I’ve been in Italy exactly a month, and I’m struck by how Italy gets intimate with its visitors. Nowhere else in Europe does a country share its quirky secrets like here. And, even though I don’t speak the language, I make more friends here per visit than in any other country. Anyone can do it. That must be why so many Americans marry into this culture.
I feel at home in Italy, whether struggling onto a crowded bus in Rome, enjoying the same birdsong Francis did in Assisi, sipping a cocktail overlooking Siena’s Il Campo, sitting on the banister of Florence’s Ponte Vecchio for a midnight street-music concert, or sharing a quiet moment on the harbor with a chef done with a long day of cooking in the Cinque Terre’s Vernazza.
Italy is a land ripe with people who want to connect. On the trail, I marvel at the dry stone walls and a man tells me he’s a stoneworker at heart: He says he has “stone in [his] blood.” A local guide explains his theory that women on cruise ships drool a lot because plastic surgery has made their lips big, but numb. I tell a student in a cafe that the CIA has killed Osama bin Laden, and the student says, “Yes, the same people who created him.” A woman at breakfast says, “For an Italian, it is heart-cutting to pay taxes.” Talking with a couple in an enoteca, the woman tells me that any older man with no ring is trouble. Her husband says, “We Italian men are good hunters, because our women are so complicated and hard to conquer.” When I ask the woman in the tobacco shop what it’s like to live in Vernazza, a harbor town of 400 people, she says, “It’s a big high school, but we’re all different ages.”
On your next trip to Italy, assume locals find you interesting. Connect. Share. They have a story to tell. Italy has a story to tell.