCA is the right school for you.

48 ARCA, Bologna – A School for Conversation

Well, I finally found it: a school in Italy that really focuses on conversation. The proper, technical term would be “Communication”. If you have been following this Blog you will already know that I have been desperately seeking a school that emphasises speaking rather than grammar. Not that grammar was not taught, but that it was always and only the handmaiden to our oral use of the language.

Located in the centre of Bologna, ARCA is a small school whose roots are to be found in the teaching of English to Italians. Hence its original name: Modern English School. The Italian side followed later. With its English origin and practice, the school not surprisingly approaches the teaching of Italian based on a philosophy used in teaching English as a Second Language [ESL]. In this approach the emphasis is placed on communication and not on the study of grammar.

Being a small school, ARCA has a small corps of permanent teachers who are all Italian natives and have all trained in the ESL approach to language teaching. This itself is revolutionary, because the method runs contrary to all their training as teachers of Italian. The advantage for the students is that there should be a homogeneous approach at the school. So my experience should be found [within reason] in any of the other classes.

The first thing that strikes an incoming student is the relaxed, friendly atmosphere – everyone is a member of one extended family. Now, other schools, in fact, I would think all commercial schools, try to generate a friendly atmosphere, but at ARCA you sense that it is genuine. Everyone knows each other, and during the break called the pausa, everyone [students and teachers] wander down to the coffee shop at the nearby piazza Santo Stefano, where we sit around a set of tables and chat for an hour or more. It’s all very relaxed.

This casual, relaxed atmosphere pervades the classroom, but don’t be fooled. My teacher wants this casualness for a very specific purpose. As she explained to me, one can’t speak a foreign language when one is all tensed up. Worry about the grammar when trying to speak and one won’t speak. Instead, be like children at the playground: they just talk and let loose. From time to time she would nudge one along the right path with a correction or by some grammatical exercise, but being relaxed and just speaking was the goal. For me this apparently simple lesson was the hardest to learn, and I set it down to the fact that for too many years I was trying too hard and being obsessed with grammatical correctness. My epiphany came when I made the analogy to tennis: learning the theory of a backhand and being conscious of the mechanics when you strike the ball won’t help you in a game. But going out on the courts and just hitting the ball back and forth and eventually, with guidance, you will develop a good backhand that is second nature. Remaining relaxed and not fretting over the “correctness” of one’s speech was the big and important lesson I learnt from ARCA.

In my next blog I will discuss a typical lesson at ARCA