What I Learned in Italy

Initial conclusions on my last day living in Bra

It seems like two weeks ago, and also two years ago, I arrived here in Bra, ready to move into my apartment and start taking classes at the University of Gastronomic Sciences. My first day in Bra was 25 September, 2024, so it’s actually been nine months, give or take a few weeks.

A former student told me early on that my program — Master of New Food Thinking — wasn’t really academically challenging, but much more intellectually and emotionally challenging. I confirm that, because in those nine months of classes and study trips and new friendships and personal journeys, I’ve learned a ton and have had at least a dozen life-changing experiences.

So what did you learn, Brian?

Here’s my initial list. It’s far from complete, and not at all thorough, but it’s a start, and I’ll be updating and posting more about everything.

• It really started with fire. The ability to control fire allowed early humans to cook food, which led to more nutrients and less time foraging, which led to bigger brains and actual leisure time, which led to every single cultural and political and philosophical idea that exists today.

• Everything is entangled. I made entanglement the subject of my final paper, and will publish that soon. In the simplest version, though, everything in our world connects to everything else in a super-complex whack-a-mole game, and we really need to be more careful when we reach for that mallet.

• We’ve become detached from our food. Too many people don’t know where food originates, and how it gets from the farm to the grocery store. Nor do they understand what goes into, and comes out of, the manufactured food we eat.

• There is a whole world out there. It’s all too easy to forget there are billions of people on this planet, and each of them woke up this morning and had to think about how to get through their day. It’s way more than just you.

• Cooking is chemistry. Physical and chemical changes happen when we cook and prepare food, and understanding how that works makes me a better cook.

• We are multitudes. We and the world around us are full of microbes, and they affect us in countless ways, including right down to our DNA. We’ve barely scratched the surface to understand how any of this works, and have precious little appreciation for it.

• We are under-evolved for the culture we’ve created. Human beings have not fully evolved from the pre-fire, gotta-find-energy foragers, but now find ourselves surrounded by countless — and often nutritionally void, or worse — options. This leads to all kinds of problems.

• It takes a lot of work to find a simple way to change a person’s mind. But it can be done.

• Italian food is different. It’s simple but flavorful. Not many ingredients, but cooked and blended and used in specific ways that make it better. I am still thinking about the phenomenal couscous meal I had on my trip to Sicily last week — I never dreamed something as simple as couscous could be so memorable.

• Our strengths are our weaknesses, just as each technological advance can lead to great tragedy. From farming to building cities to modern medicine to artificial intelligence, we always create super-sharp double-edged swords.

• Storytelling is a powerful tool. When well-crafted, it can change minds and even cultures, answer questions and create new ones, advance thinking and ideas, and enable a range of emotions. Stories are all around us, but few people notice them.

• Indigenous people were right. They understood the world, how to be part of it, and how to live in it, sustainably and happily. Much of this knowledge and understanding has been lost, or destroyed.

• It’s all about food and cooking. Preparing real food can help us better connect with our world, give us purpose and pleasure, and enhance every part of our physical and cultural health.

I’m glad I allowed a long weekend to prepare to move, because I’ve used it all. Packing was exceedingly difficult, winnowing down my possessions with what I think I’ll need in Barcelona, and what I know I’ll bring home later. I purged a lot, donated two bags of clothing to a local church (there is not a lot of poverty in Italy, or Western Europe, so there are few charities that collect such things), left a bunch of spices and condiments to the shared pantry on campus (I wish it would have been there when I arrive, but pay it forward, right?), and gave two bags of groceries to my neighbor to help sustain his two teenage boys.

I said goodbye to things I leave for my landlord and realtor — the coffee maker so carefully selected, the immersion blender/food processor that puréed many meals, the cheap guitar that entertained me and probably irritated my neighbor. I tossed the soparito (you will hear more about this soon) I’ve been using since I first made it in November, but I saved a bit of sourdough starter (from January) in hopes of continuing Sunday pancakes and pizza in Barcelona. I bid farewell to my plants — some of my herbs went home with a classmate, others, with my miraculously still-alive houseplants, will be left in the flat. Hopefully some things will be here for the next tenant, and he or she won’t have to find sheets and towels the day they arrive.

So now I have two heavy-but-wheeled suitcases, a duffle, a backpack, and one or two other bags that I’ll wrassle to the train station early tomorrow, and switch trains once in Torino and again in Lyon, France. I’ll arrive in Barcelona, via three leisurely and relaxing and transitioning trains, around 7:30p, where Anna will pick me up and deliver me as close as possible (because of the pedestrian-only zone) to the cat-flat to deposit my luggage. Then I officially move in the next day, start living in Barcelona, Spain (!!!), and begin my internship sometime after that.

And I still have to decide what to re-name this newsletter. Any ideas?

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