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Published: September 24th 2013
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Making friends, meeting people, meeting other cultures, languages, cultures, are the main reason I travel. Meeting people makes every trip special and unique.
Them - I must travel again, to meet the people I've met again and to make new friends.
My parents are both Israelis, each of them went to study at the University of Bologna, Italy in their early 20's. They met there, got married, I was born there and grew up there in the first few years of my life, and we all moved to Israel when my father finished his studies.
My parents returned to Israel and kept close contact with 5 couple of friends, whom they have known for about 10 years of their lives: the friends that were our surrogate family when we didn't have our own family. The friends who taught my mother to cook, explained my parents about life in Italy, kids slang when I started talking, helped them with work, contacts, advice, family ties. Everything a young couple needs, especially in a foreign country.
Keeping in touch wasn't in the 70's… Phone calls were very expensive, not to mention flights. Yet, my parents called their friends every year,
around Christmas. It was exciting and emotional days for all of us: annual mutual updates about life, kids who grew, plans, everything you wanna talk about with your friends.
My parents flew to Italy every few years, whenever they could. The plan was always the same plan: renting a car, spending a week in bologna, traveling around every day and enjoying every evening a dinner with a different couple.
I'm lucky enough to travel and meet friends in a different era – I have INTERNET: emails, facebook, blogs, skype, whatsapp, viber. It’s much easier for me to meet friends, and much more important – keep in touch with them.
The two years I spent in Italy brought very meaningful people into my life.
Saverio and Rosella who hosted me in their farm and taught me so much about Italy, Italian and how food grows (not in the supermarket!!); Silvia and Fabio, Silvia was my true friend and shoulder, the closest friend I had in Italy and Fabio learnt that his wife is not the craziest woman in the world (he was exposed to some of our "nail polish parties"), Silvia G. who was my teacher, friend
and had a great contribution to my relationship with Thomas (she left me the keys to her flat in Florence when we just met), Marta who was brave enough to invite me to her parents' home and introduce me to another aspect of the Italian life (forcing her mother to cook non-sea food for me) and – those amazing friends, from the country I am not supposed to communicate with, who first offered their friendship, and then gave me (and still do)an amazing insight to a hidden culture, I wish I could visit soon.
It was so great to meet all those friends, even for a short time, unfortunately we couldn't spend longer in Italy and meet some more friends.
It was a great opportunity for me to introduce to Thomas another part of my life, and now he understands that not only Israel is becoming a part of his life, but also Italy. Can't wait to be back there!!
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Gili
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Happy to be one of those friends!
And hope you'll visit me along the way some time...