{"id":999,"date":"2016-10-31T13:31:08","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T12:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruthellengruber.com\/blog\/?p=999"},"modified":"2016-10-31T13:31:08","modified_gmt":"2016-10-31T12:31:08","slug":"spaghetti-meatballs-cowboys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ruthellengruber.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/31\/spaghetti-meatballs-cowboys\/","title":{"rendered":"Spaghetti (& Meatballs) Cowboys"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
This is a cross post from my blog sauerkrautcowboys.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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In late October I spent an afternoon at a country western festival in Bologna, Italy<\/a>. It was the very last day of the two weekends that the festival took place, and I was eager to see what it was like: though I have been to wild west and country festivals in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France<\/a> and the Czech Republic, I have only been to a couple of them in Italy.<\/p>\n

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This one, called “Festival Country,” took place at the Bologna Fairgrounds, and it shared space in a cavernous hall with a sort of “October Fest” beer festival (featuring what was presented as German food). In a separate cavernous hall there was a so-called “Irish Festival:” vaguely Celtic music, and stalls that mainly seemed to sell “Lord of the Rings” type clothing…..<\/p>\n

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The path to all three led through the grim industrial landscape of the Fair buildings…..<\/p>\n

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Once there, what did I find?<\/p>\n

The scene — at least on the day I was there — was a sort of distillation of all the most common stereotypes associated with “the west,” “the frontier,” “country-western,” and, in a certain way, “America.”<\/p>\n

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