How did my life become my vita? Blame it on New York City pizza joints. I was happily settling into a cosmopolitan lifestyle working in book publicity in the Big Apple when BAM! Like a blast of Emeril’s spices, a sharp nostalgia for Italy fired itself up within me. It was all those pizza joints–and the city atmosphere in general.
It had been four years since my family and I had last visited our relatives in the Bel Paese, and fourteen years since we had lived in Milan for a short year-and-a-half long stay. But those city-scaped memories, both of Milan and of my father’s hometown of Genoa, fixed an association in my mind between cities and Italy. New York, in all its modern American glory (and pizza joints), reminded me of Italy.
So I saved up my pennies, left my publishing job, and booked myself a six-month stint living with my Nonna (grandmother) in the city of Genoa on the beautiful Italian Riviera. Three years later (or what feels like a week and a day), I’m still here. But that makes it sound as though I have any intention of leaving. La verita? I’m not ‘still’ here–I’m staying here. I, like so many others, have fallen in love with la dolce vita.
Some other random facts: I’m an Italian citizen by birth which helps me avoid many of the beauracratic issues involved in settling down here. I am also an aspiring author with a penchant for children’s literature, a language learner, a word hoarder, a lover of expressions, etimologies etc., a freelance translator and language tutor, a buongustaia (“good taster”, aka foodie), an amateur astronomer, and a shamefully untrained yet shamefully trigger-happy photographer.
