When life hands you bologna, don’t ask why life isn’t giving you the typical lemons instead; just go with it. That’s what I decided to do upon arrival in very atypical Bologna, Italy. The cities we’ve visited thus far have had one thing in common: they were very centralized. You pretty much knew where everything was because everything you needed was in the center square. Bologna was far from that.

When we unpacked our things, not even having been there for fifteen minutes, Casey Arn and I decided to venture off in search of sustenance. We headed over to what we thought was the main road and took a left, toward the direction we entered from by bus, because Casey swore she saw some places to eat on the way in. I shrugged to myself and thought “sure, why not?” and we set off. Nearly half an hour later, after trudging down several different streets where there was certainly no food available, we completely changed course and walked in the other direction. Eventually we finally stumbled upon a place serving food. The wait staff didn’t really speak English, and when we walked in Casey was so tired that she said “non parlo Inglese” to one of the waiters, which essentially meant she was telling the man that he didn’t speak English. While she was not incorrect in saying this, it was certainly not what she was trying to say, so I covered up her delusional state by saying “non parlo Italiano. Parli Inglese?” The man laughed and called to a woman who spoke extremely broken English, but we didn’t need much translation in order to point to the pizza on the shelf that was covered in french fries and hot dog slices.

We had quite the long walk back to the hotel, but between bites of the heavenly pizza and the truly in depth and personal conversation Casey and I shared, the journey that had felt like years in the beginning felt like seconds on the way back.

Life certainly didn’t hand us lemons like we were accustomed to. But it handed us Bologna, and I think I got a pretty solid friendship as a result.