Parma – Albiate

MONDAY, May 26, 2025

We left our farmstay in the morning, and as we walked down the rocky path to the main road, one of the cats followed us like a dog until we hopped into the van. It was so cute and heartbreaking at the same time!

The sun was intense as we stopped in Parma for lunch and a little sightseeing before heading home. I went inside the Fiaccadori bookshop from 1829 (located near the Duomo and the Baptistery), admiring some beautiful canvas-covered editions of great works; the size would fit perfectly for my regular Traveler’s Notebook cover. I also visited the Art Nouveau post office, Palazzo delle Poste, housed inside the Riserva building, which was used to host guests of the court, nobles, and courtiers. I licked my pistachio-bacio gelato near Borgo dell Gallo, feeling a bit nervous because I hadn’t touched my assignment for the writing class. I was supposed to submit it that day before 6 pm.

We left Parma around 4:15 pm, so I whipped out my laptop from my bag and started typing like crazy inside the van. I already had a general idea about the story I wanted to tell, but I had no time to think things through or polish the characters and dialogue, so be it.

I submitted my exercise at around 5:40 while we were still on the road. I was amazed I didn’t vomit from typing all the way home. After carrying our luggage upstairs, D treated me to a cup of granita maracuja from the gelateria across the street.

 

Albiate

TUESDAY, May 27, 2025

It had rained so hard last night, starting around midnight and continuing into the early morning hours. Temporale, Mama said. Lightning woke us up now and then with flashes of bright light, and it felt like the room shuddered every time we heard the thunder. Somehow, after some time, I fell asleep despite all this.

I spent the whole morning reading everyone else’s pieces for the class and giving critiques. It was obvious some of them were good with sci-fi. I made myself a giant cup of coffee with toasted almond mylk that I kept sipping slowly until lunchtime. Mama prepared a large pan of risotto luganega for lunch (primi) and grilled branzino and potatoes with rosemary in the oven (secondi). We were so full from the risotto (we had two servings each because it was so good, and risotto was my Italian comfort food), so we decided to save the branzino for dinner.

I finished Our Wives Under the Sea. To me, it was a love story—the feeling of losing someone gradually, and finally letting that someone go, since loving them meant wanting them to be happy; all wrapped up in an eerie underwater mystery. I started ‘Call Me by Your Name’ today and decided to skip the annotation for now.

 

Albiate

WEDNESDAY, May 28, 2025

For lunch, Aunt B took us to Etna Cafe for pranzo di lavoro—a set meal designed for workers, consisting of a first course, a second course, and a side dish, along with water or coffee, usually priced between EUR8 and EUR13, depending on the restaurant and location.

We always enjoyed visiting places that offered workers’ meals whenever we were in the area. Aunt B said this place was well known for its Southern cuisine. We all ordered different combinations of dishes so we could try each other’s plates, and everything was delicious. I would definitely go back for their pasta carbonara and norma. The portions were big, but not too heavy.

Aunt B called out the chef to compliment him on the meals, and he said he came from Naples. When Aunt B asked what had led him to end up in Brianza, he said, “Per amore”—for love.

Mamma went out for an evening event, so before my class, D took me to an aperitivo—meant to “open up” the stomach before dining—in the neighboring town, but this would actually be my dinner. I had Crodino (with lemon and ice, tasting like Aperol Spritz) and munched on chips, pizza slices, and croutons.

In class tonight, we read an excerpt from Leila Aboulela’s short story, “Something Old, Something New”. I had never heard of her before (she was a Sudanese writer with Egyptian roots), and I was instantly captivated by her style, her flow, and her subject matter (we discussed the benefits of having a limited third-person narrator to tell a story where one experiences something for the first time). Once the class finished, I got myself a copy of Aboulela’s short story collection, Elsewhere, Home, and read the whole story. It was excellent.

D’s cousin E came over, and we crossed the street to get some gelato (I had nocciola and salted pistachio this time) and sat in front of the house with Aunt B and Uncle G and their dog, Menu. Menu loved being rubbed and scratched. When we stopped, she would lift her paw and nudge us, asking us to keep rubbing or scratching her. So cute.

 

Albiate-Amsterdam

THURSDAY, May 29, 2025

We had lunch together with Aunt B and Uncle G this afternoon before heading to the airport. I made grilled chicken with salt, rosemary, and smoked paprika. D prepared red beans with feta cheese. Mamma made a big bowl of salad with leafy greens from Uncle G’s garden, and Aunt B made vitello tonnato—thinly sliced veal seasoned with mayonnaise, tuna, and capers. We had a slice of Colomba cake afterward to celebrate my birthday earlier.

We arrived at the airport three hours before our flight, so I took the time to browse my favorite place at Linate Airport: Il Fetrinelli. I finally got my cloth-bound copy of Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (which I immediately read while sipping a matcha latte at the airport café) and Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo (R mentioned during class that it was a good book to see how a writer handled non-dialogue). I also discovered two other books by Italian writers that piqued my interest (so I grabbed them): The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano and The Lovers by Paolo Cognetti.

I read A Room of One’s Own on the plane and couldn’t stop—Woolf’s arguments and observations were spot on, and some of her points remain relevant today when discussing women writers and artists in general. I finished the book while sipping a can of San Pellegrino Clementine on the couch. One of my favorite out of many underlined passages:

“It is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said, or for something very wise that was done. But they seldom spare a word for what was eaten. It is part of the novelist’s convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance whatsoever, as if nobody ever smoked a cigar or drank a glass of wine.” (Woolf 10).

Woolf, Virginia.(2014). A Room of One’s Own. Penguin Group.

Later in the evening, I picked up Call Me by Your Name again. I knew what I was getting into, so I wasn’t unprepared.

I understood that the book’s popularity largely came from its depiction of teenage lust and longing, sexual awakening, physical attraction, the ephemeral nature of “summer flings,” and eroticism. I also understood it might seem fitting for a teenager to obsess over their object of attraction to that extent, where everything was blown out of proportion, and every ‘hello’ was over-analyzed. You were practically falling for an idealized version of your crush.

However, I was 50 pages in and curious to see how Aciman, as a straight man himself, would handle the queer representation going forward (or whether he would only offer a romanticized view of this “relationship” until the end). How would he address the obvious power dynamics, consent issues, and ethical concerns between an older, experienced man and a younger, impressionable teenage boy (or would he, again, only romanticize this problematic aspect)? Would the narrator, Elio, who seemed to be depicted as an intelligent young boy, finally grow, or would he remain one-dimensional, defined only by his lust for Oliver? Would the 1980s Italian Riviera setting matter in the story, or would it serve merely as a picturesque backdrop?

 

Amsterdam

FRIDAY, May 30, 2025

Our first day back at the office after Il Passatore break, and we were greeted with more than 400 orders to process. I felt overwhelmed—it was a good problem to have, nonetheless. I couldn’t handle the pile that day because we needed to prepare for our Dutch Pen Show pop-up shop the next day.

I also found some delicious chips, noodles, and Pocky from Y and H to celebrate my birthday tomorrow—I loved consumable gifts! Snacking always reminded me to take a pause and enjoy a break, so having some Korean and Japanese snacks to nibble on was always a treat.

D also got me a pandan cheesecake from Koeah while he waited next door for the printing of our Dutch Pen Show signage. I didn’t know what to expect from the event. I guessed I would just bring my book to read during breaks and enjoy the atmosphere… sniffing inks while caressing expensive fountain pens I couldn’t afford!

I continued reading Call Me by Your Name, and it felt even more problematic as I delved deeper. I didn’t blame Elio for his wild thoughts and thirst as a teenager, but the fact that Oliver (a 24-year-old man, clearly an intelligent, educated, and more sexually experienced man) took advantage of Elio’s apparent feelings was disturbing, and Oliver’s character instantly came off as predatory and manipulative.

It felt like reading a retelling of Red Riding Hood, where you’re trying to convince Elio that Oliver was the Wolf, not the Grandma; knowing something bad was going to happen and being unable to stop it. It was like a horror story.

Imagine replacing Elio with a 17-year-old girl and keeping Oliver as a 24-year-old man. Visualize that girl as your teenage daughter, with Oliver working for you and living in your house. Consider that you may have suspected what was happening between your daughter and Oliver. Notice how you feel.

I was ready to give up on the book, but I also wanted to finish it to give it a fair chance—I wanted to be sure that I could defend my commentary on it, having read it through from start to finish.

However, I was in dire need of an alternative plan.

So, I’d read Orbital for now—just need to know I’d be in good hands for the time being—and The Solitude of Prime Numbers in the following days, and I would only go through Call Me by Your Name sparingly, maybe reading only 10-20 pages per day (I was on page 111 today).

 

Utrecht – Amsterdam

SATURDAY, May 31, 2025

Woke up this morning to my 42nd birthday, a cup of cappuccino with banana mylk, and a final mental checklist run-through before getting ready to go to Utrecht for the Dutch Pen Show. I brought Orbital with me, thinking I could read it during my downtime and then maybe go around to see other booths and treat myself a little.

I was delusional because, in reality, we didn’t stop from the time we arrived until closing time. We skipped lunch entirely, and I was fortunate to bring my large water bottle, so I remained hydrated. It was hectic, and we were still exhausted from yesterday’s flight, but we were thrilled to see everyone.

We saw many familiar faces, and it was like a small reunion in itself. We even saw B from HappyVintageCrafter, and it was lovely to meet her in person. She was kind enough to drop by, as I hadn’t known she would be at the Pen Show! C also dropped by several times, and she even helped me check and fix my pen nib, bringing along my pen with her to one of the nibmeisters at the event, as well as helping me hunting for a pen tray for A. D and A brought me a flower bouquet for my birthday… they were so sweet!

We met so many friends—and also new ones we only knew by their Instagram handles —and it was great to see them all. Meeting them was definitely the highlight of the event for me.

We returned around 6:30 pm, and then D and I got ready to celebrate my birthday dinner at an Italian restaurant in our neighbourhood, Testamatta—crazy head. We decided to take the 4-course Chef Recommendation menu for this special occasion (and to be surprised!). We also left it to them to choose the wine pairing for each course.

It was a lovely evening, we took our time and talked, sipping our wine, savoring delicious and visually-pleasing dishes (the floor manager laughed when he saw me doing my little dance and shrieked as I tasted the dish—“I’ve never seen anyone so enthusiastic about a meal”), while watching people pass by Overtoom (two bikes collided and the cyclists fell but they were friendly with one another and went their separate ways with no fuss, a few loud police cars and ambulances speeding away, a man and a woman on tandem bicycle—the woman was on the back and she was blindfolded?).

 

Amsterdam

SUNDAY, June 1, 2025

Woke up early today, made cappuccino with pea mylk for D and me, then spent the morning doing two rounds of laundry, folding dried clothes, washing dishes, and unpacking our Italy luggage while listening to an analysis on Hamlet. D went running with P and C so that I could have the morning for myself.

I finished all the chores faster than I thought. It was only 10:00 when I could finally wait for the laundry to finish. I made a cup of tea and sat on the sofa with my feet up, reading Orbital. It was truly beautiful; everything was beautiful, the imagery was beautiful, and the metaphors were beautiful. I read some parts out loud, and the words and sentences roll beautifully around the empty room.

I made porridge with leftover rice and chicken from the previous day for lunch—a light and comforting dish. Then, I worked on an idea for my Aboulela exercise for a while, and brewed another cup of tea. D came home not long after, took a shower, and we fell asleep on the couch. Then, at four, we decided to head out for coffee and reading time at Coffee District.

We had rice, salad with sesame dressing, and pan-fried salmon for dinner (I cooked, D went to get groceries and washed dishes). I spent my whole evening reading, alternating between Orbital, around 15 pages of Call Me by Your Name, and a few pages from The Diary of Virginia Woolf.

Amsterdam

MONDAY, May 19, 2025

I’d been drinking a lot of iced Hojicha and matcha lattes these days. We bought six cartons of vanilla-flavored oat, pea, and almond mylk from Jumbo last week, and these days, after work, I’d whip up my favorite concoction: a cup of Hojicha or matcha I’d left in the fridge for a day, loads of ice cubes, liquid arenga sugar or hazelnut syrup, and vanilla mylk to fill up a Mason jar.

The sun had been going strong that spring, and there were times when I arrived home feeling as if I had gotten sunburned (was it even possible?). The sensation reminded me of those times when, as a child, I sat in the passenger’s seat of our red pickup, drowsy after a day at the swimming pool, feeling the heat of the day’s sun radiating from my skin. The smell of chlorine made me feel as if I weren’t made for this world—that I came from a different place, a different time, a different universe.

Probably that was why I always had this feeling of missing something I couldn’t explain: missing a place I had never been, missing people I had never met, missing a time I had never lived.

 

Amsterdam

TUESDAY, May 20, 2025

I couldn’t stop reading The Waves. I started last autumn, but I didn’t feel like it was the right time, and I was right. I started again on Sunday evening and felt like I was in a dream. It was so beautiful, tender, and atmospheric: the description of the sun in the sky, where the light hit, and how the waves mimicked the stages of life of the characters we were about to read. It was a poetic foreshadowing of what was to come.

The narrative structure was brilliant.

I took so many notes, bookmarked so many pages, and underlined so many passages. The way the story unfolded through soliloquies—only soliloquies—reminded me of those documentaries, when you wanted to tell an event (or a crime!) through different people’s recollections. One by one, they sat in a room, looked at the camera, answered some questions: who they were, where they were leading up to the event, how they got involved/witnessed what happened, what their relationship was to those involved in the event, and how their lives changed afterward.

In The Waves, we saw everyone’s lives from each other’s perspectives, just as in real life: we knew our version of the story or someone else’s version of the story, but never the whole story.

 

Amsterdam

WEDNESDAY, May 21, 2025

I left the office early that day and walked to Spui for my paperback copy of July’s All Fours. Then I treated myself to a solo lunch at Takumi, featuring steamed white rice, spicy fried tofu, and ebi furai. I was an hour late for lunch, so I was hungry and ate gratefully while watching people pass by on Kinkerstraat. It was nice just to eat and zone out, letting my mind rest for a bit. I couldn’t sleep the night before; my mind was full of to-do lists for the shop before we flew to Italy that Friday—things I needed to do, content I needed to film, and products I needed to upload. So, it might not have been a surprise that I woke up with only 9 out of 100 body battery that morning.

After lunch, I walked home slowly, enjoying the sun. I stopped by the Coffee District in the neighborhood for an iced matcha latte, sipping it while reading The Waves. I was almost finished, with only around 20 pages left.

 

Amsterdam

THURSDAY, May 22, 2025

It was raining on our way to the office today, and the wind was so strong that we saw some bicycles toppled on the sidewalk. On our way home, D slowed down, and our scooter scooted to the right, and I asked, “Are you thinking of stopping at Vlaamsch Broodhuys?”—and he said, “Well, yes, how did you know?”

Well, it was pretty obvious, really.

He got a huge focaccia with sea salt and rosemary, one whole piece, bigger than his head, and wanted me to take a picture of him eating it in front of the bakery.

I started packing my luggage as soon as we arrived home. It was funny that the first thought that crossed my mind was which journaling supplies I would pack, followed by which books I wanted to bring. This week’s writing exercise was about a narrator looking back at a cataclysmic event inspired by a piece from Diaz, so I guessed it would be fitting to bring Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea—and I thought I must also have something by Ferrante since we would be in Italy, so I popped in The Days of Abandonment; and lastly, for this month’s study after finishing The Waves, a beautiful copy of Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name—a Picador edition designed by Na Kim—that I found at the bookstore the other day. It was the only Picador copy on the shelf, and when I took it, I felt smug.

 

Amsterdam

FRIDAY, May 23, 2025

I woke up at 4:30 that morning while D was still fast asleep and went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of flat white with banana mylk. The house was quiet, and the neighbors’ houses were still dark. I sat at the dining table, sipping my coffee while scribbling in my journal about the wonderful feeling of being alone but not completely alone. It was like having your bubble that separated you from the rest of the world. It was one of the most peaceful moments I’d ever had in Amsterdam in years. I told myself I wouldn’t mind waking up this early if I could have this feeling now and then. I suppose it reminded me of who I once was and who I wanted to become.

***

There were six of us in the van: D, Mamma, Aunt B, Uncle G, D’s brother, S, and me. We landed at Linate (my luggage arrived first at the luggage belt, the only luggage… then after 15 odd minutes, everybody else’s luggage started showing up) and hopped onto the van to begin our adventure to Brisighella, where we’d be stationed for the duration of Il Passatore 100-km race. We stopped for lunch outside Modena, in Osteria Antica Anna e Marco, which was set in what seemed to be an old farmhouse. The building and interior were gorgeous, and it was so cool inside.

It was raining when we stopped in Faenza to pick up D’s race number (837), and we arrived in Brisighella late afternoon.

Our stay was also in an old farmhouse, Casa di Otello, with a gorgeous, uninterrupted view of the rolling green hills of Toscana. Two young and curious cats and a donkey with beautiful eyes were also on the premises, and I just found out that a donkey sounded like a rusty water pump.

Standing before our bedroom window and soaking in the green hills around me, I thought, “I can see myself living here.”

 

Brisighella

SATURDAY, May 24, 2025

I prepared rice and chicken for D’s pre-race meals in the morning. Then we hopped into the van and headed to Firenze for D’s starting line. We dropped him near the Duomo and made our way to Borgo San Lorenzo for D’s first stop (30 km), where Uncle G would follow him with his bicycle through the night, carrying water, gels, and other supplies. I saw M and A passing this checkpoint and high-fiving them, and met E a bit further down—she was still waiting for R to pass this point.

Aunt B drove our van back to Brisighella through the steep and curvy Strada Provinciale roads. The view was beautiful, but the many curves we had to pass for three and a half hours straight made me nauseous. Aunt B was unaffected—she was impressive like that.

At 3:45 a.m., I made some coffee for Aunt B, as she would drive us to Faenza to pick up D at the 100-km finish line. It was so cold (6 degrees Celsius early in the morning) as we waited at the piazza with the crowds. We finally saw D running toward us, and he was looking good. His second time finishing the Il Passatore race, about 2 hours earlier than last year.

 

Brisighella

SUNDAY, May 25, 2025

We were all half-asleep, half-awake the whole day, not having had enough time to sleep the day before. Only Aunt B and Uncle G were still energized enough to see Torre dell’Orologio, the clock tower of Brisighella, after dropping us off at our farmstay.

I drifted in and out of sleep the whole day, waking up every few hours to sip water or nibble my insalata di polpo from the fridge. Today was so hot that I woke up sweaty from my frequent naps, but then I would enter the kitchen and feel cold, so I needed to run upstairs to grab my sweater.

In the afternoon, we all lay down on the grass and the sunbed, overlooking the green hills before us, taking in the majestic view. The two cats ran around us, playful and curious.

Dinner took place at Cantina del Bonsignore, where last year’s post-race dinner was held, and we met everyone there: A and R, who managed to finish the race, and M and E, the supporting crew. A would lose one of her nails, which had been peeled off during the race, but she was pretty stoic about it. R told us a funny story about running through the night with his headlamp—the light attracted a swarm of flying insects to his forehead, so he felt like he was in a cartoon movie: when someone just got hit in the head and saw a constellation of stars spinning above.