Camerino: Cold City, Warm Hearts

I am a newborn child. These words mean nothing to me. There is no form or meaning or structure in them, but the tone and cadence are the audible world and those mean everything. The wrong tone is enough to send me to war, and the correct soothing croon is enough to make me fall in love. This is how you address a baby; how one talks to the unborn and newly aware. This is how you speak to a waking woman as you brush the spiderwebs of a dreamworld from her hair. These are the lessons I didn’t know I came here for.

I wrote this in my notebook somewhere in my first week in class at Dante Alighieri. As with so many things on this trip, I got more than I bargained for.

I spent several days throughout my time in Italy speaking with people in person and via email looking for Italian language classes either with a private tutor or in a class somewhere. After some guidance from strangers and a great many emails, I decided on Scualo Dante Alighieri in Camerino because they seemed the easiest to work with over email, and because I thought Camerino was much closer to Rome than it actually is.

After two weeks of bitter cold, often without water pressure or a heater, I still don’t regret the decision.

Some years ago, I decided I would learn to speak Italian. This decision was influenced by such marvelous guiding lights as Brak from Space Ghost. Later, I would make doomed plans to move to Italy with a girlfriend, and make some inroads with the language before losing it the tide of daily life, as happens with so many things.

Fast forward to 2010. The trip from Rome to Camerino is several hours; a train and a bus. The instructions from the school and the locals were quite helpful, otherwise I may not have made it for the 7 p.m. deadline to pick up the keys to my apartment from Luciana, the secretary and my new best friend.

I shared my magnificent new living space with a couple other guys from Brazil and Mexico who did their best to help me feel at home and get up in time to make it to class on time.

If you ever want to meet cute Brazilian girls, go study Italian in the mountains of Italy.

My school was a cocktail of roughly 50% Brazilian, 47% Argentine, and 4% everything else. Yes, that is 101%. We had class for roughly 4 hours a day with various cultural events every day that really helped bond everyone together as an odd sort of family so far from home. I met magnificent people from all over; Sergio and his permanent smile, Camila with her freckles, Saolo and his huge heart, and dozen others.

This was by far the most expensive single investment I have made on the whole trip, and it was worth it.

Camerino is very walkable. The streets are tight and winding, so driving just seems counterproductive. Most of the apartments the school uses and the social areas in town run along the same streets, so every time you leave the house, you wind up in a half dozen conversations before you ever get where you were going. This provides on with ample opportunity to practice, and be frustrated with, speaking Italian. The patience of all my classmates with my attempts at dialogue must be lauded; I truly appreciated it.

The cultural activities ranged from lectures on The Divine Comedy to karaoke (another type of comedy), from pot lucks to scenic outings. These were the times when we students really met one another; where the different classrooms could laugh and share and talk about our lives and share pieces of our dreams with one another.

Italy is a place that one can fall in love everyday without an ounce of guilt. With pasta, with chocolate, with strangers, or even someone you already know.

Mornings always come early for me. 4 a.m. comes so early it doesn’t qualify as a morning, but the bus ride to Rome was a long one, and we departing masses needed to be on the bus early. When we finally rolled out of town, every head on the bus dropped under the still hung curtain of night. Hours later, with dawnlight in the air and on my heavy eyelids, a pair of kaleidoscope eyes surrounded by freckles cracked open and peered into mine.

“I’m in love. Will you marry me?” she asked.

Everyone wants to wake up this way.

Camila and I spent the remainder of the bus ride eating chocolates and discussing the details of our impending nuptials and future life together: where our house would be, what kind of dog we would have, how many children, etc. It was like waking up to a dreamstate.

Sadly, though, even Italian Kaleidoscope dreams end, and we pulled up to the Airport to let off my newfound bride-to-be and a number of the other students returning home. While making the rounds and saying goodbye to everyone, I almost missed my bus ride to Roma Termini, near where I was to spend my last couple days in the Eternal City remembering Italy and all it had been for me  before I departed for the endless desert.

Wrap Up:

Do your homework. Investigate any schools ahead of time to make sure you get what you are looking for, then go with the one with a more amiable staff. They are the ones who will go to bat for you if something goes wrong. (Thank you, Luciana!)

Dress for the weather and look at a map. I had to buy a couple extra sweaters in Camerino because I didn’t know how cold it would be.

Take every opportunity to spend time with the other students socially. I am so fortunate to have met the people I did, and I never would have come to know how great they were if I limited myself to the classroom.