insomnia

Esino Lario, Italia

I am at uncle Max's house above lake como in the northernmost bit of italy. They call them the pre alps, they are still staggering mountains to me, but nowhere near what you'd see going through to switzerland. It is 4 am and i can't sleep because sophie and i were both wearing soccer pants that are made of windbreaker material so every time one of us moves our legs the noise wakes me up, and i am also still very itchy from scabies and really not happy about that.

Good news is that i have been dancing a lot recently. Tonight we went to a little festival the town was having at it's tiny piazza where an italian band was playing waltzes and cha cha cha's and i taught my cousin alex how to dance kindof by leading him awkwardly around the floor and counting the steps outloud. But it was lovely. Before that our last night in Calabria we went to another festival (august is festival month in Italia) and we watched crazy italians of all ages dance the tarantella like maniacs. The accordion was going so fast, and the mandolin too, and i just started feeling it in my feet and dragged antonello on the dance floor and we were hopping around back and forth and bumping into everyone else and my calves got so sore after about 5 minutes of the dance, this one song by the way lasted about 30 minutes! Earlier that night sophie and i had done our obligatory full moon skinny dip in the secluded area in the perfect sea again, and that was a great way to say goodbye to the calabrian sea, and we were swimming a couple hundred meters out in the ocean while the sun dipped below the horizon and then we swam back and went to the festival all wet. Not exactly la bella figura but definitely worth it.

This time i didn't leave anything behiind in calabria, besides a little pandemonium that had erupted after I had been pretty disgustingly sexually harassed on the way to the tomato fields. Luckily he didn't touch me and I was smart enough and got away safely, but when i told my seriously protective and chivalrous and wonderfully bubbly hospitable male friends we'd made, they made it their job to track down exactly who he is, where he is from, his car, his girlfriend (i feel very sorry for you), spread word all over town and luckily didn't beat him up while I was there because I expressed a serious concern for my own safety if he were to retaliate against sophie and I for some reason, and i just think violence escalates violence and really was discouraging that. But I am almost positive that at least Antonello did on Friday night after we left, mostly because he kept swearing that he would the minute we left, saying things like "one punch in the face and kick in the ass and he'll learn some respect". I think that's just how they deal with things there. He is lucky that i hadn't made friends with any mafiosi, because he might be dead or close to it at this point. Like I said, everything there seems exaggerated and a little extreme.
I don't want to talk about this anymore and please don't talk to me about it unless i bring it up.

We left calabria on a really good note, after eating and dancing at the festival, saying goodbye to antonello and inhaling some really good cappuccinos at the train station, we took a flight up the coast of Italia and landed in Milan. Upon collecting our baggage, we discovered that someone/something had peed on sophie's backpack, or maybe had spilled a jar full of dead rat juice all over her backpack and she had to wear it and then ride on the bus smelling literally the worst smell i have ever smelled in my life. A cross between pungent pee and rotting corpse. So when we finally found Katie after an hour of waiting, and finally got to the station and then took a taxi up the hairpin turn roads to the tiny mountain town, she showered and we drank and ate with my family and then fell asleep like babies in this gorgeous huge yellow and stone house overlooking the lake.