From now on wherever we put our jumper/hat is our home.
We transit through Doha and then Vienna. The food in Doha is amazing, the food in Vienna is questionable but who cares, we are close to our Italian home. The last plane is four seats across and if I'd known we'd be on such a small plane I would have said a prayer in a chapel before leaving. I look out the windows and we are flying over the Alps, still covered thickly in snow, so close to the Dolomites but I have calamitous visions about tiny planes and have to start thinking positive thoughts.
In less than an hour we can see the delta and canals of Venice and then St Marks! And then we have arrived, hoping that our bags will be there to greet us as we've been on three different planes and I forgot to pack a spare pair of undies just in case our bags are still in Vienna but I do have concealer, lipliner and lipstick so I could survive for days.
What a different arrival into Venice airport, we're swept through by a handsome Italian guy who doesn't even glance at our passports or our triple vaxxed paperwork, not even a stamp is printed on the passport. I wonder if anyone will ever know we have actually arrived in Italy.
But our bags have arrived! All is good.
We pile into a taxi for our overnight hostel stay (very cool place - Anda Venice Hostel), exhausted, triumphant and with the smell of the sea permeating the air around us. Spring is in the air, blossoms colour the bare branches, daffodils nod in street gardens.
The next day, we head out for our first brioche, pistachio for me and lemon cream for the daughter. I ooh and ahh like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. I successfully embarrassed the daughter.
Then things get difficult. We have to go to get phone cards for a year. We go to Vodafone in Venice knowing that it is one of the most touristic cities in Europe and they will speak English. The daughter says they will be able to but they will deny it. She is correct. The girl is very helpful but we have to use our Italian. The daughter does well and after both signing our signature 9 times on an electronic pad we have our Italian number but then she tells us we must for 2 hours to activate it. We were going to be on the road soon and will need to use Google maps. The daughter isn't concerned, from being an anxiety filled being in Australia, she is all Be Calm and Carry on here. She said it'll work soon and luckily, it does.
Because then things get even more difficult. My daughter wasn't able to get the famed Green Pass that you need since Covid, to go anywhere, do anything on planes, trains and restaurants. Australia has provided us with an International pass with a QR code that matches no other code overseas - that is Australia. I got mine via a miracle, via my tenant who is studying here briefly, via a Dr that someone who knew someone knew. It came overnight into my email box. The daughter's didn't. She was told to collect it from a chemist upon arrival. Chemist found, but we could see by his puzzled look, there would be no Green pass. We didn't have a code to access it! We will need it to get our visas. The daughter turns on the phone and voila! it works. She calls the tenant, the tenant talks to someone, she talks to someone else and within an hour we have her Green pass. It is like winning the lottery. We are grateful for our tenant and all the other Italians that helped process this, whoever they are.
We are finally on the road in our hire car, heading to our Italian home, doing 130, watching all the other cars pass me by. And then, after two long years, we come up the mountain pass and into our village. We stop at the dam and gaze over the lake and go buy hazelnut yoghurt, ravioli and valeriana lettuce (tiny mini lettuces that we love and only just found in Australia) and we open up our apartment and race to the balcony to look out over our domain and Tudaio Mt, still with snow in the ravines and we know we are home. This is our Italia.
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