Last day in Italy.

It’s always sad leaving a loved one; watching them drive away in a car full of life, bound for a city thousands of miles away, or, leaving them behind for a new destination, the door closing with an ultimate “thud” behind you- no, in front of you- as their face disappears and the world shifts under you.. the sad pit in your stomach as you realize the next time you see them is unknown.

Transit is always a time of sulking; the bitter-sweetness that accompanies the train ride, the blablacar, the movement away from something, towards something, towards nothing, really.

I’d rather be the one to leave it behind. I’d rather be the one gripping the steering wheel, foot pressed against the pedal, moving forward into the world. I’d rather not be the one left behind to sulk alone, stagnant.

So, this time, I’m leaving Italy with force. This time, though, my destination is a destination of necessity. A destination of timeliness, the unfolding of travel-induced events. I have no idea what will come of this leg of the trip. Maybe, then, this is freedom. The unknown as freedom.

My generalities are telling me that I’m voyaging away from a place with the richest of food cultures to a place lacking in it. From Tuscany to London; from wild, unadulterated gluttony to proper, pint-guzzling days of poshness. Disappointing, maybe? More to learn from.

What I’ve learned in the past week: I enjoy basking in the non-traditional path. I need to accept this. Just because someone travels, doesn’t mean they’re traveled. Intellectualism is ultimately most attractive. Confidence is key to language enhancement, piano-playing abilities, most things in general.

See you all in London.

Following the crowds through the 90 degree sun-soaked streets was definitely worth it.

The Vatican City: A place I was always taught was closest in this world to heaven, to God. Little 10-year-old me, sitting in my tiny 3rd grade catholic school classroom in Plain, Wisconsin, learning about the Pope, Catholicism, and hypocrisy.

I’m thankful for it.

Fast forward 11 years: I step into the Piazza San Pietro alongside thousands of other sunscreen-blanketed, water-bottle clenching people. Through my earbuds plays Eric Satie’s Gnossienne: No. 1.

I settle into thoughts about faith, divinity, history. There is a palpable sense of grandiosity here and my reverent acknowledgement of the millions of religious people taking a pilgrimage to this site leaves me questioning what I ultimately believe in, prescribe to. These monuments, bigger in time and space that I will ever be, certainly must bring forth this feeling in the minds of everyone in their presence..

Within St. Peter’s Basilica, I take in the sculpture, the art, laying my eyes on the tombs of popes that have come and gone, as we all do, all will. Walking into the massive structure stirs within me a desire to sing.. to fill the space with a beautiful sound. I ponder the lyrics to the aria drowning out the sounds of the crowds around me, and they seem to me almost sacrilegious. How can something so beautiful express such trivial emotion? Where is this reverent feeling coming from within me? The other-worldly awe tangible in the space shared with thousands of buzzing tourists is powerful.. but…

This same sense of awe, for a girl that grew up a 15 minute rural drive away from a small town of 1200 people, lay in the rolling hills of my childhood. Native Americans wandered the untouched 340 acres of land that my father owned thousands of years before we even arrived. Instead of reverence directed at sheer grandiosity of structure and historical relevance present in the Vatican City, the reverence I had intuitively as a little girl was instead directed at the beauty of nature and the same deeply held beliefs by our native predecessors to protect land, preserve it, and live according to the lay of it.

I’d walk and sing, explore and play with make-believe friends in tall grasses, wooded tree lines, trickling creeks and open fields of green. My brother and I would occasionally find Native American arrowheads; we kept a box of them under our bunk bed in the basement of the Inn. Relics of the past, symbols of what was. I’d watch countless sunsets alone, wander with our German shepherd exploring the treeline, the perimeter of “our land”. I’d witness the change of the seasons in an unobtrusive way; the foggy mornings of springtime that wet the blossoming earth, the sun-stroked countryside of summer, the evolution of the Earth’s color palate in autumn, and the pristine calm that follows the first snowfall..

The closest thing to heaven on earth.

Pantheon: Late-July, 2018.

Here I am in Bologna, gastronomic centerpiece of the Emilia-Romagna region, sipping burnt coffee that’s been stagnant on an all-too-familiar drip-coffee burner at my hostel all morning. I’m silently pondering my dinner last night of peanuts, 2 pints of ice-cold German beer and half of a pizza shared at midnight with a hostel resident of Roman, Egyptian and (Cuban?) roots while chatting about Umm Kulthum, Egyptian and European music traditions and dating in Italy…

What is an “authentic” experience?

Each of my successive trips to Italy has left me less and less romantic about this country and yet more deeply in love with it in general; like a relationship with a significant other that transitions from the all-too-exciting high of the first few months and settles into the reality, the routine, and the progressing stages of familiarity. My relationship with Italy is becoming decreasingly romantic with each train cancellation, deepening knowledge about the economic and political problems, and the witnessing of the effects of mass tourism (which I understand that I am apart of..).

Yet, coming away from my one-night stay in Verona with my host family from two winters ago, I reminisce about why I romanticized Italy in the first place. Was there a reason why I purchased my first solo trip overseas to the most romantic of all cities in Italy, arguably all of Europe? Did my childhood exposure to Shakespearean tales of impassioned love, lust, and loss really dictate unconsciously how I decided to romanticize Italy and spend my travel dollars?

Regardless, each trip to this place has deepened my sense of reality about travel, life outside of the United States, and the beauty of being a romantic in the first place. I never really considered myself a romantic person, but now as I feel my quasi-romantic nature slipping out from under me, more and more I am trying to cling onto the lighthearted freedom and bliss that lies in naivety. Perhaps, though, I could hold onto my romantic nature through the experience of navigating a new reality..

For now, I question the “authentic” experience as I weave my way through the same streets that I passed on my first trip in Italy. I stroll past the bars that I had my first Italian coffees in when I was unsure of the ways of coffee culture in this cultural context. I see groups of people that I can now group together in my mind as being from particular places in Europe, in Italy. I pick up on more minute differences in Italian accents. I can understand the differences in age gaps; the differences in the complexities and expectations between American early-twenty-somethings and Italian early-twenty-somethings.

This is my new romantic world… getting deeper and deeper into the culture while still remaining outside of it. Outside of my own, even. Peering in from the edges of the world.. a short-term transplant, enjoying the way things are done without ever fully prescribing to them, anywhere.

Arena di Verona.