My first real stop in Italy was Verona. The train ride from Milan was pretty interesting. There were a bunch of people in my compartment, one of whom saw me thumbing through Lets Go, and asked if I spoke English and if I was an American. I replied (in Italian) that I did speak English and I gave him the explanation about my dual citizenship, and we started talking about Italy and Switzerland and stuff (in English at this point, because we’d reached the end of my Italian skills). After a bit, he asked me if I spoke French, so I moved the conversation into French, just because I could. He didn’t miss a beat, so I started to wonder how many languages he spoke, because so far I’d heard flawless English, Italian, and French. It turned out that he spoke around 10 different languages (or so he said). He said he was a writer, and whenever he wrote about a country, he liked to learn their language and their history because he liked to really understand the culture of a place before he wrote about it. At that point we were at his stop, and I didn’t think to ask his name, which was too bad. It would’ve been cool to actually read something by a guy that I had met.
A while later, I got to Verona, and hopped on the bus to the downtown. My first stop was the arena, to pick up my tickets for that night’s performance of Aida. And by arena, I mean the Roman arena, not a modern one. Every summer, Verona puts on a opera festival in their Roman arena. There was no way I was going to miss it, especially given that they were performing Verdi’s Aida the night I was in town. I had no problem getting the tickets, so I headed further into town to start exploring.