Now that I’ve been home for a couple weeks reflecting on my month in Florence feels like remembering a strange and wonderful dream. It’s vivid and indelible, but it also feels surreal, as if it was an adventure someone else went on, or a movie I recently saw.

Although it feels paradoxical, I would say the biggest surprise of studying abroad was how strange Italy felt, and simultaneously how familiar it was. Everyone spoke a language I didn’t know. The buildings, streets, and names were all unfamiliar to me. I didn’t know the social norms or cultural customs.

Even when ordering at a cafe I felt like I was an alien among humans who was about to be exposed by my absolute lack of common, everyday knowledge. In Italy, it’s normal to order your coffee (usually espresso) and pastry, and then either stand at the bar or sit down to eat (but if you sit down you have to pay an extra service charge. )Then you finish your breakfast (which is meant to be a relatively long affair as the food and coffee should be properly savored) and it’s only then that you go up to pay. This annoyed me endlessly because often I would have to get back in line behind people just ordering their food and coffee and wait all over again. This doesn’t sound that bad when reading it, but when actually living through it, it felt exhaustingly confusing. I would order in my butchered Italian, and then stand at the bar. Sometimes the server would serve it to the table anyways and I’d feel forced to sit down and pay extra. Sometimes the server would let me pay before giving me the food, perhaps taking pity on a lost American, but this only confused me more because I was never sure what the expectation was. If I stood at the bar to eat and drink, I would often feel distinctly awkward because I was basically just staring at the bartender as he bustled about. Every bar I entered, I had a stream of questions: How do I pronounce sfogliatella? When should I pay? Should I sit or stand? Should I use coins or ask them to break the fifty I’d gotten from the ATM? Should I go back in line? What did that other customer just say? Why is the bartender laughing?

This is just one example of how navigating mundane social customs was surprisingly difficult. But I was more surprised by how intensely similar my life in Italy felt to my regular life in other aspects.

Sure, social customs and expectations and norms were a bit different. The aesthetic style was more developed and the architecture was more distinguished. The streets were more ancient and the food had less salt and more carbs. But reaching through all of these superficial differences was the transcendent, intimate, and searingly familiar beating pulse of humanity. Little kids playing soccer in the plaza. Couples holding hands as they walked down the street. A field trip of Elementary students in matching red hats. Middle-aged women who were proud of their cooking. The cheering of soccer fans that was so loud it reached me in a nearby dog park, their passionate voices all harmonizing in a swelling, roaring crescendo. Florentines cheered for their favorite team with the same zeal that Pittsburghers cheer for the Steelers (although, as an avid Pittsburgher myself, I’m tempted to say with slightly less zeal). They speak of their famous lampredotto sandwich (which is made of cow stomach) the way Pittsburghers speak of Primanti’s, and proudly name their streets and buildings for their Renaissance heroes, just as we name our bridges and streets and buildings for Mellon and Carnegie and Clemente.

It was profoundly comforting to me to know that across the world, on a different continent, in a different time zone, old ladies still smile at you on the street and passing strangers let you pet their dogs. I don’t know if I was consciously expecting otherwise, but I felt intense relief nevertheless. My biggest takeaway from this experience is that Florence is a remarkable, magical, exceptional city. It’s also a familiar one, and when viewed from the right perspective, it inexplicably felt just like home.

Ciao!

Taya

“Florence – the city of tranquility made manifest.”

Katherine Cecil Thurston

Little moments of life

A painting I made upon return