Stuck in a Story -- Vicenza, Italy

Marco and I loaded into his little red car the next day and drove through the alps towards Asiago. 

"I get to visit the hometown of two famous cheeses in one week!" I exclaimed in jubilation. 

I feel like I've just succeeded in one of my life goals. Big ol' box just got a big ol' check mark in it.

My animated host and I chatted the entire journey. We had so many things to talk about, just like I knew we would from reading his couchsurfing profile. Marco is an environmental engineer who spent years volunteering with Engineers Without Borders, during which time he helped develop a clean water program in Kosovo. He is very much against consumerism, very much into traveling and living simply and has dedicated so much of his life to learning and teaching people to communicate better.

He also loves cheese, red wine and mountains. 

Why haven't we been friends for years already? 

Marco isn't very fond of Asiago (it's a bit ritzy), but I was completely captured by it (I don't mind a bit of ritz. My hairy legs are full of ritz repellent, so I can walk through the shadow of ostentation totally unscathed). 

  

We plopped ourselves down in the warm sunshine pouring into the main square for glasses of white wine and aperol spritz.

Marco purchased picnic supplies at a shop just outside of Asiago and we set off into the Alps. 

"I can have the most horrible week," I puffed to Marco as we neared our first view, "but as soon as I get into the mountains, it's like I get a restart. As soon as I can breathe this kind of air, see views like this... I just... I feel so replenished. Always. It never fails." 

We sat together at the edge of a cliff, slowly munching on our cheese, breathing the fresh smell of pine mixed with the olive oil from our sun dried tomatoes, and staring out at the landscape below and ahead in quiet awe.
 

Marco was surprised to find the mountains still full of cows.

"Most years, all the cows have been taken off the mountains by now. Probably next week, all the cows will be gone and the mountain restaurants will be closed for the winter."

We cooked an aubergine dish together that night, listening to Marco's upbeat music and sharing stories. We'd suffered through my music the first night, but as everything I own is either abysmally melancholy or Jack Johnson, Marco elected to not request my music the second night.

One of these days I'll branch out and add some jazz and classical to my playlists... not for myself, but for occasions like this. When people ask for my music suggestions and then spend the rest of the night stewing in regret.

Marco dropped me off at the train station the next morning on his way to work, and I purchased a five euro train ticket to Verona.

I love that I'm so over letting money get in the way of small adventures like this. During my first trip, I would have never spent ten euros to go to Verona and back. I would have looked at those ten euros and thought, "that's two days of travel!" And now I think, "I get to see Verona! Why the hell am I traveling if I can't see Verona?" During my yoga training in Spain in 2011, I had the opportunity to use my one day off to visit Portugal with all my yoga friends. It would have cost maybe twenty euros. And I didn't go because I didn't want to lose four days. 

And I still haven't been to Portugal. 

Long term travel, like the rest of life, is all about finding a balance. If I want to travel for three years on ten thousand dollars, I obviously can't be frivolous with my funds, but I should always feel free to spend twenty euros to go to Portugal. Otherwise I just end up sitting by myself at an abandoned yoga retreat, slapping mosquitoes, studying sanskrit, and wondering, "what in the world am I doing with my life?" 

My train rolled into Verona at about nine o'clock am. I connected to the internet of a nearby Flixbus, downloaded a map of Verona onto my iPhone, and then began my twenty minute walk to the city center.

I wonder why no other tourists seem to be out, I thought as I noticed the empty streets around me. I assumed that Verona would be bursting with tourists, even in late September. Thanks to Shakespeare, it's that kind of city. 

As I neared the square adjacent to the arena, I began to spot the tourists. Dozens of young couples with heavy backpacks and large maps awkwardly dangling past their knees (so few travelers seem to understand that you can download googlemaps and it'll work offline...) and many groups of elderly people, straggling behind a tour guide holding up an umbrella. 

My favorite myth regarding the name "Verona", is that this ancient city was founded by a Gaelic chieftain named Brenno. Brenno wasn't overly fond of the Roman Empire, so he named his new city, "Vae Roma."

Which translates into, "The Accursed Rome."

Over the years, the name evolved (as names so often do) into "Verona."

 The architecture of Verona was stunning, but the city seemed trapped. Trapped by the preconceptions of the throngs of tourists who visit purely because they've watched or read Romeo and Juliet.

The city cateres to cheap touristic whims. It's a magnificent trinket city. An ancient plastic city. A city that seems to stagnate because it's so profitable to just capitalize on its romantic claim to fame...so why try anything else? 

I sat down on a bench in Piazza Bra (yes, that's right. Bra) to read some Mark Twain, and hoped that I could enjoy a bit of peace while I read. However, I quickly realized that hoping for peace was naively optimistic. Not even Boy would be optimistic enough to hope for peace in a place like Piazza Bra.

At least three other people sat on the bench with me at a time, talking loudly with each other in English. Most were American tourists in their fifties and sixties, all exploring Verona on guided tours. All of them immensely unhappy.

"They don't give us any time to explore on our own," a lady from New York grumbled into her gelato. "They're just rushing us around so fast. I'm exhausted. I hate this tour company."

"Yeah, being a tourist is such hard work," another grey haired lady complained as she chomped down on a sandwich that looked like it had been bought at a Spar.

It took all of my willpower to keep my eyes glued to Twain and my mouth shut.

Why are you spending the money on a tour? I was desperate to ask. It's not difficult to find your own way around. And then you could use all that extra money on something significantly better than a Spar sandwich. 

After giving up on peace, packing up Twain and abstaining from interrogating my benchmates as to why they choose tours when they hate them so much, I walked to Juliet's house.

Even though there's absolutely no evidence that Juliet was, you know, a real person.

Getting through the gate to the house was chaos. People and cameras came together to form a flashing blob of child statue molesters.

In the story, Juliet would only have been fourteen years old. But people all over the world come to rub her breasts for good luck in love. Woo-hoo!

Juliet's balcony. Where you can wait for half an hour and pay three euros stand on a balcony built in the 1920s and wave at your Romeo below. I chose to remain on the ground and look bewildered at the gaggles of giggling teenagers.

Love messages left on Juliet's wall.

After escaping Juliet's, I walked to the river, hoping to find a quiet place for the lunch Marco had packed for me (he's such a considerate guy). I found some stairs that led down to the river and sat myself down in a place with a view, but shared the space with a young couple kissing and taking selfies for approximately forty-five minutes.

How many selfies do you NEED? You've probably snapped more pictures of yourselves making duck lips in the last half hour than I've taken of Italy. And I've been to Italy four times. 

The stone stairs reeked of piss, so despite my aching knee, I packed up my lunch and continued on.

Why do France and Italy smell so much worse than other countries? German people have dogs. They have loads of dogs. But German cities don't smell like piss. 
 

 

 

I boarded the train for Vicenza at 16:30 or so, thankful that my day in Verona had finally come to an end. 

I'm glad I visited, but I'm happy to leave. It's heartbreaking to see what irresponsible tourism can do to an otherwise perfectly pleasant place. Part of me wishes I'd found a couchsurfing host in Verona... just because it would be a gorgeous city to walk at night... but overall, I'm glad I'm staying in Vicenza. It's just so much more down to earth. None of this Romeo and Juliet nonsense. No trinkets. Hardly any tourists. Not stuck in a story told by a person who had never actually visited Verona about people that never existed.