It would appear that Italy is talking to me.
I joined the Navy to get back to Europe. In 1999, I found myself graduating from a respectable Irish university as a still clueless kid with a shrinking student loan grace period. I had no idea exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew that I had to find a way to continue my lifestyle of low cost/high payoff international travel. Cue my transition to life as a sailor.
My college commencement was an impressive affair. It was conducted completely in Latin with a large portrait of Jonathan Swift looking down as graduates signed what looked to be a 200 year old book. Fast forward to about one week later, and life transformed radically as I found myself in Pensacola getting my long hair was chopped off in traumatic boot camp fashion so I could spent the next three months in the land of pawn shops and tattoo parlors. To me, the Florida panhandle was more foreign than any other place I had lived. Low cost, high payoff travel. Be careful what you wish for.
Since my embryonic Navy days, my hair has thankfully since grown back, and now years I am finally back in Europe too. It’s just as good as I remember.
The last time I was in Rome was in the spring of 1996. As my backpacking friends and I checked out the Coliseum, a guy wandered around trying to sell O.J. Simpson postcards. That’s just about all I remember of Rome- except maybe for the waiter who wrote “I Love You” in my friend’s cappuccino foam.
Les Antiquités de Rome. You know how your recollections of stuff when you are young seem so much smaller when you revisit them as an adult? Rome doesn’t have that problem. Everything is pretty much awe-inspiring at any age.
I don’t think that I need to go on and on about how I feel about this part of the world. You make a quick comparison between my entries on Dakar and my entries about Europe and you will see that the European Union tourism board should be paying me for my superlative descriptions. Even though the Navy hasn’t managed to land me back in Europe yet, I would still say that all of my duty stations have served me well in terms of perspective. It’s kind of like what my Dad used to say when my flights would get delayed or canceled, “You have to experience the bad so you know how good things really are.” I’m not saying that life is bad in places other than Europe, but the comparison is kind of the same.
And what’s an old world European city without its own monument to wedding cakes? This monstrosity, complete with street sweeper to anchor the photo, is a nice transition to the reason why I am back in Italy in the first place: a wedding.
A great perk of the Olmsted Scholarship is that you increase your circle of international friendship. Fortunately for me, one of these Italian friends was kind enough to choose Tuscany as the place where she would be married. I met up with some friends in Rome, and soon we were on our way to Pienza with wrinkled up wedding attire and Senegalese wedding gifts in hand.
This is a snapshot of our accommodations in Tuscany. They are called agriturismo and really this is the only option you should consider when you come out here (having a rental car is key too). There’s a working farm on the property, and you are served amazing yogurt and pecorino cheese that is made only a few hundred meters away. No O.J. Simpson postcards on sale here, and there are no Florida panhandle pawn shops to look at either.
No one should be shocked that I had to go for a pre-wedding run in order to prepare for the deluge of good food and wine. Besides, it’s gorgeous out here- exactly what you imagine Tuscany to be in all of burnt sienna-tinted glory.
The juxtaposition of these my shoes and this landscape is pretty criminal (but really, these uglies are fantastic for smashing into suitcase).
Tuscany is all hills, and the towns can be found top of each one. I had only passing flashbacks to my evil trip to tourist-choked Provence last year, but this time it was much, much better.
The view from up on that hill as we checked out Montepulciano.
Italy has approximately 600 million billion churches. Here is one of the 100 million that I ducked into for a moment. No lightning strikes, either.
Because I took so many photos, I feel compelled to keep posting them.
So Italy is fantastic- even if this is spoken from the perspective of a person who has been here less than a week. I don’t speak Italian, but I think I could get quite used to being back on this continent and enjoying the food and diverse scenery that comes with living in Europe. There’s a fairly strong possibility that I could be stationed in Naples after my tour in Dakar, depending on what my detailer’s Wheel of Fortune comes up with. It’s hard to know, and I’m still trying to stay unwedded to any particular duty station.
Truth be told, I vacillate dramatically between “where I wanna go next” depending on the day or my outlook on what’s driving me crazy. Today is no different, but being here again has certainly reminded me of what my frame of mind was like back when I left Europe to join the Navy. I still really feel like I belong here, and I don’t certainly enjoy that level of certainty for any of my other duty stations. To wit, when I got to Dakar and did my familiarization trip, there was not any moment where I looked around and thought, “Yep, I could live here.” In fact, it was more like “Ha ha- I’m going to live here.That’s funny….”
So we’ll see what happens. I’m not too worried about making these types of decisions. Either way, it’s a win-win for Megan.
I’ll get back eventually.