Viaggio in Italia

I'm sorry I haven't been updating this as much as I intended to. And now there's so much I could say that I don't have the time or energy to get it all down. So to briefly summarize the last several weeks: after my exam, I was in Bologna for another week and a half or so and then my roommates (all but one, that is) and I went off to Sardegna to see Matteo's hometown and to meet all his family and friends. Well, I got there a day later since I forgot my passport and thus was forced to miss our initial flight. It was kind of annoying and I felt like kind of an idiot, but I wasn't stressed or upset. By now I'm a seasoned enough traveler that I don't let things like that stress me out. Anyway, it worked out fine and I took the two and a half hour train ride back to Bologna, booked another flight for the next morning, and got to Iglesias (after a flight delay of two hours in northern Sardegna) less than 24 hours after my roommates.

Sardegna was by far the most rewarding travel experience I've had this semester. It was beautiful. I got there Thursday, and we left Monday morning. Iglesias, the town Matteo is from, is pretty small (27,000 inhabitants - just looked it up on Wikipedia) and pretty quiet. It's in the southwestern corner of the island, an hour by train away from Cagliari, the capital and largest city of Sardegna. It was so fun to experience a place from a locals' perspective rather than a tourist perspective, the first time I've gotten to do that here. We hung out in Cagliari for a day, but the rest of the time we decided to fan the museums and the touristy sites just to be in Iglesias and follow Matteo and his friends around.

Matteo's friends were pretty thrilled about the idea of getting to meet Americans, even though they were surprised at us for being less than thrilled with their flirtations. I think Jennie and Dana were slightly taken aback at the beginning at how strongly they were coming on. I was pretty much just amused and fascinated by it. Whatever though, we adjusted and it was all fine. Matteo's closest friend in Iglesias was Alberto, a year younger and therefore in his fifth and last year of high school. He was similar to Matteo, goofy and intelligent and really interested in music and playing the guitar. Then there was Andrea Casulla who seemed like Matteo's polar opposite - kind of thuggish and macho though very sweet and earnest. He's trying to get into the Italian navy though so far he's failed the entrance exam so he's chilling in Iglesias til he gets another chance to try. He was the one Jennie and Dana were slightly put off by at the beginning. All he wanted to talk about were all the crazy, daredevil stunts he's pulled to try to impress us. At one point, he was showing me and Jennie videos on his cell phone of himself fighting against his friends for fun -- of course, he came out on top in all of these play-fights. And then there was the crew Andrea rolled with -- another Andrea and this hilarious little kid with spiky hair and a lisp named Daniele.

Anyway, for me it was fascinating to get a sense of what Sardinian kids were like. Here's this remote, sparsely populated island in the Mediterranean that you never even think about, and a sleepy ex-mining town with twice as many sheep as people. If you didn't speak Italian, and if you didn't know someone from there, you would never meet these people or communicate with them or know they existed. And in the end, they're not that different from kids in my hometown of Novato. For fun they hang out in the town's main piazza and drink and play guitar. Or they go to the beach and hang out and drink some more. In between they like to drive fast and crazy and try to almost kill themselves without actually succeeding. (Both of the Andreas were covered with battle scars from car/ motorino accidents -- and we of course had to look at them all and make the appropriate impressed noises.)

Sardi are I think the most open and friendly and hospitable group of people that I've ever met. Italians in general are open and friendly and hospitable, but sardi more so than any other type of Italian. I was in love with them come gente. Matteo's family was so warm and friendly. They had us over for these big elaborate lunches twice during our long weekend. And we got to meet his 90+ year-old grandparents who were amazingly cute and the hardest Italians ever to understand but I'm pretty sure his grandfather was just making vulgar jokes the whole time we were talking to him. Vulgar jokes are also big among the sardi. (Oh, another cool thing - we got to learn a bunch of new swear words, both in Italian and in sardo, a completely different language. Fun and useful.)

Anyway, I need to go back to Sardegna and see every inch of the island. I would totally live there. In addition to being physically stunning and having the warmest people ever, it's also cool because everyone is politically liberal. (Oh yeah, we also happened to be there over election weekend so we got to talk to everyone about politics and hear about who they voted for and why. Andrea and Alberto voted for the main center-left party, the only liberal party that had a chance of winning. Matteo, on the other hand, voted for the Sardinian independence party, which got a total of I think 100 votes.)

I meant to say a couple of sentences about Sardinia and instead I've written five paragraphs. Oh well. There's way more I could say, too, but in summary it was wonderful and that's all I can really say. I didn't take a whole bunch of photos, in keeping with my I-don't-feel-like-being-a-tourist-anymore attitude. Both Dana and Jennie took a bunch of photos though, including of the whole iglesiani crew, and I've been bugging them to sort through the photos but so far no luck. I will get those photos though, and I'll post a few up here as soon as I do.

After Sardegna, then. We got back to Bologna on a Monday evening and I had essentially two days before I had to leave again for Paris. Two stressful days in which I had to study for an exam, go to class and realize that the exam was actually a take-home exam (I'm not sure he ever told us until the actual day of the exam), and then try to complete it in a frenzy on the train and on the plane on my way to Paris. What a mess. In the end, I submitted it about three hours late and I'm praying the professor accepted it. I still haven't found out for certain, since the prof sent us an email saying that due to his 'international engagements' he won't even be looking at the exams until sometime in may. Whatever, I'm not going to worry about it. That's my new attitude, apparently.

So Paris. I did not feel at all like going. After getting back from Sardegna I was worn out and high on Italy and I did not feel like doing any more traveling, especially not outside of Italy and especially not to Paris, which I'd already been to and felt like I'd seen pretty well. I'd made an agreement with my friend Morena from high school that we were going to get together and see each other at least once while in Europe. (She's studying in Leon, Spain.) Since she's taken a bunch of French, she really wanted to get to France, and I agreed to go and meet her in Paris.

So we decided, since she's trying to spend as little money abroad as she can and since I've already seen all Paris' touristy sites, to just wander around and chill and eat crepes. A very low-key Paris trip. The only way I could have handled Paris at that time, on what felt like my bazillionth travel excursion. And it was nice, our plan. We wandered aimlessly, shopped, looked in the windows of the patisseries at all the pretty pastries and occasionally bought something. I got a second piercing in my ears at a slightly seedy little place, which I was and still am hella excited about. We ran into Morena's friend Elise from home and hung out with her. (She was in Paris thanks to a 28 year-old Peruvian professor and architect named Jorge whom she met once at a club and who then paid for her to come out and visit him for the weekend. I was in awe.) Once again, I took like five pictures. All I wanted was to see Morena and catch up with her and hear about Spain.

Seeing her brought out such a complicated emotional response in me, I can't even describe it. I hadn't been missing home at all -- in fact, especially after being in Sardegna, I was feeling like I wanted to be in Italy forever. And then being with Morena kind of complicated that feeling. She reminded me of all of the little things I miss about the States and about California and Marin and Novato. Not that I'm homesick or that I want to go back. Just that it's complicated, being abroad. Maybe more than making me miss the States she made me crave a kind of attachment that I don't have abroad, and sometimes wonder if I could ever have abroad. Morena seems like she's having a terrific time in Spain, and had so many adventures to recount. She adores Leon but she feels like she's going to be ready to go home. That seems to be a common feeling.

After Paris, I got back to Bologna even more worn out. I was so homesick for Italy by the end of the weekend that I was ready to start following around all the Italians we saw on the metro, just to hear their lovely voices and absorb their glowing obnoxious Italian-ness. Now I'm back in Bologna and I can get up every morning and talk to my roommate in Italian and eat pastacciuta and gelato and admire people's shoes and wait for late trains. I never want to leave.

Soon: I'm adding photos to this entry, and I'll update again on the state of things in the Bo. Promise.