I'm my own worst enemy, but Italy's forgiving

I met my friend Hubertus at the Frankfurt main train station. It was good to see him, since he'd been in Peru since February. We went and met up with his older brother who lives in Frankfurt. He showed us his version of a German fraternity. Suffice it to say that his frat made many American frats look like a child's game. Understand that how you want. They fence, even.

Printing off our tickets and looking up information on the internet brought the realization that things weren't going to go as planned. We were going to have to stay up all night and take buses all over the place to get to the right airport in time to fly to Italy. His brother shoved us out of his apartment so he could study. A couple of glasses of wine with Hubertus' adopted African and pregnant sister and her husband, a few buses, one hour of sleep, and a flight later we were in Bergamo, Italy.

We waited for our friends, Franci (Francesca) and Benni (Benedetta) to pick us up. Twenty minutes later we found each other to find out we'd both been waiting on each other. It was a good reunion. Franci and Benni lived in the floors above me in my apartment building back in Eichstaett this last semester. They were some of my best friends, and most days I traveled the many stairs above me to share my food, eat their food, or just chat with them. I had introduced them to Hubi (Hubertus) a few months ago, and they all hit it off really well. Tragically for me, Franci and Benni won't be in Eichstaett this semester as they had to return to their own. As a result, Hubi and I had decided to visit them together, which is what brought us there.

Hubi was desperate for a shower. He'd been traveling for about four days straight and had gotten less than 12 hours of sleep in that whole period, although he didn't complain about the lack of sleep. He insisted that it was no problem. He had been dreaming of a good shower, but Benni and Franci had other plans. They wanted to take us to Verona in northern Italy. So we hopped in the car and drove about an hour and a half to the beautiful old town. Despite his manly and stubborn mentality Hubi passed out, and I joined him gratefully.

I ate donkey for the first time that day. Tasted good. I didn't honestly notice anything too incredibly different from other meats I've had. The donkey came with hand-made noodles, too. It turned out we were eating at one of the oldest restaurants in Verona. At one point we sat down, and Hubi told me a general overview of the city just from looking at the city map. He could tell from the patterns of old walls and buildings, and the general layout of the city how the city developed. What a useful skill. We got back, Hubi took a shower and claimed to be a new man, and I did too. Benni's parents cooked for us, and we spent an hour trying out best to communicate through a combination of English, Spanish, and Italian, and were relatively successful. Her father told us how great America was, and how it equaled freedom for him. I haven't heard that a lot since I've gotten to Europe. Then we slept as we'd earned it.

The plan the next day was Milan. First we saw the university that the girls went to, as well as Enrico. Enrico, or Erri, was also an Italian foreign exchange student in Eichstaett and a good friend of mine. They go to a Catholic University that's very old and unbelievably beautiful. We saw a church there that had been there since...700A.D.? I don't know. Older than any church I saw in Germany for sure. That afternoon we went to the Dome in the center of Milan, a monstrous building that claims to never have been completed. It's been under constant construction for hundreds of years. A friend of the girls named Matilde joined us for the afternoon. A charming and beautiful girl I didn't concentrate on the church as much as I should have. We went back to the University and attended a class with the girls. They discussed a religious book written by a famous leader of a movement, and they did it all in English. There were about 40 people in the class or so. They discussed subjects of theological and philosophical significance all in a foreign language. I was impressed. That night we were treated to a delicious Italian meal at Franci's apartment, which happened to play house to multiple beautiful girls. I felt pampered. Despite language barriers, being that many of the girls' English wasn't at a comfortable level, and Hubi and I couldn't speak Italian, we made it work. Someone pulled out the guitar, the girls put me in a trance with simple and well done three-part harmony with good music. I was forced to play a song or two, which a butchered. I don't usually fair too well in a public setting, but when beautiful girls are watching me I kind of fall to pieces. I tried to charm them with terrible Italian to make up for it. Hubi and I spent half of the night trying to speak German with an Italian accent.

That day we got to climb a few stairs to the top of the Dome. We hung out up there in the shade of the towers and pillars and relaxed in almost 80 degree weather. The girls wanted to take a picture with all of us in it. Hubi refused. The girls tried to force him, but he wouldn't do it. They asked why and he said he refused to take a picture in or on top of a church. It was disrespectful. The girls couldn't understand him, or didn't agree. He claimed you wouldn't take a picture of someone in front of the altar, and the same principle should guide you through the rest of the church.

I was brought up with a similar principle. Every cell phone ring in the church was a disruption in the hearing of God's word. Every flash of a camera trivialized the space we tried to make holy. I always despised the people who would whip out their camera for the childrens' choir and every other slightly remarkable instance that included them. I understand that we want to mark the occasion. A baptism is a special and beautiful moment in a person's life, and photography is a great way to capture such a significant memory, but I strongly believe that coming into the church means leaving your ordinary life in the outside world and the way you operate within it at the doorstep. You're supposed to bring the holiness of church into the outside world, not the other way around. Plus, I don't know how to talk about any sense of the word "worship" if you snapping fotos like the paparazzi.

Despite my strong conviction on the matter, I've taken numerous pictures of churches throughout Europe. I had a pseudo-reason for it, too. You see, I don't have a whole lot of respect for cathedrals in a Christian sense. When I went into the Sistine Chapel, or St. Peters, or Notre Dame I didn't think about God, I thought about humans. In the Sistine Chapel I thought about Michelangelo, and the glory of human creation. I have a hard time being called to humility when I'm being drowned in gold and paint. I get the idea. I get how one could try to justify such a approach, in that all we have should go to the glory of God, but I don't think money or gold does that. Church calls us to a spiritual humility and sharing of God's grace, but if high-arched ceilings and glimmering gold are the tools we use to encourage that, I don't know how some of the beauty of the Bible isn't lost. Anyways, that was my justification for taking pictures. I devalued the cathedrals to the point that I felt okay about taking pictures. I forgot that it doesn't matter if the walls are white or gold, if there's a high-arched ceiling or no ceiling, that God's house resides where worship takes place. I can mock the waste of such human craft and creation, but not the holiness that every church offers despite it's astray intentions. I'm not really sure where the borders begin or end, but for now I'm taking pictures of the outside of churches.

The next day we went to Bergamo, where our plane had dropped us off two days before, to drop off Hubi at the airport so he could fly back to Germany and do a little sightseeing in the city. By the way, all of the cities are in northern Italy. Franci's family lives in Bergamo, and the city happens to be very beautiful, so we did a little tourism before heading to her family's house. I've met her parents before. They're wonderful people. They can't speak much English, so it's always a bit of a struggle, but they always hug me warmly and are very friendly. I did get to meet her sister, grandmother, and niece, and every one of them were a pleasure. Her grandmother showed me the garden she'd planted herself. She's 89 and she's still pretty active. They told me a story of climbing over the fence when she'd gotten locked out last year. The baby still couldn't walk, but she tried for us all. As it was Friday and they are all Catholics, and it's the season of Lent, we didn't eat meet. The father told me about being in NATO, and how the visiting American general was popular, and how he personally liked him. Franci's sister's baby was a little more noisy than nala, but she was still pretty sweet. She was teething and chewing on everything.

After a good afternoon nap the girls and I traveled on to a somewhat nearby lake. It was beautiful, but we just walked around for an hour or so before having to head back to eat with Benni's family. They all dropped their jaws at me as I ate a pizza with mushrooms, onions, and green peppers. Apparently that's a little much by Italian standards...

The next day Benni's family took us, including Enrico, to Torino where her dad and his family were from. First we went to his mother's house for lunch. He cooked a very typical meal from the area that included an entire head of clove's worth of garlic for each person mixed with fish and oil. It was super good, as well as one of the most intense tasting meals I've ever had in my life. I ate about as much as I normally do at thanksgiving. Then her family proceeded to take us around Torino, and her father gave us a very detailed history of the city and it's buildings. We tramped into a church. They had some sort of thing that Jesus was wrapped in. Wait. This sounds familiar. Wait. What's the name of this town in English? Turin. OHHHHH. The Shroud of Turin! Man I felt stupid. I had accidentally stumbled into one of the more famous places in Italy. I didn't actually get to see it. I got to see the box it was held in. Cool?

We drove back. I bade Erri goodbye, as we wouldn't be seeing each other for who knows how long. That night the girls and I watched Benni's brother play in a band. They did mostly covers, but it was good and fun. The next morning the girls had to drive me to the airport so I could fly on to Prague. It was hard for me to say bye. They were a part of my daily life in Eichstaett, always a floor or three away. I was leaving them for a long time, and it's hard to know when we'll see each other again. I hugged them both with a little bit of an anchor in my chest, went in, ran back out to grab my ticket from the car, and left.