Home and back

"Right, so, I'm off," I say, extracting what is meant to be my boarding pass from the World's Slowest Printer, of which we are proud owners here at Local Language School.

My colleague looks up from the computer (World's Most Finicky Laptop) and glances pointedly at the clock. It is 8:30pm and I have just returned from my lesson in Nearby Village.

"What, to America?"

"Yeah." I glance at the papers in my hand. Impossible to print boarding pass, they read. Super. Whatever. Will worry about that later.

"Well... good luck with that," he offers.

"Thanks!"

I rattle my little wheel-y carry-on down the Via Emilia, trying to remember if I've brought both passports. Sometimes having two passports is nice, because it allows you to choose the quickest lines. At other times it is even nicer because it allows you to not be deported. This is, I think, one of those latter type situations and so I kind of really hope that I do have them.

I jump onto the 9:47 train to Bologna, suddenly feeling all 7 of those teaching hours in my knees. (Sore knees? Really? What am I, seventy?) I am happy to note that it is not the train that stops in every station ever, meaning that we will whiz past Samoggia and Anzola and whatever else. Ciao ciao, Samoggia.

"Could I possibly print something?" I ask the clerk of the cheap-ass hotel at which I am spending the night in order to be at the airport at 5am tomorrow morning.

"Certo, vieni pure," the man ushers me behind the reception desk and explains that I can use the computer as soon as his colleague is done. I look over at said colleague, a man with graying hair who seems to be engaged in a struggle to log into his facebook page. I am nice and do not laugh. After his fourth attempt, I wonder whether I should offer to help. Before I can, he opens up notepad and begins to bang out a message. Ten minutes later, he has a nice, solid three lines. He re-opens facebook. It still does not let him log in.

"Cazzo!" he mutters. I don't remember how to say caps lock in Italian, or I would suggest checking that. He prints his message and shoves it in his pocket. Interesting.

His co-worker pokes her head around the partition with the lobby.

"Tutto okay, Mario?" she spots me. "Ma, c'è una fanciulla qua, Mario - watch your mouth." (There's a little girl here.) Mario mumbles something in my direction and leaves. I am not sure how to take the "little girl" comment. I elect to go with "flattered".

I sleep for about five minutes and find myself once again in the parking lot.

"15 euro," the hotel employee tells me, standing in front of a van with "navetta gratuita" written in big green letters on the side. It is too early in the morning to appreciate the irony (or take issue).

In the plane, they have plastic cups and you pull a tab and pour hot water in and coffee happens. Amazing.

In the second plane, there is a vegetarian curry option for the meal. Hands down the best airplane meal ever, and I don't even feel sick afterwards.

I attend my medical school interview in the middle of a late-February blizzard, and we are snowed in the day after. I consume some Thai food and some Mexican food. (Italy, the one thing you are missing: food from other countries. You should try it some time. Really. Much like Italian food, it's delicious.)

"You came all the way back from Italy for an interview?" says my interviewer, a kindly old-ish lady with whom I chat amiably about books (I recommend Se una notte d'inverno un viaggatore to her - and I recommend it to you, too - and she recommends The spirit catches you and you fall down to me). Yes I did, and you damn well better accept me after all that, I think to myself.

Whenever I'm away from home for a while and then go back, I forget how quiet it is, sleeping in my bed in my parents' house out in the middle of nowhere. It's good to be home, I think blurrily just before falling asleep.

I fly back to Italy two days later, passing through Paris's biggest windstorm in decades. ("I think we'll just skip Paris and go right on ahead to Brussels because I don't think we can land safely here," says the pilot at one point. Minutes later, "actually, you know what? I'm going to give it a try." The most precarious landing I have ever experienced ensues. I am actually frightened on a plane for the first time in years... possibly ever. The teenaged boy next to me has his iPod on and idly drums his fingers on the armrest.)

After twenty hours of straight travelling, I plop myself back into my bed in Reggio and gaze blearily at the light squeezing in through the slats in the shutters. Every once in a while you can hear a motorino go up the Via Emilia, or a group of people pass by on their way to San Prospero below. Familiar sounds, ormai.

It's good to be home, my brain mumbles silently to itself.

See why things are confusing?