Ciao, Bella: My Break-up with Italy

by Kate Morin (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown Italy

Italy is like a pesky ex-lover, a lover that looks really good in photos but falls short in real life, a lover that you keep going back to expecting change and with every return they remind you why you left in the first place. My first visit was a wet affair, a couple week period that I cautiously tip-toed through, peeking around corners, waiting for the next catastrophe to happen. There were mounting disasters, each worse than the last- angry taxi drivers, lost phones, black eyes. Towards the end I was barely surprised when, 20 minutes before our bus to Rome, I realized my roommate was missing and later turned up at a nearby hospital with alcohol poisoning. When I made it over the border into Austria, a bedraggled zombie with a broken spirit and a bad case of bronchitis, I put a check next to Italy’s name and frankly, I was okay with never seeing her again. But the Amalfi coast is undeniably enchanting, isn’t it? The lush mountains, the blue sea, the layers of buildings stacked haphazardly like the tiers of a wedding cake. And just like that ex-lover, I couldn’t resist Italy’s lustful lure. So I made excuses, I chalked my first visit up to bad luck and felt confident my second visit would change the narrative. To be fair, I was already pretty mentally exhausted by the time I made it back to Italy. I had spent a month rescuing my female travel companion from dangerous situation after dangerous situation, and when we went out dancing one night and I saw her gearing up for another reckless night, I stormed out of there in a teary rage. But in my anger I barely paid attention to the winding streets and endless staircases and I ended up hopelessly lost. So I walked and climbed every staircase I saw which more frequently than not ended in front doors and concrete walls, and on the 20th dead-end staircase, I sat outside someone’s front door and cried. I could see my hostel above me with seemingly no way to get there. Where was Rapunzel when you needed her? Why didn’t I bring that fire-escape ladder my paranoid mom had bought me when I lived on the 3rd floor in Chicago? Eventually I made it home. And on the threshold were a group of my new friends who were strangers just a few hours ago and we huddled together in the darkness and I ended up crying again in their arms. It’s kind of funny how crying with strangers makes you feel sort of irrevocably connected to them. They held me tight, then mentally tucked me into my twin bed in a room full of strangers in bunk beds. The following days were marked by innumerable moments of helpless bewilderment and hilarity. Like when our airbnb host demanded an additional €300, and after we coughed it up she then conned us into buying her a pizza. We were too astonished (not to mention slightly impressed) to even put up a fight. The final blow came on our last night, an evening we had planned with careful precision. We stationed ourselves at the bus stop for an hour, and when the last bus of the night rounded the bend, it promptly blew past us without a second glance. We stared at each other in shock, our tickets clutched in our hands, our grand plans dashed, our stomachs empty. Unwilling to pay €200 for a round trip taxi, we walked along the empty road to the first restaurant we could find. We cleared our plates and emptied our bottles, and when we walked home we danced in the middle of the street, an act of defiance in which we relinquished ourselves to all of the things that were out of our control. And isn’t that the beauty about traveling and about life? That even despite the best-laid plans, you’re really just along for the ride. 6 months after I left, Italy sent a handful of love letters in the mail in the form of nearly €300 in traffic tickets. It was so fitting I laughed and threw them in the trash. Ciao, bella