Wandering around Parma and me and my friend, Jess, found ourselves
immersed in a 10-minute conversation about the use of the word ‘nice’ in the
English language. “But I just can’t think of a better way of saying it… it’s
just so nice… I mean, look how nice this is!” I said as we stopped for the
hundredth time that day to take as many touristy shots as possible of the
pretty lamppost in the cute little street filled with window-shutters and
flowers and rickety bikes with wicker baskets. Forget trying to blend in with
the Italians (hey, I’m blonde, it’s virtually impossible), Parma was all about
embracing the ‘I’m a tourist’ attitude, which meant coming away with tired
feet, 200 photos to sort through and a belly and a bag full of Parma ham.
First impressions of the town had us both planning a Parma
ham-filled lunch and getting an early train back to Bologna. Final impressions
had us planning Parma-ham filled dinners for the next week and getting a train
back to Parma in not too long… “It was just so nice!”.
In a nutshell, our Parma was a series of cobbled streets, artisan food stores, and stumbling across beautiful monuments, churches and palazzos… not to mention a very Italian-style wedding involving a pair of street-performers giving an impromptu performance of The Wedding March (before proceeding to ask the father-of-the-bride and all the onlookers for money) and a loved-up couple in an old, blue car disappearing down a church-side alleyway.
Though I saw none of the following things, there was something about Parma that made me think of postmen riding bikes, Sound of Music-esque convents and snow-covered lanes lit only by streetlights. I could imagine myself transported back to Italy in wartime, or Roman time. In fact, there is almost a sense of timelessness about the city; from the hustle-and-bustle of the restaurant-lined streets to the peaceful calm of the hidden-backstreets.
Crossing the eerily dry river (which I later learned is more of a
stream, and regularly dry – thanks Wikipedia) we found our way to Parco Ducale,
a park which made me feel that I had stepped into autumn, into some
Italian–style Narnia, a world away from the car-hooting, smog-filled
twenty-first century. Re-entering our comparatively substandard world and the
only thing left to be done was to buy us some ham. And that we did. And now
prosciutto is being paired with pesto and bread and spaghetti, and savored as
though Parma really is in another world within some irretrievable wardrobe. In
fact, the wardrobe can be retrieved with the golden train ticket, and then the
magical world of Parma is only an hour away.
