When I settle into home after weeks or months traveling abroad, I want to eat familiar foods.
Not organic produce, smoothies, or whole grain bread. What I crave are the tastes that take me back to a moment in a time.
Sticky rice with mango from a crowded and bright food stand in Chiang Mai. Fig gelato from the gelateria with a line out the door in Florence. Moussaka from a restaurant in Athens, where I drank, ate and danced all night in a spot high above the city with new friends.
I can Skype, send emails, or Gchat with friends anywhere in the world to catch up with them. I can search the menus of every Thai restaurant, gelato place and Mediterranean restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area, searching for a taste that might bring me back to my last adventure. But there is no way to recreate the sharing of a meal, a cappuccino, or a glass of wine, while discussing life so different, yet so similar, no matter how many miles lie between us.
The meal of mushroom risotto, lasagna, carne, salad and patate, exists nowhere but in the minuscule kitchen in the big four-story house on the hill with a view of Desenzano Del Garda, where my friend Chiara lives with her family.
This is the meal I must prepare myself for, by not eating before the four-hour train ride from Florence— through Bologna, Ferrara, Padova and Verona—looking out the window at cities with rich histories, leading me to a place that is my home away from home.
Chiara is waiting for me at the train platform, as if I just saw her yesterday, even though it has been more than two years.
After two blocks in her bright green miniature Volkswagen, with the trunk just big enough for my backpack, we are home.
I settle into my own room with Chiara’s engineering awards hanging on the wall. Her English-Italian dictionaries and other books are neatly shelved on a red metal bookcase. I set my sunglasses on the blue draftsman table covered with glass and painted with tropical fish. I can feel the ocean breeze through the window.
Chiara’s mother calls from the kitchen down the hall: “preparato.”
Time to eat.
I eat, and eat, and eat, because it is so good, even though I’m full after the first plate of risotto.
We sit at a table covered in white lace, as the breeze passes through lace curtains next to the Virgin Mary on the wall.
La Zia walks into the dining room, as Chiara and I chat, over espresso for her and chamomile tea for me, about our plans for the weekend. La Zia leans next to me with her blue floral dress and fuzzy white cardigan, takes my hand in her thin and warm wrinkled hand, as if I am her niece, too.
“Elizabeth, como stai? Sei stanca? Hai mangiato bene?” she asks, taking in the details of my face, with a smile. Are you tired? How are you? Did you eat enough?
In my slow, out of practice, Italian, I tell her I still have the medallion of St. Christopher, meant to keep me safe during my travels, that she gave me the last time I visited. I’m not sure she understands, or maybe she doesn’t remember.
The tiny medallion, that I’ve carried in my wallet since she gave it to me three years ago, sits in the palm of my hand.
“Eccola,” I say. Here it is.
Solo travel has the ability to create such a family away from home. A family that grows with each new journey.
