Italy: What I'll Miss...and Won't

As our departure draws near I’ve been imagining what I might miss about Italy once we’re back in New Hampshire. I want to be realistic, though, and also include what I probably won’t miss so much. Maybe I’ll think of very important other parts to add later, but it’s a start and it helps me as we prepare for our voyage back to our permanent home. What would you miss about the place you live now if you moved away? What wouldn’t you miss?

         I’ll miss waiting outside of Ingrid’s school at dismissal with other parents and grandparents while each class comes out and the teacher bends down to peer out into the crowd with each student until the parent is pointed out and eye contact is made, the child bounds down the steps for an embrace before handing off the backpack and asking if she can run a lap around the school with her friends before heading home. I won’t miss a school day that ends at 12:45. I’ll miss the strident church bells that ring for fifteen minutes a few times on Sunday mornings (I don’t sleep late enough for them to wake me otherwise this one might’ve gone to the other side). I won’t miss construction vehicles backing up (beep, beep, beep), the crane lifting loads, workers yelling at the site on the other side of our neighbor’s yard for the past five months. I’ll miss the warm aroma of fresh bread and pastries emanating from bakeries. I won’t miss the stench emitted by Vespas and various diesel vehicles that are everywhere. I’ll miss being able to walk five minutes to pick up some bread. I won’t miss the traffic and pollution. I’ll miss gelato, tasting it, of course, but also seeing it heaped up so beautifully at the gelatería. I won’t miss the milk from the grocery store that you can keep on a shelf for months before drinking. I’ll miss the pizza, thin, delicious, satisfying; I’ll miss the carrots and many other vegetables from the supermarket that are never waxed and almost always taste fresh; I’ll miss the pasta, the fresh home-made pasta but also the dry pasta bought in stores which is somehow better than what we buy back home and I’ll miss the locally grown and pressed fresh olive oil, of which we have consumed gallons. I’ll miss the barley and bean soup Eva helped us make. I won’t miss the relative uniformity of cuisine here (okay, I admit we’re pretty spoiled in the US with such a great variety). I’ll miss the fruit and vegetable markets. I’ll miss the walls which encircle the town center and are topped with a pedestrian road and lined by trees, sitting up there and watching everyone go by, jogging a loop around it, traveling by bike on it, walking up there on a Sunday afternoon with all of the families doing a post lunch passegiata. I won’t miss the enormous tour groups who walk in a large pack of forty or fifty up there or in town. I’ll miss the pleasantly warm and sunny weather of September and June. I won’t miss the long, gray winter with no snow, high humidity, temperatures in the 30s and 40s, and a cold house. I’ll miss using a bike as primary means of transportation, and being able to easily do so (flat terrain, everything located within two or three kilometers); I’ll miss seeing so many other people from all walks of life doing the same. I’ll miss being able to see world-class bike racing in person and to see live coverage of entire races on television. I won’t miss mismatched sound and lips on Italian TV, whether dubbed from another language or in Italian in the first place. I’ll miss the rattling of my bike as I ride over cobblestones in town and the occasional ding of bicycle bells from those hoping to prevent a collision. I’ll miss the 80 mph speed limits on the highway and the aggressive confidence I’ve learned to drive with to avoid getting plowed into. I won’t miss seeing ninety percent of the car colors only in black, gray, or white. I’ll miss riding back from photography class close to midnight in February or March, very cold but with no cars out, hardly any people, and lots of quiet. I won’t miss all of the lice problems in the schools this year and having the little buggers brought home to us and set up camp for three weeks. I’ll miss seeing the packs of cyclists out training, and the packs of cyclists out just as much to exercise their mouths as their legs. I’ll miss the narrow roads, the incredible climbs and switchbacks through olive groves and woods, the routes with fast down hills where the curves are plentiful but not always so acute that you need to slow down much for them, the anticipation of what will be around the next corner. I won’t miss all of the cigarette smoke or seeing middle school kids waiting for a train on a field trip smoking while their teachers stand right there with them. I won’t miss the bad dollar to euro exchange rate, $7.50/gallon gasoline and the high price of almost everything else. I’ll miss the Parole d’Oro a few kilometers to the south where we’ve gone for picnics where the kids have played hide and seek in the empty canals that lead down to the aqueduct. I won’t miss the much smaller body space bubble here, all of the crowding, cramped spaces and jostling in groups and frequent absence of lines. I will miss the trains and the train system. I won’t miss the strikes and the often seemingly endless waits at the train crossings. I’ll miss discovering, time after time, almost wherever we travel, towers poking out of a forest, a many centuries old church down a non-descript road, walled towns atop hills, cobblestones, laundry hanging out windows, forts and cathedrals. I’ll miss specialty food shops of all kinds and personal service, asking the local butcher if he can get a full turkey for us by Thanksgiving and waiting for two minutes while he calls someone and tells me he should be able to do it and to stop back in a few days. I won’t miss shopping at Esselunga, our primary grocery store (well, okay, maybe a bit). I’ll miss all of the events that take place in and near Lucca and how easy it is to get to them—Lucca Comics&Games, Settembre Lucchese, Desco at the Real Collegio, Italian 10k Road Race Championships, European U23 Cyclocross Championships, Procession of Santa Croce, Free Concerts, Lucca Summer Festival (music), and on and on. I will miss Italian. I’ll miss hearing preschool children speaking it, complaining about not wanting to go home from the playground or describing the best way to roll a toy car down the slide; I’ll miss hearing grade-school kids speaking it, asking their friends if they want to sleep over, describing how a game they’ve made up works; I’ll miss hearing teens speaking it, flirting in Piazza Grande, joking; I’ll miss hearing adults speaking it, arguing about politics, giving their opinion about how someone was dressed, describing which are their best vegetables that day, calling their dog over, giving directions, conversing with friends; I’ll miss older folks speaking it, chiding one another for a naïve move while playing dominoes at a bench table on the walls, complimenting a passing younger woman on her appearance, encouraging a grandchild learning to ride a bike. I’ll miss the challenge of speaking Italian. I’ll miss the sense of satisfaction when I can express myself a little more clearly than a couple of months earlier, when a store owner doesn’t screw up his face or try using rudimentary English in response to me. I won’t miss not being able to instantly and effortlessly communicate any idea. I won’t miss the lag time where I am understanding what a group I’m with is saying and then, in the time I prepare to say something, have the group’s conversation already moved on to something else (hey, to be honest it happens to me in English, too!). I won’t miss having a person I haven’t met before smile, amused, after I open my mouth and say a few words, realizing I’m not Italian (okay at first but after a year it gets kind of old). I will miss the more fluid sense of time, of meeting times and of saying goodbyes that go on and on. I will also not miss that. I will miss all of the people I’ve met, especially those from Lucca Italian School, my photography class, and the Shambala group I practiced with. I will miss writing a blog about a New Hampshire family’s year in Italy. 

Il Bel Paese

So a sabbatical in Italy it would be (see Intro: World Map, Blindfold and Dart?). From everything we heard kids are adored in il bel paese and with two of our own this element weighed heavily in our decision. The remaining clinching factors might seem easy to add up: good food, good weather, a slowed down life, beautiful scenery, rich history and art, a musical language not impossible to learn. Who could go wrong, right?

            We had read enough on-line from expatriates from the U.S. and Britain living in Italy debunking the typical Pollyanna-like reverie of how life was lived there--said dream-like images often induced by short-term travelers to the country or readers of books describing an artist’s year in Tuscany painting, writing, or restoring that old stone farmhouse--to know that day to day life (and life with a spouse and two young children, no less) would be different from a purely traveler’s experience or an artist’s experience alone and with loads of free time, that the daily grind did exist in Italy, often fraught with noise, endless bureaucracy, high gas prices, expensive everything, difficulty finding a job, long hours at work and a plethora of other inconveniences.

            But when push came to shove we took the naysayers’ advice with a grain of salt. It wasn’t just because their advice was aimed more at those looking to move permanently to Italy and work there, but also because we had never read those popular books prominently featuring Tuscany, didn’t feel like we really shared that dream, and in fact did not want to move to Tuscany or the countryside, per se, since we get plenty of rural life already in our small New Hampshire town. We wanted to experience something a little less rural. Plus, we were on a paid sabbatical and, luckily, so luckily (yes, we are extremely grateful for this opportunity!) would not have to work for the year. And there had to be some truth to the positive associations with il bel paese, right?

            Umbria was our first choice and no, heavy research did not play a role in putting it first on our list. It was for chocolate. In addition to Perugia playing host to an annual chocolate festival attracting visitors from around the globe, Umbria’s capital city also is the permanent home to a well-respected chocolate factory! While that was enough reason for some of us, others wanted more, and there was more: “the green heart of Italy”, fairy-tale like hill towns, music festivals, a region perhaps slightly less visited than Tuscany. But Perugia ended up seeming too big for us, and while Assisi, another Umbrian gem, attracted our attention for a while it, too, failed to make the cut. Although it was smaller and seemed beautiful and peaceful in its quiet hours, Assisi was hilly, too and just seemed too over-run with tourists. Le Marche? Urbino or perhaps Ascoli Piceno? Reading others’ accounts of their time there made this less touristy region with its own breathtaking landscapes very appealing, but from afar we couldn’t get a good enough sense (mostly because of fewer Internet resources) of schooling opportunities or decide on which one town would work the best. So, despite originally thinking we wouldn’t do it--too touristy, too expensive (all of this sight-unseen of course)--we decided on Tuscany.

            Lucca, in the northern section of this region, soon made the final cut. Including around 90,000 inhabitants in all with 8,000 in the historic center, thirty-foot high Renaissance era walls encircling the old town complete with walking and cycling path on top of its four kilometer circumference, limited traffic zones within the walls, flat terrain (my bad knee is forever grateful, just remind me not to climb more than one of Lucca’s many towers in one day), bikes everywhere, plenty happening culturally, several schooling options, proximity to mountains and sea, we finally said Lucca, sì! We had found our home for the next year. Buongiorno Lucca, la Toscana, ed Italia! 

(Many thanks to all of you who have helped us with planning this year in one way or another, from suggestions of places to live to advice about applying for the Elective Residence Visa!) 

World Map, Blindfold and Dart?

            After sixteen years I was up for a year off with pay 2011-2012. A sabbatical! It’s fair to say this probably won’t happen again, and for all four of us the timing seemed to be the best it was going to be, so the option of staying put in New Hampshire for the year bounced back and forth between us for all of four or five minutes. But where to go? Well, besides my wife and me there were our kids, nine and four. What would they do for schooling? How would they adjust? What would they do? We thought briefly of staying in country, of moving to Colorado or California. Communication would be no problem, academics could be worked out, adjustment overall would be relatively easy. We’d heard that in some ways it wouldn’t matter where we went, that the beauty of relocating for the year without the typical work obligations in itself would be a great gift. Moving away from old routines and rhythms to learn more about one another and ourselves, find new routines, live new adventures as a family, gain perspective—all of these ideas seemed to make sense.

            What would be lacking, however, was the adventure element. For us this meant a different country, a different culture, a different language. I guess we were looking to up the ante and challenge ourselves more than California or Colorado (nothing against these fine states, and yes, I’m sure we could still challenge ourselves in some ways there, but we decided we wanted to go abroad). Not too much more challenge, mind you—China came to mind briefly, for example, but one of the goals of this year being renewal--some relaxation here and there amongst the trials and tribulations--such a different culture with such a difficult language just did not seem within our reach given “just” twelve months to adjust. As visitors for a few weeks, sure, no problem, give us exotic, take me completely out of my comfort zone, but as semi-residents? We just couldn’t wrap our minds around it.

            So we wanted a challenge, but we didn’t want it to be too exhausting. We wanted our kids to be appreciated and to have a reasonable chance of making friends in our new location, but we wanted them to learn about another perspective on life and on the world via a different language and culture, ones that would be within their grasp and ours. Given all of this, we rejected taking a world map, a blindfold and a dart and throwing our future to chance. We decided on Italy.