From Tuscany to Tennessee: Stepping Into and Out of My Comfort Zone
I heard it through the grapevine….
We set the clocks back here at the end of October. That means the sun will set at about 5 p.m. and creep back ever closer to 4 p.m. by the end of December. To help make that reality less frightening, I’ll take us back to Tuscany, where we spent five glorious sunny days in late September. I didn’t write about it at the time because everything I could think to write seemed trite and tired. Pretty as a picture? Warm climate and people? Comfort food to cure whatever ails you? Yes, yes, and yes. And while it may seem like it’s all been said, I’m going to say it yet again. Because in these dark days of roaring forest fires and raging hate speech, who among us can’t use a little Tuscan comfort?
Our trip - like most voyages to Tuscany - began in Florence. If we think tourists are taking over Amsterdam, it’s nothing compared to what goes on in Florence. And yet. And yet. There’s a reason the crowds form their own river alongside the real river bisecting the city, the Arno, to snap that perfect selfie. The sculptures all over the city, the red-roofed buildings with the light reflecting off them: it all transports you back in time. You feel like you might see a Medici stroll down the street at any moment.
When in Florence, you can stretch your wings if you go a little ways outside the city, to the town of Fiesole. A 30-minute bus ride will take you up and away with stunning views of Florence spread out in front. Our bus driver - the Mario Andretti of the Italian public transportation system - took those hairpin turns as if he were in a little red Ferrari, not a cavernous bus. Hold on tight, or for dear life, and you’ll be fine. Once off the bus, you walk up and up to get that view. You have to hand it to the Italians, who find ways to weave art in everywhere. In Fiesole, the covers to the gas meters were works of art.
Fiesole also has some well-preserved Roman and Etruscan ruins. We were grateful to Mother Nature for arranging the blue sky that set off the ruins perfectly. In the summer, there are concerts in the Roman Amphitheater. Sorry we missed out on seeing one of those, but not sorry to have missed the crowds. We nearly had the whole ancient world to ourselves in late September. Fiesole has been around since the 8th century B.C. and it’s still going strong.
One of the best things about living far away from home is you get to actually spend more extended time with family and friends who visit. So while you might not see them as often, when they do come, it’s not just a dine and dash. In a few days, you can see more of them than you might if you had never left your U.S. home. It’s the quality over quantity advantage to living abroad. We wandered around Florence and Fiesole with Peter’s sister Wendy (yup, they know about the Peter Pan thing) and her husband Bob.
Imagine a world in which your sister tells you she will be in Florence, and you can go join for a few days. We are beyond lucky to be living this life. Plus there were two more mouths to help out with the bottles of wine, since I don’t pull my weight in that department any more. I know some of my friends from the ancient days will find that news surprising.
Another advantage to traveling with others is you can finally get a photo of the two of you together.
And now I can finally fit in this beloved song, Peg by Steely Dan. Laura, this one’s for you:
“This is your big debut
It's like a dream come true
So won’t you smile for the camera
I know they're gonna love it.”
Getting out of Florence and into the hills of Tuscany was our goal on this trip. After grappling with a little bit of traffic, we were on our way to San Gimignano. One difficulty about traveling in this area is deciding which quaint village to choose as your destination. San Gimignano has been the popular girl in the Tuscany hills for quite a while. The giant tour buses pull up in the late morning and disgorge passengers from all over the world to gorge on gelato at an ungodly early hour. But that’s why staying in San Gimignano is wonderful. You get to see this gorgeous medieval city perched on a hill before and after the day-trippers leave. Otherwise, we’d be singing a different tune, one along the lines of": “It took me so long to find out. And I found out.”
You really see why this part of Italy is so full of visitors. Everywhere you turn, there’s another gorgeous greyish-green hill crowned with dark green cypresses, all there for the photo-plucking. I thought back to a passage from a book I read recently, The Happiest People in the World, by Brock Clarke: “…And the spectacle is so great that even the skeptical end up taking too many pictures.” He was writing about a slice of Denmark, not Tuscany, but the words fit.
Sorry to partially block your view of the hills with our bodies. Notice I am wearing Tuscan colors so I blend in. Sort of.
We headed next to Volterra, a town a lot less discovered than San Gimignano, that is until it showed up in Twilight New Moon, the sequel to Twilight, the swooned-over-by-teens vampire best-seller. When it came time to make the movie version, however, Volterra was passed over in favor of another hill town, Montepulciano (which, like the vampires, we also visited. You’ll see it later in this post).
This is ribbolita, the Tuscan vegetable and bread soup that is comfort in a bowl. I tried it several times in our five day journey. It truly does stick to your ribs. But no worries. I was always hungry again by dinner time.
When you are traveling in these parts, it’s easy to think Italy is perfect. That may actually be true if you are just passing through, but not if you live there, I’m told. Nowadays, there’s not just the sluggish local services that keep you from declaring Italy a perfect paradise. There’s also the national government which is veering far right, and has even recently loosened gun laws. This is one aspect of U.S. culture you’d think no one would want to copy. It was hard to escape politics even on our vacation. One afternoon, we returned to our hotel for a siesta. I passed the time not by resting, but instead by watching the Kavanaugh hearings. I felt like I had to, as a citizen of the U.S. It will take more than a comforting bowl of pasta or ribbolita for me to recover from that experience.
One way to deal with the catastrophe-a-day news cycle from the U.S. is to try to forget it all. That’s what I did on this trip. The next day, we were off to yet another picturesque town: Pienza. Although Pienza has a starry past (Russell Crowe’s Gladiator was filmed just outside the city walls) it was much less crowded than our other stops. At times while we were wandering, we had the streets nearly to ourselves.
At a tiny restaurant in Pienza that evening, La Buca di Enea, we enjoyed the homey food the chef prepared using recipes he learned as a boy while cooking alongside his grandmother. Out of the corner of our ears, at the only other filled table, we heard the familiar loud sound of Americans. We listened more carefully, and detected their Texas twang. We quickly lowered our voices, worried - post-Kavanaugh hearing - that our fellow Americans would be celebrating his performance. As my mom would say, “Don’t assume.” It turns out they were Democrats, and disgusted with what is going on in the U.S. They had a lot of questions for us about what they would have to do in order to live abroad.
Last stop on the comfort tour was Montepulciano. Just saying the name of the town makes you feel happy. We toured a family-owned winery where our millennial guide told us about how he learned the business from his grandparents. Then over a four-course lunch with stunning views of the hills, we tasted some of their wines. Or maybe all of them. An American couple seated next to us - we saw more Americans on this trip than on any of our other trips combined - looked astonished at the amount of food showing up at our table. We explained we don’t eat lunch like this every day, that it was part of our tour, and that we were skipping dinner that night. Yeah, right.
This was just the starter, a bruschetta party on the plate. It was all down (or up) hill from there, depending on your attitude towards food.
“I got this feelin' inside my bones
It goes electric, wavy when I turn it on
All through my city, all through my home
We're flyin' up, no ceilin', when we in our zone.”
And it’s also hard to be unhappy when you watch the dancing in this video.
So I’ve brought you into my comfort zone in Tuscany. Now it’s time to move onto the Tennessee part of the title. Yup. Surprise ending. At the end of the summer, we will be moving to Nashville, Tennessee. Peter’s company, Akzo-Nobel, is moving their U.S. headquarters from Chicago to Nashville and we’ll be moving along with the office furniture. After what will be nearly five years in Amsterdam by the time we pack our bags, we are ready. Or as ready as we will ever be. We’re ready to be closer to our kids, and the rest of our family. I’ve come to realize it’s the clock, not the ocean, that most separates you when you’re an expat. It’s a strange feeling to know I’m a quarter into my day when Rachel is just getting up. And then three hours later, Ben starts his day. It’s like we are leading parallel lives that are never quite in sync. We’re ready to be in the same time zone, so staying in touch isn’t as complicated and we’re not always wrestling with jet lag when we do visit.
When I think of the time difference, I remember back to when I lived in San Francisco for a few years, post-college. Each and every phone conversation with my Dad began with his question, “What time is it out there?” We laughed each and every time, but underneath the humor, I think he was onto something. It is the time difference that most separates you, so why not put it front and center in the conversation? He was both wise and funny, my dad.
I recently saw this photo for the first time. My dad, at age 11, is holding up his sister Ruthie, while my grandmother Sadie looks right at us. I love thinking about what he was like as a little boy. Was he wise and funny even then?
In answer to the anticipated question, no, we’re not ready for the crazy political climate. How could we ever be? But since the mess in the U.S. might not be cleaned up anytime soon, we just have to dive in. The move to Nashville may present us with as much culture shock, if not more, than the move to Amsterdam. Southerners, Republicans and Gun Owners! Oh my! Actually (thankfully) Nashville is navy blue and not Republican. But the South will still be a foreign country to me. I’ll need to keep up my second-language learning. I only know a tiny bit of Southern (after “Y’all” and “Bless your heart” I’m out of options). Not to worry. I have some expat friends who hail from the South who have promised to tutor me, to help get me ready for my new life.
We’re still in the is-this-really-happening? phase of things. It might also be known as the receiving-lots-of-info-from-friends-and-family-about-the-place-you’re-heading-to phase. In part, that’s because Nashville has been getting a lot of press lately. Although it was passed over by Amazon as a Second Headquarters hub, it will be an Amazon hub-let. I’ve recently learned there are quite a few celebrities who call Nashville home, including Justin Timberlake (go back and listen to his song, earlier in the post, to hear his Memphis, Tennessee drawl), Reese Witherspoon, and Nicole Kidman. I’ve scoped out restaurants and coffee places to try out, with or without these celebs. Have no fear. There will be more than enough content to keep Suzanne Vine’s Nashville, Etc. up and running.
I think things have changed in Nashville since this movie came out in 1975. There are a lot more transplants like us taking over, for one.
When I think about making the switch from Northern-to-the-bone to Southern belle, I think back to the country singer Mary Chapin Carpenter. We went to the same fancy prep school in Princeton, N.J. She was two years ahead of me, and I remember her playing the guitar at school assemblies. How cool was she, in that world of preppy lacrosse players, in her clunky work boots, singing Joni Mitchell songs? Somehow, her record label decided to market her as a country singer, and this Princeton-born and raised resident now has five Grammys for country music under her country-western belt. So maybe there’s hope for another Northeastern gal to find her way down South, too.
I’ve already begun to embark on my Nashville Preparation Plan. My two year stint in San Francisco is my only other experience (other than college) with a U.S. life outside my comfort zone in N.J. I learned from my days in San Francisco that the feeling of loneliness is not all bad. It makes you appreciate the family and friends you have, and forces you to make a new life for yourself. Maybe having to go out and make friends as an older person is like learning a new language: it keeps your brain happy.
As part of that Nashville Preparation Plan, I’ve had to go on a Taylor Swift binge, since I scarcely know her music and she lives in Nashville. Taylor and I have something in common. She wasn’t born and raised in Nashville either. That’s probably the only thing we have in common, but it’s a start. She writes a lot about breaking up and beginning again, both of which I’ll be doing this summer. I’m trying to figure out a way to let Amsterdam down easy. I imagine he might be singing these words to me, rather than Taylor Swift’s:
“Don't you know that I heard it through the grapevine
Not much longer would you be mine
Oh I heard it through the grapevine and I'm just about to lose my mind.”
Y’all should come visit us in Nashville! Until then, there’s lots more of Amsterdam to discover. I plan to “make the most” of our remaining time here, whatever that means. It’s not quite time yet to begin again.