It All Comes Around

It’s been funny, the last few days. I’ve felt at home and settled. I’ve been walking around like I know where I’m going, spending time reading and taking long lazy lunches. But, the odd part is, as content as I felt, it’d all started to get a little bit lonely.

Now I’m only three days in so I can’t expect to make friends straight away, I know that, but when your basking in the sunshine with your Aperol Spritz, surrounded by large groups of chatting students, and you’re just sat there with ol’Hunter S Thompson and a bag of crisps for company, you can’t help feeling a bit blue.

I have spoken to people, and my Air BnB host was really lovely, but to really see a place and experience it like a home, you do need to share it with someone.

Yesterday, I moved in with the family I’m going to be spending the next nine weeks with. It’s a lovely flat and my room is perfect. A girl was living there before me (and will be for the next few days) her name is B* from Brazil. She’s been studying at the school and has decided to stay an extra month.

After my lonely afternoon of sitting in the sun I went back to the flat with some market bought food for that evening, expecting another quiet night in with a glass of wine and YouTube streamed documentaries on Italian life (I know… wild!) but while I was cooking tea, B* and I got chatting and she was SUPER NICE!!

Chatting about the school and how life cannot possibly be this grey dirge of 9-5 (“you have to LIVE”) we shared stories of our previous lives for two hours before she mentioned that her friend had invited her out for drinks and would I like to go?

Needles to say I jumped at the opportunity and we headed out.

The best thing about meeting people who have lived somewhere longer than you is that they know all the quick routes, the back roads and the best places, and that’s what I found out last night.

Turns out, we live opposite a street where my favorite Antipasto place is (that I found last time I was in Bologna) and, even better, my favourite breakfast place is 100m up from that!

It sounds odd to say it, but I’d never connected those places with where I’m staying. I think when you explore a city for a short period of time, like I did last year and then again in March, you create a mental map that is a lot more rigid than reality. You stick to known roads and routes, once you have found them, believing that you know your way around when, in reality, you’re missing out on the wonders you find when you get lost!

Seeing the streets from B*’s internal map gave me a different perspective and suddenly everything seems closer and more like, I don’t know, “local”. In my head all I could here was Adele warbling “Hometown”!

Side note: Read this article about walking a city and trying to find a fresh perspective – it’s fascinating!

We met up with S* (Bianca’s) friend, she is an Anthropology Student from Leeds Uni (by way of the US and Oz) and her two flat mates A*1 and A*2, apparently every boy in Italy seems to have this name and there are actually three of them; small, medium and tall A*. We had small and medium with us.

We went to this little place for aperitivo. For the uninitiated, aperitivo is basically where you buy a drink (at a slightly higher price than usual) and then for the rest of the night you get free food at a buffet style arrangement on the bar. You can just keep going up for more and, at this place, they kept bringing stuff round – honestly I decided then and there that I will never buy dinner again, there is honestly, no point.

Sitting and chatting, it came to light that the band I had seen on my first day (the band in the first post – The Trouble Notes), B* had also seen on her way back from school that day– the photo we had both taken was almost identical. And even weirder, it then turned out that the band had stayed with S* and A* in their flat because their other housemate knew them!

It was one of those moment were you cant help but believe in some higher power, fate or a grand plan – whatever you want to call it. It all comes around.

From there we went to another busy bar down a little street I never would have found on my own and stood outside drinking Moscow Mules (and more wine) until we all parted ways at about half-past midnight, planning to maybe meet on Sunday to go to the park that evening.

Walking home with B* that feeling of (admittedly contented) loneliness I’d been feeling for the last few days dissipated.

It all comes around; the way the streets all link together, coincidences, crossed paths and hoped for eventualities.

Il Senso Della Vita.

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