Backpacking Through Your Up
If there’s one place I don’t like, it’s the Eastern hemisphere. But summer means one thing for young people: the conversion of an already dreary noun into an even drearier verb, and the pairing of that verb with Europe. This has always been a dangerous ritual. Eurotravel often leads to Europhilia, which in turn encourages Eurothoughts. The latest victim I’m aware of returned to our shores a Turkey-loving vegetarian.
I know of no vaccines. The only thing I can do is offer entries from a journal I kept during my trip to Italy three summers ago. Here is the first.
My first location was Begegno, one of many quiet villages that lie sloped down the foot of the mountains surrounding Lake Como. Most famous of these is Bellagio, an entire village dedicated to the grandeur and magnificence of the historic hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, which goes by the same name. These charming little towns on various points of the lake are mostly in full picturesque view of each other. One imagines seeing them from a distant satellite perspective, as in a computer game, and thinks of how cool it would be if they were to have an all-out war. Villagers would hide behind the walls of their already fortress-like territories. Missiles would glide in gallant arcs from one end of the lake to the other, leaving trails of gleaming sparks to decorate the dusk, supplemented below by the white sails of modest battleships. But I digress.
A romantic simplicity characterizes these places. Days are spent licking gelato and playing by the water. Couples bike in from the city to lazily goof off. At night people sit and chat outside a limited number of cafes. That’s the simple part.
What with all the tainted windows and craze for privacy going around, these are generally bad times for voyeurs, but European village-life provides an agreeable respite. Thanks to a lethargic economy most Italians live at home until marriage, which means all the sex in their entire lives takes place outside of a roof and, if one is lucky, under a lamppost. Herein lies the romance.
It behooves me to report that young Italian couples “work” in the sense that they inconspicuously match—neither striking flair nor weirdness being common among them. Nothing offends my aesthetic quite as deeply as the sight of a lop-sided couple: one in which either participant is significantly better-looking than the other. The moon revealed no such ghastly pairings, and for this I am grateful.
(Summer 2005)
