Quale, che cosa, quando, perche, come?

Uh okay.  Is this thing on? Okay, apparently so.

So... What is this? What does it mean when a whitebread, Scot, English, Irish, Czech background old dude declares that he's "Becoming Roman"? Am I suffering from Thomas Mann, Death in Venice syndrome?  Do I think I'm Keats?  Maybe just a little.

It's a longish story, but I won't tell it all now, not all in one piece at any rate.

I first made my way to the Mediterranean in my late twenties while in my previous life as an audio engineer, doing live concerts for various acts. That had been a big-time bucket list item for me since I was the youngster that had firmly figured out music was my career; my squad goal was to get paid to travel the world while doing music. In my twenties and thirties I made it happen.

Pay me to do a tour in Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy.  Oh yeah, throw me in that briar patch. And from the very first trip I completely understood the value of non-tourist, not just moving from hotel to hotel to hotel travel, but working, meeting people and forming fast friendships and sharing culture no matter the language gap was the epitome of the travel experience.

An example, so you don't have to guess.  There I was, first time in Italy, speaking hardly a word of Italian beyond "scusi, prego and espresso, per favore." Sicily, actually, so a whole other subset of Italian culture and doing a 9 day annual folk music festival near Agrigento,  Il Teatro di Tenda in Mondello. I found myself in a car with my production liaison Paulo, who spoke about 10 more words of English than I did of Italian, barreling around the Sicilian countryside to view venues and do stage set up prep for my "folk band."  Actually, we were American blues and gospel which was exotic at the time to Euro audiences and highly anticipated by the crowds.

Driving with Paulo was the most fun day ever, chattering in pidgin Italian and pidgin English we somehow spent the whole day laughing and getting to know each other while he proudly showed me all around his hood. At one point he screeched the tiny Fiat to a stop in front of a storefront that said Trattoria / Pastecceria. I followed Paulo into the shop and instantly was made to feel like his best friend returned from a long trip abroad. I met the cugini who owned the shop, his girlfriend Lucretia (who I immediately got a crush on) and was made to take into hand a freshly made panino for the road, piled high with prosciutto crudo and salumi, and some pastries of indescribable creamy lemon and almond flavor -  and...and, espresso, doppio espresso (my vocabulary was rising steadily)! The cugini were firm that, "Your money is no good here."  Announcing, "This is my new friend Beel, sona Americano," to each new person who walked into the shop." I never wanted to leave, and the last thing they gave me was the most amazing thing I've ever had, -- Pocket coffee --  a perfectly round ball of semi soft dark chocolate with a hollow core, filled with espresso.  I bought (insisted that they take my money for this and it took much arm twisting) 3 boxes thinking they'd last a while. Good luck with that, they didn't even make it home from the tour. BTW, if you know where I can get Pocket coffee drop me a line.  It's far better than crack, believe me.

The rest of the day was a sunny blur, dashing from stage to stage, trying to convey monitor mic requirements  to engineers who again, had as much English as I had Italian, but it all worked out fine due to warmth, the sunny disposition that I've found lives with every single person I met on this trip and for years going forward. 

The festival started the next day and the promoters put on a dinner at a local hotel. When I arrived with my band mates, from across the crowded terrace full of Italians, Czechs, Spaniards, French, Croatians, Malagarans (it was a very international folk music fest) we heard shouts of "BEEL, BEEL BEEl," My new Italian friends we're waving me over to meet about 20 of their friends from the surrounding towns and I instantly found myself surrounded by a crowd of more new friends, eager to buy me a drink. It's a wonder I was able to make it to the show the next day. Again my money was no good and l Iearned all about Prosecco, which to this day is still my favorite and first choice of a celebratory beverage. My bandmates who'd spent the day cooped up in their hotel rooms and hotel bar were amazed that I appeared to be a minor celebrity in Sicily.  To tell you the truth it was mostly a blur of shiny, smiling faces and a cacophony of languages I couldn't cypher floating me in a sea of a universe I'd never known back in California. An unforgettable evening.  The tour went off amazingly well, and I still  have a dozen go-to stories of amazement from Sicily. Ask me to tell you some time. All it takes is a glass of prosecco and I'm an open book.

Sorry for the pretty pointless story, but that was my beginning of my love of the mediterranean. So here I am many years later and a few more trips under my belt going to make my first foray into an extended time in country. Time measured in months and people and experiences, not days or a few short weeks of frantic running around trying to tuck in as many photo ops as I can.

Phase one:  Rome in Winter.  Rome without the mobs of tourists, Rome as home in Trastevere in a house on top of Gianicolo hill, not a brief stay in a hotel that ends far, far to swiftly.  Finally time to go to my favorite ristorante multiple times to sample the whole menu, to motor out on weekends to have a Buona Domenica on the beach, to shop for verduna and formaggio at the same markets daily until they see me coming and pull out something special with a suggestion for my dinner, and to find a morning espresso bar to latch onto where

I can gain my favorite seat to work, write, muse and just let the dolce vita which has always attracted me and made me begin to feel like the person I was always meant to be, soak into my skin and take over my soul completely.

To cook, to eat, play music, wander, sip Limoncello, and really think about the value of taking the time to think of things of which have real value.

So Why Italy?

Great question that I have indeed asked myself more than a few times.  Why Italy and not Spain, or France, or Greece?

All good suggestions and certainly places considered, but it mostly came down to one deciding factor: Food. I like to eat and I like to cook and Italian regional cuisines as well as cheese and olive oils and breads are the kind of things i dream about and make heroic attempts at creating. 

I've been to Paris and love love love the city of lights, it's culture and people. To date, no, no one has ever been rude to me in Paris. Well, maybe that one waiter in a cafe in the Tuileries on a beautiful April day who snubbed us and refused to wait on us or even look at us for 40 minutes until we got up and left.  God knows what needle got stuck up his butt that day, but he was the exception. Maybe it's because I always, always make the effort when travelling to learn at least the basics of becoming conversational in the language of the each country (though French has always been a steep hill to climb for me) and speak in my own caveman fashion.  I've found that properly phrasing and correctly conjugating verbs is far less important than making a human connection with the person in the market stall, your waiter or cafe owner, the person sitting across from you on the train or bus.  Smiles and effort and being human carry a lot of water.  The best words I made a point of mastering in Italian before my first trip was, "Mi Italiano e non forte o perfetto, ma Io provo. ...but I try!

And I've been all over Spain and muchas adoro the people, the food, and omg, the music!! The slowed down and forgiving pace of life. Spain was a contender when I landed in a job I love which allows me to work from any location, in any time zone and I realized, Hell yeah, this is the opportunity to travel in a more rooted fashion and really become a part of the community I enter.

But I chose Italy.  Rome and the North in the Emilia-Romangna regione. I chose it for the pasta, I chose it for the ciabatta, the amatriciana, the arrabiata, the wine and limoncello, but mostly for the breakfasts.

I love espresso and i love a pasticceria in the morning. Simple light and packing a power to launch you into a life mode that really defines the whole mysterious dolce vita thing.  It hit me last year when on a driving trip through Southern Italy, in the wilds of Puglia,  found myself rocketing through the countryside in a Fiat (of course)  just after a stop at a bar for a fast colazione, fueled on 3 espressos and a cornetto filled with lemon cream and suddenly it hit me that at that exact moment I felt more alive, more comfortable in my skin, more bursting with, with just everything than I'd ever felt in my entire life. It was like I was seeing the word in technicolor after a lifetime of faded black and white.  It was how I was meant to feel and how I wanted feel like that again and again.

Here's a photo taken at almost the precise moment of my epiphany.  Good god, what a day that was. pristine vineyards, green verdant hills, small hillside towns with the only traffic congestion from some sheep and their guardian dogs 

making me wait a few minutes while they went about their timeless business,  not to mention lovely friendly humans everywhere we stopped and a sun that hit me like a golden hammer.



Oh sorry, I was getting all poesy there.  That'll happen, can't be helped. But you get my point. I'd found a feeling, a part of me that needed to be felt and to be brought out to see daylight.

So here I am roughly  year later coming back for more adventures. This time not just a quick flash through Rome and a meander through the South, but in residence, with time to make friends, have dinner parties, wander alleys and streets in Rome without rush or purpose othen to to perhaps find a bookstore or a place for a suppli and a glass of prosecco.

I always knew I'd be back, because that after 50 + years of life I finally felt like I was home.