I was born in Sicily 50 years ago, I spent the last 23 away from it.
You never imagine that one day you could feel a tourist in the land where you took your first steps.
The land where your family still lives, where you attended the first school in Catania and had your first love.
I belong to that generation who still thought that your country and Europe, or any other continent for what that matters, are two very distinctive things.
I was the first Erasmus generation, I came back to Sicily and I thought that everything should have been different because I had lived in a different way for the first time in my life.
I married a foreigner, I went to live to another country and all of a sudden, one summer, I realised that I was not so different from all those people landing with me in a summer holidays charter at Catania airport.
I had become a tourist with some lucky insights on the place and the people.
My children were born abroad as well, so I decided that they should have the chance to see Sicily for its best, forget about daily life.
My parents were never big travellers, all I knew about my own island was my hometown, the places where I spent my childhood and those where I went with the school trips.
I am not sure I was so much ahead of my kids in terms of being a Sicily connoisseur.
I used “Take it Slowly” as my companion to this Sicily discovery and it was actually an amazing experience.
I visited places and corners I had never explored before, my boys learnt new things, we tried some exciting challenges and we thought all the way through we had an absolutely stunning time.
I doubt that, if I had never left Sicily, I would have taken the time to undertake this discovery tour.
You never see things in their real proportion and details until you are far away enough.
Distance puts things in perspective.
Thank you Take it Slowly for reminding me how beautiful and rich Sicily is: sometime you need an eye opener to know that you had everything you needed just in front of you.
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