The travelogues I've spent years devouring gloss over the realities of living in a new culture. You don't tend to read about the neighbours who invade your personal space, shaking their finger at you and screaming, their volume, pitch and facial colour only heightening in anger that you can't understand them. The Peter Mayles treat genuine frustrations of communication with wit and self-deprecating style. In regular life, hindsight is 20/20. When living abroad, hindsight creates a rose-coloured tint to even the most painful experiences overseas. I think because travel writing is often done after the fact, the sting and confusions often fade in the glow of the accomplished task.
Despite the daily joys in Italian life, simple tasks are so much more difficult, their dubious efficiencies hampered by lack of vocabulary and comprehension. Some days, everything is just plain hard. And all you want is to rest easy with someone who knows you and shares your history.
Nicola bursts into the piazza at Milano Centrale in a typical whirlwind of colour and enthusiasm just at this unsettled point in my journey. My partner in crime for nine years, her arrival doesn't just represent my first tangible link with home, but my jailbreak from school to my summer of travelling.
We drink good wine, eat enormous pizzas, sip cappuccinos and check out perfectly groomed Italian men. They're almost too pretty to be real. She helps me run the big-city errands I've been putting off for two months and we discover anew the uncomfortable reality of "swack" (the sweat that literally pours down your back in extended bouts of humidity) on the un-airconditioned train back to Bra. We marvel at the ability of European women to look cool and elegant even in 38 degree temperatures with nary a bead of sweat in sight, while the two of us are covered in a sheen of it. (We blame the Scottish genes and temperate Vancouver climate.) I get to show off my new home, introduce her to my new friends - and just be. It doesn't matter the location, the dynamics of us never change. And it's so good.
Despite the daily joys in Italian life, simple tasks are so much more difficult, their dubious efficiencies hampered by lack of vocabulary and comprehension. Some days, everything is just plain hard. And all you want is to rest easy with someone who knows you and shares your history.
Nicola bursts into the piazza at Milano Centrale in a typical whirlwind of colour and enthusiasm just at this unsettled point in my journey. My partner in crime for nine years, her arrival doesn't just represent my first tangible link with home, but my jailbreak from school to my summer of travelling.
We drink good wine, eat enormous pizzas, sip cappuccinos and check out perfectly groomed Italian men. They're almost too pretty to be real. She helps me run the big-city errands I've been putting off for two months and we discover anew the uncomfortable reality of "swack" (the sweat that literally pours down your back in extended bouts of humidity) on the un-airconditioned train back to Bra. We marvel at the ability of European women to look cool and elegant even in 38 degree temperatures with nary a bead of sweat in sight, while the two of us are covered in a sheen of it. (We blame the Scottish genes and temperate Vancouver climate.) I get to show off my new home, introduce her to my new friends - and just be. It doesn't matter the location, the dynamics of us never change. And it's so good.
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