The End/Her Majesty

Alright, I feel absolutely no legitimacy in making this post given that I haven’t been in Italy since December, but I’d like to straighten things out proper and award myself some personal closure in the process.  Let’s go back in time to tie up the last few knots in the story.

I arrived at a crossroads in mid-November. I had the opportunity to establish myself in Bari, as an English teacher with the aim of staying until mid-summer.  However, the sleigh bells of the holiday season were beginning to ring and the opportunity to return home beckoned powerfully.

I was torn.  One side of me wanted to stay in Southern Italy, continue my study of Italian,  live la vita Bari, and perpetuate the gratifying liberty of living on the road.  Tugging me from the other side was a longing to see my friends and family, New York City, a new stage of life, and a deep satisfaction of the experience so far.  I was split 50/50 and I couldn’t rationalize it, so I let me subconscious sort it out.  I consulted my dreams, my emotional reactions to: music, e-mails, advice and conversations, and the way I spent my free time. To sum it up, my focus naturally began to drift away from life in Bari.

I decided to come home.  It ultimately FELT like the right thing to do (Capitalized felt in the sense that I listened to my instinctual feelings as opposed to a use of the past tense in order to forecast a change of mind in the future).  I spent a lot of time thinking about my decision between booking the flight in November and arriving home in late December.  If I was to write a paper about it or something, I would organize my thoughts somewhere along these lines.

This kind of traveling as a form of escapism, like watching movies, playing video games, and taking drugs, is  valuable and truly didactic for a certain period of time, but it’s also important to graduate from the experience, taking with you the things you’ve learned along the way.

Conscience: Escapism how?  escapism from what? Isms isms isms, but no definition?

I suppose what drives me to travel, to explore, is a dissatisfaction with some institutions here in the U.S and a resulting curiosity about the rest of the world. Things like Scandinavian welfare and Southern European lifestyle really appeal to me because they ease some of the blues I feel at home.  However, every place has its ups and downs. Everyone in the world feels the strain of the global capitalist system in some way or another.  The super-market is always around the corner. Permanently moving to Italy was never going to resolve these dissatisfactions. Accountability for one’s own lifestyle is everything, and the endless potential of this world makes this a beautiful, beautiful thing.  I realized: Life is what you make of it, and a poor craftsman blames his tools.

On a more personal level, the day is meaningless without meaningful relationships:  “Happiness is only real when shared.”  Although I was making a lot of good friends in Italy, leaving my friends and family in the States could never make sense to me.

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A Little Reminiscence

I sit here in Hoboken under the fury of a cosmic blizzard, thumbing through my phone book and reminiscing about the names through which I scroll.  There’s Andrea, the owner of the guitar bar where I waited on tables and strummed Dylan tunes;  Betta and Iside, my two lovely roommates in seaside Bari; English Express, the school where I taught Italian “youths” English; Lorenzo, the owner of Fish Pub who sent me on covert marketing missions in the Florentine universities; Marin and Alessandro, maghi delle seghe; Nicla, the farm owner who employed me on her picturesque farmhouse in the middle of Tuscany; and Maja, my bluebird from Denmark.  People are the greatest resource this world has to offer and it is these characters who shape the memory so well.

The pilgrimage to Italy was a lovely six months of liberty and la vita dolce. I’m going to miss the fertility of the Mediterranean peninsula, the Sunday strolls along cobblestone streets, the balmy evenings, the sweet clementines after dinner, the romance of the Italian language and the sanguine blood of the Italian nation. Despite my sappy longings, I’ve made my peace with these memories and look forward to whatever it is that lies ahead.

Since returning to America, I’ve picked up a few jobs to keep my hands busy.  I’m currently working as a blogger for xanga.com, interning at an independent publishing company in SoHo and enduring the pains of an indentured clerical servant at a home health care company in Union City, NJ.

I’m quite busy in these days but perhaps I’ll have the time to start another blog if there is enough demand.  I’ll call it: Craigorio Does Regular-Ass Life. Until then:

Buon Viaggio,

Craig

La Vita Danmark

It’s been a snowy weekend approach to Christmas here in Danmark.  Maja and I have filled the past 10 days or so scouring festive markets, playing with sheep, touring western denmark, eating aebleskiver, and taking lovely strolls through snowy Aarhus.  Although it hardly snowed when I studied here in 2008, an unlikely storm has struck the country and were knee deep in a picturesque winterland.

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Hyggeligt

[who-geh-lee (confused American pronunciation)]

Talking about holiday experience in Denmark without the word Hyggeligt doesn’t make sense and leaves a massive hole in the story.  Roughly translated, the word means “cozy.”  However, our word “cozy” doesn’t justify the meaning of Hyggeligt.  It is a state of mind and a cultural cornerstone that represents pleasure, enjoyability and happiness.  It is a very common word used in noun, verb, and adjective forms.  I.E…….

Noun : “This is some great Christmas hygge”

Verb:  “We hygge together” -  We get along well

Adjective: “That was hyggeligt” – that was nice

Hyggeligt culture is most evident in the domestic setting.  Because the weather outside can be so brutal, it is important to make the indoor environment as warm, comfortable, and “hyggeligt” as possible.  Physically manifested in candle arrangements, hot tea, comfortable chairs, cozy décor and chocolate, “Hygge” goes much further than decorations and drinks.  Rarely touched in the America I’ve experienced, the real value of hygge comes in the mentality behind the physical things—A relaxed, content, and warm frame of mind.  It’s a unique flavor of “good times” that this part of the world specializes in.

Classic Hygge

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I arrived in Aarhus on December 8th after an 18 hour Ryanair journey that involved an overnight on an empty airport floor, an unprecedented touch of luck with a Ryanair check-in lady (that allowed me to avoid 100 dollars of extra charges), forgotten sandwiches (the worst thing in the world), annoying British accents and a temporary goodbye to Italy.

Maja and I spent a little over a week in Aarhus before heading over to Copenhagen for a Christmas celebration.   She was finishing up her last week of journalism school.  She took me to school one day to attend the release party of the magazine for which she is an editor.  Only in Denmark do you arrive at school to carry cases of beer from the bar (that is located in the same hallways as your lecture hall) to the foyer where you are having a party a few meters away from the library, speaking to your teachers about a certain assignment as you enjoy a Christmas beer at 12:30 in the afternoon.

Drinking at School, A Rebel Without a Cause

Kolding

We went to Maja’s parents’ house in Kolding for a few nights on the way to Copenhagen and they were very eager to share their take on Danish Christmas.  On the first night we dined on a homemade Risengroed, a cornerstone of the holiday culture. Risengroed is a rice pudding sprinkled with a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon upon which you melt a piece of butter to brew a savory maelstrom of rice pudding glory.  It’s sweet, but not jelly donut sweet, and this golden middleway in combination with the spicy Christmas beer makes for a memorable dinner amongst the holiday “hygge” of the Danish home.

On the second night we had a proper Christmas dinner with a roasted duck, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes and a cabbage salad.  The Bygvraa’s dug into the family wine collection after the royal meal, and within a few hours, Momma bear was fast asleep, Mr. Bygvraa was playing 80s pop hits on the laptop while Maja and I were jamming on the guitar, singing songs while wearing Santa hats–christmas candles burning, teeth stained red and that intangible joy, that Christmas never seems to forget, floating through the air.

Conscience:  And by intangible joy, you mean 3 bottles of wine, right?

I sit here on 11:25am Saturday morning, next to Maja’s dad whose been hammering away at some semi-professional snood for the past half hour, the both of us too hungover to talk and waiting for Maja to wake up so we can get going with breakfast.  Maja’s mom knocks on the door, returning from a walk with their brown lab “Dino.”  I answer the door and she stands there saying something in Danish, waving her hand and walking away, and I answer with a gentle, “okay.”  I close the door and turn around and Maja’s dad says, “she meant to say that she is going next door.”

My time in Denmark has been filled with numbingly awkward moments like this as well as moments of holiday cheer and Danish intoxication.  The Scandinavian winter is a bit overwhelming and I now recall those long January nights of 2008, when I first arrived in Denmark for my semester abroad.  Daylight is difficult to catch as the sun sets around 4pm here.  Days go from black to grey to black again, but the most interesting aspect of this pattern is the degree of darkness that is reached in the early evening.  By 5pm or so, it is midnight dark outside as if you were galavanting around the city at 2 o clock in the morning.  The long hours force a lot of the Danish werewolves to migrate south for the winter.

Conscience:  There’s a handgun in the closet, I left the child-lock off for you.

Anyway, Maja and I are jumping on a train tomorrow to head out to beautiful Copenhagen.  I’ll be in touch soon.

Buon Natale,

Craig

written 12/20/09

Unsolved Mysteries Update: blah blah blah, what dishonorable bullshit!  We did go to Copenhagen before I came back to the States and it was a fantastic time, however, we can’t dwell too long on that because I’ve waited too long to finish this thing.  Here are some pictures from the Copenhagen visit…. I hope to have the last entry up by this weekend, if not, early next week. Peace.