👉 Italiano
7 with my Eyes, 1 with my Heart
This article is part of the #20Again series: in these texts, I do not intend to advise anyone to travel, nor I want to convince people to stay at home. Simply and generally, I will tell my experiences and share my thoughts, without the presumption of wanting to influence those of other people. I firmly believe that everyone can decide for themselves, through their own evaluation parameters. In addition, during my travels, I always respected all local restrictions and rules, on which I constantly tried to inquire beforehand.
I will conclude the #20Again series with this article. For being a lousy year, from a travel point of view (and not only), I think I can't complain about my routes. So, after coming back, I will try to rewind my thoughts.
I could think of shaping the whole article on the pandemic situation in the various countries visited and illustrating the differences in behavior. It is a current topic that arouses great interest. And I would have good answers to give, having seen with my own eyes so many different managements. I could list the behaviors of the inhabitants in various situations, indoors and outdoors, for each country. However, I will not.
Because every time I visit a new country, I like to think it's like meeting a beautiful woman. Each with her own way of fascinating. These are just impressions, I do not expect to be able to report details of places that I have visited only for a few days.
But aren't the first moments of a person to strike us?
SLOVENIA
I met her when I was coming from Trieste. At first, she showed herself as a bit shy woman, in her karstic landscape, almost as if she wanted to hide her green hair. Cautiously, I kept getting closer. At that point, she stood up and presented herself in her longilineal, fascinating and sharp figure, made of trees and pointed buildings.
I misunderstood her, I admit it. Once, twice. I will not talk about the first one, I'd make a poor showing. Of the second I will say that I perceived her a bit distant, almost haughty. I was wrong. The Japanese would call her a tsundere, a girl who appears to be a bit grumpy, but ultimately reveals her sweet side. So I saw her benevolent smile extend all along the river that runs through Ljubljana, dive into childish thoughts in Å kofja Loka and finally lay down with familiarity in Bled.
She kissed me, albeit furtively. She took me by surprise, as the cheerful shouting of people confused my senses, framing them in a dominating blue in the sky. She left on my lips the vagueness of a taste of Kremna Rezina, in my soul she stuck a bolt of light.
LUXEMBOURG
The petite woman who clutters your thoughts. Without even wanting to. I arrive and she looks annoyed, wary, maybe a little scared. She gives me signs of closure, in the true sense of the word, since I would not be able to visit some of her attractions. She intrigues me, like the shy girl who keeps aloof. And then no one dedicates time to her. I always fall for it, in these cases.
And I try to understand her, in her migratory phenomena, in her linguistic mixture, with my rusty French and my non-existent German. And not even the idea of Luxembourgish, before a specific search on the internet. And then then I understand that underneath there is more. Here too, literally, as in the spectacular view of the Grund. I approach her, I ask her to tell me about her. She leads me to Vianden, where this wealthy girl sheds a few tears on me with the help of a gloomy sky.
Eventually she smiles at me before I leave her, inviting me to come back, in a triumph of pastry run by Portuguese, on a wonderful day. A sign of a reached understanding. She leaves me two caps of beer as a gift. I will keep them fondly.
GERMANY
She is the woman I turn to when I have doubts. She is a lover, but also a friend. With my not very Latin character, I look for balance in her, sometimes understanding. Sometimes even a contrast, however: when she corners me, when she finds my contradictions, which I cannot escape.
And then I tell her: “But you too, did you see yourself? You start with the grandeur of Berlin, then you run away from it to Bavaria and you paint houses, shaking my soul. And then I find that I didn't have to move that much. I go back to Berlin and find even more tension, your street art overwhelms me, disorients me. I immerse myself in a multi-ethnic environment, I nourish myself with recipes from Turkey, a woman who has captivated my palate in the past. I feel that you're looking at me from above, even if you appear to me lying on your side, alert and confident. What, then, is your real role? "
She replies: “Redefining me and redefining you. I have no role, how do you think you can assign one to me? But, you know, dear Stray, I will always be there for you. It is to me that you come back every time."
Defeated. Little to add.
AUSTRIA
I do not understand her. And I go there again. No, I just don't understand her. But I return. I went first to Vienna, then to Salzburg. This year to Innsbruck. It's a classic troubled love for me. Of those who break up and meet again. Is it really me? A rational. But she knows how to transform, she knows how to contain all your proposals within the Viennese Ring, she knows how to make you lift in spirit and on uphill paths in Salzburg and then she knows how to reward you in a hot Innsbruck summer.
I've been looking for you for many years now. It would be difficult to say that we really met. The first time, you hardly noticed me: you relegated me to that distant hotel, you presented yourself to me in the guise of a fable teller. We saw each other briefly, but I saw you running away on the train, And, no, I was the one moving. But how could I understand at first which of the two was in motion? I had no reference points. The ground had disappeared under my feet.
And that's how you gave me a handhold to recover. A cool beer, to water an unexpected summer. A sandwich with Schnitzel, to reaffirm your earthly nature, to finally give me a point of contact.
DENMARK
I interpreted her immediately, from the first glance. Few elevations, she is what you see, as far as your gaze can go, as far as the pedaling of your bicycle can take you. But it is only the gaze of a human being, with a limited horizon. And then I went beyond, further, to the border with fatigue. A woman I wanted to discover. Too rapidly, perhaps. And I don't think I succeeded. At least not when she forced me into a race against the illuminated board that indicated my oncoming bus. 5 minutes, then 4, then 3. And the only way to get the ticket was online. We made it. Really? Yes. On to the next leg of my itinerary. At least not when I abandoned myself on a boat through the canals of Copenhagen, swallowed up under the bridges and re-emerged in front of different expressions of the city, sometimes colorful, sometimes even messy, much less Nordic than an Italian would expect.
I ran away from you early in the morning, almost like an ungrateful lover, who ran away to the house of her neighbor, Sweden. I'll come back if you will accept me.
SWEDEN
There is no imaginative effort here in my writing. Because I've seen Sweden, in the flesh. She was sitting on a bench with her laptop. Her hair dyed in a vague shade of purple. I was, like an idiot, taking pictures with my wife, near a fortress. And she, despite our physical and acoustic volume, remained impassive. Nerdy and majestic. Majestic and nerdy.
As well as Stockholm, the capital. Which projects you along her endless bridges pointing to the past, dominated by authoritative buildings in appearance and structure. And then she forces you to pay electronically to get a coffee.
As well as Uppsala, which strikes you with a jaw-dropping cathedral and then displays a rather contrasting city center. But you just need to take a few more steps to find out they designed an ultra-ergonomic bench for you to let lie down, gazing at the stars while drinking a coffee, falling asleep dreaming of all the most angelic nerds in the world, dreaming of a Sweden with surprising hair.
ITALY
The most beautiful one. it's not me saying that, I'm not even that much of a patriot. The literature says so, others tell us. Yes, the most beautiful, but also the moodiest. She spoils you with her gastronomic variety, imposes continuous musings to you, sifting her from north to south, from south to north. One country, millions of routes. You read it on the facades of churches, you deduce it by interrogating the vegetation.
How much did you see? You, our Italy. You are everyone's, after all, do you know? How much will you see?
You, who reduce the rules to heartfelt recommendations. You, who unite and rise again when no one expects it anymore. You who fall, fall and then fall again. You who are not one, but who somehow unite many peoples, even those to whom you have not allowed to adorn themselves with your name.
Always the most magnetic, the most incomprehensible one. Often unjust: you hit me from above, as from below, crushing me in the middle in my helplessness. A woman that I have always thought to leave, but who somehow chains me, with her bitter sweetness. Will I ever succeed?
TAIWAN
Then there is a country that I have not had the opportunity to visit this year. But to which I am sentimentally linked, not only because it is my wife's country of origin. Even though I'm a long way away, I'm emotionally connected to Taiwan. I have more than one direct contact on the other side of the world, which allows me to constantly feel her pulsations. That tells me that the pandemic has just touched my proud and demure lover. A pandemic that nevertheless manages to spray its evil effects in some areas, such as aviation, for example.
This year I will not visit my Taiwan (almost certainly), except through some photos or videos. I will see myself walking along her shores, walking on the often empty beaches. Exhausting myself in reaching her peaks: these instead are always quite crowded. I will desire to explore places still little known to me, such as the eastern part of the Taitung area. I will imagine discovering new foods, without ever memorizing their names. But also rediscovering the known flavors, the simpler and more everyday ones, like my majiangmian (sesame noodles).
And I'll repeat the usual talks with the ladies intrigued by me at the bus stop. “Yes, ma'am, you don't see me. But how come that the driver of the R37 bus stopped without you waving at him? You all miss me too, after all, you all know it."
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