It was 11pm and I was standing alone outside the Lecce train station with two luggages, two bags, no ride, no money, and Lecce’s Wikitravel entry loaded on my iphone, warning me about Lecce’s rip-off taxis. Well, thank heavens. I had phone service.
I had just endured three days and two nights of continuos travel to get to Lecce, Italy (in the region of Puglia) from San Diego, CA, for the wedding of two of my best friends: an Italian bride from Lecce, and an American groom from Buffalo. They met on Valentine’s Day at a party at my apartment in Bologna, years ago. I couldn’t wait for the nuptials, and the celebration, but mostly to be reunited with some of my best friends.
So despite obvious fatigue and ambiguity about the next few hours of my life, and the lack of fairytale charm that was driving my current travel story, being back in Italy after five long months away and the promise of what was to come was enough to keep my spirits up.
I was the first out-of-town guest to arrive in Lecce. I made it to the B&B in an overpriced cab (Wikitravel is always right) and slept in a damp cave-like hallway of a room in a bottom bunk. Still unfazed, I woke up the next morning and tried my best to play host to the string of foreigners arriving by bus and train, depending on whether they flew in on a budget flight to nearby Brindisi, or endured a long train ride from a major airport. We were stuck like sardines, eleven of us, in the small B&B with two bathrooms with no central access. But we were happy nonetheless to be reunited once again. Many of us had studied arts management together, while others were students or teachers in other capacities. But we all had at least three things in common: the bride, the groom, and we weren’t from Lecce.
That evening, in the absence of the tradition of a bachelor/bachelorette party, the bride had organized a pre-party to celebrate with friends. I’d been tasked with preparing a “Bologna style gag” for the occasion. Meaning that, because Bologna is a university town, it is famous for graduation traditions involving a significant level of public humiliation, such as printing out bad quality, embarrassing pictures of the graduate, writing funny captions on them, and posting them on the streets for the public to enjoy. When the groom did this for my Bologna graduation, my landlord sent me a congratulations. “How did you know I graduated?” I asked him. “Well, I saw your pictures on the street of course,” he responded. Eeeek.
So this was my natural choice for the gag for the “quasi bachelor/ette” party. Three of us from the “foreigner” cohort spent nearly an hour plastering Lecce with embarrassing photos of the couple on this busy Friday night in town.
We died of laughter as the pedestrians accepted our “art” with gusto, tourists and locals stopping to enjoy the photos as they headed out for the evening. The public humiliation continued as I managed to get the bride and groom to cross-dress during a “soon to be newlywed” game (photos not included for the sake of the long-term reputation of the couple, sorry guys ;)).
We made it to bed at a fairly decent hour in anticipation of the big event. Venturing out the next morning – the Saturday of the wedding – in the heart of wedding season in gorgeous, baroque Lecce, we seemed to run into a wedding around every corner.
Due to this competitive wedding season, our bride had “settled” on her third choice for the wedding ceremony: Lecce’s duomo.
Let’s just say Lecce’s duomo is not your average duomo, and not your average place to get married, especially by American standards. It is, for lack of a more sophisticated word, immense, and usually packed with tourists. I was dumbfounded that it was even an option to get married in a place of such beauty and history.
We arrived early for the ceremony, dwarfed by the scale of the duomo, and feeling as though we had finally stepped into the pages of the fairytale. Except, are grooms actually nervous in fairytales? We tried our best to console him. The bride was on time, but the organist was late.
Other than the late organist, they managed to get hitched without a hitch. The American “assistant priest” even offered comic relief for all as he embraced his big moment on the duomo altar by taking pictures during the ceremony.
After the ceremony, the bride and groom greeted their adoring family and friends on the steps of the duomo,
tossing the bouquet into our crowd on the edge of the immense piazza,
which ended in a surprising steal by one of the guys, who was teased endlessly after by the bride’s brothers. More priest photo-taking,
and a long string of well-wishing and congratulations, during which the bride’s nana (grandma) took a breather in the coveted limousine (not such a common car in Italy).
We got our pic with the beautiful bride, and then we finally set out for the reception.
The party took place in a castle called Castello Monaci on a piece of country land outside of Lecce. As we pulled up at dusk, it felt like we were arriving at Cinderella’s castle set on the backdrop of the beautiful Pugliese landscape.
First wine tasting in the museum foyer (another building on the estate),
followed by an antipasto buffet in the castle,
complete with all of the bride and groom’s favorite things,
and a few of our own too. 😉
We foolishly thought the antipasto buffet was dinner, but our plates were soon pulled away and a several course wine paired dinner began.
We were all feeling well taken care of.
As we savored the last tasty morsels of dinner, we were beckoned outside for the cake cutting happening in tandem with traditional Pugliese Pizzica and Tarantella music and dance, complete with a traditional band.
Tambourines were ringing as women threw off their heels and ran for the improvised dance floor in the damp grass, everyone trading partners and teaching the little guests and foreigners how to join in.
And just as we all imagined that life couldn’t get much better, we were ushered into another wing in the castle, and greeted by a dessert buffet that could only be matched in my wildest imagination by a scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Off the dessert bar was an enclosed glass patio where the DJ, the official dance floor, and an open bar awaited.
The grappa was amazing.
And then, just as the clock chiming midnight snuck up on Cinderella, before we knew it 4am had rudely arrived and ended our magical night. The bride and groom retreated to their castle chambers, and we headed off in the Volkswagen of one of the waitresses, as the last taxi in the region had already called it a night. Not exactly a magical carriage ride, and returning to our damp and dark B&B wasn’t so magical either. Reality had arrived, but that was ok. We can’t be too greedy about our special experiences…we got enough of them tonight to even stow some away in reserves for awhile.
And that, my friends, is the end of this fairytale, at least for now…
These contrasting black and white words in front of you were written and rewritten a million times in those unpredictable moments of reflection that inevitably sneak up on me while on or en route to public transportation, or just sitting alone in general, wherever I happen to be. But until now, the words never made it on paper (well, actually, my iPhone notepad) because the more time passed, the harder it was to come back to you guys. Thankfully, a recent conversation with an old friend finally gave me the inspiration I needed.
You see, I’m back in America now. Since last May – May 18th, to be exact. I’ve gone from Bologna to New York, and finally, back to San Diego. And this is my first blog post since returning to the United States. Let’s just say it has been a long few months. The good news is I’ve traded in my exotic travels for the chance to finally be able to enjoy my old friends and family. They are the highlight of being “back.” Being able to say “we knew each other when” is a luxury that I’m loving indulging in.
On one such visit recently with an old college friend in Las Vegas, my friend said offhandedly: “Boy, you sure do have a lot of stories.” I don’t remember which story in particular inspired his remark. Possibly it was the one involving the sombrero and the bus (definitely a crowd-pleaser). We were standing in the living room of his beautiful home, and I stopped and took in what he said, agreeing. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
Believe it or not, I’d never thought about it. But his point was true. As his house was growing, my luggage was shrinking, but my ability to entertain groups of acquaintances at cocktail parties was growing exponentially.
The conversation awakened my deep-rooted pangs for a more “normal” life. Getting older and acquiring more stuff of increasing value feels like the expected life progression. My annual trips back home to the U.S. used to make it easy to spot the transitions that my friends, family, and colleagues were going through. With a few exceptions, I noticed their gains in weight, wealth, and family clearly, since I missed the gradual daily changes.
My life path has been a bit different. So far, I’ve spent all of my 30s on the road. Instead of engagement parties, I’ve had tearful goodbyes in Milan with my now ex-boyfriend. Instead of Christmas with my family, I’ve lived (as my father said), an Agatha Christie novel of hopping from Venice and, in the same week, ending up in Paris during the terrorist attacks. Instead of settling down and enjoying home ownership, I have memories of frantically signing the final documents to sell my condo, located in San Diego, at 5pm on December 31st while sitting on the floor of a mall in Budapest using their wi-fi with my laptop and having a mall security guard yelling at me indecipherably in Hungarian to – I’m guessing here – get out.
I have managed to spread my friends and possessions across the globe, giving the illusion of less friends and less possessions. No gaining weight, wealth, or family for me. On the bright side, I save on gym membership. And wealth, as they say, is relative. It just depends on what we each want and need, right? But what is that, exactly? Wouldn’t it be nice to know.
Being home and attending the baby showers and weddings and funerals that I normally glimpse from afar via Facebook makes me wonder when my next milestone will be. Or if there will even be a next milestone in the foreseeable future. I am struggling to regain my footing in my own country. But, as a good friend of mine reminds me, so is she, and she never left.
Somehow, holding onto my traveling ways gives me a sense of stability. I still live out of a suitcase because, oddly (or not so oddly?), I’m more comfortable that way. My most important possessions include my pink LL Bean travel toiletry case that my dad bought me when I was 25 and I scoffed at, naïvely unaware of the future that awaited me. My second and third most important possessions are my laptop computer that my computer nerd ex-boyfriend bought me in 2008, and a small stuffed toy that once belonged to my old dog. And the rest of my “prized possessions” are wound up somewhere between my heart and my head – memories of friends, of things I used to have, and memories of experiences. A lot…of memories.
Not what I expected I would be using to measure my life by at this point. But in those inevitable moments of doubt and loss of perspective, I force myself back to a moment ten years ago when I was overhearing a colleague on the phone with a travel agent planning her second vacation to Italy with her husband. While I sat at my computer at the next desk, I clearly remember thinking to myself, “Oh, that will never be me. I’ll never be lucky enough to visit Italy.”
Ironically, I never doubted my impending milestones back then – it was the vacation to Italy that seemed unattainable. Well, it is true. I wasn’t lucky enough to visit Italy. Instead, I was lucky enough to make a life there. But I wish I had never taken the normal stuff for granted.
I should just start creating my own weird “milestones” to quench my need to measure my life in a more mathematical way. I’m wondering how Hallmark might handle the increased demand for cards for non-traditional life events. But I can rest assured my friends will know how to help me celebrate, even if they can’t find a card for it.
The good news is, I have enough material to keep you all entertained on this blog for a very long time. And I’m lucky to be a part of this blogging community, full of other adventurous spirits and wandering souls.
It is nice to be back.