CIAO BELLA

But all dreams dissolve in waking hours and when uttered aloud in the stark light of day suddenly seem like madness. We didn’t speak Italian. We knew no one in Italy; in fact, we had only been in the country for a few weeks on rose-tinted, aperol-spritz-toasting, basil scented holidays. My parents hated the idea. I also had the best job in the world: hosting a top-rating afternoon drive radio show with my friend and colleague of eighteen years, Dave Hughes – in Australia. Not in Italy. As for the children, by the time we planned to leave on our grand adventure, two of them – Lewis and Sunday – would be teenagers, reluctant to uproot their lives, and leave all they knew.

So what we swiftly discovered was this: the world doesn’t necessarily share your dream.

This is the story of an Australian family making their way across the world to a foreign land, trying to find an apartment, a car, a supermarket, a basketball team, a school, a cafe that would serve them a cappuccino after 11 am (no milka after morning!) and – hopefully – their place in a foreign place.

And it is also the story of our sixteen-yearold son, Lewis Lewis. The boy who lived. The child who at six was diagnosed with childhood leukaemia and survived – and who, because of this, was the unwitting motivation behind our bold move. The deep irony is that, though we wanted to seize life because he nearly lost his, he would rather not be in Italy.

It is about the day-to-day of Italian life, trying to learn a new language and make new friends, and what you discover about yourself when you are a stranger in a strange land. It is about stepping up and falling down. On cobblestones. It is about the Australian spirit – about wearing thongs as footwear and leaving the swimming pool with wet hair and laughing when many would weep. It is about fear and courage; about having a dream and living it.

It is no great revelation that certain countries or cities can become shorthand for a feeling; that their very name becomes one with an ethos or experience. Hawaii. Thailand. New York. The name of the place automatically conjures a mental picture. So much so that when you say you are going there others immediately intuit what sort of holiday or experience you will have.

Hawaii, for instance, is cocktails in tiki bars and old dudes doing the shaka, surfing on longboards, garlands of leis, Elvis Presley movies, volcanic rock and swimming with giant turtles. In Thailand you will float in aquamarine waters, eat green curry, drink fresh mango juice, tuk-tuk to markets and marvel at strange foods and maybe wash an elephant in a village stream. New York is the subway and musicals and eccentricity on the streets. It is The Met and ‘Empire State of Mind’ and Sex and the City (hopefully not the lamentable second movie) in a glittering, tumbling, urban front- loader.

Of course, this is not necessarily the case. You could be in any of these places working as a nurse or a builder covered in limestone and dust. You may be a free-running, teetotalling instafluencer who consumes their surrounds for likes. You may spend the day in a funk, weeping in your fourth- floor, red-brick, freeway-facing apartment. Just as we don’t know the inner workings of each other’s lives, so it is with a foreign country. We have no idea of the way in which it will open up to us, and us to it. And yet we think we do.

Few places on earth, it seems, conjure up more of an emotional response than Italy. It is a land that transcends cliché by simply piling on more of them: afternoon slumbers and wine, church bells and saints, terracotta coloured villas and washing hanging over balconies, grapevines and pasta, and glittering seas and venerated old people.

It is cobbled thoroughfares and picture-book villages, Pinocchio and families in the piazza, sliced meats and summer fruits, and music on the streets and romance. It is golden light caressing – not just the ancient stone buildings upon which it alights but also those blessed to bask in its rays. Falling in love with a country is like falling in love with a person. You are initially tentative. You start off with a few dates. With a country drive; with dinner. If that goes well, you return for more. Magical outings in which it feels everything is brushed with possibility. Suddenly, your heart is singing. You have never looked better. You feel alive – like your true, unfettered self. You are open and happy and free. You laugh. You see things differently. Mostly, falling in love is not so much about the reality of the other person as it is about how they make you feel about yourself.

I wasn’t looking to fall in love with Italy. I wasn’t expecting it. It just happened.

This is an edited extract from, Kate Langbroek’s new book ‘Ciao Bella! Six Take Italy,’ published by Simon & Schuster Australia. RRP $32.99. Kate’s deliciously funny, irreverent and inspiring memoir about moving to Bologna, Italy with her family to seek la dolce vita is a glorious reminder of what we can learn from the Italians about living life to the full – and what really matters when the world goes to hell in a handbasket.

Photograph © Tina Smigielski