(fine)

i'm really dragging this out, aren't i? it's now wednesday morning, earlier than i care to admit, i fly out of bologna in 24 hours, i have made little to no progress on my packing, and i just woke up from a dream about being stranded on this subway platform in the dark waiting for a train that wasn't supposed to stop, even. i was in berlin when it was divided sitting around with a bunch of kids all night at one of these ghost stations but no one seemed to mind that we were there.

lately we've all been watching the euro cup, they have a big screen set up in piazza and last night italy beat france when it was storming, pouring with so much lightening but everyone was still crammed into the piazza screaming and cheering and honking horns in the rain. i love the italian team mostly for their dramatic antics. i also love that babies in strollers out way past any decent american bedtime are already craning their necks to see the game. i rode my bike home in the storm as fast as possible and gave everyone soaking wet hugs in front of my house as they ran to catch the night train to lecce.

i said goodbye to monica last night and she kept saying that she couldn't really process all of us leaving, that she was still expecting to pass us on the street next week like always. we made plans for when each of us comes back 10 or 20 years from now and are walking through the piazza and see monica in bici, come una bandita, and it's nice thinking that really in my lifetime nothing here will change. my magnolia tree finally bloomed, mostly last night.

i'm wrapping this up, now, 6:43 am on thursday with my last cup of coffee in italy on the stove. i've been killing myself since i got back from my trip with not being ready to leave, even after nine months. it doesn't really seem possible that this year is over. i'm always too attached for transitions. i stole my favorite coffee mug from elvira and buried it in a suitcase, if that makes it any clearer. i should probably start dragging everything down to the train station. goodbye, blog.

j

Stand up for the champions

hello blog. i write you from the kitchen table on the monday before the thursday i go home. my gray cat that lives on the balcony across from me just went inside, so i'm pretty sure it's about to start raining again. i just got back from a ten-day trip to berlin, copenhagen, and prague, and my feet feel like i actually walked from city to city instead of flying. sometimes when i write this blog i sound like a failed stand-up comic.
berlin is absolutely incredible. i think it might be the biggest city in the world. it seems like it goes on forever, not in the consistently fading identical ugly athens apartment building way but sort of sporadically being pieced together by someone from thousands of other cities and neighborhoods and decades. it gives the feeling of changing constantly, like at any time there are too many things going on for you to possibly choose from. i can see myself living in berlin. not someday, but now. i think i could comfortably move there right now, despite my lacking german. i say comfortably as though the moving process is something i handle well, which is entirely a lie. my life is packed in boxes and piled on the floor of my room and the walls are bare and i really can't stand it.
i should tell you about copenhagen and prague, but it would be more fun with pictures and i can't put any up now because my computer, ronnie, went into a coma about a month ago. hopefully i can put some up after i get home. i've been taking some kind of scrambly last minute photos around ferrara, and every time my shutter clicks and the photo i just took reappears on the screen everything looks ten years older than i remember.
i will at least tell you that ann and i look(ed) scandinavian with this refreshing sun/wind burn on our faces and even lighter blonde hair, food for the squardos back in ferrara, while in copenhagen we fit right in. the city is quieter than stockholm, but apparently if you're a beautiful young couple you move to copenhagen and push around a surprisingly elegant baby carriage. in prague i felt like i was running into kanzulaaks all over the place. i kept seeing my grandmother, strangely. all of the bakeries make kolackys but they're round.