I landed in Italy over a month ago. Where do I begin? So much has happened since I last posted. Tanki Flip seemed to be in the rearview mirror, looking ahead to a new adventure in Europe, so I admit to being woefully out of practice with words. Writing should be a habit like everything else in life, or it’s just not there when you go back to it, and then you have to put in the extra effort to find that place where it feels normal again. Alas, I lost good material at the end of my time in Aruba because I didn’t write about it, especially dealing with the island’s healthcare system. Crossing the finish line on the island was a madcap montage of medical mishaps mixed with a mountain of paperwork.
Aruba loves a bureaucratic chase, which meant I was behind the wheel, racing from one government office to the next in order to close up shop on life there. There were four years of tax forms in Dutch to finalize and a car to sell and a house to empty and utilities to shut off and boxes to ship and money to transfer and coconut trees to trim. The last two weeks were spent stirring up dust speeding down dirt roads in an island-weathered Hyundai Tucson, which also had a radiator leak, meaning frequent stops along the side of the street to add coolant each time the engine overheated.
As if there weren’t enough items to check off the list of things to do to leave Aruba, I had the added challenge of initiating all the paperwork needed to live in Italy eventually. And I wasn’t getting to Italy without a good conduct report in hand, which is a piece of paper issued by law enforcement to assure the country where you will soon be living that you didn’t misbehave in the country where you currently reside. Two weeks after expediting the process and two business days before my flight left Aruba, it felt like a miracle as the glorious good conduct report was being passed from the clerk’s hand to mine at the Ministerio Publico in Aruba when the clerk abruptly asked, “You know what the process is from here, right?”
“No, I thought this was it. I don’t have time for the next step. My plane leaves on Tuesday,” I answered.
“You have to go to the main post office to get a 2.50 Florin stamp and then take this paper along with the stamp to the blue building next to Ling and Son. There you will get the Apostille. You have to get it there today because it will take them 24 hours to process it. They close at 3:30 PM. I don’t know if you can make it with all the roadwork and traffic.”
It’s almost like they want you to fail.
Meanwhile, between racing down the streets collecting stamps, I was penciling in doctor’s appointments and taking advantage of socialized medical care. Living on a Dutch island has perks. Imagine going to the doctor and only being asked for your first and last name. That’s it. No one asks for proof of insurance, or money, or identification, or money. Your name is in the system. Then, imagine the same when you go to the pharmacy to pick up your prescription. It’s all free!
I made use of all this free healthcare to run routine exams and blood work and such so as to make sure I had the health and vitality to cross the pond for another adventure. I certainly wasn’t going to be able to afford routine wellness care in the States over the summer, although there are some snags when it comes to medical care on an island. Resources are limited, machines malfunction, and sometimes doctor practices are questionable.
Back in Texas, in time to see fireworks with my family on July 4th, I was due in Houston to meet the Consolalto Generale to apply for an Italian work visa the following week. I took the bus to Houston Thursday night, arriving well after midnight because of traffic that had us at a standstill and bumper-to-bumper on Interstate 45 for two hours. Stepping off the bus, a bit haggard and dazed, I found that I hadn’t landed on the safest downtown city block. After we disembarked, my fellow bus passengers left me all alone, quickly zooming off in all directions inside cars driven by loved ones who had come to carry them safely away from skid row. To be honest, I’d never felt more alone and out of place, and I was clearly standing on a city street in a state that I call home, only my home includes guns and drugs and desperate people willing to use one to get the other.
“Where are the taxis?” I hopelessly asked the lady standing next to me on a dark and empty street.
“Taxi, what do you mean, taxi?” The woman replied in disbelief as if I had asked where one might find a stagecoach. “Nobody takes a taxi anymore.” “Everybody take Uber or Lift.”
These are the consequences of living on an island. You are an alien when you return to civilization. People treat you like one because—clueless that transportation has been transformed in these modern times—stupid questions like this come out of your mouth.
And how does this kind of change happen in just four years? The yellow cab has been around my entire life. I did have the Uber app on my phone, and I’d even used it twice before: Once when there was a torrential downpour in Dallas that plagued me with doubt about driving myself to a dinner out with friends. Another time, when I was staying with friends in Atlanta, I was certainly not going to ask them to take me to the airport in the middle of the night on a Sunday so that I could catch a 6 AM flight back to Aruba. Outside of those two episodes, there just wasn’t a need for an app that delivered on-demand ride service when one lives on an island in the Caribbean.
Knowing I had to act quickly, I tracked down the only Megabus man around. “Could you help me?” I pleaded. “I don’t live in the United States, and my phone isn’t working,” I rambled on about Setar and Aruba phone service and details that meant nothing to this guy. He looked at me with an expression that asked what the hell do you want from me, lady? I cut straight to the chase. “I need Uber fast!” I struck a deal. “I will give you 20 bucks if you set me up with a car on Uber right now.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why the bus drops all these girls here in the middle of the night. This isn’t the safest part of town,” he added while opening the app.
My Uber driver was exceptionally chatty. A much different character than the morose man who dropped me at the bus station the next day, along with parting words of advice to never trust anyone. After a historical midnight tour of Houston, she drove me to the Marriott, where I checked in and took the elevator to the 14th floor to sleep 4 hours in Marriott’s most expensive hotel suite, the last room available. Four hours later, my alarm went off, and I was sifting through some twenty pieces of paperwork I needed to get the visa, most of it written in Italian and organized by sticky notes for translation purposes so that I could pull this thing off when the lady behind the counter would undoubtedly demand each piece of paper in rapid succession.
I didn’t have an actual appointment at the Italian Consulate; rather, I was on standby, meaning I could talk to a clerk if there was time after sitting in the waiting area listening to every other appointment that morning as they filed across the row of plexiglass windows. All I could hope for was a no-show or a last-minute cancellation. This place was not messing around. If you did not dot all your I’s and cross all your T’s, you were out the door and not coming back anytime soon since they were booked through September. I watched college students burst into tears when they realized their dream of studying abroad wasn’t happening because they forgot a postage stamp or didn’t bring the exact change. I chatted with a couple who worked for HGTV and were hoping for a visa to complete a six-month television project. They had flown in on Southwest from Dallas that morning after taking a time slot as the result of a cancellation. I eavesdropped as they professed their love of Italy and carried forward with a convincing case during their scheduled appointment; their renovation of the Italian villa would still only be a dream. I don’t know how I walked out of that place with an application in process status, but afterward, I made my way directly to the nearest watering hole, Whole Foods, and ordered a fancy flute of prosecco.
My fondest memory of arriving in Italy involved Johnny Cash since there was a tribute to him the week I arrived in Trieste. I climbed to the top of a hill on one of the first evenings living in this place to watch it at Castello di San Guisto. Everything was Italian until I heard, “Hello, I am Johnny Cash.” Somehow, the 5,496 miles I just traveled disappeared because Johnny Cash feels about as close to home as I can get in Italy.
Trieste is on the border between Slovenia and the Adriatic Sea. Aside from that evening on the castle hilltop, it is clear that I am farther away from home than ever. Isabel arrived in Trieste from Sicily on the day I moved here, and I was lucky to see a familiar face after landing to live in a place I had never visited. We traveled to Ljubljana the first weekend in Italy, which felt like discovering a hidden gem. The next weekend, we traveled by ferry to Rovinj, Croatia. Another gem. The weekend after that, I went to Venice with friends from work. And the weekend after that, I went to a food festival in Udine.
Aside from the travel, food and culture in Italy make life beautiful. The greatest thing about living here so far is that you can buy choice culinary experiences with pocket change. The best gelato on the planet will only cost you 1.20 €. The pizza is delicious and around 2.20 € a slice. This is the region where prosecco originated, and people drink it every day after work as part of the aperitivo tradition. Trieste is also known as the city of coffee. Strong coffee is served in a shot glass on every corner, and the price is government-regulated, never to be more than 1.20 €, but only if you stand huddled with the rest of the crowd around the bar to drink it. There is even a college of coffee here.
But, of course, it’s not all pizza and gelato. I am living in the Old World. Life is different from home or even Aruba. It’s an adjustment. I make coffee in the morning the Italian way, which involves a gas burner and a Bialetti, producing only one very strong cup of coffee. I’m not qualified to operate European appliances, and I go to battle every weekend with these beasties. The washing machine is a little demon. It gyrates and grunts and moves across the bathroom tile. The refrigerator dies and kicks back up tenaciously the next morning, freezing all the food that spoiled the night before. There are 88 stairs to ascend and descend in and out the front door of my apartment. My commute involves a two-mile walk and round trip bus ride every day, which will be something fierce once winter arrives, especially once the wind blows into town.
There is something here in Trieste called the Bora. It’s this forceful, piercing wind that just about knocks innocent people over while walking down the street. Well, actually it does knock people over, and there are ropes and rails strategically placed all over the city so that people can protect themselves from such calamity when the Bora gusts between buildings. The locals speak of it as if it is supernatural, a blast of something mythical that moves through you and sparks the life force within, producing a bone-rattling chill to tell you that you are alive today and remind you to be thankful for all of it because someday, eventually, you will only be bones.
It is October again. I can feel the Bora on its way. I turn 47 tomorrow. I think I made it to Italy just in time.
tanki flip 