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Train travel is a love hate relationship. I have been able to travel around Europe, jumping on a train in one country and in just a few hours getting off in another. But with train travel comes train trouble. Here is a guide to survive the notorious Italian train system.

First, just to give some background, there are three types of trains in Italy. There is the Eurostar, the nicest but also the most expensive. Every seat is plush and comfortable, some even with a little leg room. They make fewer stops, have a dinner car (well most of the time), and travel to the larger tourist and commercial destinations. Next there are regional trains. As the name suggests they travel regionally, stopping at every po-dunk little city and run down train station between Roma and Timbuktu. However they are fairly inexpensive ? maybe a euro or two, but you definitely get what you pay for. In general they smell like a backed-up toilet, the seats are spotted with dirt and you can see the make-up and dead skin stuck to the head rest. To add a dash of excitement don?t be surprised if you are bumped and jostled or shoved and sat on or who knows the train may just screech to a halt or crawl painfully slow to your final destination. Finally there are InnerCity trains (IC), the love child of a Eurostar and a regional train. It has fewer stops than a regional, is not as expensive as a Eurostar, and as long as the train?s toilet hasn?t exploded then it might not smell too bad.

As for seating arrangements there is a wide variety. You can sit in a single seat. These sound great because you are near the door and don?t have to sit next to a stranger, but don?t get too excited. Next to the door, where there will ultimately be a cold breeze, is also the toilet and remember what I said about the smell and in general someone will also be lazy and not want to drag their bags to the middle of the train cabin instead opting to stack them in the large empty space next to the single seat near the door.

Then there is the four seat arrangement where two sets of seats face each other with a small table in the middle. This is ideal if you are traveling with a group. You are able to sit and chat with each other, maybe even play some cards. But that table, which is great for books and food, is also a royal pain in moving around and facing each other ? just imagine where your feet have to go ? right into the other person?s leg room, so I hope all your friends are very short. As for the regular two seaters, they really aren?t that bad when it comes down to it, unless you are claustrophobic and then maybe you should just not be on a train. Lastly with seats, in my opinion, always?always get the window seat if you have the option. With the window your head can bypass the weird discolored head rest that makes it impossible to sleep and instead lean against the window. Just don?t think about that oily streak across the window from the previous train sleeper or the drool stain on the arm rest ? it is totally sanitary. And of course this situation is ideal because it discourages the frequent stops to that horrible bathroom because you don?t want to have to disturbed the spiky haired, pierced Emo kid dressed entirely in purple who is perilously sleeping upright in the seat next to you.

Oh the bathrooms?what a great place on a train. As a rule of thumb with train travel, if you haven?t guessed already, pay the 30 euro cents at the train station before you get on. It might only be a hole in the ground at the train station, but at least you don?t have to touch the toilet there and the toilet sits still. But if you don?t listen to my strongly, strongly encouraged advice, here is a little bit about what to expect.

Dirty?smelly?umm did I say smelly. I do believe I have seen it all in train bathrooms because sadly I am just that cheap. There will be toilet paper on the floor and most likely graffiti on the wall. Also for the ladies, if a man just came out of the bathroom you might turn and find another restroom, especially if you just traveled around a corner. One thing to the good side though for the train bathrooms there is usually water for your hands, but don?t count on soap or a towel so make sure you have your handy hand sanitizer. As for toilet paper that is usually a big, fat, NO because it is all over the floor and you just don?t want to use that. Yet if it comes down to it and you just have to go, don?t squat or you will find out how the floor got so dirty and Oh - make sure the train is moving. Trains are probably the most UN-environmentally friendly sources of transportation because when the toilets flush if you watch it go down, you will see the speedy ground below open up ? and well of course, remember that next time you decide it would be exciting to walk on the train tracks!

?Oh my gosh?there we are. We are on TV!? I heard someone shriek from behind me. The room burst into noise and rustling. You would think our mushroom lasagna had burst into flames and was torching the kitchen at how quickly everyone ran out of the kitchenette to gather around a television smaller than the box of wine we had tapped for dinner at this announcement.


With the furry I turned around from the layers of fresh pasta and finely grated parmigano that I was lining a pan with and I could instantly feel my face rush red in a warm blush at the sight of myself taking notes on television.

My hair was disheveled ? in a tangled mess partially covering my face. In my hands was my jacket that I had to take off because of the hot production lights over head which caused my note taking to look awkward and nerdy.

I didn?t know they were filming us then, I thought to myself. While it is notable that Rété Veneto doesn?t put on a ?show? for the news, I really could have used some hair and makeup.

On Tuesday morning my travel writing, cultural communications, and ethic courses visited Rété Veneto, a television station in Bassano del Grappa. An office, hidden on the outskirts of town, in a building that doesn?t even seem large enough for a family of four, is a surprisingly small production facility for the station that transmits to a region the size of Chicago.

Inside was even more cramped, especially when you are trying to maneuver around 14 extra people through small offices, production rooms, and a multi-use studio. Taking up more than half of the entire hallway standing shoulder to shoulder our group quickly settled around Angelica, one of the newsroom editors, for our tour accepting that we were going to be uncomfortably close for the next hour and half.

Even though early in the morning and close enough to my class mates to know if each showered the night before, the company tour was eye opening to the differences between Italian news and American news.

?One thing is the journalist, one thing is the news? Angelica said describing American and Italian news. American news is more about the show ? it?s over the top and glamorous, while the Italian news is all about just the news, she continued.

Throughout the remainder of the day we came to learn this fact well. Standing around the studio, we were told we were going to be on the 10:45 news brief with the pattern station. Immediately my hands started sweating and I?m sure my eyes were probably wide with anxiety.

The lights from the overhead were bright and hot like the most miserable summer day, which did not help calm my nerves. When we were grouped together behind Angelica I made sure to stand off to the side and not directly behind her to try to avoid the camera.

Once the camera was off and I stopped holding my breath, I was glad that I did a great job of staying off the camera almost the entire time. But obviously you just can?t hide on stage.

RIP my beloved six dollar blue and green plaid Keds.

My pile of dead shoes continues to grow as I travel more and more around Europe. I have now lost two of my most favorite pairs of shoes.

Barcelona saw the end to my black flip flops that I have had since I was 12. They were perfectly molded to my feet and even though they were wearing millimeter thin in spots they were the most comfortable pair of shoes I have ever worn. The bottoms of the flip flops were so worn that they have almost killed me several times. They have zero traction. Whenever it rained I had to walk perfectly flat or I would fall right on my face.

When I was a senior in High School, my band traveled to Victoria, Canada for a parade. One afternoon there was a freak rain storm and as we walk to the olden day photo shop I slipped and sprained my wrist; yet I still love them.

They also almost killed me another time. The spring of my freshman year of college my friends and I decided to go rafting down a river near Sweet Home, Oregon. I wore my beloved black flip flops because I have really soft feet and hate walking on the rocks. It also happened to rain that day, but we decided to float the river anyway. It was below 50 degrees outside and I?m sure the river was well below that temperature because the rain almost felt warm when you were out of the water. About half way down the river, exhausted from high water and I?m sure almost hypothermic we decided to cross the river and hike up the bank to the road and call our friends to pick us up. Stupidly I decided to wade across the river with my flip flops on. The water was up to my chest and strong. All of a sudden one of my flip flops slid off of my foot and began floating downstream. Knowing I loved those shoes and could not lose them, I reached for shoes and left my raft. Yet the current was too strong and started to carry me down stream. I reached one flip flop as the other came off and I hit the rapids. Crying out to my friends I desperately tried to grab at the rocks beneath me but they were to slick. Finally I turned on my stomach and landed on some rocks that brought me to a halt before I hit the second rapids. Crying, bruised, and scratched in only my bathing suit I laid of the rocks and called for my friends to come get me ? but also to make sure to grab my flip flips. I was not going to leave without them.

Barcelona brought an official final end to my flip flops. As we went out to find some dinner one of my travel buddies accidentally stepped on the heel of my shoe, ripping the strap from the sandal and tearing the weak rubber. I thought I might cry ? but the first thing that ran through my head was my sister laughing ? see absolutely hated those flip flops, thinking they were the ugliest things she?d ever seen. To make the situation worse, we were too far from the hostel to return for me to put on a new pair of shoes so I had to improvise and tie off the strap and basically walk on one foot around the dirty floors of the Barcelona metro and grainy sidewalks along the beach.

However, my six dollar Keds made it through that trip to Barcelona and up and down all the stairs. They even survived my trip to Florence ? horse back riding and being chased through the streets. They saw more laps around Paderno then I would like to admit and even made it to Prague, Czech Republic. But that is where the fun ended.
The historically old streets of Prague are rough and uneven with small cobble stones that make walking difficult. I can?t even imagine trying to maneuver those streets in Stilettos, but my Keds were going great. The smooth sole and light weight fabric traveled great over the rocky pathways; yet by the second afternoon a large hole in the heel started to appear and by the end of the day my shoes were ?talking? the flap opened so far.

With a deep sadness I packed up my Keds back in my bag and went to the mall in Prague and bought myself a new pair of tennis shoes. Again only the equivalent of six dollars, my new black and gray high tops roamed the streets of Munich, Germany, up the frozen paths to the Disneyland castle in Fussen and wondered the barren streets of Bratislava. Each day I was reminded of my loss, seeing my Keds sitting out-of-service in my bag ? yet I could not throw them out.

Now sitting in my room in Paderno are my sad, broken, shoes that have been through so much with me. I feel as if throwing them in the trash and leaving them in Italy just doesn?t seem appropriate.

Would haling them back to the States and burning them in a good bye ceremony be too much?

Two hundred and twenty Slovenian crowns left to spend and two hours left to kill. I wondered into a small café and souvenir store off of the main square in Old Town Bratislava. Originally intrigued by the posters of croissants and coffee I decided to sit down at a small corner table with red and white checkered table cloth and table lamp for a second lunch in a measly attempt to spend the remainder of my Slovenian money.

At the counter I eyed a delectable looking chocolate mousse and banana cake. Ordering with only charades and pointing I managed to get a slice and a round warm cup of cappuccino for less than 100 crowns or three euro and then settled into my corner table with my book. Over head was the light and upbeat music of the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. The music carried my thoughts and spirits lighter after a long 7 days traveling around the former Austrian-Hungarian Empire. A quiet moment to myself to think and just really enjoy my surroundings, then I suddenly realized?

Wait! I?m in Bratislava! I actually made it to Bratislava?

Just under four years ago I sailed by that same Bratislava. Recognizable by the large castle fortressed with four corner watch towns that loomed over the entire city at the highest point of the Danube river valley, Bratislava was one of my young and naive dream cities that I wanted to visit. Built off of impressions I gathered from watching the movie Euro Trip with my high school friends, Bratislava in my mind was a poor eastern European city where two pennies could buy you the world. However, on that trip my dreams of seeing the city would sail by on the hydropower boat that carried my high school travel group and me smoothly past on our way to Vienna.

It is still remarkable to me, that my second travel week here at CIMBA panned out that my travel group of four girls wanted to stop by Vienna before returning home to Paderno del Grappa. Since I had already visited the gold clad palaces and gothic style cathedrals of Vienna, Austria, I pulled from my high school dreams the chance to visit Bratislava.

At 7:00 am Saturday November 16, I yanked myself drowsily out of my bunk bed at the Wombats Hostel in Vienna and grabbed my purse and black and white pea coat and made my way to the West Bahn train station to cross the border of Vienna to Slovakia and the undefined border of Western to Eastern Europe.

Only an hour away from Vienna, Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia, a country that has seen war for centuries. The country only gained its independence in 1993 when Czechoslovakia divided into the Czech Republic with Prague as its capital and Slovakia represented by Bratislava.

A city on the rise, Bratislava is starting to flourish as a European hub along the Danube River however its dark history can be seen in every crackling stone building, bullet hole filled walls, and constant military presence.

I arrived at the small, empty train station outside of Bratislava around nine in the morning and quickly realized that I should have printed off a map or found directions before I left because no one spoke English. Finally I found someone in the train station who sold me a map and pointed me in the right direction of the bus.

Take bus 80 ? five stops.

One. Two. Three. Four.

I counted to myself as the bus scooted through the west bank of Bratislava and over the main bridge to Old Town, not knowing where I would end up if I lost count.

Five. I jumped off the bus and before me laid the entrance to Old Town and above my left shoulder watched the castle.

Old Town, more than just the walled in portion of Bratislava, was a whole another world. Within the walls, the mix of eastern and western cultures converged in the city streets; however, with each winding street the Old Town remained ghostly dead. Beyond a few small tourist groups and the random store owner, the streets were empty. You could walk for a few blocks and not see a sole, as if you were the only one left.

The city on the outside, people ran around wildly, sirens constantly rang with police cars chasing one another ? the people inside with dark masks covering their faces, and trams honking at pedestrians crossing the crowded streets. Yet within the walls of Old Town remained a quiet peace ? a peace though that swallowed with it a feeling of deep sadness, in hopes of a revival for the town.

My own mind raced with the history of Bratislava as I read my walking tour guide map and strolled through the Old Town?s many squares and stared in awe at the castle?s grand walls.

But then I spotted that café with its red and white checkered table clothes, warm cappuccino, and moist, crumbly cake. With each bite and sip I was able to quiet my own mind like the walls of Old Town for Bratislava. I was able to swallow the frustrations of traveling to revive my spirit and excitement and ? well of course ? spend a little cash in a city where you can still almost buy the world for two pennies or at least something more valuable - a new state of mind.

In the dead of night or first minutes of the morning darkness ? you know, that time in the middle of night where it is the darkest and coldest immediately before the sun starts to peak above the horizon, I strangely felt the closest to home through the blare and bright repetitive flash of the TV screen. Thousands of miles away from the United States and I still almost believe I could hear the hopeful and excited cheers echoing off the Atlantic waves.

Barack Obama is the 44th elected president of the United States, the cheers announce in unison roar.

While people back in the United States were just finishing up dinner and settling down in front of their televisions or traveling to Grant Park or Times Square to watch the election live on November 4, 2008, it was already the 5th here in Italy and way past my bed time. I wondered over to the Simpson room on the CIMBA undergraduate campus from the computer lab a little after midnight. The sun had long gone down and the cold mountain wind that rushes down the steep slopes of Mount Grappa was swirling the leaves around the cobble stone path ways. The Simpson room, the common meeting place with chairs and a T.V. and satellite from the US Army base in Vicenza, was already scattered with the few other students dedicated enough to the presidential campaign to sacrifice sleep. The three almost-comfortable chairs were already taken by this time with students dressed in flannel pajamas and sweatshirts. Also it was obvious from the open plastic wrappers from candy bars, empty tan coffee cups from the vending machine, and paprika potato chips, they had already been there awhile and were prepared for the long night ahead.

Coverage of the election started about 1 am. Still wide awake from excitement, the first states closed the polls and one by one blinked red or blinked blue up on the screen.

Red?

Blue?

John McCain was ahead 5 electoral votes after the first two states announced.

For the next two hours, the five of us who survived past one thirty at night, sat transfixed by the screen as the colors illuminated the voters decision and illuminate peoples hopes and dreams for the United States.

By a little past 3 am and after 2 cups of cappuccino, a coconut chocolate bar, an apple with peanut butter, and a bottle of water, I started to wind down ? finally giving in and pushing four chairs together and wrapping up in a blanket to try to get comfortable; yet determined to make it to the official president-elect announcement.

A Barack Obama swayed room, each time a blue state would appear on the screen a tired, strung out cheer would erupt, keeping us on our toes and letting everyone know we were still conscious.
3:30 am marked the hour when only the strong would survive with our group dwindling down to just myself and fellow Oregon student Jill. It also marked when Ohio turned blue ? a battle state, notorious for voting with the winner. Twenty electoral votes went over to Obama?s side by a close margin of only 3%.

With still almost half the country to finish voting, Jill and I enjoyed the low-budget, ridiculous commercials on the Army satellite station and the educational presidential facts reported by Brian Williams.

Even though we already knew that Obama was going to win the election, Jill and I were on edge. Finally a little past 5:00 am, the screen all of a sudden split out. Washington, Oregon, and California had not closed their polls yet, but flat on the screen in gold and the patriotic red, white, and blue read that Obama was the elected 44th president of the United States of America.

Shocked, we sat sitting at the screen asking, What? Huh? What's going on? And then the news station panned to the crowds of people celebrating in Grant Park, Chicago.

At that moment, even half way across the world, I could sense a change in the attitudes of people. Looking at the numerous flags over Barack Obama?s head as he gave his winning speech, I felt proud to be an American again for the first time in eight years.

You might say George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are among the greatest heroes of American history because they had the courage to stay loyal to the U.S. through the worst, but I'd have to argue that Margo, Sharla and Giancarlo are just as heroic for mustering up the courage to leave the freest country in the world.

Though the notion of moving abroad permanently excites me, the concept remains just as foreign to me as Italy itself. We CIMBA students have been in Italy for nearly three months and are well-versed in tabacchi products and prosecco wines, but we're still awed at the idea that an American could drop everything to live in Italy indefinitely. So, naturally, the panel of four expatriates that sat before us one night last week intrigued us all.

Sharla, an expat who has lived in Italy longer than her 15-year-old daughter has been alive, said she literally hasn't seen "this many Americans in decades." Though she was there to answer our questions, she wanted to know about us, about our lives as Americans, something with which she has been out of tune.

I was surprised, in fact, by how very American they all still seemed, considering how far removed they are from American culture. They, like us, sometimes missed things like bagels and chipotle--though the longer they live there, "the smaller the list gets," according to Margo, and "now when I go back to the U.S., sometimes I want a spritz"--and there are certain ancient Italian practices they still haven't gotten over, like working around inconvenient store hours and siestas.

"In America you can be like, 'Oh, it's 2 a.m. and we need milk, let's go get it!' Here, you have to plan ahead for everything," Margo said. Added Giancarlo, "planning business things like meetings is really frustrating."

Though they live lives I thought I couldn't imagine, the expats echoed my thoughts every few minutes with one of their comments about living here in Italy. Sharla said, "When I go to the States to visit my family, I feel more Italian. Here I feel more American." I, too, feel more American than ever here, but compared to many of my schoolmates who've never ventured outside of Oregon, I'm practically a native European.

Heroes, though their status seems loftier, are just as human as the rest of us. No exception here. These expats did something unthinkable to most of us at CIMBA, yet somehow they were just like us.

When Margo mentioned peanut butter longingly and the whole room sighed with her in moans of gastronomic pain, I realized that, while we students haven't left our home country for good, we're expats in many respects too. I envied these panelists their ability to just up and leave for something completely foreign, but in a way, I did the same thing.

By 4:30 p.m., all I could see from the train window was black. Staring out the window on the way to Prague had been my last source of entertainment; my iPod was already out of battery and I?d finished the one book I took with me on the travel week. Now all I could do was pull out a map of Europe and stare listlessly.

Perhaps that?s how, after about 20 minutes of staring, my eyes focused on Dresden, Germany.

I?d begun to think about my traveling companions, two girls who wanted nothing but to shop at American department stores and read at Starbucks during our entire three-day stay in Vienna. Would they do the same thing in Prague? Even if they changed this time around and showed enthusiasm for seeing the sights, I knew I wouldn?t be too thrilled to tag along. I had already visited every important Prague monument three years ago with a touring singing group. I wanted something new. I wanted something German.

I already had it all decided when the train screeched to our stop: I would take a day trip to Dresden, a two-hour train ride away, on Saturday to ease the monotony and my frustration. I didn?t know what Dresden had to offer, and my German still wasn?t up to scratch, but what the hell.

I was even happier about my secret pact when, as we came up from the underground near our hostel, I felt the dry, penetrating cold of the night air. Dresden must be warmer than this, I thought, though I had nothing to back up this theory.

The air had the same biting chill in the morning; there seemed to be little difference between day and night here in terms of temperature. We wound our way through tiny alleyways toward the Old Town Square, shivering and shoving our hands deep within our pockets, and I again commended myself on my brilliant plan of escape.

And then, just like that, there was the square. I didn?t even recognize it at first, thinking it was just another busy square that happened to house a few beautiful buildings, but then I saw the main monuments: the Church of Our Lady of Ty?n, the astronomical clock, the many restaurants with yellow-clothed wicker tables spilling out onto the cobblestones. The cloudless azure of the sky seemed almost to reflect upon the apartment buildings and to illuminate each color: pea soup turned to lime popsicle, marzipan turned to pale lemon and glass windows looked like pools of water.

My hands fell out of my coat pockets and my eyes were so wide they reached an aperture I?d never before accomplished. I was not cold anymore. I was in Prague, my intrigue renewed, and I wasn?t going anywhere.

Sure, it?s rained enough in the last week to rival Oregon?s rainfall record, but let?s face it: Paderno del Grappa, Italy is nothing like Eugene.

I know, I know, I?m not exactly in a position to complain. I couldn?t imagine a more idyllic place to study?right at the foot of the Alps, surrounded by villas dotting the countryside, an hour?s train ride away from the romantic canals of Venice. But even so, now that my time here is two-thirds gone and I?m stateside bound in just a month, I can?t help but think about everything I miss about Eugene, where I?ve lived for the better part of two years, and how excited I am to return.

In those moments when I get what I?ve started calling ?hippie withdrawal,? I?m lucky to have more than 10 fellow U of O students to turn to. We all feel the same way, torn between the excitement of traveling and new experiences and the familiarity and comfort of our home away from home. We talk about our favorite cafés on campus, study spots we like and great professors at dinner sometimes, but even after getting some of it out of our systems, we still yearn to return.

But something fortuitous happened on Saturday night that eased the chill of the Alpine foothills and made me feel a little more at home: a barbecue. We all skipped dinner in the cold, cavernous cafeteria that night and instead broke out the barbecue. There were French fries, hamburgers, hot dogs and baked beans, and we gathered it all up on our plates like ravenous pigs. We chatted among ourselves as we dove into the all-American feast, and amid conversation, someone mentioned an Oregon game was scheduled to play on TV tonight. And suddenly four of us, decked out in Oregon shirts and sweatshirts, were parked in front of the television in the campus lounge. Then eight. Then 10. And then the Oregon faculty members were there too.

The game was at UC Berkeley, not on home turf, but what did it matter? We could see our team, up close and personal, and we identified our yellow-clad fans in the stands as if we were there with them.

We gave loud whoops when the game was in our favor and groaned, heads in hands, when our team let us down. We yelled in unison and held our hands above our heads in ?O? shapes at the kickoff. We tried practicing other traditional game chants even though the band wasn?t there to back us up.

Practicing a U of O tradition, even when we were nearly 5,600 miles away from U of O itself, staved off my homesickness enough to make me feel buoyant even at the end of the game, when we lost to Cal and the rain in Berkeley fell harder than ever.

Everyone thinks the best stories come from the wildest adventures, like getting lost in the Himalayas or kayaking down a hundred-foot waterfall in the Amazon. But sometimes a great adventure story comes from the simplest act of moving outside one's comfort zone. In the case of Dominic Standish, this act was moving from England to Italy and getting married four days later.

To be fair, it's not quite as adventurous as it all sounds. "All the men wondered how I'd managed to find a wife in four days," Standish said, "and I pointed out to them that I'd met her a while ago in England."

Still, a permanent move to a country whose culture and language was at the time totally foreign to him was adventure enough. Though he knew little about the way Italians behaved and could barely communicate with them, his eyes helped him discern the subtle differences. "Because I was coming to a new culture and a new country, I was making observations all the time," Standish said.

And he began to write about them, shedding light on the interesting quirks of Italian life that Italians themselves weren't aware of. Shortly thereafter, he was offered a position as a contributing writer for the International Herald Tribune by an editor interested in input from a fresh pair of eyes. The fact of his expatriatism was, then, the secret to his success.

Starting out a writing career as an international reporter, Standish said, "gives you the chance to get our foot in the door because you're immediately perceived as having a different perspective on things," something publications always look for in a prospective employee.

Hearing Standish's story made me think about the role of the expatriate journalist. While expats in general are enthusiastic to immerse themselves in a different culture than that of their home country, to what extent should journalists living in a foreign country do so? Do they have a responsibility to retain vivid memories of their upbringing in their respective former homelands for purpose of cultural observation? If they become completely immersed in another culture, will they lose that essential talent for observing culutral differences once they take life in their new home country for granted?

I wonder this because, if I were to move to a different country permanently, I'd want to truly immerse myself and be one with the community. Perhaps in the process, though, I'd forget things about life in the U.S. and consequently stop spotting the cultural differences that were once what made my writing stand out.

But maybe there's no cause to worry: Dominic Standish said he still feels like he never wears the right leather shoes to fit in completely with his Italian friends, and he still expects his children to sit at the table until they're done with dinner even though sitting down to dinner as a family is no longer a common practice among modern Italian families.

But, Standish jokes, "we don't have a bonfire in our backyard" on Nov. 5 to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, nor does he yearn for the supermarket aisles of Marks & Spencer. He's let some of the Italian culture seep in while retaining his own identity, blurring the lines between expat and Italian citizen.

Or, as he puts it, "My role is less defined by patriotism. I regard myself as a citizen of the world."

We were hopelessly obvious tourists, my mother and I. We sported unintentionally matching black fleece jackets, bags decidedly not made of leather, and confused expressions as we stopped at every corner to consult a city map.

But I was sure the Italians who walked past us and made a concerted effort to ignore our Americanness must understand our befuddlement. Their hometown of Verona, they must know, was a distracting place. For every sight we intended to visit, there was another equally interesting sight not marked on our maps that we stumbled upon and consequently forgot where we'd been headed in the first place.

This time, we were on our way to the Roman theater across the river from Verona's historical center. The city dropped us off two blocks from the ruins along a busy traffic artery. Which direction should we go? We pulled out the map once more. Then it happened again. Verona's distracting nature reared its too-beautiful head in the form of a narrow column of stone steps lined with sherbet ice cream apartment buildings. The engraved stone street sign on the wall, which read "Scalone San Pietro," begged us to climb the stairs to the top, where we knew the hill palace of Castel San Pietro stood.

With thoughts of Roman ruins gone from our minds, we climbed the stairs. It might have been the red of the first apartment building on my left, a color that reminded me of the Early Girl tomatoes that spilled over the sides of the planter box in the backyard one summer, that pulled me in. Or it could have been the quaintness of the basket-adorned bikes strategically locked against the ground-floor windows covered by iron bars. The paint on Number 7's facade was a splotchy salmon shade, the kind of color foreigners try to duplicate with sponges when they want the Tuscan look but that can only truly be achieved by the erosions of time. A grape vine snaked its way in and out of the iron-bar balcony, and I wondered why there weren't crowds of people gathered here, because surely this was the real balcony on which Juliet called for her Romeo. As far as I was concerned, this house, with its gently creeping greenery framing the wooden doorway, was the real Capulet family home.

In two more flights of steps, an iron gate stood open and a sign vaguely mentioned restoration. We curiously walked through and found ourselves in what looked like the Irish countryside. A deep thicket of grass stretched out to the base of a brick wall at the edge of the hill. Crudely hewn prisms of stone, placed all around the grass, served as benches. No one else was there, nor had anyone left evidence of having visited recently, adding to the park's austerity. Yet somehow the blank expanse of grass and stone was inviting, and I felt an urge to sit down with some panini and wine and gaze out at the mist. For even on this gray day, the city's entire expanse was visible from here. Past the River Adige, red spires and domes stuck out of the tile-cielinged maze and mopeds the size of ants scooted along the bridges. On a hill opposite the park, on the outskirts of the city, sat a massive Palladian-style columned creation above dots of houses.

Why was no one here, I thought? Could there be a better view of Verona anywhere else in the city? Shouldn't Rick Steves let people know about this?

Perhaps, for all our fashion faux pas and touristy tendencies, my mother and I had the capacity to be trendsetters.