Florence Italy: An Honest Confession On How One City Changed My Life
There was this amazing moment. As soon as the white and green marble of the Duomo came into view the bells started ringing. It was six o’clock in the city of Florence and it had been fourteen years since I had last been here. Fourteen years of feeling out of place in every city I had lived in. I had liked some, loved others and been lukewarm at best on a few. I had traveled looking for this feeling I had had as a nineteen year old living and traveling on my own for the first time.
But standing there with this rush of belonging and emotion running through me made me feel more at home than the last three years I had spent at home. It was like the city was welcoming me back in the most beautiful way she knew how. She sang for me.
The emotion was so strong it took everything in me not to break down and cry in the middle of Via dei Pecori. I may not have seceded. It was too much, it was everything I had been looking for since I left the city on a train to Paris all those years ago. I was home.
When I had been studying abroad in 2004, in the early days of international cell phones and text messaging, I had been walking home one night and as I passed the Piazza del Duomo the bells from Campanile di Giotto started to ring. I didn’t live in the city center or near a church so the sounds of the main cathedrals bells still exited me and gave me chills, I suspect now they always will. It was so beautiful that I felt I needed to share it with someone so I called home and my mom and I listed to the church sing her song together. It was and still is one of my favorite experiences I’ve ever had. We still talk about it to this day, how we were able to share this beautiful experience even though we were thousands of miles away.
I hadn’t known what time it was when I began my wandering into the heart of the city. I had only arrived in Italy a few days prior, spending a few days in the Eternal City before heading north. The fact that this was once again my first experience back in the city that I loved was beyond coincidence, it was the warm embrace of a loved one. The one that gives the best hugs.
I have spent the last few days getting reacquainted with Florence. I have walked the city east to west and north to south. I’ve spent my days wandering narrowed streets looking for favorite restaurants and shops, excited to see what has changed and what has stayed the same. The wine bar my mom and aunt frequented on Borgo S. Lorenzo is still there while the jewelry shop with the little old man who would chase me down the street to show me what he was working on is gone. The building my school was in has been converted into a hotel while the school it’s self has moved across the street. The roundabout at Piazza della Liberta now has cross walks so you don’t have to dart across six lanes of fast moving traffic…but where's the fun in that? My apartment building looks the same but my perspective has changed. I didn’t remember the walk from the apartment to the city center being so long. I guess you get used to it when that’s your only option. Santa Croce is still one of the most beautiful sights in the city.
There’s more supermarkets now as well. Back in 2004 there was only one on the north side of the Arno and it just happened to be a few blocks from my apartment. I remember lugging heavy bags of groceries down the busy streets and up the three flights of stairs. I was always sweaty and out of breath by the time I made it to the kitchen. Now I like going to the smaller shops and markets. Though I think that’s something that has come with age and exposure. I’ve learned to haggle since my time here. I cringe at the money I’ve just handed over because I didn’t understand the game. Visiting the Middle East and Asia has tough me the satisfaction of a good deal. I enjoy it now, something I never would have thought I’d say all those years ago.
To be fair I’m not the same person I was back then. It’s something that worried me if I’m being honest. I had such a wonderful time in Florence when I was younger that I worried it wouldn’t feel the same. I had been holding on to this memory for so long with such passion that what would I do if it wasn’t what I remembered? I had created a whole identity around my experiences in Italy that I’m not sure what would happen if suddenly this thing I had been counting on was no longer there. I knew that my experiences now would be different. That wasn’t the problem, it was the soul of the city. That feeling that I belonged here and want to belong here, that I was worried about.
I have traveled the world since 2004. I have been to Egypt (pre revolution), Central America, Europe and all over Asia. I have lived briefly in Indonesia until a motorbike accented sent me home with broken ribs. I have lived in the South, Pacific Northwest, southern and central California in the United States. I’ve explored some of western Canada and have had a taste of the Caribbean and Central America. I am well traveled to some and a moderate compared to others.
I had a 24 hour layover in Rome a couple years ago on my way to Greece that fanned the flames for Italy. Last summer a friend and I were supposed to do an Italy trip but a week before we were supposed to fly out her mom had a series of serious strokes that canceled the trip. At the time I was more concerned with my friend to care much about the trip. Others were more heartbroken for me than I was myself. I didn’t know it then but its that event that put me on the path I’m on today.
I decided that a two or three week trip wasn’t going to cut it for me. I needed longer. I wanted to be get to know this country again. So I set myself on a path that would pay down over ten thousand dollars in credit card debt and save enough money that I could quite my job and buy a one way ticket. All within a year.
So now I’m writing this on my IPad in a funky coffee shop La Cite in the Santo Spirito area, two blocks from the little apartment I’ve rented in Oltrarno. I’m watching family's pass by on the street and hear the sounds of foreign sirens. The odor of cigarettes wafts in every now and then, something that has become almost completely foreign to me living in California. The sun has been playing hide and seek behind the clouds all day, the threat of rain unable to damper my mood.
Because I’m in the city that has lived in my heart for over 14 years.
Because Carpe Diem and all that.
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