3. Summer 2014, Europe
I got my first taste of real travel when I was 16. I had been away from home before on various expeditions with our nearby scout camp, Tweedale, but the gradient foothills of Southeastern Pennsylvania—in the shadow of the mighty Appalachian range—paled in comparison to the journey I was scheduled to take.
For the past six months, I spent time preparing for a three-week long school trip to France, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. No one in my direct family had ever been to any of these places, although my father’s family is Italian. He grew up with the full Italian American family experience. Big, extended family gatherings in a Pennsylvania mining town with as much food as you could possibly eat, homemade wine and olive oil shipped from the old country, Catholic mass every Sunday, and maternal pressure to never leave home. The rumors, or stereotypes, about Italian Americans are often true, but my father resented all of it.
The second my dad turned 18, he left my grandparent’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and never moved back in. My single aunt stayed back to look after my grandparents, but my father went off to do what no Italian American did in the late 1970s—leave. He started small. First, he moved 2 towns over to Newark, Delaware, where he completed his degree in geology. Four years later, he skipped his own graduation to take a job in New Orleans, Louisiana, doing desk work for Opec. He worked in the Crescent City for three years until big oil left, and then was offered the option of moving to Texas or continuing his education. The choice was simple, and he enrolled in a master’s program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
No matter where he was, my grandmother called him every single Sunday at 3 PM sharp to ask how Mass was. He lied about various sermons he never attended, but the mistruth kept my grandmother at bay. Years later, he returned to Newark, Delaware for a second master’s, met my mother, who was a residence hall director at the time, in a bar down in Dewey, and the rest is history.
I craved the Italian American experience as I grew up, and almost resented my father for failing to give that to me. We attended some of those big gatherings in Carmel, Pennsylvania, when I was a kid, but they didn’t last long once more and more distant cousins started passing on. Holidays in my family were small; often just my nuclear family, my aunt and uncle, and grandparents before they followed the path of their cousins. My father was simply trying to give me what he never had—some peace and quiet. But I wanted the seven fishes, and midnight mass on Christmas eve, and huge family gatherings with relatives I have long since forgotten the names of. Like he had.
I figured that if I couldn’t have this full Italian American family experience that I dreamed of, going to Italy was the next best thing. So, when the academic year started, I enrolled in a school-sanctioned study abroad across the Atlantic. In mid-June of 2014, it was finally time to go.
That morning, I dressed in my uniform of khaki pants, a too small maroon polo, and a lanyard with my name, program, and emergency contact in type print on my chest. I was nervous for my first trip across the Atlantic, especially because the people I was travelling with were near strangers and I was barely a teenager. Nevertheless, my parents dropped me off at the Philadelphia airport and drove off.
I’ve come to love being alone in an airport. Despite the marketing of Planet Fitness, an airport terminal is the only true “judgement free zone” I’ve ever visited. It is one of the few places you can chase a bagel at 9am with an ice-cold gin and tonic without being observed as an alcoholic or frat boy. You can brush your teeth in public bathrooms, sleep sitting up in broad daylight, and wear everything from business formal attire to pajamas, no one cares. But as an insecure 16-year-old on my first true adventure, I felt like everyone was staring at me.
I nervously made my way through bag check and security to my gate, where a few other people I was traveling with already sat patiently. Our group stuck out like sore thumbs. We didn’t really know each other albeit a brief orientation meeting, but we all wore the exact same uniform. I grabbed an iced coffee and sandwich with the $10 my father slipped me as I exited the car and found my seat on the plane—an aisle beside other members of my program. We were off.
I followed the path of the plane as we sailed across the black nighttime sea. Notably, the map marked where exactly the Titanic sank and how many miles were left until we reached our destination, Paris. The first day of international travel is almost always a fever dream. From the plane, we loaded onto a tour bus and traversed to the Louvre. My memory of one of the greatest art collections in the world is a jet lag-fueled blur, in fact I don’t remember much of that first day in Paris at all aside from a Nutella-stuffed crepe in a small restaurant near the Notre Dame Cathedral. Since the fire I wish I committed that building to memory more. I wish I took more time to take it all in. But I was a kid who couldn’t sit still. Hell, I still can’t sit still.
The Paris I knew 10 years ago has changed a lot. I remember those quintessential tourist activities in that whirlwind first destination; climbing the Eiffel Tower (we couldn’t find the elevator), walking the steps in front of Montmartre, and sampling my first taste of escargot.
We fit so much into two weeks as we traveled across Southwestern Europe in a coach bus. I stayed in a hostel in the French countryside, played basketball in the Alps, camped on hay beds in an Austrian village that I no longer remember the name of, ate guanciale polenta with a family in a farmhouse older than the United States, milked an alpine cow, attended an underground youth club in Vienna, stayed with host families in Bern, Switzerland, and so much more. It was a lot to take in as a teenager. But nevertheless, I took thousands of pictures that I still look back on today.
Finally, we made it to Italy. Our first stop was Venice, then Florence, then Rome. I had a fabulous time in the weeks prior, but this was icing on the cake; I was the first person in my nuclear family to ever visit this country we allegedly came from. I looked the part, had an Italian last name, and tried to speak the language as much as possible with my inadequate knowledge of it from Italian language class my public high school taught.
As I walked the halls of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, I started to fall ill. I came down with a fever and chills that rendered me bedridden for a full two days in my most anticipated destination. Camping in the cold of Austria had caught up to me, I assumed. While my travel group attended Papal Mass in Rome and ventured the storied walls of the Colosseum, I lay in bed after three weeks of travel. I felt defeated, like I was missing out on this once-in-a-lifetime experience that I looked forward to for months. Luckily, I recovered in time for our final night out and the flight home, but for a moment my time overseas felt bruised because I didn’t have the experience I was seeking in Italy.
I tossed that ritualistic coin in the Trevi fountain to ensure my return to the eternal city, but I wasn’t convinced. What I had seen of Rome in my feverish state I wasn’t even sure I liked. My tour group was often encased by masses of tourists, and the food we were served in Italy tended to be some variation of fried meat and potatoes in the backroom of a cheap trattoria. I knew there was more to this country that I had dreamed of for my entire life, but being in a tour group just wasn’t the way to experience it. I wanted freedom to explore on my own terms, a glass of wine, and a simple taste of the local cuisine.
I was a major stickler to the rules. I hated getting in trouble so much that I actively avoided any scenario in which I could possibly be reprimanded. In my imagination I was a fearless young woman with a devil may care attitude, but, at least at the time, that just wasn’t me.
Our final night of travel wrapped up and I went up to my hotel room. I wanted to put on the lone sundress I brought with me, stroll out of my hotel into the heart of Rome, and order a huge plate of Carbonara and a glass of wine in a little hole-in-the-wall trattoria. I wanted to sit on the Spanish steps and watch the people pass me by. I wanted some Italian stranger to sweep me off my feet and strap me to the back of his Vespa and take me far, far away from these tourists and this roadside hotel and my travel group. But that wasn’t me, at least not yet.
