Embracing the nebbia

There is a time of year in Reggio, I'm starting to remember now, when the sky turns to a soft blanket of grey, like suspended fog. A damp chill creeps into the air and makes you pull your jacket more tightly around you in the evening, which begins to come earlier and earlier. At 7, it's dusky out and the streetlights reflect off the pavement, which is in various stages of wet-ness more often than not. During the week, maybe you just work through it and don't really pay much attention to it, except to think 'well, I might as well be in here listening to this guy drone on about his weekend as outside in the wet' when you happen to glance outside. During the weekend, though, it makes you slow to emerge from your bed. Maybe you get up once and then crawl back in with a book. Then you read your email wrapped in a blanket. If you didn't need to go out and get some food, it would be tempting to just stay inside all day, maybe watching movies and wishing for sunnier times.

That's where you'd be wrong, though. I know, because I've done it: spent more than one Saturday curled up on my bed with a book and some chocolate, probably bored and probably lonely. Mostly my first few months in Reggio when things were still new and occasionally overwhelming. Now I know better. The thing to do is to get out of bed, put on a few layers of warm clothes, and meet someone for a coffee out in town. Half the town is out on the streets, ambling up and down and window shopping and running into people they know. Children you've taught will wave at you and other students from days of yore (by which I mean... 2008) will stop you in the street with a big hug, and various other acquaintances will ask you if you've married an Italian yet. (Ahem, no. Though apparently this is an anomaly because it seems the only valid reason to stay in Reggio is to have married a Reggiano.)

Anyway. My point is: don't let the grey fog of death get to you. Go out. Have a coffee or a drink or an ice cream (stranieri are allowed to have ice cream even in the dead of winter). Have a quick passeggiata and enjoy the reflection of the street lights on the pavement, because even if it doesn't smell like summer anymore, it's starting to smell like roasting chestnuts, and that's nice, too, in a different way.