"Fuggi da Foggia!" At 1030am I go to meet my friend R who wanted to bring me to Manfredonia, where well off Foggiani enjoy the sea and also a carneval in a couple of weeks. It's south of Gargano, lush green mountains, a calm blue sea and dry planes full of cacti inbetween. I already have many reasons to come back and the day hasn't even started. R sees me from her car, parks quickly and runs towards me, we hug as she introduces me to Alfredo. "I like *La Traviata* and a song dedicated to the character". I say "piacere di conoscerti, Alfredo", touching the dashboard in a heartfelt greeting and we set off. On the road, Alfredo is thirsty and R hesitates. "I've never done this by myself" - "Well I can do it", I say in a manly manner, secretely thinking about the first time I tried to fill up my dad's car with diesel not knowing that it ran on gasoline back when I had been learning how to drive and so we stop at the gas station. The problem is the automatic payment system and we had to invoke the help of the guy who waited for us to liberate the pump. It's more complicated than I thought but we did it with his help, although it took us all three attempts. "Do you know we Foggiani have the reputation of being unfriendly?", R continues presenting her hometown to me and I nod: "I can believe it talking to you. But that means this guy wasn't from here, right?" maybe, maybe not. "Anyway now you know how to do it yourself!" "Oh no no no, now it's even worse!". R does not like technical things and admits it openly. She's strong and independent and prefers being on her own over losing time in bad company but for technical problems she asks for help. Her passion lies in the humanities about which she has deep and vast knowledge. She went to *liceo scientifico* and had suffered through it for 5 years, cheating at her final math exam. There was a fine classical high school in her neighborhood but her communist parents didn't want her to set foot there, as it was run by the marcelline order of nuns. Even so, she had passed her exams because her teachers liked her. I laugh. Me, I liked the scientific subjects in my humanist gymnasium but failed during my final eams. My teachers liked me too and let me pass on condition that I cut my long hair, that everyone in school found ugly. Manfredonia is a cute little town next to the sea. We're lucky in that today the sun graces us with her presence and there are many people out, quite elegantly dressed and also kids with loud firecrackers. Everytime one goes off I seek shelter under a bench. R laughs. When we arrived, R put a chain and padlock on her steering wheel. I couldn't believe my eyes, had to look twice. "Who would kidnap Alfredo?" "Siamo nell'Italia meridionale" It's normal. Okay. So on this bench facing Cafe Bramanthe and under it we spent most of our trip chatting. In Italy, she explains, people always have something to say about inhabitants from other regions or towns. "Fuggi da Foggia", is the stereotype about her hometown. "Foggiani are rude and impolite" - I keep nodding emphatically, "but there is another reason!, she adds, switching to a new set of sounds mid sentence. What follows is an unholy sequence of noises that could summon demons, if they weren't covering their ears as well. "Porca dio!", I say, "are we still speaking Italian??" The communist daughter is tempted to enact a crucifix: "Nobody swears like that - except the Tuscans. They are blasphemous!" I don't think I know of another swear word in any language that modern people still avoid for this reason, yet in Italy I have heard this argument twice. It turns out though that R just used the Foggian dialect which does not use consonants and therefore sounds kind of Czech to me. "Fuggi da Foggia..." Naturally my first reaction as a language enthusiast is to ask for more expletives. R is well educated and hesitates but soon enough after having proven my initiate status with the likes of *mortacci tua* we arrive at "kite murrrrt!" and "vaffammoche!" both of which are perfectly fine to use. Grinning like having just been granted some alchemical knowledge, I am satisfied. R shows me where she had spent the happiest year of her life teaching at a school right next to the mediterranean: "You could hear the waves in the classroom". Now the building is being renovated and her private life from that time had broken into pieces and forced her to become an entirely new, stronger person that she is proud of. Like with many things we talked about that day I ask myself if I have been going through something similar myself, if the solution to everything is recognizing that happiness is the balance between attraction and repulsion, seeking closeness and maintaining distance. Sheltered from the surprisingly powerful february sun in the park behind the medieval fort that Friedrich II of the holy roman empire had built here because he had elected Foggia into one of his preferred places of residence in the 13th century, we spent most of the day until about 3pm when we'd become quite hungry and R introduced me to the cakes they have at Bramanthe. We kept talking about relationships. independent partners, shared responsibility in caring for or hurting each other by searching in the other for what we are missing in ourselves and the importance of recognizing that they cannot be a provider forever but need to be treated with patience and understanding when they eventually grow out of this role. Passion and what comes next. She had struggled with a total focus on passion and no reason to stay beyond that but is now trying for the first time somehting new - a relationship that didn't start with passion but intellectual closeness. I of course come from exactly the opposite side and wonder if passion, short lived and earth shattering, is the right way to go. It's like there are no good answers, as if uncertainty and pain but also bursts of energy and excstatic feelings are just as important as long lasting stability and trust. Neither on it's own seems fulfilling. As long as we can handle change, it might be worth seeking it out. The conversation flows effortlessly because both of us are conceptualizing such ambivalent concepts and browse through the infinitely many possible paths you could take making sense of them. We don't arrive at solutions but mindful consideration of what has been happening to each of us. As I tell her about my recent life and the openness and honesty I tried to maintain about my changing and evolving emotions, falling in love with a friend and trying not to hurt anybody or to get hurt, she tells me that I'm impossible: "You're unique, nobody does that!". She arrives at the conclusion that A and I have somehow reached the highest degree of trust and openness possible between two people and is curious to meet the one I call a genius. "A is an incredibly strong woman". Just like F, R also believes that everything happens at exactly the right time for the right reasons and so "F was who you needed at this moment". One powerful thing I learned is that I probably talk too much. "When you talk, decisions have already been made, weather you realize it or not". Even though I experienced passion for the first time with F, I did not commit to it. We also talk about friendship in general, how every meeting is fortuitous and every shared moment precious. I only realized recently just how strong an effect it has to talk with a friend in person, fuse mindsets and ideas for a moment and then go back each to their respective lives. Friends come and go and that's a feature, not a bug. I do enjoy every new occasion for these playful exchanges but cannot help but feel sad everytime they have to end. In fact, R wants to meet the whole cast of amazing friends I am now lucky to fill my thoughts with and urges me to make that happen as soon as possible: "Invite us all to Vienna!". A congress in Vienna, you say? While preparing our trip back, R was undoing the chain and pad lock fastened to her steering wheel giggling. "I haven't told you the story, right?" - "What story?" In short, she was working, late afternoon classes one day and finished when it had already gotten dark out. Opening her car she didn't notice that her keychain had unraveled itself and all the keys fell off, scattered in and outside of the car. No light at hand, she struggled to find them all but in the end sat in the driver seat, reached for the ignition and - realized that she hadn't found the key to the lock holding the solid steel chain around the steering wheel in place. "I panicked slightly, cold my dad. What should I do?? He had no ideas so I decided to drive home with the chain on. All was fine until I reached a roundabout. I could only turn through about one quarter of it and ended up in the bushes. Pulling, scratching and gnawing on the chain, I was able to get out of the roundabout through the honking of annoyed italian drivers but it dawned on me that it would be impossible to drive all the way back home like this. All the 30 kilometers or so. I cold dad again, he said 'wait there, I've got an idea!'." He appeared with a hammer in hand and the determination to smash the chain to pieces. Hammering away like a hero forging his sword, people came and went, watching, whispering and as all the effort bare no fruit, "we decided to go back to where the car had been parked in the first place to look for the missing key with a flash light. It really had fallen under the car. Relieved we returned but of course, what do people do when they here two *pazzi* hammering at a chain used to secure a parked car? 'Freeze! This is the police'. I said 'no no no, you've got it wrong, this is my car and I was teaching until late and my keychain broke and I couldn't find they to the lock so I tried to drive home with it and but realized I couldn't so dad offered to break the chain with a hammer but look! We've found the key!!! The key chain is for keeping others from stealing my car. His name is Alfredo by the way. " Imagine a scene with Roberto Benigni, told while driving home and I remember every dramatic pause, every illustrative move of her hands and rhetoric question because they always came with a slight reduction in road safety due to the drivers attention shifting to narrative mode. And then she remembered other stories which made me hold tight to my seatbelt and pray to the rosary hanging from the rearview mirror. At least I would die smiling, the saint seemed to say. We had been writing for more than 3 years but I had never noticed how funny R can be. Meeting friends is amazing.