Proud of being from Tuscany

Italy, morning

I needed to be pampered. I needed to spend some time with family and friends and so I packed my computer and I decided to do my work in Italy. I am at my mom's place and every time I come back, I wish I could stay here longer. The time spent here is never enough.

I like living in the South of France. I love the people I work with, I like the place where I live, I have nice friends and a great apartment. But nothing is like here, in my home town. I am aware of all the things that don't work in Italy, of how bad the economy is, of the lack of jobs, of the nepotism that dominates the University jobs, of how difficult is to do research here. But I truly strongly miss being here. Tuscany is great. Not only I was born in a place very close to the sea and very close to mountains, hills and hiking places. But the cities are lovely, people are generally friendly, I have my friends since I was a kid, there are no real big dangers here....I wish I could find a job around here...Unfortunately the chance of that happening is probably less than winning a huge amount of money at the lottery.

The other day some foreigners were asking me about the rate of homicides in my home town. I laughed. Local people say that my home town is getting more and more dangerous...and it is true....but the truth also being that when I was little, robberies were rare events, as well as aggressions. Now, robberies are more commons and sometimes aggressions happen. But the rate of these events, compared to other places in the world, is nothing.

Trying to do as much as I can to come back home or keep living abroad and come back here as often as I can? This is a big dilemma. I see that any person that I know, doing my job, who decided to come back to work in Italy, after spending some time working abroad, is very very frustrated and not happy. Things do not work well here. There are not many jobs and the money invested in the research is very little, probably lower than any other European countries. I would probably end up being very frustrated if I would work here. But on the other hand, I think of all the things that I also like about Italy and especially about Tuscany. The more time I spend abroad the more proud of being Italian I became. I love the life style of the little Tuscan towns. I love to walk around these cities and see kids, teenagers, adults and old people sharing the same space, interacting. I like to have the feeling of being in a familiar environment. I like to have family dinner, laugh together, talk, share things. I strongly miss being part of something.
I have my life in places abroad since almost nine years now. But most of the time, no matter where I am, I feel out of places. I remember than when I was younger I use to feel out of place here too. But now, here in Tuscany, in my home town, with my family and long term friends, is one of the few places in the world where I not only feel home, but I also feel that things are familiar to me.

I may not come from the best place in the world....but it feels pretty good to me. And I miss it a lot. My way of looking at the same things changed a lot with the time passing by.....