The vat of pasta water boils as wine is opened and passed between my aunts, Silvo’s daughters, and me. Huddled around the table I’m quickly enamored by the fact I’m eating lunch with someone within five years my age and speaking English in this tiny faraway place. As the conversations switch to Italian I tune out. 

It’s late August and I’m lost, lost on the cobbled streets, lost on my way to Silvos patio, and lost in my thoughts as I stare across the mountains dotted with wind turbines. Their slow unified rotations bring an uncanny sense of modernity to the view. Sitting in stark contrast as the old cast-iron-fire-grill drips directly into the sewer grate below.  It has grown quiet as my grandfather and his friend continue to cook with a familial passion and love.

 I begin to realize, like the turbines on the mountain, that this village is acting in gentle unison, eating lunch, drinking wine, and talking about nothing of substance. It will not come to life until after we have all finished eating and awoken from a mid-afternoon nap. Not a moment before does anyone dare to go near any store, cafe, restaurant, or business of any kind. These hours are for family – and that rule is respected universally. 

Before my trip, many friends and colleagues had wished me a nice vacation and inquired about my excitement for this trip. While I sincerely appreciated the sentiment, deep down I resented the notion of this vacation being a source of “excitement”. My pre-trip hypothesis was correct: Castligone is boring. I mean this not with malice or disdain but rather with admiration. People there live a slow and calm life, it felt unshackled from the desires of endless consumerism and it reeked of a quiet protest against the eternal rat race we are all beckoned to. Its beauty is enshrined in serenity I could never hope to reach elsewhere.

This is why when I stumbled across the four American Expats at a housewarming party. I felt an immediate sense of dread. As I myself am an expat I know what we Americans have a tendency to do, we fill local coffee shops up with a boisterous language that is not native to the lands. We walk with an entitled air around us often neglecting to learn foreign customs and cultures. Our inflated sense of ego often prevents us from assimilating. The attitude of “if they want our money they must conform” has been instilled in us by our homelands, conscious of this or not, it is ever prevailing in our lifestyles. It is precisely for this reason we have created our own term. “Expat”. This term is used as a shield, a shield against the pains of assimilating to a new place, an excuse for our failures to understand cultural norms. It allows us to hide behind ideas like “If they want our money they will learn our language”. It creates social bubbles and pushes out tradition. This is exactly why as I heard these newcomers talking about “How cheap they got their vacation homes” my heart sank. 

 While Money and youth may bring new life to a community like Castligone, in the cultural tug-of-war that will result from the growing population of Americans, both sides will lose some of their identity. And it will surely be dragged firmly into the camp of consumerism. But with the world becoming Anglicised it’s a rare treat to find somewhere true to itself down to its roots. By this I mean that Castiglione is one of the rare places where store owners will close when they feel tired, mothers and fathers can (and will) go home to their kids, elderly people will ask passerbyers to enjoy tea or coffee and biscuits with them. No-one is concerned about their instagram metrics of linkedin followers, or what new phones have come out. Yes it’s boring, it’s elderly, but it’s beautifully rare as it is, and in terms of authenticity it deserves to be preserved.  

Yet, 

As it is now, no matter how  painful it is, I am hopeless to change this reality, left to silently dread the day I will return to my grandfather’s home and hear English on the streets as people gently forget the memory of his father and their struggles, and the stories of families are replaced by desires of Starbucks coffee and stores that don’t close for lunch any longer.