Lovable Chaos

The amazing author Neil Gaiman once described Italy with those two words. I concur.

Trekking back to Sunday: I took plane, trains, and automobiles to get from Berlin back to Perugia. The grand voyage began at 3am in Berlin, ending at 4:30pm in good old Perugia. Practically every view you set your eyes on here takes your breathe away...as long as you're not looking beyond the façade (many apartments in Perugia are terribly rundown, especially those rented to students.)

Being first generation Italian-American, you´d think I´d appreciate the motherland and possibly even want to live there someday (ahem, Mom). But it's not so simple. And I do love Italy because it´s gorgeous but it´s just, well, not my cup of espresso. I can´t seem to identify much at all with the people nor their general mentality and certainly not with the way things are organized (hah, Italy and organization are two words that never belong in the same sentence.) But it´s a love-hate relationship because, of course, I think I do have some of that "Ah, who cares" mentality in me as well and so I like it when their mentality works to my advantage (for example, taking the bus the other day without paying for a ticket and not even thinking twice about it because I know Italians really could care less about traffic and public transportation law enforcement in general.) On the upside, I have lots of friends and relatives that are either living in or visiting various regions of Italy, so I'm looking forward to seeing familiar faces in strange places.

On that note, I´m actually a bit sad that Germany lost last night, because it´s also sweet to see the host country lift the cup. Alas, the world is not perfect. (I know, I know, my family is probably throwing my belongings out of the window as I type this.)