II.vi. Balmoral

"Fools are without number"
- Desiderius Erasmus

A friend informed me that tonight there was to be an Erasmus party in Bologna. The irony of naming a debauched pub-crawl after a Christian Humanist who espoused tranquillity was lost on most. If any of those present had read In Praise of Folly it certainly didn't show. Erasmus was now synonymous with the greatest of all European Union exchange programs. This was to be an affair organized by and for foreigners, where nary an Italian would be found. Great, I thought. Just what I needed. More Americans and Brits. We met in front of the Balmoral Pub at eleven o'clock, and it was thronged. The Balmoral Pub flanks San Petronio directly, and people were even crowded onto the venerable basilica's steps, where barely two days before Saint Petronius' head was being displayed with an appropriate solemnity that had rapidly vanished since then. While we were standing in Piazza Maggiore, shooting the breeze, we noticed an important sector of the Italian economy, the stolen bicycle trade, was in full operation.
    "Just what I need!" I said, "A bici, cheap." We halted a punk who was riding a fairly nice bicycle, swaggering incredibly as he spoke to us in a slurred Italian. As it turned out, he was selling this bicycle, which he had "found", or rather, that his girlfriend had found. There was still a lock attached to it for which he had lost the key, unfortunately. He wanted thirty Euros for it, but we would have none of it.
    "Twenty-five."
    "Well, I don't know man, I'll have to go ask my girlfriend. She lives at the train station. Give me your number and I'll call you back in a while." I was impressed that he had a cell phone far fancier than mine, but this is technitalia, after all, and cell phones are the ultimate social leveller.
    "Um, how bout you give us ours?" Finally, we reached a tentative deal. He would return in fifteen minutes, and we would purchase the bicycle.
    After a certain amount of time (which was markedly more than fifteen minutes), we gave him a call, and the man returned. This time, however, he was riding an entirely different bicycle, a far less desirable one, that he pretended was the same one as before.
    "It's not the same," we protested, "the deal's off." And so the arrangement fell through, and I am still without transportation, and I have met even more foreigners.