Planes, Trains and Friggin Automobiles

It has been a week since my parents left and only now have I finally felt it possible to write about their stay with us. Ok, so you may think that I am being overly dramatic, that I should just suck it in, deal with it and just get on with life. However, in all honesty saying goodbye to my parents at the airport was not only the strangest experience ever for me, it was really difficult. I am a family person, I love my family and they annoy the hell out of me at the same time, but I would never be with out them so saying goodbye to them was extremely hard for me. Anyhoo, I think I can now type without getting all teary, but I am not 100% sure this is really the case.

I was so nervous before they arrived; I constantly thought that I would disappoint them somehow. I thought that when they got here they would finally see what a flim flam I am, how little I have actually achieved in my life and I was worried they would see the desperation in my eyes. Maybe they did, but they never said anything to me. Not in an overt way anyway, but I am sure they did, I have always found it hard to hide my real emotions.

At Glasgow airport we were the only 4 people in the entire airport who ran to each other, embraced and cried tears of joy. I suppose everyone thought we were complete whack jobs, or they just thought “oh another bunch of ethnics” I can’t help it, I cry – deal with it! I have never had such an emotional holiday, 3 weeks of discovery is what I would call it. For 2 of those weeks we were in Italy and you can tell that you have been on a woggy, dago, garlic munching family holiday when 80% of your photos consist of images like this …. (ok all anonymity is going to go out the window here … oh well it was good while it lasted I suppose)

It isn’t a holiday it is a war of attrition I swear to God. If you come back from one of these holidays and haven’t put on weight then I want to know your secret. I don’t think I have eaten so much food in my entire life and the worst of it is that it tastes so damn good that you can’t help yourself. I felt like that character out of the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life “oh come on it is only waver thin”. At one stage I thought I seriously was going to die from over eating, honestly.

I don’t know about you, and this is a massive generalisation I know but from our experience the difference between Anglos and Italians is that when you go to an Anglo house they ask if you want a cup of tea and a biscuit and instinctively we say “no thank you” and then for the next 3 days they never ask you again. It was just a reflex people! When you go to an Italian house, they ask you if you want a coffee and food and for the next 5 times you keep saying “no thank you” until you finally give in. Because you know that if you say yes straight away you will get 20 cups of coffee and 20 million bowls of pasta shovelled down your throat.

This trip to Italy was like flippin planes, trains and automobiles as we went from the top of Italy to the bottom and back up again .

We flew into Milan, Bergamo and in two weeks we travelled to Rome, Calabria, Orte and then back to Bergamo where our flight departed from. In those two weeks I have never been so sleep deprived and over fed in my life that it was insane. We stayed with my father’s cousin in Bergamo for a couple of days, caught the Eurostar to Rome where we stayed with my father’s niece for a couple of days. We then caught the bus all the way down to Civita, my father’s village in Calabria – stayed there for a couple of days, caught the bus up to Orte and stayed one night with my uncle. The worst thing we ever did was catch the sleeper train from Orte to Bergamo because I can tell you this it is a LIE – you don’t sleep, not at all. It has to be the noisiest train I have ever caught in my life, and I have a good mind to write to the Italian railway people and tell as much. We had a 4 person cabin, the G-man and myself on the top bunks and my pa and ma on the bottom bunks and the most amazing thing was that even though the train was noisy as all hell, we could still hear my pa’s snoring over the train ! How the hell is that possible, that is some supersonic snoring capability going on there.

I must admit, it was a great experience even though I am only now catching up on sleep. My pa took me around his village, showing all the places he used to work and where he used to live. It was really interesting; all these people would come up to him and say “Mario, do you remember me? I used to work with the goats with you” and my pa would say “take your glasses off I might remember” so they would take their glasses of and then he would say “nope don’t have a clue, who are you?”. You couldn’t walk around the village without being stopped and the stares from the crazy old people wooo weeee – the G-man, my ma and I started to get fed up and when asked by the locals “who are you” we would answer “we are people who are you?”

Anyway I am prattling on now, and I don’t want this to turn into one of those boring, un-intellectual, self absorbed blogs that get hammered for lacking any literary imagination and full of mundane drivel. Oh why oh why didn’t I mention Nietzsche or Foucault in this blog? Then I might have some credibility …. Sorry just being a bit of a shit stirrer.

I would post more photos, but I am not sure 50 million photos of us sat around the table with over flowing bowls of food would be all that interesting. Anyway I have shoved them all onto my Crackbook if you’re interested.

From an emotionally drained Sakura – laters peeps!