It’s now been four days since I’ve returned from Italy. It has been more than enough time for my trip to become a haze. It’s a weird feeling coming home from time abroad; you would think that spending a month in another country would be hard to forget and it is. However, there’s a weird normalcy of coming home that causes all memories to become a blur. Each photo taken is a reality turned into a story. I want to burst with stories but at the same time its hard to piece everything together. I thought that because I wasn’t gone for a whole semester that everything I had heard about how hard it is to return wouldn’t apply to me. It does!
Don’t get me wrong. I’m SO happy to be home. I love my bed and my favorite coffee shop and my roommates. But I’m having a hard time grasping the fact that I spent so many days traveling through Italy. Sweet sweet Italy. I dreamed of how wonderful it would be to study olive oil and wine and parmesan in one of their birthplaces. I got to do that. I had a month long food journey. Bear with me because as I’m typing I’m finally starting to process (slowly) through all of this. I visited Venice, Parma, Modena, Sorrento, Capri, etc. I drank a lot of wine, I ate a lot of pasta, I walked everywhere. I took nice trains, I took sketchy trains. I had a shot of espresso every morning. I learned to ignore street vendors and not to use public bathrooms (mainly because they cost $$). I biked through Chianti and wine tasted in castles. I had pesto pizza, a cannoli, bruschetta, lots of tomatoes, truffle gnocchi, and lots of gelato. Italians like to feed you. Italians like to wear black. Italians like to express themselves and have conversations with their neighbors across the sidewalks. Roads are narrow and moped drivers are crazy. Some people don’t like Americans, others are extremely hospitable. Trying to speak Italian is a good thing, even if you screw up. They put Nutella in everything. They eat local as much as they can. A meal is an event and if they feel like closing their store in the middle of the day for a couple of hours they will. Wine is a respected part of the meal and is always necessary.
Italian men on motorcycles are indeed beautiful. Gelato shops are on every street corner. It’s impossible to get sick of standing on one of the bridges on the Arno river watching the sunset. It’s easy to become immune to the detailed churches that grace each piazza. Being homesick happens. Even with the romantic thoughts of living in Italy, sometimes you can’t get home out of your head. I’m so gleeful that I got to have such a cool experience, with a professor who loved the topic and fellow students that I loved getting to know. Please ask me about Italy because I will be more than happy to tell you about it. I want to keep learning from it, even back here in sweet Minneapolis.
Suggested Music -- Cannonball // by: Skylar Grey, X Ambassadors
May your wine be shared with friends and coffee taken black,
Sarah
