Do you hear it? It’s faint, I’ll give you that, but it’s there. You can just make out the tune if you prick your ears. It’s the jingle signifying it’s time for unabridged, unadulterated and cringe-worthy honesty. Thus, this is an admission post. Traveling changes you. At least, in my opinion it’s supposed to. Because, if it didn’t then you might as well save your, potentially, hard-earned money and stay home if nothing would be different anyway. I’m bringing this up because I am noticing a change in us. A very specific and somewhat concrete change: The evidence is stacking up that we now cannot rule out calling ourselves island-folk.
What are island-folk? Well, it’s a grossly inexact generalization that people living on islands walk to a slightly different beat than their coast-line-challenged counter parts. In a way, a rather grounded existence. We’ve resisted the moniker though for a long time as it’s somehow synonymous with driving in the slow-lane and as perpetual urbanites, what fate could be worse than that? We would instead live in multi-million inhabitant metropolises (Montreal for a short stint and Vancouver for a much, much longer one), drink our lattes and wax on about our most recent trip to Paris. As if that’s anything special these days.
After two-ish weeks on Sicily and loving basically every minute of it once some of the worst jet-lag had subsided (I’m sorry Catania, I never should have doubted you) and a nothing short of spectacular introduction to Sardinia by virtue of our current stay in stunning Alghero, there’s just no other way to put it; whatever happens later we’ve had exceedingly positive experiences visiting Italy’s two largest islands and thankfully we have well over a week left on Sardinia before we fly back to the mainland.
The weather is fantastic. 22-29 degrees centigrade and sunny. The Med seems even more appealing than around other parts, somehow. Even though the temperature is still too cold for most locals (I’d guess around 18 degrees centigrade), for a Swedish-Canadian, it’s just about right especially considering the clarity of the water. I kid you not, it rivals the Caribbean. It was during one of these afternoon dips, I bumped into one of the locals (yes, another old guy!) who in addition to speaking Italian, which I’m still embarrassingly poor at, spoke comprehensible German. Well, bring out and dust off ye olde tourist German and it turns out we could converse rather uninhibited. We managed to speak about Alghero (he’s born here), bike racing (GdI starts here in Alghero tomorrow, after all) and the virtues of regularly swimming in salt water. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more European, even when I still lived in Sweden.
It’s quite possible, and even likely, that these low key, people and surrounding-centric experiences contribute to the positive impressions we have of this country, its islands and inhabitants, but I suspect that’s part of traveling and living among the locals. We’re not in a rush, our second month of travel started today – we’re just taking in each day and living it on island standard time.
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