Joe Goes to Italy

After a pleasantly uneventful flight, a surprisingly brief arrival clearance (see other post), and a pleasantly uneventful train, I finally reached terra firma. At Roma Termini, I met my friends Tom and Chacha and their son Erasmus!

Chacha is a friend from high school. Her husband Tom works for the U.S. Navy at the base in Napoli. When I visited them in 2019, Erasmus was on his way.

They took me to their favorite local restaurant for Sunday lunch. I’m still recuperating. The delicious antipasti would have been a good large meal on their own. Then came the pasta course, which we barely survived. And then the meat course which defeated us completely and will make a second appearance as leftovers later tonight.

After hopefully a good night’s sleep, tomorrow morning I’lll pick up my rental car and drive to meet Alessandro for lunch in Benevento.

I was going to write a long post to tell you all about how they checked my documents at the border and what those documents were and how I filled them all out.

But they didn’t check anything at the border.

At the gate in DFW, I looked at a camera that recognized my face and matched it to my passport and showed a big green check mark and then I could board the plane.

After landing in Roma, at Passport Control I scanned my passport on a machine and looked at another camera that presumably recognized my face again. And then an agent stamped my passport without even looking at it. And that was all.

Now, maybe everything was connected together and synced up on the back end. Before checking in for my flight, I had used the American Airlines app and the Verifly app to upload my passenger locator form and proof of vaccination. Maybe AA checked the forms on behalf of the Italian government, and connected that info to my passport. Maybe when the cameras recognized my face they also followed the trail of digital links across these apps to verify all my evidence that I’m allowed to safely visit Italy without quarantine. Maybe the Italian Ministry of Health, Ministry of the Interior, Border Police, US Department of State, and American Airlines, are all working together in perfect harmony to make traveling in these times both safer and easier than ever before. Maybe.

Anyway once someone actually checks my CDC card I’ll talk about that.

While waiting to board, I found an old friend here in the terminal.

I remember watching this sculpture as a kid, waiting for planes with my parents. I think there was a larger one somewhere else in the terminal too. A nice note to start the trip. Next stop: DFW.

48 hours until departure.

I’m borrowing a large suitcase from my parents. I haven’t checked a suitcase in years. I don’t even own one. I like to travel with just a carry-on backpack. For a two week trip that’s fine, I can easily carry what I really need. For a two month trip things are different.

I’m renting a bicycle. The Benevento area is full of wooded hills and lovely views and I want to ride all around it. Pictures will certainly appear on this blog. So, for those rides I’m bringing my bike jerseys, shorts, shoes, gloves, sunglasses with rearview mirror, all the little things. They take some space in the suitcase but not as much as I thought. By bringing my own equipment I’ll be more comfortable on the bike, and that means riding safer and farther and having more fun. I don’t have to do this, I could rent shoes, skip gloves, find other options, but I think it’ll be worth the suitcase space to have the familiar sensations of my own gear.

Apart from that, I’m bringing much more clothing than I normally would. On a two week trip I’d bring 4-5 days of clothing and do laundry a couple of times. But this trip is going to be two months long and I don’t really want to do laundry every 4 days over and over, so I’m bringing 10 days of clothing, which is longer than some entire international vacations I’ve taken.

Everything else just kind of adds up. Packing for this trip feels different, because I’m going to be settled in one place for so long. I’m not really traveling, I’m living there. There are things that I’d normally bring on a vacation that I’m skipping this time because I can just get them in a store like a normal person, I don’t really need to carry them across the ocean (like sunblock). And there are others that I’d normally leave at home, but two months is a long time, so the comfort of having them will be worth the suitcase space (like the aforementioned bicycle gear, or my coziest pajamas).

And because it’s 2021, I’ve got face masks and my CDC card. More about the CDC card next time.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and I’m pretty much done with work for the day. This week, I have a bunch of tasks to finish, to leave my projects in good spots for the rest of my team to take over. Incredibly, I’m ahead of schedule.

My suitcase is mostly packed, just a few more things on the checklist. I’ve printed out my Passenger Locator Form and photocopied my passport and driver license. I have a Covid test scheduled for Friday morning. I submitted a travel notification to my bank.

Time to start a blog, I suppose.