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.