Strangely enough, I'm back in England, and even more strangely, here is a blog post!
After eight months (almost to the day) of up and downs, more the latter than the former, I'm back in England.
I've been browsing through photos of my year abroad on Facebook, and in so many ways my year abroad in South Tyrol seems like it didn't happen. These photos of alpine towns dwarfed by terrific mountains and bilingual signs on roads winding through vineyards in the clouds seem as if taken by someone entirely different; rather than commonplace and everyday, like they were for the best part of a year, these images have now returned to being foreign, or at least, more foreign than they were at the time. Although I very rarely felt welcome or at home up there on top of the world it did at least become my normality, and living back in England once again has been an adjustment.
Odd things have jumped out at me as different or strange about England and South Tyrol since returning, and what those things have been has actually rather shocked me.
Most recently, and most shockingly, I keep spotting my students from the FOS here in England. Now this is especially odd, given that they are definitely still in Italy… with the possible exception of one girl who wanted to au-pair over here. The ones I think I see are the students who made an effort, who actually tried speaking English. Not even the good ones, just those who tried. I don't know whether this is me missing them, but I can't think why else this would be happening. Seeing as I apparently at least retrospectively enjoy the company of young people, then perhaps I shouldn’t cross working in education off my list. I have recently realised my issues with my job weren't really anything much to do with my students; rather more the school, its staff and their attitude towards me. I could empathise a great deal more with the bored overworked students than the uninspired and uninspiring staff. The students weren't even getting paid for their time in class.
Secondly, I've noticed an absence of hazelnuts here. And, also, that I've entirely forgotten how to spell that word in English. In German it's Haselnuss and I just got very confused at the presence of a zed in a British English word. There was so much hazelnut-based food in South Tyrol and I've missed that here – I particularly loved Nussknacker. I struggled to choose what chocolate to buy the other night because nothing had hazelnuts in it! And there was only about two types of Milka, and they were very expensive.
I've also struggled with buying pasta sauce when the labels aren't written in Italian – the English words don’t mean anything to me; rather, ‘sugo ai funghi’ or ‘sugo all’arrabiata’ conjures up the image of a thick mushroom or tomato, garlic and chilli sauce, and I found it much easier to read the fancy Waitrose description, which was actually written in Italian, than the English. Ordering ice cream, something which during my life has been done about five more times in the past year than in the preceding nineteen, is also difficult not to do in Italian. This is especially true when the flavours are written in Italian (again for the sake of being fancy) and also when the names are written in English that has been badly translated from Italian. I'm looking at you, Joe Delucci's, with your 'Chocolate Fondant' ice cream... cioccolato fondente is dark chocolate in English! I forgive you though because your ice cream is delicious.
And finally, discovering that I have the ability to communicate intelligently and speak eloquently has been an unexpected revelation. I urge anyone who can speak a foreign language fairly well to try long term immersion-without-integration in a culture which speaks that language, solely for the humbleness it will result in. Words like ‘muggy’, ‘obtuse’ and ‘faff’ I use in English, and I use them with the background of a whole life of connotations and layers of meaning; for example, it is possible to faff around whilst putting your shoes on but not whilst sewing a tapestry, as far as I am concerned – whereas my active vocabulary (words I use without having to search for them in the back of my mind) in German and Italian is much more limited, and there are no ‘levels of meaning’ – simply, Erwartung means expectation and mysterioso means mysterious, and there isn’t much more to it. That’s not a cryptic message by the way, however much a mysterious expectation is, well, mysterious.
I found my first few interactions in a very English setting quite overwhelming. I met up with my friend Caitlyn for a drink in a pub, and there was so much I had to remember. The drinks on offer were completely different, the money was different and conducting a two-or-three-hour-long conversation was difficult to concentrate on because it required English words I hadn’t used in a long time. Before going out I had to pack ID to drink (I never had to do that in Italy), I had many more clothes to choose from, and I consciously had to leave my passport at home, as the carabinieri very rarely check The Railway for illegal immigrants, from my experience. Most of all however, the sounds of a language I instinctively understand (well, in the part of the world I grew up at least) meant that it required great efforts to block out other conversations. In Italy I wasn’t used to accidentally hearing people that much, and certainly not understanding every single word of what they were saying! This is a problem I know a lot of others who have returned from their years abroad have experience of.
All in all, even the last month here in England has been a fascinating experience. The year abroad, as much as the day-to-day aspect of it is, is not finished, because it has obviously massively affected the way I think and see things, including myself, my life, and my country – which I now see as my country, not just the one I happened to grow up in.
I have learnt that I am a product of my upbringing more than I ever realised. This blog itself is a testament to this; it shows my wonderment at a way of life which is normal for a whole lot of people. Their way of life is astoundingly foreign to me, and has even remained so despite a long time spent around their culture. But, as a person, I am also a product of the experiences I've had in life, and these past eight months in South Tyrol are part of that, and will remain so, whether I like that or not. My previous posts on how my languages mi also evidences this.
I hope to post some more now that I’ve got more time. I’d like to write about my final week or so and how everything came to a close in South Tyrol, plus the many experiences and trips I haven’t spoken about here yet, because the final four months saw me stop being fascinated by the world that surrounded me and instead resulted me focussing on enduring a period of my life that I realised I wasn’t very happy with, and that just wouldn’t come to an end, no matter how much I wished it away. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t interesting, though, or that I didn’t have some very wonderful experiences on my frequent excursions out of my day-to-day life, and it’s those things, plus some others that I missed out from earlier in the year, that I’d like to revisit during the summer.
I’m hoping my thoughts will be like a good curry; better having been left alone for a bit. As the spices work their way into the vegetables and the sauce, so shall my reminisces give another layer of perspective to my memories of Rome, Milan, Turin, Lake Garda, and strangely enough, Porto, amongst others.
A curry metaphor to end a post about being back in England. Very appropriate, I think!
written on Sunday the 7th of July
