These two BG News alums certainly soaked in all Italy had to offer.
By Dina Horwedel (’86) and Marcy Grande (’86)
Dina: Back in the nascent days of the Internet, I co-founded a relationship travel website. The web site is long gone, but its premise is still fundamental: travel is all about relationships: with oneself, with travel companions, with people one meets along the way, and even those long gone.
My love of travel took root when I was 16. My family hosted three AFS exchange students from Jordan, Spain, and Belgium when two buses filled with kids from around the world stopped in my small Ohio hometown for a week. I was a shy kid and AFS provided me with an outlet to new people and experiences. I was hooked. I worked after school and weekends and used my earnings to fund my own exchange experience to Luxembourg.
To say AFS changed my life is an understatement. It made me eager to learn more about other lands and cultures. It also gave me the confidence to travel, live, and work outside the U.S. For me, nothing is more rewarding than building relationships with people from around the world. Yet one country in particular—Italy—keeps calling me back—because the people I met there are family.
My great-grandfather Vincenzo used to say, “One week of travel is worth one year of education.” He spoke from experience as a Southern Italian immigrant who arrived at Ellis Island in 1910 at age 20 with one dollar in his pocket. Many immigrants then, called birds of passage, traveled back and forth from their homelands to work before returning to buy land and settle down. Vincenzo’s brother went home just before the second world war broke out, but Vincenzo chose to remain in Ohio where he started a family, retired, and eventually died just before reaching 100 years old.
In some ways my upbringing was not much different from the lives of my family in my ancestral village of Oriolo. I grew up on the same street with my aunt, cousins, grandparents, and great grandparents, and family was the center of our world. Yet I never pondered why my great-grandfather would leave the center of his world, why he never spoke of Italy, and why he lost contact with his family until after my mother died. Grieving, I traveled to Italy to find the half of the family we had been separated from for 103 years. To my amazement, I not only found them—I was welcomed into the fold.
For the past ten years I, too, have been a bird of passage myself, going back at least once a year to visit family; to learn about Italian history, culture, art, and literature. With many cousins and just one English speaker among them, I knew if I wanted to forge lasting relationships, I would have to learn Italian. For the past 10 years I have been taking courses and hired a tutor in the States and last year took an immersive language program in Italy.
The experience was so profound I wanted to share it with others. I took my niece back with me, then a cousin.
Last year my college roommate and bestie, Marcella Grande, also an Italian American, told me she had always wanted to visit herfamily’s village in Molise. Marcy and I were both housemates and colleagues at The BG News.
Marcy is a selfless and thoughtful friend: she drove two hours to meet me at my parents’ home while I was visiting my mother who was battling cancer to say hello and give me a break with a walk along Lake Erie. She took time off work when we buried first my mother and then my dad. When Marcy said she wanted to visit her ancestral village, I was going to do everything I could to repay her kindnesses over the year and make her wish a reality. “Let’s go!” was my response.
The cherry on the cake, as the Italians say, is Marcy is a lifelong Bruce Springsteen fan. She wanted to see him perform at Circus Maximus in Rome, the venue where Roman emperors once held chariot races and religious festivals. She bought the tickets, and we started with that event as a centerpiece and built an itinerary.
I arrived several days before Marcy to visit my own cousins (and warm up the Italian language skills), then returned to Rome to greet Marcy. We had planned everything in advance, right down to which of her family members to meet and when and where. In addition to spending time in her ancestral village and neighboring Isernia, we also planned to see sights elsewhere so Marcy could get a taste of our Italian patrimony.
How to choose the highlights? I loved helping translate when Marcy met her relatives (to say I am a skilled translator is a stretch, but I can hold my own in conversation). I loved seeing the fountain in her hometown where women gathered to do the washing. I loved seeing Marcy’s expression when we visited her grandfather’s house in a peaceful spot overlooking the town and her cousin’s wife gave her fresh-picked sprigs of rosemary growing from the foundation to take home as a reminder of her roots. I loved watching the rolling hills of Molise unfurl from the train windows and seeing the animals out at pasture.
And just like our BG days, I loved shopping for chocolate and treats like the fondante (dark chocolate) gelato at my friend’s Arena del Gelato shop near the Vatican, where the wares are made fresh from scratch every morning and I got to meet his new wife and infant son.
When our trip came to its close, we weren’t sad because we were already plotting the next adventure and widening the circle of relationships of family and friends abroad and our BG friends even more.
Marcy: I was the only one in my family to have never visited our ancestral homeland, and with the pandemic raging, I was destined to take that trip once COVID was far enough behind us. Thanks to Dina and her many trips to The Boot, I knew how many Euros to bring, what to wear (good walking shoes), and to bring an outlet adapter. We started planning a year in advance. Dina and I would be coming from different parts of the country – Dina from Denver and me from Cleveland. Our final trip dates were determined by the Boss, of course.
Shortly before my family left for Hilton Head in May of 2022, Bruce Springsteen announced his 2023 tour starting in the States, then Europe. On our last full day of vacation, my husband gave into my moping around, graciously allowing me to interrupt our quality family time to buy tickets for the Rome Springsteen concert on May 21, 2023. My daughter worked her magic and snagged the Rome tickets (that were half the price of U.S. tickets). This was a tailor-made opportunity to not only see the concert but visit the town where my grandparents were from, and with my BFF, to (the) Boot.
It was in my senior year at BGSU, another raging Springsteen fan and fellow journalism student Doug Kaufman (1986), accompanied me to Asbury Park, New Jersey, where Bruce got his start, to feel the Jersey Shore vibe, interview Springsteen contacts and immerse ourselves in an area ripe with musical greatness. After all, we hailed from the Rock ‘n’ Roll capital of the world—it all made perfect sense. Our adventures were reflected in a piece we co-wrote for the BGSU magazine in the fall of 1985.
For months, I had prepared for this journey by arranging to meet family members on my mother’s side. My cousin and BGSU alum Bob Andreano (’73), put me in touch with these relatives to finalize the details. Meanwhile, Dina toiled on logistics, arranging hotel bookings, trains, taxis, and buses to get from Rome to Rionero Sannitico, a town of 1200, and then back to Rome before our final sister soiree in Tuscany. Just before Christmas, I downloaded the Duo Lingo app, passing the winter nights by learning Italian. Our plans were all coming together.
Dina had one requirement – only take a carryon, no checked baggage. I found out why as we lugged our bags all over Rome and Florence. She had left a few days earlier to visit her family, so she often “WhatsApp’ed” me, sending tips and reminders. As per her advice, I tightly rolled up my clothes, squishing, compacting, smashing. Then, I get this text from Dina: “It’s been raining here for days, and it’s cold – everyone is wearing puffer coats.”
Mamma Mia! I unzipped my suitcase. Clothes exploded. I tossed out my shorts and cropped pants in favor of more jeans, waterproof shoes, and a raincoat. Finally, after a 10-hour flight, clearing customs and security and meandering through airport corridors, there was Dina. WE DID IT!
Hours later, we were off to The Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica, which was more cramped than the flight I took, but as marvelous as one can imagine: The Pieta by Michelangelo, the detailed mosaics, the statues, and tapestries, and fountains. Inside, different services were taking place including a baptism while visitors studied the many masterpieces. Our last stop was The Sistine Chapel. As we entered, guards scrambled to stop a woman from carrying in a café grande.
“There was no sign saying you couldn’t bring in coffee,” she muttered to the guards. Dina and I looked at each other. Must be an American. As the woman disappeared around the corner, the guards had a few choice words for her—capito, I certainly understood, no Duo Lingo necessary.
At the end of our tour, we were given the option to walk on the roof between the domes of the Vatican, outside and inside. We peered down at the tiny figures below celebrating Mass, and the officiant we assumed to be the Pope (based on the hat) in all his papal glory.
The woman with her coffee had a point…about signs: We in America have signs for everything such as, “Watch your Step” just before you come to a small step edged in fluorescent yellow paint. Every place we visited in Italy had small, shallow steps in places—no signs, no paint, no warning. I called them “passi delle labbra” or lip steps. My theory is that Italy’s landmarks are hundreds of years old, and foundations settle. The easiest way to mitigate the settling without busting up historical foundations would be to install passi delle labbra. Dina and I remained fracture free, despite a couple near wipeouts for me. We sometimes had more fun watching other unsuspecting tourists than touring; with regard to those lip steps, fortunately everyone remained unscathed.
I was surprised to the extent to which restaurants go to have guests dine in their establishments. For the love of cheese, of all the eateries on Earth, how much arm-twisting is necessary to fill a restaurant in Italy? True to its reputation and location, everything served was fresh and delightful. No chain or franchise eateries—save for the Golden Arches—only quaint mom and pop sidewalk cafés featuring clear-sided canopies trimmed with thriving greenery and flowering vines. Every morning, we found a different café, sat down and savored every sip of white frothy cappuccinos.
Altogether, Dina accompanied me at three visits with family: one in Isernia, one in Rome and one in Rionero Sannitico, where we explored the childhood home of my grandfather and his brothers. There is not enough space to describe the feeling of completeness and spirited oneness with history. My grandfather’s great nephew Carlo and his wife Agnese had warm baked bread fresh from the oven for us, along with homemade wine, pasta with asparagus, fresh mozzarella, sliced tomatoes, Carlo’s dried sausage—the best I’d ever eaten aside from my father’s—and chocolate-covered biscotti for dessert. Heaven has competition!
Other visits with my family included a church festival in Isernia with my grandfather’s niece and her daughter who drove from Venafro to meet us, a pizza dinner and night walk to the Piazza del Popolo, and a well-known lookout point featuring a breathtaking panoramic view of Rome. My dear cousins also took us past a certain hotel where “the other Pope” (Bruce Springsteen) was reportedly staying. No luck with a sneak peak on that attempt, but the concert was the next evening. And rock on, we did! Along with 80,000 fans stomping in a mud pit of what was once a chariot racing track called the Circo Massimo, we were Springsteen’s “broken heroes on a last-chance power drive”— or in our case, a two-mile power walk back to our hotel with a pit stop for gelato.
The next day, we visited the Uffizi, the museum with the largest collection of Renaissance art in Europe, the Boboli Gardens with the many passi delle labbra (behind The Palazzo Pitti, which served as the primary residence of the Medici family), the Piazza Della Signoria, the Duomo, and the markets, painters, and shops along the Ponte Vecchio.
I have unending appreciation for Dina—not only for her planning and interpreter skills (the Duo Lingo app helped me understand some of what was said, but without Dina’s fluency, I would have been merely exchanging nods with newfound family)—but most of all, for her friendship.
Our trip was as if 38 years had never passed. And yes, travel IS about relationships—forging new ones and dearly cherishing old ones.