Siamo Arrivati a Verona!

Our first two weeks in Italy

If L’Avventura were a novel, the opening line for Chapter 1 in Italia could be:

As the sun set over La Basilica di Santa Anastasia, streaming light through a rose window in Verona’s largest church climbed the clerestory wall of her Gothic transept….

We steered our evening walk across the river to follow throngs of unticketed onlookers perched above Teatro Romano for Goran Bregović, his Balkan gypsy brass band, and a light show….

After hours of IKEA’ing, we staggered into the nearest pizzeria well after 11pm and found a new heaven via duet of Impero’s €8 sourdough pies and €18 liter of chilled Veronese rosso….

Last Saturday, we narrowly escaped a tempest of gumball-sized hail that dented hoods, and knocked out power at Branzo, the little osteria that serves Soave, tiny clams, and big fish love….

Italo Calvino’s Italian postmodernist book If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler doesn’t have a single opening line – instead, a whole new book begins every other chapter. That’s what this past fortnight felt like. Each day, each hour, brought new characters, fresh encounters, plot twists, unfamiliar vocabulary, and so many things utterly lost in translation.

Those first days were a blur of landing, settling into the language, and starting to play house: buy mattresses and pillows, sheets and towels, forks and glasses. We bought a mini-fridge and stocked it with essentials so that we wouldn’t eat through our savings at restaurants before a kitchen arrived. And it won’t for another month at the least. In fact, as I typed this sentence, an IKEA technician was just taking measurements and noting outlets and terminals for water and electrical. A design is forming.

In the meantime, we’ve got overturned boxes for countertops and a two-burner electric piano cottura stovetop for cooking meals. It’s barely powerful enough to boil water, but we’ve coaxed enough watts for scampi, flank steak, crispy skin fish, and ‘grammable breakfasts. I wash plates in the bathroom sink – where dish soap currently resides adjacent the toothpaste – taking extra care not to chip stemware on the low faucet.

Seventeen days in, I’m basking in luxuries that have nothing to do with comforts like a bed frame or dishwasher. Those will come later. For now, contentment is driven by living in Verona’s beating heart: Centro Storico. The grocery store is close enough that when we made that first salad, our twelve-year-old went two hundred steps around the corner and returned with Dijon mustard before we’d finished peeling the garlic. It’s a luxury to walk to the river, which is closer than the nearest ATM, and to the farmer’s market, or to the laundromat next to a place with hot fried samosas and cold Birra Moretti sold in singles so you can crack frosty suds while the wash spins.

It’s a luxury to open an account at Banca Intesa Sanpaolo and discuss with the manager, in Italian, why there are less books behind her desk about economics than art, opera, music, and architecture. It’s a luxury to hunt and gather two bottles of vini locali, one liter of Veronese milk, a bottle of Veneto olive oil, a bag of Sicilian lemons, half a dozen farm eggs, and a ripe summer melon for €35.63. It’s a luxury to slow down and stroll behind older folk and the very elderly who are not shuffled off stage and out of sight. Octogenarians walk with proud vitality, arm in arm with daughters and grandchildren, dressed fine and owning their space. It’s inspiring.

Right outside our living room windows… Le Arche Scaligere

Our first meal at home was from Macelleria Equina Giorgio e Lorenzo Avesani, an equine butcher with excellent take-away like Medaglioni di coniglio (medallions of rabbit) and Faraona al forno ai profumi d’arancia (Roasted orange-scented guinea fowl). We haven’t tried the horse yet, but ask me next month when I bring home a specialità di casa during their Settimana Dell’Asino (Donkey Meat Week). It took a minute to unearth one the corkscrews I’d stashed in our checked bags, but it did the trick on a crushable and translucent candy apple red Cantina di Custoza Bardolino 2023 so delicious and cheap (€2.95) that I’ve already bought it twice more.

That’s the easy part. The hard part is onboarding ourselves into the system, but not due to an overwrought Comune di Verona or sluggish bureaucracy. Each official interaction we’ve had, each contractor we’ve met, has been on-time or early and they’ve shown us patience and grace. It’s just a lot – like one of the many magazine-thick IKEA schematics we’ve followed to assemble furniture. You can’t skip ahead and you can’t count on falling back to your native tongue when things get complicated.

After filing reams of documents, we’re in a holding pattern. We’ve announced to officials our arrival and now we await visit from the Vigili (local police) who will confirm that we’re actual residents. Then, we’ll receive our Certificati di Residenza and Carte d’Identità, the keys to unlocking social services like health care, library cards, and free schoolbooks for our sixth-grader.

Faced with these otherwise tedious tasks of red tape navigation, I’ve set a challenge for myself to add one more line of dialogue to each engagement. In the bank, for instance, I made a cute teller laugh when she pulled out more copy paper from of a cabinet. “I thought that was a refrigerator and you were pouring us a spritz to celebrate my new account!” It’s good language practice and it’s a way to still be me in a foreign tongue. I’m also modeling fearlessness for Julian and a willingness to make mistakes. When we rented a car for the IKEA trip, I meant to inquire if there was an option for a convertible. Instead of asking for “una macchina senza tetto” (car without a roof), however, I asked for “una macchina senza tette,” a car without tits. That’s still better than my first tangle with Italian vowels twenty years ago in Taoramina when I learned that finishing a four-letter word with A instead of O is the difference between declaring your love for figs … or 🐱.

We haven’t landed dinner party friends quite yet, but we've already been invited out for cocktails. And I’ve definitely got in my head a working guest list of whom I’ll ring to join us for a housewarming. Our upstairs neighbor is a charming delight who carries a pocket dog and can’t walk down the street without fielding “Ciao Maddalena!” from every other storefront. Matteo and Anna, who live next door in the house known as Casa Romeo, made acquaintance from the street – Juliet style – and called up to us on the balcony. There’s Denise our ace real estate agent, Alessandro who picked us up at the airport, Pietro with the bar around Piazza Erbe, Elisabetta who runs an artisan goods boutique across the way, Elena at the furniture salon, and Bahram the Persian carpet dealer. As soon as I learn the names of our adorable florist and that bass-toned gent at the coltelleria who sold us our knives, I’ll add them to the lineup, too.

Some faves from what Jules and I call the Verona Door Tour

Akin to that Chiacchierare moment in the post office I wrote about back in March, three recent happenings helped cement why I’m falling deeper in love with this country.

First, en route to the IKEA, a car got hung-up at the toll plaza. The driver fumbled with the ticket and payment and I could feel my Jersey blood starting to boil. Amy Lee put her hand on my arm. I let it go, they figured it out, and all was good in a flash. On the way home, I was the one who got hung-up. The machine read, “Biglietto non valido!” and wouldn’t accept my credit card. I pushed buttons and tried other cards for a good minute. Niente. Lights in the rearview mirror got brighter as cars piled up behind me. Two minutes, three minutes. A voice came over the speaker telling me to insert cash, but I didn’t have any Euros yet. “You can do it online,” she said, but I have no idea how. Now I’m pleading in Italian over an intercom. Four minutes, five. Finally, she sent a ticket through with instructions how to pay later and then opened the gate. We drove off. I couldn’t believe that despite holding up the lane for six plus minutes, no one honked. No one flashed their lights. No one shoved a finger out the sunroof.

On a late-evening walk, we passed teenagers and twenty-somethings, in groups and alone, lollygagging in shadowy spots around the Adige that, were it the James River back in downtown Richmond, I’d caution my girls and boys to avoid. Farther on, we came to a park with a wading pool, maybe calf deep, half the size of a soccer pitch. In one spot, older women gossiped and cackled. In another, young men spoke and smoked. We watched two middle-school–aged girls unlace their shoes, splash around for a spell, return to snack on cupcakes, and then pack up their trash and walk away. The hour was going on midnight, yet no one clutched pearls and worried, “Is it safe” or “Where are their parents?”

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3:11 of Veronese found sound assemblage: morning bells, afternoon chatter, evening song.

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Then, after a grocery shop, I grabbed the supermarket circular. It made me tear up. I cried because I could read it – not in a lurching, learning-to-drive-stick way, rather with slow, gentle ease. I mean, the circular isn’t Dante, yet it was a leap, and not from Italian to English to comprehension, but directly from Italian to comprehension. Happy tears continued as the meaning set in. The circular opened with an editorial, “Benessere in movimento” (Well-being in motion) that talked about how feeling good isn’t a personal matter, it’s a collective act that involves daily choices and the support we offer one another. It finished with (translated), “Because true well-being is a network that keeps us united.”

Perché stare bene non è solo un fatto personale, ma anche un gesto collettivo, che coinvolge le nostre scelte quotidiane e il sostegno che possiamo dare agli altri.

What? This wasn't some credo overheard at yoga class. This is amidst ads for prosciutto, shampoo, and toilet paper. I could go on about the morning bread, the exquisite shoes, the pistachio gelato – and I will sometime soon – but the real revelation of these first days isn’t what you’ve already witnessed on any vacation here. It’s what I didn’t really didn’t understand until I starting peaking under the hood as a resident. I embrace the sophistication of Italian design, literature, cuisine, but it’s the simplicity that enamors me the most. Like when the handyman brought us tomatoes and a cucumber from his garden. There’s innate generosity, passion, and sense of community. So, when you come here and see the words lievito madre all over the pizzerias and panetterie, you’ll know it’s more than mother yeast that’s baked into the culture.

17 days in Italia.

PS. Stick around. Things are just getting interesting. The 2026 Winter Olympic Games are coming to Northern Italy and Closing Ceremonies will take place right here in Verona. If you’re keen to join Olympic festivities, L’Avventura can be your guide to what’s cool, hot, delicious, and fun. Paid subscribers enjoy video tours and personal touches.