To the Underworld and Back in Bologna

Slaying my discomfort demon unlocks a true adventure

I. July 2, 2018

“An unsettling vibe seems to hang in the air here, like some weird nightmare come to life… but fascinating.”

Such was my first impression of Bologna. I set foot in Europe for the first time, well-prepared, I thought. Ready for the best pasta of my life, for train-hopping around Northern Italy, for challenging myself to get by with the few foreign phrases I’d learned. But nothing prepared me to be thrown for a loop in Bologna.

I stepped off the bus and into the underworld above ground, everything a shade of faded yellows, reds, and oranges. I made my way through the porticoes of the old city center, a grid of eerie passageways, partial tunnels neither inside nor out. Walkways sloped up or down without logic alongside the street. I turned one corner and weaved through crowds, another and I was suddenly alone with my solitary footsteps, another and I’d lost the daylight, swallowed by the great labyrinth.

Gargoyles glowered at me from above. A peculiar cleaner scent followed me everywhere. Then I noticed the skies were alive. Swarms of black birds circled above the alleys, looking uncannily like bats bold enough to come out in broad daylight. Their cry was a screech and a hiss at once, as if through a closed grin. Chimney swifts, I later learned, but I had already dubbed them demon birds.

Most curiously, nobody else was bothered by any of this. In fact, it felt more like a party at the end of the world. The very old coexisting with the now. Confetti, street buskers, scooters, coffee shops. Colorful street murals and scrawled graffiti lent a moody urban grit to the faded grandeur. “Fight back.” “Uber uber uber.” Even my art-themed hotel room got into the act. “Gnawl growl. Bup buup up!” warbled the smiling goblins who covered my walls.

Weird on top of weird. Was this for real? Only in a nightmare could I have imagined such a place. Don’t get me wrong, the Italian culinary hotspot totally delivered. Squacquerone, tortellini in brodo, mortadella! I felt perfectly safe, and yet disoriented in a way I couldn’t shake. At the end of my two nights in Bologna, I was eager to leave for the picturesque Italy of the travel guides.

But as the train pulled out of Bologna Centrale, my mind was already starting to change…

II. Two weeks later

I’d gone on to Lake Como, Cinque Terre, and way off the tourist track to Certaldo’s Mercantia festival. Yet once back home, I was still unpacking my experience in Bologna. Why did the most unattractive part of my trip stick with me? The first thing I noticed was the qualifier I added. “Bologna creeped me out, but… it was so wildly unexpected, I feel lucky I got to go there.”

Lucky? Where did that come from?

I’d been to places very different from home - the jungles of Belize, the isolated islands of Newfoundland. But they were different in expected ways. Now I had been somewhere truly alien. I hate being pushed out of my comfort zone, yet I started to travel in pursuit of novelty. Even more, experiences that were otherworldly. Now I’d found it, but could I handle it? Did I deserve to call myself an adventurer?

I puzzled over the idea that Bologna was someone else’s normal. Among the snarling gargoyles and demon birds, the locals rode their bikes to work, grabbed their coffee, gathered with friends in the piazza, and made their art. Community thrived here beneath the shadowy porticoes. The old and the new, sometimes jarringly superimposed. The same timeworn walls painted in a traditional fiery palette were repurposed as canvases for free-flowing art. It was almost post-apocalyptic, in the best way.

I framed and hung a photo of Guasto Village, the university district towering regally over a pop-up gathering hub adorned with murals and light strings. I set Bologna street scenes as my desktop slideshow and found myself staring into them. No one disappears over the horizon in Bologna, they only vanish into a convergence of seemingly infinite frames. So too, the city seeped further into my consciousness.

I made a second visit to Europe the following summer. I found the swifts again, in Croatia. They weren’t half as creepy, rather they seemed out of place on the riviera. Then the pandemic came and I shelved my passport for three years. I took time to research for the future, but more and more, Bologna was calling me back. Somehow I craved to confront what had spooked me the most. Finally ready to travel again, I knew my first stop.

III. March 12, 2023

I booked five days in Bologna in late winter, a generous amount of time to test my theory. Had my mind had truly changed? Could I welcome and enjoy the weirdness of this place that repulsed me the first time?

The city was as I remembered it, more chilly but still vibrant, with the familiar hint of chemical cleaner in the air. No swifts, only pigeons. I left my days open just to wander the streets, on the trail of more art, flamboyant door knockers, and ominous passageways. University graduates appeared wearing laurel garlands and flanked by friends bearing wine bottles and cameras. Glitter trails in the streets let me follow their procession route like animal tracks.

I visited the taxidermy exhibit at the Museo di Zoologia; its sheer size both impressive and increasingly stomach turning the more I lingered. I ventured outside the city gate to the expansive Giardini Margherita where the locals chilled out on trampolines and slack lines. Every night, acoustic instrumentals of Stairway to Heaven, Zombie, and more played on a loop from a cafe below. Lest we forget the food - still the best. Passatelli, zuppa inglese, balsamic vinegar, and Parmesan!

I walked nearly every corner of the old city. I felt like an insider this time, as much as a tourist can. Though I could never live here, I felt welcome by the worn tile corridors and scribbled-over columns. Not just welcome, I let the spooks walk beside me and lift my spirit. I’d chased that old uneasy feeling down to the source and proved my mettle as an adventurer. If this was the underworld of myth, I’d completed my trials and been granted passage. A third visit? Maybe someday.

First, more continents and more countries to get under my belt. I want more of these mind-changing adventures, but it’s proving elusive. Have I widened my expectations too much? Can I still be surprised setting foot in a new place? I hope so. Travel is chasing comfort, and discomfort. And if we’re lucky, our most discomforting stops earn a place in our heart at the end.