Un posto rilassante

Last year in July, I moved to Milan. For several weeks I was on workation in the neighborhood  of San Vittore. But while I had actually planned to do some research and work on my novel, I ended up spending my days indoors, in meetings and calls, too exhausted in the evenings to actually do anything due to the heat.

That is not to mean that I didn’t utterly enjoy being in my favourite city. On the weekends, I had a well-thought plan on what to see and do, and with the exception of one museum in Brera I actually managed to visit all the places I had hoped. I even went swimming at Bagni Misteriosi, which was a dream come true! One afternoon, I even took the train out to Lecco to visit Alessandro Manzoni’s home. His work “I Promessi Sposi” is one of the main motifs in my book, and I had really wanted to see where this author, who is so important for the Italian language and literature, spent his life.

It was raining when I got to Lecco, and I immediately set out to find the villa. My feet were hurting, and I neither had an umbrella nor a sturdy jacket. I found the villa at last, and was disappointed to see that it was closed for renovation. My Italian was still developing then, and therefore I had not noticed the short sentence on the website that indicated the closure.

So I aimlessly wandered around the small lake-side town, until I sat down in a cafe on Piazza Manzoni and wrote. Not all was lost. Afterwards, I caught the train back to Como, however something was wrong with it, and they made us get out in the middle of nowhere, and wait for the next one. Which did not come. There were a couple of American students on the platform with me who were starting to get anxious because it just was not clear if and when the next train would arrive, and they were wondering if the small town of Molteno, where we were stranded, would be served by Uber.

Of course I made it to Como in the end. I also managed to get to that night’s attraction, Celtic Glasgow against Ajax Amsterdam in the beautifully situated Giuseppe Sinigaglia stadium. There was a cool breeze coming up from the lake, and later during the night, torrential rain fall caused many roads in Como to be completely flooded. Como’s train station is situated high above the shoreline, so I was home in Milan by 9:30, just in time for work.

So what is different, this year in Trieste? For one, I took a week of vacation to ensure I had no meetings to attend, or All Staff Calls to moderate.

And this proved to be a game changer: the outline of my novel is done. I managed to sketch the plot, understand my characters a lot better, and made additions to the story that I had not seen coming. At the same time I finished my piece on Siri Hustvedt’s “Ghost Stories” and even got good headway on a short story I plan to submit to a magazine at the end of the month. My trip was only for a week, but I feel it has done me a lot of good.

Every morning I got up, made my coffee, and opened the window out to the street. I sat down at the big white table in the living room, powered up my laptop or opened my notebook, and wrote. My apartment was in the Borgo Teresiano, close to the Canale Grande. During the day, the area was bustling with suited men and women working in the many big insurance companies around my building, and at night a constant stream of tourists occupied the zona pedonale. Many voices, and almost as many languages, floated in. Since the weather was nice almost throughout my entire stay, I kept the windows open to let the sentences flow in from the street, and onto my page.

It may sound like a little too much effort, but it always helps me tremendously to see the venues of my fiction, and I am fortunate enough to be able to travel extensively. After all, places are important to my writing! Having staked out the Milanese part of my novel last year, this year I was able to see Muggia once more, which had been in the back of my mind for a while. Walking around the old town, I mapped where the nonna used to live, and found the spot where Domenico “put a ring on it”. There is so much inspiration for me in all the locations I see, and as per usual I met quite a few people during my writerly excursions, and sometimes the stories they told me even made it into my notes.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/336b89_d2a023d5f4864b7e912186a739083e76/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

on my way to Muggia

So all in all, everything is better this year. My next writing retreat is already being planned for the fall, and in the meantime I try to carve as much time as possible out of my busy work life. Of course I will be back in Milan in a short while as well, and cross that one elusive museum off my list. Tornerò, as Arnie used to say.

my apartment with the big white table

But enough about the past, what is up ahead? I actually have an announcement to make: there is a give-away coming up. Watch this space, enter the competition, and win a book! And it’s not any old book, but the one that contains my first published story. Stay tuned.