It's 7pm and I'm sitting in front of my tent. My knee hurts but I am happy that I finally found the City Campground. I had to drive 5 km through the city, because there are no other ways over the river. It's nice here and I decide to rest here one day while hoping that my knee would become better.
One day ago, when I was in Parma, my knee started to hurt. I am sure that this comes from the few training I did so far. As long as I could drive without any interruption or when walking, the pain wasn't too bad. But whenever I had to accelerate the pain hurt like hell for the next 100 meters. Nevertheless i kept driving and spent only a few hours in the cities of Parma, Reggio Emilia and Modena. The Landscape of Lombardia is flat and can sometimes be really boring. Normally when I drive, I am busy checking the streets or loking at the landscape but here I wished for the first time I had some music with me. So I started so sing a little bit.
The last night I had to camp next to a ruin house and dogs and policesirens didn't let me sleep well. In Modena I visited the market hall which had everything of food, you would imaging when you thought about italy.
The neyt morning, I wake up early. There's even a bus directly into the center of the city and while I wait for it I am using the free Wifi in the bar of the Campground.
A man approaches me and asks me in english, if I am the guy with the bicycle and if I speak german. I say yes and it turnes out that he is from switzerland too. Hans and his wife Monika have been travelling around in their camper after their retirement. We quickly get along well and are chatting during the whole bus tour. In the evening I will visit dem for Dinner in their camper.
I am roaming alone through the city, with my camera by hand. Bologna is a very beautiful citiy with its long arcades and ancient buildings. I find a lot of photomotives. Especially the market in the inner city catches my eye. On small shops and booths you can find every speciality and much more to eat. There are hundreds of parmesian ham, huges saussiges and of course pasta and fresh fruits.
I often take pictures from the hip, which means I don't actually look through the viewfinder or try not to be seen in order to get some authentic portraits. This way, I also photographed a bearded man, whose face I found quite interesting. Two hours later, I was again in the market hall, drinking a beer, when this very man sat right next to me. I asked him where he was from and soon we had a nice conversation. Alessandro is a dentist from Bologna and we talk mostly about food. He gave me the tipp, that the pasticceria "Atti" was the best in town. He hadn't noticed that I took a picture of him but when I showed it to him, he didn't like it. But anyway, I somehow liked it.
I later went to the pasticceria Atti, where it took me a little effort to explain to the shop assistent that I am a baker too. But then, she showed and explained everything I wanted to know. I bought a single piece of everything I liked and left. I later gave the pieces to Hans and Monika to try when we were in their camper.
Back on the Campground, i met my neighbours, two young, pretty ladies from Germany. Saskia and Anna were Air traffic controllers from Frankfurt and seemed to be really interested in my journey. we had been talking a long time when a man with a bicycle arrived. While the ladies did their dishes, I talk to the cyclist. Contrary to most of them I saw on my journey, he didn't have an electro-motor. Wolfgang was already retired and with his bike he was fullfilling a childhood dream, driving through Europe. He was german and we kept talking until the bar on the campground closed. He had some really good stories to like the one when he couldn't find a single spot to pee for 20 km in southernitaly. There were either walls or prostitutes and now you have to imagine him finally finding a spot opening his pants and a prostitute comes right around the corner. Not easy to explain that he just wanted to pee.
Or as two other travellers, two girls from France persuaded him to camp on a farm instead of a proper campingplace and the his wife called.
I was glad to have someone to talk about biking and the next morning i met him again before I finally left Bologna. I met the two girls too but sadly, they didn't write me to this date.