Exploring Nowhere: Interporto Bologna

If you ever find yourself in the logistical wonderland that is Interporto Bologna, which you never will, unless, like me, you have applied for your US visa somewhere in Italy and intelligently decided to pick your passport up from "Interporto Bologna" because you assumed it must be in Bologna.

Technically Interporto is indeed in the province of Bologna, but it's in the commune of Bentivoglio (and also conveniently not anywhere in the city center of Bentivoglio). It's really only 20 kilometers from the center of Bologna, but with public transportation that's going to feel more like 50. You're most likely going to need to get on bus 95 from Autostazione to get to Interporto.

One of the mistakes I made after I picked up my passport at DHL (Section 9.4 within Interporto) was to walk around to explore. A logistics center is understandably no place for pedestrians and so it shouldn't have surprised me when I found no path to exit the main entrance to Interporto other than to seem like a sketchy trespasser walking across tarmac, ultimately finding myself walking on an autostrada (a freeway). That was bad, but what I would strongly recommend against is trying to walk down an on-ramp in the opposite direction of an autostrada. Not only is it probably illegal to walk on an autostrada, it's extremely unsafe.

I got really lucky: no-one on the autostrada even honked at me. Maybe the generally left-leaning Emilia-Romagna is more sensitive to recent migrants and assumed I was lost?

My mistake is your gain, so here are some photos from my journey to Interporto on a day that turned out to be presciently nippy and rainy during a week of otherwise glorious sunny summer weather.