My Italian Summer - Not There Yet

I've lived in Canada for more than 1o years, and I've met less than 10 rude people. Lucky for me at the beginning of the trip I just happened to meet the rudest person ever at the Vancouver airport. For whatever reasons I couldn't remember, I lined up in the wrong line. When the ticket lady at the counter realized that she asked me in a high pitch tone if I COULD read. I usually could come up with some kind of quick combat, but this time I was simply too shocked to speak. She works for the biggest and the snobbiest Germany airline. I will make sure I will NEVER have anything to do with them.

My flight to Vienna stopped over in Dusseldorf, Germany. I don't know why I was nervous about that (the ticket lady certainly didn't help!). It might have had something to do with the Olympic drama. Germany and France topped the chart of anti-China/Chinese as always. I was so nervous, and I wasn't even a Jew! Maybe God wanted to teach me a lesson or something, and I ended up sitting beside just about the sweetest German girl. She was a beautiful girl with blond hair and blue eyes, a fresh grad with a mater degree in veterinary medicine from Cologne. After the North American trip, she was about to start her job at Beyer. We talked about everything. Once she found out my stone-age crush on Klinsmann she grabbed all the sports magazines on the plane (they were all in German, and man oh man that guy was in in almost all of them), and tried to translate everything about him for me. At the end of the trip I was almost in love with her.

Traveling with in the European Union is way easier than within North America. I didn't see any German immigration officers at the entry point, and the customs officers were too bored to even look at you. I had 4 hours to kill, so I walked my German friend to her train station. After that I spent hours struggling with the European pay phones with no luck. Dusseldorf was a gray industrial city. Mountains of people were smoking outside the arrival gate. I could feel the weather was very mainland-ish. By the time I left it started to rain.

My Italian Summer - Getting There

I realize if I don't write it down soon I would forget. Right now I am sitting in front of my computer somewhere in the Midwest, USA. It was only couple of months ago, though it feels like a dream when I think about it now, or the past life. I don't want to forget. It has been the best summer of my life.

Everyone has a dream place, a place she/he has been dreaming of always but never been. Some people don't know where it is until they see it. Some people keep changing the idea along the way. For me, it has always been Italy. I have this rule with myself, that I am not going to have kids until I see Italy with my own eyes. It is my psychological and emotional bottom line of compromise with life.

During the height of all the drama, the wedding, packing, cleaning, moving, and all that crazy shit, my only sanctuary was planning the trip because unlike everything else that was going on this one was mine, and mine only. As a control freak and a chicken, I planed the hell out of it. The planning was almost as fun of going there, just imagining all the possibilities, the places and people I would see and meet. I also knew I would be in the strange world with strange custom and language. Knowing as much as possible might help me to save some trouble or maybe even my life.

The only sad thing is I lost my camera in Vienna. So I have nothing to show you visually before Rome. As how my friends from Vienna put it, "The only way to make it up is for you to come back again'. They were probably right.