One of the requirements of applying for an Italian Digital Nomad Visa is that you must have a physical address in the country, lasting for at least a year in the future, which meant that I had to get an apartment. Another requirement was that you had to provide proof that you are going to travel to Italy which meant that I had to buy an airline ticket to show the consulate that I, in fact, am really going to travel there. These two aspects of my DNV adventure collided last week. The tickets I purchased were, arbitrarily, for the 12th through the 19th and so even though I’m probably still far away from getting my visa I decided to take the week and visit my new city, Genova.
It was amazing. I am in love.
I’ve been very excited about the whole process–stressed and excited–and so I’ll tend to like everything I encounter no matter the quality, but the city truly felt like my new home. The location of the apartment made it an easy transition from being in the middle of everything in Atlanta to being in the middle of everything in Genoa. There’s excellent public transportation but… I didn’t need it. Restaurants, bars, beach and coast, bodegas, shops, and historic districts are all walkable. The expected budget was blown with the monthly rent but, besides being the only rental I could find before my consulate visit–the only one where the landlord would work with me–it’s a location that allows me to see the best of the city. There’s definitely a Midtown Atlanta tax based on association dues and actual taxes being ridiculous; downtown Genoa has the same.
The flight there: I did well, public-transportation-wise, after we landed and until I got to Milano. The train from Malpensa airport takes around 45 min (?) to get to the Milano Centrale train station. No problem. But then when I got to the station and found the ticket kiosks all that was went awry and sanity was lost. I’m sure I purchased the correct tickets (there’s only one Genoa!) but the train number never arrived. As my wait lengthened and the board with train statuses never displayed my train’s number, I got increasingly willing to approach others, attendants and travelers, with my concerns. Multiple explanations were offered: you’re here too early (I wasn’t) so just wait; you can just pick a train going in that direction and it will stop at your station at some point (yeahhhhh, but…); I don’t recognize this ticket you have, that train doesn’t exist (damn you, ticket kiosk!!). All this time I’m texting with my landlady that I’ve arrived and am in Milan and on my way to the apartment etc. She apparently has an appointment of some sort to go to and has to leave by 5 (17.00), but she really wants to show me the apartment. There were tentative plans to leave the keys.
There was chaos in finally getting a train and I had to sit on my luggage the two-hour trip from Milan to Genoa, but Serena waited for me at the train station to take me to the apartment and give me an abbreviated tour of her city. We had chatted a bit as my travels progressed from the airport, and I think she was more than a little frustrated, but that all dissolved when she picked me up in her Mini (why she called it a Cabriolet I have no idea). I warned her of my travel stink (la mia puzza del viaggio), and after 24+ hours it was impressive, but she played the perfect hostess. The only train I could get ended up at Principe station and not Brignole–one being a 20 minute drive and the other a 15 minute walk–so she had opportunity to point out the sights along the way to the apartment and we had the opportunity to chat about nonsense. This is one of those moments I will always remember. She was so gracious with correcting my Italian when it needed it and switching to English when it was necessary. And she was so in love with her city that it maybe laid down a base for me to love it even more during my week there.
Several days were spent from late morning to late afternoon walking the city, much of that in Centro storico and surrounding neighborhoods. Monday I had mapped out seven palazzi that I wanted to visit and ended visiting none of them and simply walked the streets taking pictures. By the end of the week I probably walked most of the area and yet the walkways are so discursive that I’m not sure I have any better sense of where anything is.
Except for the book-sellers.
Yearsyearsyears ago when we visited Paris I remember the booksellers along the Seine. They had long, locked cabinets filled with used books that they would open during the day and lazily hawk their wares. I may have bought something just to buy something because… what a cool thing even if I couldn’t read it! Well here was my opportunity to actually read the books I buy. (I recently watched Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World and in a scene a person on the street was selling paperbacks to cars paused at red lights–instead of water or asking for money–and I want to give up my job and do that.)
On my first walk through the city on Monday, one of the many piazzi that I visited was Piazza Colombo and it had booksellers along two opposite sides. Each was a little different and a little the same. One was flush with gialli and the other with fumetti. I immediately spied the Diabolik, dozens and dozens, but learned what should be obvious: the sellers only take cash. Lisa told me to bring cash. I don’t want cash. I never have cash. I didn’t bring cash. This was all on me. Well I knew that this would not be my last time in Genoa so I put a pin in Piazza Colombo and its books and its sellers-of-Diabolik to take advantage of during my next visit.
Days later, in Firenze, just as I was walking by a currency exchange shop I remembered that a long time ago I did what I always do when I get a new wallet and I put Secret Money in one of the hidden pockets as a surprise gift to Future Scott. Well. Usually it’s $20 but this was just $10 and, man, the euro-to-dollar exchange rate sucks right now. After fees: €6,30. 🙁 It’ll have to do. After an unexpected cash-only caffè in the neighborhood I still ended up with the exact amount of cash for those three Diabolik. Bonus: a much smaller piazza, Piazza Banchi, had a seller that did accept credit cards so I picked up three issues of Julia. I had never heard of it before but they’re at a perfect reading level for me. What I don’t understand, I get from context and maybe learn a few new words.
I ate good-not-great while I was there. Meals were not planned and just happened when I decided I was hungry and there was a restaurant nearby. Restaurant meals were always much more food than I expected and even though I probably walked 10k steps a day, I felt like I gained weight. Coulda been the wine?
I am going again from September to through October (there is a limit to how long you can stay if you don’t have a visa, I’ll be staying just under it in the chance that I need a few weeks of bureaucratic visiting) so I’ll get to experience life–real, non-vacation life–for an extended period. Work is 6 am to 4-5-6 pm here, so we’re looking at 12 noon to whenever. It will work out since I’ll be in Genoa. Although honestly I don’t have any sense of what such a daily work period means… well, I worked second shift out of college and tried to start a small business during that period (it sounds as stupid as it was). I also wrote a cyberpunk novel(la) during that period in my off-time (I actually have fond memories of that, and still have copies, no matter how stupid that sounds and was). So creativity and overwork shouldn’t end, as long as you have healthy limits.
I didn’t.
But now I do?
Museo Novecento in Firenze had three outstanding artists showcased while I was there. Haley Mellin with her show Siamo Natura, an American who works with land conservation in California and creates en plein air art that ties into her conservation work. Some pieces richly textured and precise, other rich and action-painter-ly. Lorenzo Buonechi with La città delle donne, clean, cool, Modigliani-esque modernist who has strong roots in Renaissance art. I would go back just to spend more time with his works. And Marion Baruch’s Un passo avanti tanti dietro. Baruch’s were all notable for their emphasis on absence. The ground is the subject and the figure disappears. I was moved by, at times, the calm that came from her violent cutting-away or censorship.
I thrive in isolation and know that, whenever faced with it, I will also find its limitations both in how much I can tolerate and how much I expect to achieve and don’t. Of course productivity is fragile, whether given the opportunity of time or not, and my time in Genoa alone will give me that fragility and that opportunity. I wrote more music there in a week than I do at home in a week. I drank more too, but that’s whatever that is and we shouldn’t read too much into it.
Before I left I decided to purchase a notebook and pen and keep a diary of what I saw and experienced and failed at, and of the lists of words those days I tried to learn (matita, pencil, “some of Haley Mellin’s work was in matita“). Before microblogging/Twitter, Blogs used to also include brief thoughts about what you saw or read or even about blogging itself. Less than this paragraph. Even as I moved to blogging I missed the privacy of a notebook. With the benefit of having your notes searchable, you gain the loss of having your notes searchable. In college I filled maybe a dozen of those classic composition notebooks with ideas and sketches for paintings or stories or music, or just nonsense. I’m pretty sure they no longer exist, somehow censored.
I’m looking forward to the return in September and that definitely feels like a cliche. “I loathe the idea of returning to Italy” is a sentence even Dan Brown wouldn’t write but the longing is a sense of returning home. On the Wednesday and Thursday when I took the train and spent a night in Florence, and when I then returned to Genoa and the apartment, I texted Serena in sincerity and told her that I felt I had returned home. My week-long visit was a vacation visit and so, to a point, meaningless. Every destination can become a “dream” destination when your time is spent workless and entertained. Two months of work and cleaning and groceries and buying toilet paper will be a commitment that that week was not. My brother’s Italian instructor spoke of her dislike of Genoa. My consulate interviewer said much the same, declaring it “very industrial” and was confounded by my choice. Living there will be living there, to put it inexpressively, and I will have the opportunity to experience its ugliness. But something something something about ugliness and sincerity and beauty. I’ll see that city as it is.