A tall, lanky young Italian man working for Greenpeace took one look at me as I walked down via Lagrange in Torino, and shouted "You are DEFinitely NOT Italian".
His name was Marco, and has lived in Torino all of his life. I asked him what it was like to live in Italy, and his response: "hot". The heat was oppressive, you could just feel it closing in around you and all you could do was sweat. But you get used to it. I loved it, in a way, because it is so very different from Chicago. Paris never truly felt like school, so I had no sense of a transition into summer. More like, one day we did not have classes anymore. Here, I feel the heat and know it is summer. Marco told me that my flip flops make me stand out (I broke down and wore them because of the heat), and before I went on my way he tossed out another loud, joking "She is definitely not Italian"....
Torino has large avenues, tiny streets with little cafes, piazzas, a castle, theaters...everything I wanted from an Italian city. I was perfectly content to walk the streets, listening and observing.
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