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From Seattle to Verona (Italy)
Verona, September 2009. Italy was to be an intermediary step between two places. I’d been living in Budapest for five years and felt like it was time to head home to Seattle. I felt unsure about uprooting myself from Budapest and leaving Europe behind. Once I’d settled back into life in the States, returning to Europe would be difficult. So, I decided to take a detour in Italy before traveling home.
It’s hard to remember exactly what it was that drew me to Italy. Coming from Hungary it seemed very decadent. There was the aesthetic lure of scooters zipping down cobble-stone streets, weathered shutters and chipping plaster, and smart little bars emanating the perfume of coffee and warm brioche.
It was only chance that I ended up in Verona. A friend of a friend knew the director of a language school here. I met with the director and was offered a job and accommodations.
It rained nearly every day for the first month I was in here. The people struck me as rude, judgmental, and superficial compared to the people I’d met in Budapest. After a month I was tired of petty conversation over pizza with acquaintances. I was tired of navigating the crowds of pushy, window-gazing veronesi on my way to work. I only came back at Christmas because of work obligations, determined to leave at the end of summer. And then, before I knew it, I had made a few close friends, met a guy and spring came. I decided to stay.
The guy, who later became my husband, introduced me to his friends who were anything but judgmental or superficial. Suddenly those icy veronesi seemed warm, laid-back, and open-minded. Italy brought out a new side of me. I began to enjoy the highly social lifestyle, the rituals (after work aperitivi, Saturday dinners with friends and evening passegiate through the city) and, of course, the pure beauty of the city.
After three years in Verona, visa problems forced me to leave. So my future husband and I went to the States. We spent the next three years in Seattle. Making friends was not nearly as easy as it was in Verona. Our closest friends were another couple from Italy and we inevitably found ourselves longing for absurd things like good pizza and prosecco, and a place to enjoy a passeggiata. On the other hand we found a city full of possibilities; there was a robust music and art scene, my husband and I landed satisfying jobs and we enjoyed some economic stability for the first time in our lives.
We returned to Italy almost unexpectedly. And we returned a family, married with a baby. Even as a family with children, we have fallen back in with most of our old compagnia. My husband’s family is nearby, and good pizza and fresh prosecco are readily available again. However, my husband has experienced the odd sensation of seeing his hometown as an outsider and he’s a little disappointed. The city is much more expensive than he remembers it, the job possibilities seem fewer, and the intolerance, lack of culture and basic civil sense is more apparent after living in the States.
The future? With another (final) addition to our family, we have become very pragmatic about where we live, carefully weighing the pros and cons of Verona and Seattle. The beauty of Verona and its surrounding countryside, good food and the close network of family and friends we have here are not lost on us. Nonetheless, there are other things we want, like good schools for our kids, the hope for a fulfilling career when I go back to work, and, most importantly, the opportunity for our children to grow up as ‘world citizens,’ appreciating the diversity around them and the rich culture that diversity brings. Despite the current economic situation and the hullabaloo about health care, the scales right now seem to be tipping in Seattle’s favor.
Denise
