Story: Try the Gelato

Everyone who has been to Italy will tell you to try the gelato. Hearing this, you might grin or laugh a little and start listing the things you are going there to do. Things like see the Colosseum or the Leaning Tower. Hey, maybe you just want to have a pizza and ride a gondola.

Whatever. Those things are great. But trust me. Try the gelato.

I was in Italy for a summer exchange program and did not have a lot to occupy my time. The other students, far more diligent than I, were busy studying their courses in Italian and several different varieties of environmental science. I had the bare minimum of two courses. One in basic Italian, the other in beginning environmental issues. Of the two, I retain about six phrases in Italian and not a word from the issues class. It wasn’t really why I was there.

Back in the real world, I was between my freshman and sophomore years at the local community college and was insanely jealous of my friends who had gone away to school to places like New York and Boston.

I was in Italy to prove that I could travel too. I was in Italy to have an adventure before I gave in to the inevitable and settled down to get married and have kids and have no life, just work.

I didn’t know anyone else in the group. There were about thirty of us, most of the students from St. Thomas University in Florida, with only one other student, a girl from San Diego representing the U.S. West of Texas.

It was early on the second day of classes. Every other student was tucked away in the classroom several blocks down from our hotel, studying various methods of saving the planet. I was in the hotel room I still had to myself, throwing on one of five black T-shirts I had brought and trying to figure out what to do with myself. I spoke no Italian, had no map of Assisi, and had no one to talk to. It was my first trip outside the U.S., excepting a few drunken excursions to the Mexican dance clubs just a few miles from home, and it was the first time I’d ever travelled anywhere by myself. Even if there were 30-some other English speaking students in the hotel with me.

So I went out and got lost. That was my intention anyway. I made it as far down the street as the Basilica di San Francesco and turned back towards the hotel, taking a street one block further south. My eyes drank in everything on the walk: The cobblestones on the streets, the impossibly small European cars whipping around corners, the buildings sharing foundations and supporting walls like two old friends sitting on a bench, leaning against each other in the afternoon sunshine.

I stopped by a drinking fountain and saw a small gelateria opening up for the day. Stepping inside I was assaulted by the smells of chocolate and sugar, vanilla, pistachio, and maybe hazelnut. I stepped up to the counter and grinned at the proprietress. She was small, dark haired and exuded “grandmother” like it was cheap perfume. She rattled some Italian at me and I answered with fluent pointing until she had amassed a large helping of hand made ice cream, pushed it into a paper cup, and topped it with a plastic spoon.

I fumbled a handful of Lira, small coins with unknown faces and large numbers, onto the counter and trusted her to give me back correct change.

I sat down in one of the iron chairs she had outside, under a canopy that was maybe red or maybe purple, and tasted my first gelato. It was...everything people had told me to expect: delicious, sweet, smooth, creamy, and, surprisingly, almost like taffy the way you had to pull a spoonful away from the mass. But it was even more surprising in what it was not: It wasn’t sugary, nor icy, nor bland. If anything, my expectations were left far in the dust by the actuality. An incredible blend of flavors that left one completely satisfied and contented.

I wish now that I had had the confidence or temperament to try to capture the streets around me as I sat there, contemplating the chocolate seizing control of my taste buds. I wish I had sketched something or written down my, no doubt, immature thoughts. I wish I had done something. But I was younger and still completely trusted my memory to hold all the details for me. Things like the color of that girl’s hair or whether the old guys with the chess set down the road had actually been there or if my imagination added them in later.

So I wish I had done something. But I did not. I sat with my headphones on listening to Lou Reed sing about playing football for the coach and watching the people pass by.

Eventually, I got back to the hotel, and then to classes, and later still, I made it back to the gelateria with a couple of the girls I made friends with. I ate a lot more gelato, at a lot more shops before I left Italy, but nothing ever matched that first time, in the small street near the basilica, where a girl might have been smiling at me, maybe.