Despite the never ending heatwave I managed to haul my ass around this town several times. Assisting me in this endeavour was several centuries of sensible town planning.

The entire centro storico of bologna is made up of porticoed buildings which allows for plenty of shade and places to sit and also maufactures pleasing breezes which tickle the sweat on your brow and somehow trick you into thinking that 40 degrees C aint so bad after all.

In contrast to this is the town’s main square, piazza maggiore, a slab or concrete big enough to have a footy match in.

Bologna is home to Europe’s oldest university, formed about 1000 years ago to argue about how to split up the cash the church was making… gee so glad they sorted that problem out once and for all…

Bologna is also home to just about every left wing political movement and lobby group in italy and the town is not too over the moon about italy’s current political saviour… In fact Mr Berlusconi is mocked quite publicly and i challenge anyone to find a copy of one of his newspapers for sale in this town, i have seen one copy of the corriere della sera whilst staying here and that was in the corner of the breakfast room in the 4 star hotel i was staying in when i first landed in this town. Most people that prefer their news on dead trees get to a copy of La Repubblica and its certainly the only paper you see advertised at the edicole around town.

The other advantage of the uni town is the fairly active nightlife and spirit of the town itself. Young, smart people wandering about arguing the point or just being pretty, lots of languages and culture all trying to hammer themselves into something that can loosely be called italian society.

I am over the cobblestones and ancient walls, i look into the eyes of the poeple now and allow myself to be washed away by their passion their anger, contempt, joy, conflict, pessimism, hope and contradiction,.. this is what makes a culture, its not a formula, it’s a cacophany of choices which when viewed from a distance all point towards the one destiny. This destiny isnt corruptible by the desires of a single person, sure each person has their say and can influence others but you cant sway a culture just because you dont like something about it,.. it takes numbers, it takes time as much time as it took to develop the thing in the first place.

I have always been amazed by how impatient Australians are to manufacture a culture for our country, i am certainly in no hurry, yes i think its important to discuss these things but not so we can come up with a consensus on where our cultural identity lies, to do so would mean to take a vote on which cricket player best captures the australian sprit… none of them do… none of them can… we cant decide how many australians need to die in a war before we can feel that we have contributed to the worlds development,.. thats a ridiculous notion, we cant conjure up history, conflict, resolution peace and tension, we just have to get through it like every other society throughout history.

Hmm… back to Bologna now.