Places - Part 2

Even if Mumbai was the undisputed main character in my past 4 months, I have also been lucky enough to go on a few trips around India, each one of them left me different memories and emotions.

GOA

Miserable bus ride to get there; finally getting off that bus and finding myself in a tropical paradise; seeing and listening to world-famous speakers at Think-Fest; reflections on the Israel-Palestine conflict; meeting the American scientist that "killed" the planet Pluto; dinner and wine at the Grand Hyatt; motorbike rides in the jungle; beautiful beaches; palm trees; random Portuguese churches; catching up with my friend Kate.

DELHI-AGRA

Seeing my friend Kate from California with her Delhi life and meeting her friends; feeling cold and wearing a sweater for the first time in India; going to shiny, cool, fun bars and restaurants; the modern, wide, empty roads of New Delhi and the ancient, tiny, full of people-activities-sounds-smells of Old Delhi; the magical sunset at Jama Masjid mosque; waking up at 4am and spending 8 hours in a car for a day trip to Agra; seeing the world famous Taj Mahal and not being disappointed at all (that's what usually happens with me and important landmarks..).

PUNE

Bus ride among the beautiful hills of the Maharashtra region; getting sick for the first time in India (that was the beginning of a 5-week-long stomach issue..); not being able to eat anything for days; finally getting to see Mugdha, my ex-classmate from UC Berkeley and meeting her parents, some of the sweetest people I have ever met; experiencing my first Indian wedding and being absolutely fascinated by all the little details of the ceremony; wearing a long kurta; having a nervous breakdown in the busy streets of a market in Pune.

RAJASTHAN

Spending almost every night on freezing uncomfortable buses; eating chips in the middle of nowhere for Christmas Eve and missing my family/Italian food/Christmas traditions; Christmas Day exploring the beautiful city of Udaipur, the city of lakes, wearing a Santa Claus hat for the whole day, with everybody around us staring and laughing at us; Christmas potluck at my friend Megan's house;  spending 15 hours on a bus and arriving in Jaisalmer, an exotic magical town in the middle of the desert; riding camels in the desert all the way to the Pakistani border; drinking beer and running on the desert dunes during sunset; having dinner around the fire with old and new friends; sleeping under millions of stars; waking up to a freezing sunrise in the desert; riding motorbikes INSIDE the ancient Jaisalmer Fort; seeing the "Blue City" of Jodhpur, my favorite one in Rajasthan; breakfast on the hostel rooftop with an incredible view of the Jodhpur Fort; running around Jodhpur at night trying not to miss the bus.

GUJARAT

Spending 1 day and 1 night in a tiny village; meeting tons of "uncles" and "aunties"; drinking whiskey in a room with 15 men, all of them were called "Uncle Patel"; dancing in big circles with the whole village; going to the craziest, biggest, most incredible wedding I have ever seen; being at the best New Year's Eve party I have ever been and being the only one that actually cares about New Year's Eve; trying all kinds of food in spite of my upset stomach and feeling really bad for the following 10 days.

BANGALORE

Having very low expectations for Bangalore and being absolutely surprised to see a beautiful, green, nice, colorful city; spending a super-nice day with my friend Mini eating amazing food, walking through green parks, visiting relatives; and meeting some really interesting people; having a delicious South-Indian lunch with Shreyes, my ex-classmate from UC Berkeley; having the most relaxing Sunday afternoon I had in months. 




...more to come....

Places - Part 1: Mumbai

It has been 3 months since I moved to India, and I have no doubts that these have been the most intense months in my life. Every single day is so full of happenings, funny stories, lessons, misadventures, news, good and bad emotions. I could write a blog entry for every single day... but, since it's been so intense, I don`t have time anymore. Time.. time is something I never missed as much. I guess it means I have a cool exciting life, but I often wish I had more time to ponder and digest things... Those times in Bologna where I had days and days of nothing but thinking seem so far now...

One way to summarize what happened in the past 3 months is to go by PLACES. I have lived, worked and taken trips in several places and each one of them can tell a story about my new life in India. Let's start with the city where i leave, Mumbai, a "small" town of 20 million people, that feels more like a country than a city. These are the 3 most significant neighborhoods in my Mumbai experience. So here we go:

MUMBAI: BANDRA

This is my home now. It's one of the coolest neighborhoods in Mumbai, in the outskirts of the city but at the same time very central. This is where a lot of Bollywood stars live, there's a boardwalk, palm trees, a "potential beach", lots of cafes, restaurants, bars, gyms and shopping. My apartment is in the heart of Bandra, and I couldn't be happier about it. I love my house and I love my neighborhood, it makes me happy every time I come home from other parts of the city. The bad side is that when you live in Bandra, you forget about the fact that it is just a happy island that has everything you need, which you never feel the need to leave, and living there is a privilege that most of the people who live in Mumbai cannot afford. Foreigners usually come from countries with much stronger currencies that automatically give them the benefit of having a much higher purchasing power. So fancy Bandra is becoming the land of foreigners, where the prices for groceries are 10 times higher and the rent is extremely expensive.... but... surprise: there are other neighborhoods of the city that are even MORE expensive...

I have lots of memories in Bandra... from jogging in the morning on Carter Road, a beautiful promenade right by the ocean, .....to going to Hindi class at 7 in the morning, my teacher lives in a high-rise building right next to a small slum area, an island inside fancy Bandra, .....to my first night in India, when I went to an "expat party", with only Americans and Europeans and an environment that was exactly like one of those college party back in Berkeley and made me wonder where I was.. ....to the time I went and bought a small plant and some decorations to make it look like a Christmas tree... ..to all the dinners with friends in one of the many restaurants of the neighborhood, some cheap and good, other extremely overpriced.. ...to the funny adventures all around the place looking for "passata" to make pasta sauce, after realizing that here there is not really a difference between pasta sauce and ketchup.. ...to the never-boring rickshaw ride to the super-busy Bandra train station every morning to go to work, .....to the nice feeling of happiness that I get everynight when I finally get to Bandra after my long commute on the train...

I know Bandra is not India.. but I cannot deny that it makes it so much easier for me to live here.. and especially lately I appreciate it more and more every day.

MUMBAI: ANDHERI EAST

Thinking about it still gives me chills. It's another neighborhood in northern Mumbai and it's where my first job was. I have nothing specifically against Andheri East, really, but the only bad memories I have from India are basically all from there... :-). I don't want to list all of them, but the main one was something that probably affected my whole experience there: TRAFFIC. Traffic of cars, traffic of buses, traffic of pedestrians... I had no idea that so many people could do so many things and go to so many places all at the same time. If anybody still doesn't believe that our planet is overpopulated, they should probably spend 1 hour in Andheri East during commuting time.. I'm pretty sure they would change their mind. This is the place where I had my first crisis.. one day I left my office at 6:30 pm to go home. My ride home was usually made up of a 40 minutes rickshaw ride, a 30 minutes train ride and another 15 minutes rickshaw ride. That night I waited for a rickshaw for 30 minutes, how it works is that you stop one, if it's empty you tell the driver where to go and he takes you there: simple as that. Except ..NO! That day most rickshaws were taken, if any empty one stopped for me, some smart, fast and mean 14-year-old girl would steal it from me (yeah I know..), and when I finally got to talk to some driver, they were all telling me "NO" with an angry face..... I didn't understand.. it was getting late, and I was still hours away from home. So I tried to take a bus. The first bus was full, the second bus was full + 10 people hanging out of the doors, the third one was full + 10 people hanging out of the doors + people on the rooftop..... 30 minutes later.. I was hopeless... I thought I would never get home... but then: MIRACLE: an almost empty bus came! I quickly got on and I was so happy.... 5 minutes later there was smoke everywhere and the bus broke down in the middle of the road. As I got off like everybody else, I started to feel my first "I-wanna-go-home" moment ever. Something I had never felt before, even when I lived in California for 2.5 years, 9 time zones away from home. I had no idea what to do, I started walking towards the train station, aware of the fact that it would have taken me more than one hour just to reach it, and it was a pretty miserable walk. I was walking fast, pushing everybody and making my way through thousands of people doing all kinds of activity on the side of the road (there are no sideways). I felt angry, sad, disappointed in myself for not being able to adapt to this country. I remember thinking: "This is not the place for me. Who am I kidding? I cannot live here. I am just a spoiled European that needs his comforts all the time, I just need to go back home as soon as possible". I almost cried during that walk and I felt defeated, lost, and not worth anything.

I am thankful for that day, because it's what gave me the strength to change, to realize that I really didn't deserve to complain like a child, when there are millions of people in this city doing that every single day, and they don't get to complain, they just do it because they have to. So the day after I gathered all my courage and began my transformation (still far from being completed) into a MUMBAIKER! So in a few days I learned how to run for rickshaws, how to aggressively push people to get on the train, how to ride buses hanging out of the windows and how to be smarter than 14-year-old girls. Forget about kindness, forget about politeness, forget about good manners, it's a jungle. No, worse: it's rush hour in Mumbai.

MUMBAI: SOUTH MUMBAI/COLABA

or.. "The Rebirth". Colaba is the most famous neighborhood in Mumbai, the place where most of the important monuments are, and it's full of tourists every day of the year. It can be considered the "Center" of Mumbai and the prevalent British Gothic architecture makes it unique in India and in the world. It's my favorite part of Bombay, I love the huge, magnificent, gothic buildings, I love how much history you can feel everywhere, but, mostly, I love my new job. Our office is in the heart of Colaba, 10 minutes walk from the world-famous Gateway of India, and since I started working here my life has completely changed. The second day of work, at night, I remember walking towards the station after an exciting day in the office. It's a very cheap taxi ride, but I decided to walk to get to know the neighborhood. As I was strolling under the ancient porticoes, right next to the elegant old buildings of the University of Mumbai, noticing how surprisingly empty and peaceful this place becomes at night (something you really learn to appreciate when you live in Mumbai), for the very first time I came to the realization that I love Mumbai, and I love my life here. For the first time in years everything seems to be going exactly how I want it to. After I reached my biggest goal of going to Berkeley in 2008, I had a few years where I didn't know exactly what the next step was.. I didn't know what I wanted to do professionally, and my personal life pulled me in different directions.. But a miracle happened and now I have everything that I wanted at the same time. I had not felt this happy and content for a while... and realizing this, that night, was an extreme moment of happiness. I smiled. I was happy. I am happy.

and then comes ....INDIA!

The summer was over.. and I found myself in old Bologna, done with school and without a job... I was really starting to question the decisions I took a few months before, when all those big italian companies offered me good jobs in Milan.. but then, one sunday night, I received an email... it was about the internship position for which I had interviewed on skype the week before... The company liked me and they offered me the job.... small detail: the job was in Mumbai, India!

I had actually been looking for a job in India for a few months... I knew I had friends there and it is a country that has always, somehow, been part of my life. When I was a little kid my parents went on a few trips to India and they came back with amazing photos and stories about that place. My mom also used to write me letters every day, and those are the first things I read in my life.. I actually learned how to read on letters describing India... That, of course, created this magical image of India in my mind, and then, when I was living in California, I got to meet some people that made me realize I was just destined to go there. Then there is also an official excuse, India is the country of the future. Lately I have been dreaming about the idea of living in one (or more) of the BRIC countries, and India is the only one where I know the language (for now..)

the BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China

So here I am, 1 month later, writing about my first month living in one of the biggest cities in the world, in one of the most special countries in the world, once again thousands of miles from home, and, this time, I am actually working! It is so weird right now to believe all that happened since the end of the summer. It's like a dream that came true... after spending weeks and weeks in Bologna, where my only activity was checking my email, I just had a month full of events, emotions, life lessons, and crazy days.. and I really need to sit down and write about it to "digest it".

    

The first few days were pretty weird... It didn't help that I left Italy with a high fever and an ear infection, I couldn't hear anything until the third day I was here.. and it was kind of a cool experience.. I got to see India for the first time with only my eyes, without noises... some of my friends told me that I missed the strong emotions of the first impact with the loud city of Mumbai, but I see it more as a way to slowly adapt my ears to a whole new level of noise that was pretty shocking to me in the beginning, but now I'm used to it. (or maybe something in my ears broke and loud honking doesn't affect me anymore)

    

So let's see.. people ask me: "How is India?"... the first answer that comes to mind is: "I don't know". Something that I noticed is that this place is way more difficult to describe than any other place I have visited... So, for now, I will only say that I really, REALLY like it, more than I was expecting.. and I can think of some first impressions, that I know will change with time. For sure, though, I have been learning a lot.. every day so many new lessons about this place, the world, and myself. These are a few things I learned in a month, in no particular order: (Some/most/all of them sound exactly like what everybody else said in their blogs about India... but it is fair that I list my first, not-very-original, impressions, so that I can laugh about them in a few months)

• I will never complain about traffic in Bologna ever again.
• There is no such thing as a “full bus/train”. There is ALWAYS room for more people.
• A car accident is not a car accident until the cars actually touch each other. It doesn’t matter how incredibly close they are.
• In Mumbai you can eat a full, good, complete meal for 40 rupees (50 eurocents) or for 10 000  rupees (150 euros).
• No matter how fancy, quiet, peaceful, different the neighborhood is, being on the street will always remind you that you are in India.
• In Mumbai one single person can have more money than 1 million people all together. And it is likely that they share the same neighborhood.
• Taking an auto rickshaw is one of the most fun things I have ever done.
• So is taking a busy train during rush hour.
• Both things mentioned above can be really frustrating and make you hate Mumbai if you happen to be in a bad mood that day.
• NEVER say "I can't believe I haven't had any health problems yet". The day after you'll wake up with a fever.
• It is useless to stress out over being late because of traffic or late buses/trains. Everybody in Mumbai is aware of the commuting situation and, most likely, they will be late too.

Diwali 2011

• Diwali is a beautiful celebration. After 5 days of scary loud fireworks at every hour of the day and night right outside of my window like it was world war 3, I was praying for it to be over soon, but, yeah, it was great! :-)
• I am really lucky to know people here. If it wasn't for them I would be living the "expat life", which is fun, but maybe too detached from the place where we all are. I was able to have some amazing authentic Indian experiences right after I got here, and I am so thankful for that.
• The idea of going from A to B gets a whole new meaning in this city. Every time you have to go somewhere, take into account that it might take a few hours, no matter how close your destination is.
• I am so privileged and lucky for all the things I have done in my life. I realize it more and more every day.
• Indian food is delicious! I do not understand how so many people back in Italy think it is so crazy and weird.. it is really good and, I think, also very easy to like for even close-minded people like Italians, it is just a little spicy, which is really something that people should get over. I feel like Italians are scared as soon as they taste the first spiciness and think that it will burn them alive.. but it really is something you should try once and you will understand that nothing happens. Really.
• Most of the people here are really nice, honest, open-minded, hard-working, and they will try to help you, even if you don't ask them, even if you don't want them to help you, even if you told them 3 times that you don't need their help.
• Either be aggressive and push people... or get home from work 2 hours later: you choose.
• It really is amazing to see so many different religions in the same place, all peacefully respecting each other (especially after going to Israel..)
• India is a beautiful, modern country, where everything is possible.

my (Last?) Long Fun Summer

Ghana changed my mind about a lot of things... I knew I was ready to go somewhere very different from Italy, and not just for a vacation, I wanted to find a job and live in a country outside of Europe and North America. But where? And more importantly: how? While I was thinking about all the possibilities I decided to take my "Esame Di Stato" (Professional Industrial Engineer State Qualification ), an exam that we have to take after graduation to become 100% Industrial Engineers and then.... it was summer! In Italy nothing works for 2 months during summer, we all have to go to the beach getting a tan, so I just decided to embrace the Italian culture and I travelled for the rest of the summer. :-)

 First stop was Turkey. Oh Turkey... I don't know why but I know that I will eventually end up living there. It is such a wonderful country and I keep finding myself making friends with Turkish people everywhere I go! Some of my best friends in the world are Turkish and I got to see them during this trip. It was great to see them and I left with the feeling that we are all still close like we were when we all lived in Berkeley 3 years ago. (Bak Şarap!)

After Turkey I went on a road trip from Bologna to Sicily, it was incredibly nice. Cinque Terre, Tuscany, Rome, Naples, Amalfi Coast, all the way down to Sicily... My country is beautiful and I realize it more and more every year.

Then I went to a place that would deserve a blog entry just for itself....

the so-called Holy Land (?)

I was able to see the North, Haifa, Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, then I went South to the West Bank, Palestine, saw Jericho, Bethlehem and the Dead Sea, and finally to incredible Jerusalem and went back to Tel Aviv. It was a short trip, and by no means do I think I now know anything about that complex place (the word "complex" doesn't nearly describe it..). Whatever I say about the Holy Land in my blog would probably be inaccurate or offensive for somebody, but I still want to say my impressions, because that place really touched my heart and my brain and it is impossible to be indifferent.

So that place is nuts! It's like nothing I have seen before. It's the middle east but it's also not, it's rich but it's also not, it's small but it's also not, it's developed but it's also not, it's beautiful but it's also not.... What a mess!! Maybe 9 days are not enough to figure it out, actually I'm not even sure it's possible to figure it out at all! I guess I can try to sum up my impressions in a few bullet points, not necessarily related to each other and not in any order:

• It's a f**king interesting "country" (countries? State? Nation/s? Region?).. Even just walking on the streets made my mind wonder about so many things! 3 of the main religions in the world, at least 10 different ethnic groups, 2000 years of such a complicated history, 2 almost opposite cultures .... ALL living together (not so happily..) in this tiny (look at the map! It's so small) piece of land! I couldn't go a day without falling in deep conversations about religion, politics, history and culture.. And I keep wondering: who is wrong? Who are the evil ones? Is there such a thing? .. And another thought I had was: how is it possible that such a small country could resist the pressure from all these Arabic countries surrounding it for so long? How can it stay so completely isolated from the bordering countries but so connected with Europe and Russia (they participate in all the Eastern European music/sport contests!), how can it be such a rich country with almost zero natural resources and no trade with his own region of the world?

• Food is sooo good. It's not just the amazing hummus with every meal.. Everything is delicious! So many vegetables, both raw and cooked, and beautiful desserts... I still dream of some of a meal I had in Bethlehem.

• There are so many tourists! No, worse! There are so many Italian tourists! No, worse! There are so many Italian Catholic pilgrims, making noise, complaining about the heat and only interested in seeing where Jesus pooped, not caring about what Israel is today. ..but maybe that's just me being racist with Italians once again.. :-) It was actually really interesting to see a different kind of tourists... Not the usual Americans, Germans and Japanese that are now the majority in Florence and Venice, but people from all over the world: from Korea to Côte d'Ivoire, from France to Ethiopia, from Korea to Papua New Guinea (!!!) (I was so excited when they told me they were from Papua New Guinea! It doesn't happen every day.. :-) )

• Jerusalem is a place I will never forget... especially the intense feeling I had for the whole time I was there... Maybe because I kept seeing pilgrims from every country and religion coming to pray in that city, maybe because of all the sacred places around the old city that are so important for the history of the world, maybe because of some symptoms of the "Jerusalem Syndrome"... whatever it might have been, I felt strange and kept having crazy dreams every night I was in Jerusalem, and during the days I felt so enlightened and strangely enthusiastic about every single religious idea that I saw or learned there. Going to the Western Wall was absolutely the most intense experience... Seeing all those people praying in front of that sacred wall really moved me and I couldn't stop thinking about it for a few days after I saw it.

• You can feel there's so much hatred and racism all over the place. Jews, Christians and Muslims all passionately hate each other. And you can feel it in what they say, what they do to each other and how there's no integration at all. (there's walls between regions, walls between towns, walls between neighborhoods, walls everywhere!). Crossing the borders between Israel and Palestine always made me wonder why... why do they have to live like that? I know this is a stupid question.. there are plenty of strong political, religious and cultural reasons.. and after talking to people from each side of the wall I left the Holy Land with the fear that ..there might never be peace there....

That trip to Israel and Palestine was something that had a huge impact on the way I see the world. I learned so much (and definitely not enough) about that place and its never-ending internal conflict, and also a lot about how the rest of the world is dealing with it. How important Jerusalem is, not only for Israelis and Palestinians, but for Jews, Christians, Muslims, and people from all over the world that are indirectly affected by these tensions. There are so many mysteries and things we don't know about that place... it's scary, and fascinating, and definitely a reason why I need to go back to Jerusalem and understand more about that magical, difficult, very intense city.

Graduation Trip

On the news they say that Italy, like many other countries in the western world, is in the middle of a serious economical crisis these days. They say this is the worst recession in decades, there is no way out,  nobody will be able to find a good job anymore and, basically, we are doomed.

As a consequence of all these apocalyptic signals, I knew I was going to have to work hard for any kind of job opportunity as a recent graduate... and that is the reason why I was really surprised when I started to receive phone calls and emails from very good companies around Northern Italy that were interested in ...me! So, for each company, I went for the first interview, then for the second interview, then for the third interview... and by the end of the spring I had 6 finalized job offers, all with good companies, all with good salaries, and all ....in Italy!

Now... I have nothing against Italy, seriously, it really is a beautiful country, probably one of the best places in the world to live a happy, nice, quiet life, finding a nice job, eating the amazing food (definitely the best in the world), driving to Rimini or flying Ryanair to Ibiza every summer and just enjoying life.

            

  .....I did not want that.

After living in California, and, especially, after meeting all these people from such different places in the world, all with their own culture and way of life, that I would probably have no idea about if I had stayed in Italy, I could just not be satisfied anymore... There are so many places out there, so many cultures to understand, so many different people and things to learn. I have always been a curious person and, therefore, I had the strong desire to go somewhere else. Somewhere completely new and different, some place that would challenge, not the perfect easy California, I needed something difficult.

So I said no to all these good job offers, and I bought a flight ticket to Ghana. This would have been my graduation trip. Why? This was many people's first reaction when I told them I was going to West Africa for a month. I know, it's not the most common destination for a graduation trip, but we can't all go to London, Paris or New York. Somebody needs to do something different sometimes :-)

 

 

That trip was probably the best of my life. Ghana is an amazing country and it gave me feelings that are still so strong in my heart, but so hard to express. I didn't know anything about Ghana before going there. I was hoping to see a real African sunset and maybe see elephants.. but that's it (by the way... both those things happened and they were AMAZING! :-) But then I went there and it was so so so so much more than that. I experienced beautiful landscapes, incredible markets, extremely interesting cultures, wonderful people, crazy dancing, astonishing nature, delicious food, but that was only part of it. What really shocked me was the difference with my country... I realized how lucky I am to be born in Europe.. and I got mad at myself for taking my luxurious life for granted. I saw people who have absolutely nothing, people who have to deal with extreme challenges every day and, no matter what, they get by. It made me realize that I really do not need 90% of the things I have. Going back to my HUGE house after 1 month in Ghana was an experience that I will never forget. I arrived to a clean, big house, that smelled like somebody just sprayed Chanel No. 5 on it.  I opened the door and, first thing, went to see the bathroom... huge clean bathroom, and I saw the sink, and the toilet, and all this clean, safe, water flowing magically everywhere, I just needed to push a button... How come I never thought how great all that was?! This is only one of the several things that that trip to Ghana taught me.. and only one of the reasons why that trip is still stuck in my mind.