My Italian travel diaries

HO SOGNATA (I HAD A DREAM)

I was working in Wellington, New Zealand. I was bored with my job at the research company. Then one night in October I dreamt I was living in Italy. There I was in some unnamed city wandering the pasta and gelato laden streets. Strange, but I noted it along with my other dreams in my diary. November arrives, I dream of a map of Italy with a bleeping light marking a spot. It’s somewhere in Umbria. Strange again, I mused. In December, my third Italian dream. There’s a beautiful Italian woman in the dream, I wish. No, the dream is of being in an old Italian marketplace. It feels like another time period.

After my Christmas holidays I returned to work. It was January 7. Later that day I found myself typing my resignation. In one month I would leave and begin my preparations to live in Italy.

After leaving my flat, taking four lessons in Italian at the University, storing my belongings, visiting friends and relatives I finally departed the Auckland Skies of New Zealand in March 2003. I was heading first into a virus epidemic called SARS in Hong Kong.