My first time in Italy was on holiday at the end of the first year at university with my family. Rome, Florence Pisa, and Siena. An Italian trip that showed me all the highlights of the Italian peninsula condensed into a week and four cities. Three and a half years later I was back in Italy for my Erasmus year. I landed in Rome and caught another flight to Milan where after an agonizing hour I discovered my suitcases were lost. But no time to stop there. Onto Stazione Centrale in Milan where I caught the train to Verona, literally within seconds. About an hour and a half later, baking cabin, as it was still warm in northern Italy in September, I finally arrived at the city of Romeo and Juliet where I began my fourth and final part of my journey, and caught a train to Trento. The train made its way from the top of the Po Valley, up up up into the Dolomites where, after seeing mountains jut out of the ground, flanked by tiny towns and budding villages I finally arrived in Trento.
That city was to be my home for the next four months or so. I got out of the station and as if by radar and sans map I found myself in the lobby of my hostel. Finding my friends who were on my placement year, we smoked and had a bottle of wine (that cost a Euro and tasted like cat pee) that we bought from the local supermarket. In fact it was so local, it practically catered to the immediately family of the proprietors.
Those four months in Trento taught me Italian grammar, geography and gastronomy, that my favourite coffee was Latte Macchiato (only €0.80 from the café opposite the Duomo and €1.20-€1.80 in Milan), that Americans were smart and more importantly fun, how to drink wine as if it were juice, who my friends were and who weren’t, that you can buy a slice of pizza per portare via, that Italian Churches looked like museums from the inside (and don’t they say beauty comes from within), that jumping into a fountain in the piazza in your underwear with your friends is illegal apparently, as is stealing dustbins from the street and a side-order or fried from a restaurant in Bologna, that ‘ti voglio bene’ means I love you, that the authorities need 16 days just to process a piece of paper, that getting your fiscal code may seem less mundane than originally thought, that travel is paramount for passion and knowledge, that you can catch a train to Venice for the day (€25 return and 2 hours each way) or a Taxi for five from Ljubljana to Venice for about €40, that Innsbruck was only 2 hours away and cold, that Lugano is the best city in Europe and even better with good company, that the Duomo in Bologna was stopped being built by the Vatican in case it was bigger than the Vatican and that Milan is a formidable city.
After I left I did not expect to return to Italy any time soon. I loved the country and knew it well (well… north Italy anyway) but there were so many other places to see and Spain was calling at the time… so I wrapped up Italy and got on with my life, thinking of Italy only occasionally until five years later…Italy was calling me to go back again…
That city was to be my home for the next four months or so. I got out of the station and as if by radar and sans map I found myself in the lobby of my hostel. Finding my friends who were on my placement year, we smoked and had a bottle of wine (that cost a Euro and tasted like cat pee) that we bought from the local supermarket. In fact it was so local, it practically catered to the immediately family of the proprietors.
Those four months in Trento taught me Italian grammar, geography and gastronomy, that my favourite coffee was Latte Macchiato (only €0.80 from the café opposite the Duomo and €1.20-€1.80 in Milan), that Americans were smart and more importantly fun, how to drink wine as if it were juice, who my friends were and who weren’t, that you can buy a slice of pizza per portare via, that Italian Churches looked like museums from the inside (and don’t they say beauty comes from within), that jumping into a fountain in the piazza in your underwear with your friends is illegal apparently, as is stealing dustbins from the street and a side-order or fried from a restaurant in Bologna, that ‘ti voglio bene’ means I love you, that the authorities need 16 days just to process a piece of paper, that getting your fiscal code may seem less mundane than originally thought, that travel is paramount for passion and knowledge, that you can catch a train to Venice for the day (€25 return and 2 hours each way) or a Taxi for five from Ljubljana to Venice for about €40, that Innsbruck was only 2 hours away and cold, that Lugano is the best city in Europe and even better with good company, that the Duomo in Bologna was stopped being built by the Vatican in case it was bigger than the Vatican and that Milan is a formidable city.
After I left I did not expect to return to Italy any time soon. I loved the country and knew it well (well… north Italy anyway) but there were so many other places to see and Spain was calling at the time… so I wrapped up Italy and got on with my life, thinking of Italy only occasionally until five years later…Italy was calling me to go back again…