If I could be born again I’d like to be born in Italy….

Se io potessi rinascere vorrei nascere in Italia... translation : If I could be born again I’d like to be born in Italy….

I was raised in an Italian-American household that bears no resemblance to what has been the standard stereotype. We didn’t have plastic covers for our living room furniture, I don’t have a relative named Guido or Vito, and my “nonna” wasn’t the central figure in the family. Oh I had relatives that covered their furniture with that hard plastic !! Instead of Guido or Vito, Vinny (for Vincenzo) was a prominent family name, and many a Sunday dinner while my “grandma” (not nonna) was alive was spent down in her apartment in New York City. None of my grandparents had ever been back to Italy, and the only thing I remember my father saying about the country when he visited as a GI in the 1950’s, was that the money was so large it had to be folded in half to fit in a pocket.

For this reason I never had any preconceived ideas about Italy or what is was to be Italian beyond the celebration and passion for food and the opera music that always waffled through the house on weekends. At the age of 12 I was determined to learn the Italian language because at those Sunday dinners at my grandma’s my father and his family would be speaking Italian and my mother (whose parents only spoke it when they didn’t want her to understand) would just move her head back and forth and wait for one of the few translations. That’s when my desire grew to understand about the country my ancestors came from. My school only offered French and Spanish so it took another 6 years to realize that determination until I was a freshman in college in Washington, DC.

While in my 2nd semester of Italian I went to the Italian Embassy and spoke to the education liaison about studying abroad in Italy for my junior year. She point blank told me it was impossible because I needed to be fluent in order to be admitted into any Italian university. She made it clear that even if I had 4 semesters of Italian language I would not be fluent enough and I might want to consider the American University of Rome. The last thing I wanted to do was be with other Americans. I wanted to be living among Italians.

Towards the end of the semester my professor, Isabella O’ Rourke, handed out a flyer about scholarships to study Italian in Italy that were being offered by the Italian Foreign Ministry. Eight of them were available to US students. Only one was available for an 8 month long term. With the help of my wonderful professor (the application, including an essay, had to be done in Italian) I managed to pull off winning that 8 month scholarship. I chose the Universita’ per Stranieri (The University for Foreigners) in Perugia because it was smack dab in the middle of the country. So in October of 1981 off to Italy I went. Twenty-nine years later, it is still the one place I truly feel “a casa” (at home)….

I had the chance to really live in Italy. Those 8 months turned into almost 2 ½ years (much to the chagrin of my parents.) I just didn’t want to leave because I loved living there so much. I was fortunate enough to have lived there before McDonalds and the Italian version of drive thru, McDrive, had arrived, when trains either had wooden benches or compartments, malls did not exist, nothing was open on Sunday except restaurants and coffee shops, and no business ever stayed open continuously all day until 7pm.

One of my fondest memories was going to the green grocer. I quickly learned that I was not allowed to touch the fruits or vegetables to choose the ones I wanted like we do in the US. I remember my horror when he yelled at me after I picked up a tomato that first visit. I almost cried. Later when he approached me asking me how much I wanted it  registered in my head that the green grocer chooses for the customer.  There were other green grocers that I could have shopped at but I went back religiously every couple of days and just waited my turn until he’d ask me what I wanted. After a couple of weeks that I had been frequenting his shop, I asked him about buying some basil because I didn’t see any herbs in view.  He went into the back and asked me if the bunch he brought out was enough. He put it in my bag and did not charge me. I went on to learn that his name was Vincenzo and he learned that I was going to be in Perugia for 8 months. And every few visits after that he’d toss in some fresh herbs with a big smile. His shop is no longer there, but the memory of my regular visits to learn about what was coming into season will stay with me forever. I saw fresh garlic and fresh figs for the 1st time as well as artichokes with their long stems. There were no green grocers were I came from and as far as I knew a fig was a dried thing and artichokes had a little stump.

My Italy I lived in as a university student and my Italy I visit today as a 48 year old woman aren’t really so different. Over the past 20 years of annual (sometimes biannual) pilgrimages back, I’ve been able to see this beautiful country change but still keep her charm and dignity no matter who comes to her shores or what kind of business sets up shop in her towns and cities. That is because of the Italian people.

Everywhere I go I meet people who dream of going back to Italy someday and they want to because it is the most hospitable country there is. Italians, no matter how much English they speak, will go out of their way for you.  They are the most expressive people I’ve ever known and even if you cannot understand what they are saying, their gestures will certainly convey the important parts of the “conversation.”  If you are fortunate enough to speak the language well or make a serious effort to learn it, their world completely opens up to you. You can listen to Radio Italia that only plays Italian music, watch Italian TV news or read an Italian newspaper and get an Italian perspective on what is happening globally. But because Italy and the Italians are so accommodating you don’t have to speak a word of the language to experience all that it offers.

About 6 years ago, three of my sisters and I decided to take a trip to visit the town where our paternal grandfather comes from near Caserta as well as tour Sicily and visit with friends of mine who live in Salerno. None of my sisters speak Italian, though my sister Nina had been taking lessons and was armed with her dictionary and phrase book. I did most of the necessary translating but left them to try and communicate without me when my brain would get tired switching back and forth between the two languages. In Sicily an innkeeper in Trapani kept his taverna open until we got back to the inn so that we could have a hot meal, in the Madonnie mountain town of Petraglia Sottana a very trusting innkeeper came and opened her inn, gave us the key, left us “in charge” so to speak and came back the next morning with warm homemade baked goods and to make us breakfast. In Salerno my friend arranged for someone to take us out on a boat over to the Amalfi coast to have Sunday lunch. Nina made good use of her book that day and had everyone engaged in part English, part Italian conversations. Once we reached the restaurant we had to drop anchor and then a little boat came over to pick us up and bring us to the restaurant. That was the day I learned that paccheri, (large, thick tubular pasta from the Campania region normally served with a ragu) can also be prepared with seafood. To this day I crave that pasta dish… Italy wasn’t new for my sisters as they had already been to visit without me, but they all can’t wait to get back there.

One might think that I am biased, but I’ve lived in more than one country and traveled enough to say with confidence that Italy is unrivaled when it comes to culture. The art and design, the architecture, the fashion, and the food are unparallel anywhere. Also, logistically, technologically and medically speaking the country is a powerhouse. And yes, for anyone that has lived there, lives there now, or wants to live there, the governmental bureaucracy and red tape are unparallel as well.

When you have lived in a country and have learned to speak the language fluently and have visited it more than 25 times over the past 20 years, you have no way of escaping what is the most difficult aspect to understand about this most amazing country: the bureaucratic maze that Italians have to maneuver. But it doesn’t matter that their governmental systems are not organized like they are in the US, it’s just something that everyone has to put up with. It has most definitely improved since I was a student.

Back then on a return trip to Perugia from Rome on the train, somewhere between stations in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere the train came to a dead stop. As word passed through the train car people’s voices seemed less anxious and more resigned. A strike had been called in the middle of the afternoon and we were stuck where we were. A few people got out of the train and began walking. Almost everyone cursed once or twice and almost no one continued on complaining about the situation because, at the time, random striking was what Italians had learned to put up with. We were on that stopped train for 6 hours… people chatted, laughed, shared their food with each other and made the best of the situation at hand.

It has greatly improved since 1981. On a trip about 10 years ago I had planned to travel to a wedding in Asolo in the Veneto region by train from Rome. The very day I arrived in Rome, the railroad had announced that it would be going on strike in 2 days.  I couldn’t leave early since I had planned to visit with my Roman friends. So, instead of buying a train ticket at the travel office, I bought a ticket on Alitalia, flew up to Venice, rented a car and drove to Asolo. Italian logistics and technology rescued what might have been a bureaucratic nightmare.

Ever since my first trip back in 1990 I’ve wanted to live it Italy again. In 2011 it will mark my 30 year “anniversary” with Italy and my 50th birthday.  I’ll be buying a house in Italy as my birthday present….

Ersilia Moreno