On Via Emilia
Parma to Bologna, 10th - 12th April
The obvious road route between Parma and Bologna is along Via Emilia, a long straight road connecting all the major towns in the region just north of the Appenines. It's not very pleasant for cycling, as you ride along the potholed shoulder and get overtaken by huge lorries, but it does have a lot of history. It was originally built for the Roman invasion of North Italy, which was previously populated by Celtic tribes, and named for the consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. The Romans wanted the land for agriculture since it was, as now, the only large expanse of flat, fertile land in the whole Italian peninsula, and established colonies along their new road including what we now know as Bologna, Modena, and Parma [1]. While I'm not a Roman Empire obsessive by any means, I like the idea that I'm following a road which has been continuously used for more than 2,000 years. I'm sharing this space with all the people who have ever passed through it, for war, settlement, trade, love, and every other purpose imaginable.
The historical romanticisation rather falls away with the tenth big lorry, though, so I got OpenStreetMap to give me a route parallel to Via Emilia going through villages and quiet rural roads instead, which is a lot more varied and pleasantly unpredictable. At one point, it took me through a field, and I absolutely deny that this was a wrong turn on my part (it definitely was, but what does "wrong" mean anyway?).
I had failed to plan ahead for where I would stay in Modena, and had no luck with last minute requests on Warmshowers and Couchsurfing, but found the contact for a nearby farmer listed on iOverlander and arranged to stay in his back-garden campsite. The farmer, Enrico, was a former motorcycle traveller and quite interesting to talk to: at the age of forty, he'd decided to ride to Kathmandu, and came back loving his home of Emilia-Romagna all the more. Of his village in the countryside outside Modena, he said, "to be born here... I feel to be lucky". It's kind of amazing how much we are shaped by the places we're from - for him, this random village is the best place in the world, and he's so grateful for it.
I also spoke to him about the Punjabi people I've seen in so many villages in the past few days, and he gave me an explanation: making Parmigiano Reggiano requires a lot of dairy farming, and Punjabi people 'are the best' at that. My own quick research more or less confirms this, and apparently Punjab and the Po valley have similar climates too, which I didn't expect.
After a much less cold night camping than last week and a send-off from Enrico with a small bottle of homemade balsamic vinegar, I reached Modena around lunchtime. I didn't want to spend too long there, though, since I had agreed to meet a friend in Bologna in the evening. I took a quick look around the central piazzas (very pretty), ate some pizza, and bought fresh strawberries in the food market from a Chandigarhian fruit seller keen to tell me about all the local gurdwaras. The highlight, though, was a conversation I had with William, a former Londoner living in Bologna and teaching English at the military academy in Modena (like Italian Sandringham, according to him). He was curious about my journey as a fellow bike traveller and offered me advice on my upcoming crossing of the Appenines between Bologna and Florence. I'm inclined to take it - he told me he'd been over the Appenines a hundred times on all sorts of routes, albeit on a much lighter bike than mine.
I am a little nervous about my first serious hills coming up. I think my panniers remain a bit overweight and oversized - I'm sure my aerodynamic profile is comically bad, and even small inclines in the past week of pancake-flat Emilia-Romagna roads have had me flicking down the gears. I'll try to cut down some items: perhaps I don't need a hundred grams of sugar in my kitchen bag for making tea. I also haven't used my waterproofs yet, but it would probably be unwise to get rid of those.
On Saturday 12th I took a day off cycling to spend some time in Bologna with the friends I saw in Milan. They've been on their own journey by train across the whole country, but the timing has worked perfectly with them having arrived in Bologna just before I reached it. It really is a lovely city and I can see why the locals often have a distate for Milan: Bologna is prettier, cheaper, and has better food. The university also gives it a youthful, alternative energy and there is writing graffitied all over the city in a way that somehow suits it. After zooming through Parma and Modena and entirely skipping Reggio Emilia, I'm glad I got to spend a whole day in Bologna.