Epilogue: We’ll always have (a video of) Paris

The biggest lesson I’ve learnt from this shaky video, filmed throughout our last month in Paris and quickly cobbled together back home, is that I really need to get some sort of camera stabiliser. The second lesson is that it was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful place to live for half a year. Adieu.

This is the way the year ends, not with a bang but my belongings in a clingfilmed box

Kneeling on the dusty floor of terminal 2E at Charles de Gaulle airport, surrounded by my worldly belongings and trying desperately to shove half of them into a cardboard box, I was struck by my failure to have nailed this whole travelling lark. Confusion over the requirement to separate my luggage allowance into more than one case meant I had lugged a 39kg one across Paris, only to find out it was far too heavy for the baggage handlers to carry- and fair play to them, this valise was lourde.

And yet, despite making me feel like I really had learned nothing this year, my unforeseen forage through my possessions hit me with a wave of nostalgia. The oven glove I’d bought in Monoprix to replace the frankly ugly one the apartment came with, the baby blue trousers I wore on my first day in the office, far too many orange bags to muster, my Navigo card, its edges gently frayed by time and pockets, faded books purchased from the bouquinistes along the Seine. Little scraps of Parisian life, gathered together in my bag, and now spread inelegantly all over an airport floor.

The disgusting glove provided, presumably to make us feel more at home.

The whole situation was so laughable that I couldn’t help bursting into giggles at regular intervals. I wouldn’t have been too surprised if I were approached by security for suspicious behaviour at that stage, a girl stood alone with a sagging suitcase and a cardboard box covered in airport luggage wrap, wearing a straw hat and a leather jacket, laughing uncontrollably.

The box, the suitcase and I were all happily reunited and made it home yesterday, which means my year abroad has officially come to an end. I’ve signed the forms and closed my bank account, cancelled my phone contract, and returned home. As quickly as I had made my little life in Paris, and in Bologna before that, I have unmade it again. Setting up homes on such a regular basis has made me realise what I really need to feel at home, not just materially (although that requires 39kg worth of stuff, to be quite precise), but also more personally, and it is not a lot. Access to good pastry, coffee, friends, rectangular pillows, a decent sofa, time to write, sunshine.

If you had told me 11 months ago that I would be feeling quite so nostalgic now, making such hazy lists of loves lost, I’m not sure I’d have believed you. I had heard the stories from students in the year abroad about what an ahhh-mazing time everyone had on their year abroad, and they had made me nervous and panicky, unsure I could live up to this feat everyone else seemed to manage. But I think that the rosy glow of I did it, when you can say “why yes, I did live in this little flat in Paris when I was 21” comes quite a lot later in the game.

Essentially, what I am trying to say is the beginning of the year abroad is a bit rubbish, and I think that is true for everyone, or at least everyone I have spoken to. Under the shadow of your expectations, it can be a very lonely and daunting place, until you make it into a home. But I did. And Paris was one of the best homes I’ve ever had.

View from the balcony

Paris is somehow big and small all at once, a patchwork of little bits of city that never feels too overwhelming. Its arrondissements each have their own characters, and are filled with their own characters, and it has been an absolute pleasure to get to know them over the past 5 months. Its buildings are never too high to suffocate you, the Eiffel Tower literally shines out like the North Star to guide you home, and its pastry is plentiful and delicious. I did not expect to fall for Paris the way I did, but I truly loved living there. It was a very easy place to make a home and a life, even if the paperwork was tiresome (I’m sorry, I could not avoid mentioning the paperwork in my final blog. Have I ever told you how much paperwork there is??).

Well, voilà, there you have it. I travelled south, and my skin turned warmer– although it didn’t turn brown, unless you count my mucky knees from whatever is on the CDG terminal floor. I travelled south and spoke Italian and French, ate extremely well, voyaged around on trains, buses, planes, metros and even a giant helium-filled balloon, made friends, made lists and made tortellini. If this is the way the year ends, with me looking back on it and smiling like I did at the contents of my cardboard box, then I’m very happy with that.

“La canicule” is French for heatwave

Never has the title of my blog been more apt than during this last week in Paris (for those who don’t know, it comes from this Belle and Sebastian song). Temperatures hit 39 degrees, a peak I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in my life before and would be quite happy to avoid ever experiencing again.

Being a Brit, and never having blogged about the weather, I feel I have so far betrayed my national stereotype, but I am going to fully make up for that now. It was hot. Really really hot. It has just about cooled down, which means I am able to sit down and type this without sweat dripping from my pores into my keyboard. This time last week, I was sitting on the balcony desperately eating ice cream, wondering how sleep in a non-air-conditioned flat that was 33 degrees was going to work. It turns out, it wasn’t.

My main issue with the heat was clothes. I believe you can divide people’s dress sense into two categories: summer dressers, and winter dressers, and I am committed to the second camp. I like jumpers, I like black skinny jeans (sorry not cool anymore, but nothing beats them), I like turtlenecks that make me look a little bit like Steve Jobs more than any other item of clothing. I love wool and tweed and leather. I do not, however, know how to be chic in the heat. Having a job means slobbing about in tiny cotton shorts and a vest top is hardly an option, but neither is my loyal work wardrobe of jeans and a nice top.

I am lucky enough to work in an air-conditioned office, but to get there requires a metro journey. Not at all the dream in a heatwave. Tubes are sticky and smelly at the best of times, but during la canicule they were unbearable- imagine Dante’s descent into hell, only a bit hotter. For the first time, I made no effort to get a seat, in the knowledge that the distinctive sound of thighs ungluing themselves from faux leather is not one anyone needs to hear in the morning.

I ended up resorting to some pretty strange tactics to cool down, including putting wet socks on my feet (didn’t work), putting my pyjamas in the freezer (didn’t work) and crowning myself Chief Air Current Implementer, attempting to create a draught between the flat’s two windows…. didn’t work. It was less “travel south until your skin turns warmer”, more “travel south until your skin is swathed in a permanent layer of warm sweat”.

To top it all off, on Friday morning my best friends in the world descended on Paris to visit me, which obviously sounds great, but actually they selfishly made the flat even hotter. I joke, of course (but have I made it clear how hot it was??): it turns out Paris is a pretty cool place to herd about town, even when it’s not cool at all.

Les Berges de Seine, in my opinion, are the coolest of the many cool places Paris contains. On our short, hangover-fuzzy visit there, we climbed a giant hexagonal structure, lazed in hammocks and played Uno in a tipi. Cool and cooling, and I hear Paris Plages is due to kick off there any time soon. Add to that Bastille Day on Tuesday and the Tour de France making its final leg along the Champs Elysées in a couple of weeks time, and I’m starting to think I could bear this heat, if only to stay in Paris a little while longer…

An unexpected French love affair

Paris has long been the city of romance, the ideal location for lovey-dovey couples to come and stare into each other’s eyes and romantically clamp a piece of metal on a bridge (to be later removed, to the chagrin of still-lovey-dovey couples and the probable relief of no-vey-dovey couples).

My own Parisian love affair has been of a rather different nature, and one that would make it difficult to leave a padlock on a bridge with my loved one even if I so desired. Said hypothetical love lock would have to say EG RG, because it is with tennis, and specifically the French Open, Roland Garros, that I have fallen hopelessly in love over the last two weeks.

I have never been a big sports fan, neither playing nor spectating, but something about tennis has taken hold of me. It began with seeing the Eiffel Tower, a giant green tennis ball dangling between its first and second levels, and wondering what exactly it was for. A couple of weeks later, I found myself over in south-west Paris, wandering around the grounds of what Wikipedia informs me is widely considered to be the most physically demanding tennis tournament in the world.

Roland Garros has a wonderful evening visitors ticket system which allows you to enter the grounds after 5pm for just €12, granting you access to any of the outside courts and giving you the option to queue and pay extra to upgrade, if desired. I was quite happy just to be there, even if it was during the colder first week of the tournament. We managed to catch a Murray, Jamie to be precise, playing a successful game of doubles, as well as joining an excitable crowd outside the big screen on Suzanne Lenglen to watch Frenchman Monfils pull off a fifth set victory against Cuevas.

I think it is the set system, which once seemed so unnecessarily confusing to me, that has turned me into a tennis supportrice. Risking stating the obvious to anyone who knows anything about tennis, but the set system ensures that even after a dreadful first few points and a loss of the first and even second set, it is always possible to bounce back and come out on top. It’s why it looked like Murray might actually beat Djokovic, why even at the last few moments of the fourth set in the final between Djokovic and Wawrinka, it was always possible that either of them might win. Even as a newbie to the sport, I know I have been watching incredible tennis over the past two weeks- another bonus of tennis: it’s all over in an intense, nail-biting fortnight.

And there are some incredible places in Paris to watch the tennis. This year, Roland Garros dans la Ville took up residence on the Champ de Mars, just before the Eiffel Tower, which made for a pretty exciting spot to lie on the grass and watch. And friends’ flats with pizza deliveries are even better spots for when a storm rolls in.

It’s also been a great way to pick up a lot of new, very specific vocabulary. Une manche (a set), un jeu décisif (tie break), égalité (deuce), les ramasseurs de balles (ball boys/girls). More info on the incredibly tricky process of getting to be a Roland Garros ball boy/girl can be found here (click Le Docu top right).

I never expected to fall in love with tennis in Paris, and I never expected it to be such a whirlwind affair: racing across Paris to find a bar with a TV, surreptitiously checking the scores at work, and getting to go to the tournament itself. It was a short but sweet fortnight, though, and I will treasure my overpriced souvenir ball for many years to come. Even if I might just cheat on RG with Wimbledon in a few weeks time…

Running Paris

Although this title might suggest otherwise, no, nobody has asked me to be in charge of Paris. Although, often I wish they would, because there are certain things about the city that make absolutely no sense to me. First amongst these things is the topping-up system on the French métro equivalent to the Oyster card, the Navigo. The way it works is that you top up your card for a month at a time, but instead of running from a month from the day you buy it, it runs for the month you’re in; top up for March and you can use the metro until the end of March.

All sounds quite neat and simple, until you realise that this involves long queues of grumpy Navigo users waiting to top up their cards on the 1st of April, and not just because it’s a cruel April fool but because this actually is the system. Why the cards don’t just last for a month from their purchase date, thus staggering the top up times and eliminating these queues, I can’t understand. And that’s just one reason why I should run Paris.

For now, I’m contenting myself with just running in Paris. For more on why I’ve chosen to do such a strange thing, please see here (and also please donate if you are that way inclined). My training, if it could be called such a thing, is going reasonably well. Well, it’s going. I have been on some runs.

GPS proof that I have done some running!

It turns out Paris is a surprisingly pleasant city to run in. I had visions of coughing my way through polluted, congested streets, running quickly more to get away from rapidly approaching vehicles than to improve my average pace. But there are many lovely parks; I enjoy Parc André Citroën’s futuristic right-angles, the gently curved paths of the Champ de Mars and the floating island that is the Île aux Cygnes. The Parisians seem to enjoy them to, especially on a Sunday morning along the banks of the Seine, where many of them can be seen running merrily along.

They really do seem to wear a lot of clothes, though, even when it’s pretty balmy. I still haven’t seen anyone in less than full leggings and a long-sleeved top, and I have come across many people in a full tracksuit, as well as one woman in a puffer jacket (shudder) and scarf. I’m impressed by their heat management, especially as I suffer from serious red face when I get going.

The other oddity I have noticed is not found so much amongst the runners, but along the other Parisians. When running along a pavement that is perfectly wide enough to accommodate 2 or 3 people, individuals tend to walk right in the middle and refuse steadfastly to move one way or another to let me pass. It’s not just when I’m running either, so I can’t blame it on a general annoyance towards other people trying to get fit (been there, understand that). People just don’t like moving out of the way for others. Being British, I tend to be the person that eventually gives in and goes on the road, but I do wonder how far I’d have to run towards someone before they made any effort to move. If I ran Paris, I’d definitely make a by-law on that.

Gallivanting and gadding about

As readers of my previous blog post will know, I have now completed my exams and thus pretty much finished the first half of my year abroad, a feat that seemed practically unobtainable back in the tricky days of early September. I’m in a weird transitionary period, full of goodbyes and hellos, packing and unpacking, paperwork and… paperwork. If you’re annoyed about how much I mention paperwork, think about how annoyed I must be having to complete it all. Very.

It’s a strange time. In some ways I feel like I should have already left Bologna; I have nothing left to do here, save get a few forms signed (there’s that old chestnut again!). And yet it will also be strange to leave the streets I have walked and now know so well for new, unknown ones.

I feel under pressure to make the most of my last few days here, but I’m unsure exactly what that should mean. Thanks to the bucket list I made back in those aforementioned tricky early days, I’ve done pretty much everything I wanted to do here. The major unticked box is “Go for a run in the Giardini Margherita”. Naïvely, I thought that 5 months was plenty of time in which to go for one run: a realistic goal, I thought. Not the case.

Instead, I’ve opted to spend my remaining days gallivanting and gadding about, as shrewd title-readers will have already guessed (no prizes, I’m afraid). The map below represents the journeys I’ve made in the last couple of weeks, all thanks to Italy’s wonderful, clean, efficient, relatively cheap train network, and some dodgy buses at the French border:

Part of the reason for all this voyaging was that it was my 21st birthday a couple of weeks ago, in honour of which Hannah and I travelled to Turin for a lovely weekend filled with delicious bicerin- a sort of heavenly rich mocha. On the subject of my birthday, I’d like to thank all those wonderful friends and relatives who posted cards and gifts- my mother even managed to send a banana cake over. I cannot understate the sheer loveliness of receiving these things at a time when I was worried this most important of birthdays might be a little out of sight, out of mind. It seems it was neither, and for this I am very grateful.

After Turin, Valérie and I popped over the border to stay with our friend Agathe in her beautiful house in a valley of the French Alps, in a small town called Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. The major purpose of this trip was to partake in some winter sports action, words that made me pretty hesitant but also excited. I am not le type sportif by any stretch of the imagination: I failed to go for a single run in 5 months, after all. And yet here was a fabulous opportunity to try something new, in what was to become the best value skiing holiday ever thanks to Agathe’s kind loan of absolutely all the kit I needed, no accommodation costs, and my terribleness at skiing- I didn’t even need to buy a ski pass the first day as the flat slopes were quite enough for me.

Very kindly, Agathe even agreed to teach me to ski. Living in the Alps, she has been skiing for about as long as she has been walking, and is terribly graceful on the slopes. Graceful is perhaps not the word I would choose to describe my debut. “Bambi” might be more like it. Being taught in French was also far funnier than I could have imagined. Panicked yells of ‘je peux pas bouger!’ when I was trapped in a snowy ravine (not a ravine…but felt like one) were probably terribly amusing to passersby/skiersby. I have chosen to blame my main failing (not being able to turn right) on my confusion between the similar-sounding phrases ‘tout droit’ (straight on) and ‘à droite’ (to the right). When the muffly effect of days of powdery snow is taken into account, I like to think that even a French person would struggle with this. Still, by the end of my time in France I was able to successfully navigate my way down a piste without toppling over, a feat I am immensely proud of. Skiing is an odd thing: there is so much kit that it is anything but natural, but the views from the top of those frosty mountains made it all worthwhile.

The other big highlight of this trip was visiting the Opinel museum. For those unfamiliar with the name, Opinel is an artisan producer of beautiful sharp knives with wooden handles. I am a big fan of the obscure museum. They are cosier than other museums, you learn something completely different, and you get the sense that the curators really care about your visit because they are so passionate about the subject themselves. The curator of this one was a member of the Opinel family, and appeared in the short documentary we sat and watched as well as hanging about in the gift shop. The entire museum was clearly meant to advertise the brand, and it worked; to Banksy’s disdain, I’m sure, my Exit Through the Gift Shop left me money-poorer and knife-richer.

Valérie, Monsieur Opinel et moi

My time in Italy has also left me much money-poorer, but richer in almost every other sense. An Italian film I saw here, Benvenuti al Sud, sums it up quite well, if I can permit myself the poetic license to substitute ‘al sud’ for ‘in Italia’:

‘chi viene in Italia piange due volte: quando arriva e quando se ne deve andare’

-Whoever comes to Italy cries twice: when he arrives, and when he has to leave.

Musings on learnings: An Italian education

This week marked the official end of my semester here at the University of Bologna. I still have a few last things to tie up here before I leave, not to mention some exciting travelling/skiing that just must be attended to, but my university career here is over.

My lectures ended in December, but I returned to Bologna to do my exams, something which I thought would be a relatively straightforward experience. And so, after a hurried week of cramming, praying that my reading across the semester would stand me in good stead, I headed to my first exam on Monday.

Most exams at the University of Bologna, and I believe Italy as a whole, are oral exams, which was already a strange concept to me. Of course I’ve done oral exams before, but only to test my abilities in speaking languages; they are not something UK universities really use for getting a sense of how much you know about a given subject. But it actually makes quite a lot of sense to me now, as unlike with a written exam, the professor is able to probe your knowledge and push certain parts of your argument. It’s also quite a good paper-saving strategy, and it was nice not to have to bring my usual half a dozen biros- there’s always that chance that 5 will run out of ink. You never know.

Given that I couldn’t attend the normal date for my first exam, the professor arranged a separate one for me. I waited for him outside his office, reading through my colour-coded cue cards (I’ve not changed), when he arrived, and immediately picked one up to have a look. I was already finding this really weird. I wondered whether he was already deciding what mark to award me based on the visual evidence of my revision, and was secretly hoping so as he complimented me on the little quizzes I’d written for myself.

I thought when we entered the office that that would be the end of the cue cards, but as we went in and he started tapping away on his computer I hesitantly asked how the exam was going to work. At this, he picked up one of my cue cards and asked “Tell me about Voltaire’s flair”. It was strangely like an informal chat- almost enjoyable at times, even if I often wondered whether he was really concentrating on what I was saying as he logged onto the internal system to record my exam. In the end it went brilliantly and I beamed as I walked home, a new advocate for the oral exam system, as well as more than a little smug that I had got away with doing so little revision.

But my, how my opinions changed when I attended my second exam, for which I was able to make the published date. The entire class of around 50 people had to turn up at 9:30am to attend the ‘appello’, where we were registered to be taking the exam that day. Then, we all had to wait. I was advised to return at 2pm, which I did, but subsequently had to sit for another 4 hours waiting to be called in to take the exam.

This might not sound that bad; it’s only one day, after all. And yet, one day of sitting with a group of other stressed out students, constantly reading over your notes “one last time” in case you get called in, losing energy by the second, and it’s a wonder anyone is actually able to say anything coherent. By the time I got to do my exam, at 6:30pm, I was tired, bored, hungry and had a headache. I wasn’t really in the mood.

I asked the Italian students around me if this was normal, and they assured me it was. I asked them why they didn’t all just get their own specific time to turn up, and they said it was because the professors didn’t trust them to be on time. I asked them if they minded this system, and they said of course they did, but nobody was willing to change it.

The whole thing seemed symptomatic of the relationship between Italy and its youths as a whole. Perhaps it sounds dramatic, but sitting with those students, waiting around for 8 hours for the convenience of their professors, even being told we weren’t allowed to sit on the floor whilst we waited, I got the sense that they were being badly undervalued and patronised.

Youth unemployment in Italy is at over 40%, a rate amongst the worst in Europe. Its young people are frustrated, bored and anxious, but they are also bright, ambitious and hopeful. It seems to me that their country is doing them a great disservice by undervaluing their intelligence and their dedication; and if you treat people like lazy idiots for long enough, they give up and start acting like it.

It may seem a grand conclusion to draw from a minor experience, but I think it rings true for many of the people I’ve met here. The university is in desperate need of young, inspiring academics to breathe some life back into its ancient classrooms, and its students need to be given more opportunities to do more outside of those classrooms. I know I have been utterly spoilt with my university experience back home, but I also know that Italy needs to do more for its young people and invest in their futures, or the future of the whole country will soon be in great jeopardy.

“It’s not a long holiday. It’s a short life.”

This title is perhaps the most precise summary of the year abroad that I have written so far. Which is a shame, because they aren’t actually my words. This phrase was the inspired thought of dear Rebecca, as we sat together on a metro in Paris, pondering the confusions of the year and wondering how we might ever find somewhere to call home there.

It is a short life. You have to go to a new country and essentially create yourself as a bureaucratic, systematic, (HYDROMATIC) human being there, a process that basically involves lots of forms. Lots. More than you can imagine. I’m talking a metric shit ton of forms. A short life contains just as many forms as a full-length life, just in a much shorter space of time. It’s form density. There is a home to find, bank account to open, phone contract to sign for, plus friends to make, supermarkets to find, favourite cafés to discover, language to learn, train network to decipher. All things that are already a part of your current life, but that you have to do all over again in a new country for it to ever feel like home.

Unfortunately from a paperwork point of view (and it’s surprising how fast this becomes your primary point of view), I had decided to split my year abroad. But happily, Rebecca had been equally naïve, and even more happily, our second placements were both to take place in Paris. And so, whilst the weight of forms hung heavily over me as I jetted off to Paris last week, it was lifted by the comfort that at least this time I wouldn’t be alone whilst getting my life in order. Almost falling off the metro due to the weight of your suitcase is a bit tragic and embarrassing alone, but with a friend it’s mostly just funny, especially when it’s the friend doing the falling (sorry Bec).

I cannot mock her too harshly because I made a much greater error shortly after arrival at Paris Charles de Gaulle, the largest and most bizarrely empty airport I’ve ever been to, in accidentally abandoning my rucksack on a bench. This rucksack contained my laptop, money, phone, but most crucially a huge amount of, you guessed it, forms, without which I might as well have got straight back on the next flight to England. I was convinced that, in the 10 minutes before I realised it was missing, it would almost certainly have been blown up by a bomb squad, but to my great relief and some quite impressive traversing of floorscalators, it was exactly where I left it, forms and all.

My hero.

And thus, generously hosted by Walter, our flat hunt commenced. Paris is a horribly cruel city in which to find an apartment. Everywhere you look there are apartments. Taunting you, because none of them seem to be actually available to rent, and certainly not for a short period to students. The subject of how to find a Paris apartment has been covered in numerous blogs, and so I’m not sure I have much to add to the wealth of advice out there except my own anecdotes.

The very worst flat-viewing experience we had was also the first. Having wildly underestimated the size of Paris from our map, we thought we would stroll from the Eiffel Tower down to the south-east of the 5th arrondissement, which was a nice idea until it started raining chats et chiens and we realised that Paris is actually pretty sizeable. Not only had the landlord told us the wrong address, but when we arrived we were surprised (naïvely, I now realise) to find that there were other potential tenants viewing it too. Within a minute of entering, these two jeunes hommes had declared that they were willing to take it, and would it be okay for them to send their paperwork that afternoon? We exchanged a glance and quickly left, hot-footing it to the nearest McDonald’s. For the free WiFi, I tell you. And okay, also for a McFlurry and a small cry.

This was probably the lowest low, however, apart from a time where a woman on the phone would not stop repeating “c’est pas pratique!” (It’s not practical!) when we called to enquire about her apartment, where one person would have to traverse the other’s bedroom to get to their own. This was clearly listed in the advert, and so I’m not sure why this lady was quite so keen on insisting on the impractical nature of her apartment, or who exactly she thought it would be practical for, but I quickly gave up and moved on.

Eventually, we found our luck with an advert posted on the announcement boards at the American Church in Paris. This was something we’d read about but that I’d hardly believed could actually be a source of success, but we’re really happy with our newfound home, even if we haven’t moved in yet. More details and photos to come when we have, but for now I shall just share my own personal point of glee- it has a balcony with a view onto the Eiffel Tower. I feel like I’m winning the short life game already.

However, one big hurdle jumped and I remembered that I still didn’t really count as a person in France because I didn’t have any of the human being numbers that my new forms required. A phone number. A social security number. A bank account number. Not only does each of these things take a good hour of research, another very decent hour of queuing, and a conversation with an uninterested French person to sort out, but you are somehow supposed to intuitively know the order in which to get them. I couldn’t get a bank account without an address, nor a SIM card without a French bank account. It is a horrible bureaucracy trap, especially because the French bloody love forms. They adorent forms. When opening my bank account, I was asked for a photocopy of my landlady’s ID. To be clear, I wasn’t opening the account for her. This was just something they wanted 3 copies of.

Whilst we’re at it, why does everybody want 3 copies of everything? I understand one for them, one for me, one for… who? It remains one of the great mysteries of our time. I can only conclude that somewhere in the middle of rural France there is a mad aristocrat called Monsieur Bureaucratie, to whom everyone sends their third copies. He then proceeds to fill his great country chateau with them, basking in a room filled with forms, and the warm, inky scent of photocopier paper.

There are no shortcuts to the successful short life, but luckily there are friends, food and cheap wine. Not to mention beautiful cats. Paris, you’re next.

The Puffer Jacket Conundrum

It’s fair to say Italy has more than its fair share of world-class fashion designers. Prada. Gucci. Dolce & Gabbana. Versace, Armani, Emilio Pucci, and my favourite of them all, Valentino. Milan is one of the four fashion capitals of the world, and Florence home to some of the best artisan leather producers. Italians are known, perhaps after only the French, for their style and elegance, and I half expected to turn up here and be judged for my pathetic English high street wardrobe by better-off Italians, as they flounced by in a swathe of carefully matched, beautifully produced textiles, their leather brogues click-clacking on the marble pavements. And you better hope those shoes have a good tread. Said shiny marble pavements are a death trap to those of us who dare to wear otherwise.

I have thus been surprised to find myself in a world of, well, puffer jackets. It’s hard to put it any other way. I am literally surrounded by them whenever I leave the house. Like Day of the Triffids but with polyester. It would have been weird enough to see this many puffer jackets in any country, but in one famed for its style, it’s incomprehensible. I cannot get my head around it. It has reached the point where I am starting to see every other type of coat as simply a variety of puffer jacket. Are fur coats not just puffer jackets made in a different fabric? I don’t even know anymore.

Because I know it may sound like I’m exaggerating the number of puffer jackets, I have chosen to provide some photographic evidence. I did consider going out and photographing all the puffer jackets I saw in one day, but given that that would have meant stopping every passerby to ask to take their portrait, I couldn’t be bothered. Sorry. So, here comes some anecdotal pictorial evidence, and you must simply trust me, dear reader, that this is representative of normal life in Italy.

The cloakroom of a museum. Nothing but puffer jackets.

 

 

One of many sources of the puffer epidemic.

THEY’RE EVERYWHERE.

 

Even brides are into them.

Now, whatever your opinion on these things, most people can agree that style comes from individuality comes from NOT ALL WEARING PUFFER JACKETS. I’ve been trying to comprehend their ubiquity ever since ‘winter’ (if a slight wind chill can be described as such) began. I’m sure they are warm, but really it is not that cold, and a good woollen coat would keep any passing chill at bay. If the question is warmth, then why not choose one of many other ways to stay warm? I would rather see someone strolling down the high street in their dressing gown, if only for a little variety.

In good faith, I thought there would really be no other way to get to the root of this by trying one on myself. And so, off I trotted to United Colors of Benetton, where, true to their name, they have a range of colours. But not a range of styles. That’s the point. They’re all the same. Trying one on, a matte purple number, I came to three main conclusions. 1. It made me look like the Michelin man, and who needs that in panettone season? 2. It made my hair go all static. And 3. Okay, I admit it, it was actually pretty warm.

And yet I’m afraid I’m not going to end this blog with the revelation that actually I fell for its cosiness and bought one- but wouldn’t that have been a brilliant shock?! I will, however, say this: the Italian word for the puffer jacket is piumino, a word that also means duvet. If they’ve managed to create a society where it’s okay to go out in what is essentially a waterproof duvet, and not even try to deny it, I guess they’ve won. And, go on then, if Valentino ever makes his own version (and it would only make financial sense, given their popularity), sign me up. But only to try it on.

Dr. Autonomy, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Own Company

I’ve been looking for an excuse to riff off (or, some might argue, rip off) this film title pretty much since I started this blog. Quite a lot of the things I’ve written about could be categorised under how I learned to stop worrying: about travelling about in foreign climes, if I’m learning Italian the ‘right’ way, and whether or not it’s okay to eat biscuits for breakfast.

Worrying, I have convinced myself, is a normal part of life: if you’re not worried about anything, you’re probably also not excited about anything either, as the two feelings do tend to skulk about together. I worry a lot. It’s self-indulgent, it’s analytical, and it’s endless. Quite a lot of the worrying we do back at Cambridge is competitive worrying: who has the worst essay crisis this week? Whose extra-curricular commitments are going to drive them to distraction this term? Who is actually going to fail?

A lot of this worrying was pretty surface-level for me, and I would hazard a guess it’s the same for most. I knew I probably wasn’t actually going to fail. I recognise this now, because I have never experienced such acute worrying as I did before moving abroad. I shan’t bore you with a list of the things I was afraid of, because it wouldn’t do justice to the overriding fear of absolutely everything that I lived with before getting on that plane alone at Stansted. What all the fears boiled down to, though, was basically just that: being alone.

I am no stranger to independence. I live autonomously at uni in England: cook for myself, organise my studies, make sure I get enough sleep, arrange to do things with my friends. But I was never really alone in the way I had to be when I first moved abroad. Trotting off to university was so different; my parents drove me there and made sure my room was comfortable, took me for some coffee- by the time they left I had practically already made friends, and from then on it was pretty much a breeze. I never had to be alone again if I didn’t want to be, there was always someone to ask for help, and if it all went pear-shaped I was only ever a 2 hour train from home. Add to this the fact that Cambridge terms are just 8 weeks long, and that I was lucky enough to have my parents visit once a term, and you can see why I was still living a pretty comfortable life in the famed bubble.

Months before the year abroad began, I asked myself quite a worrying question: if I had to choose whether to go or not, would I? I was required to spend 8 months abroad in order to graduate, but if this wasn’t the case, would I have chosen to do it? 99% of the time I told myself I definitely would have gone anyway, but there was always that niggly little 1% hanging around in the dusty corners of my neurons, saying, but would you? Would you really choose to go?

Dusty little things

If I could reach back into the past and shake little worried Ellie and give one piece of advice, it would be, yes, you would, and you should. And not for all the reasons I thought, about natural language acquisition, easier accessibility of gelato, opportunities to travel, or the absolute classic, better employability and something to stick on your CV. All of these reasons pale in significance against what I now see as the number one reason to do a year abroad, which I shall now (finally, sorry) attempt to articulate.

Only an absolute split from everything familiar to you forces you to understand yourself. Yourself, not in connection to your past, your culture, or your loved ones- none of those things are really there when you first step off the plane. Being alone in this very particular, inimitable way not only allows you, but forces you, to really get to know you, and recognise what you want and need and love and hate and miss and still have to discover. It sounds like a cheesy travel blog, I do see that. But it is so important, in a world where our favourite hobby is generating new distractions from solitude, to find a little. Cesare Pavese puts it quite nicely:

“Viaggiare è una brutalità. Obbliga ad avere fiducia negli stranieri e a perdere di vista il comfort familiare della casa e degli amici. Ci si sente costantemente fuori equilibrio. Nulla è vostro, tranne le cose essenziali – l’aria, il sonno, i sogni, il mare, il cielo – tutte le cose tendono verso l’eterno o ciò che possiamo immaginare di esso”

“Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers, and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off-balance. Nothing is yours, except the essential things- air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky- all things tending towards the eternal, or what we can imagine of it.”

It doesn’t mean I have become a hermit and never want to see people again. On the contrary, I do want to, and I do! It simply means that I am content alone too. I have literally learned to stop worrying about it, and do my own thing (thang?). And it’s great. I could go out now and sing, and dance and be merry! But I don’t want to. I want to curl up in my cosy bed with a good book and read it until my eyes get droopy. And you know what? That’s fine too.