Volare: To Fly
Polignano a Mare, home of Domenico Modugno and now permanently attached to one of the great earworms of my life - “Volare”.
What Fits in a Suitcase
At the moment, our apartment in Paciano is full of half-packed suitcases and shipping boxes. With only days remaining before we fly home to Australia, a low-level panic has settled over the apartment as we somehow attempt to compress an entire year of life into ridiculously meagre airline baggage allowances.
As I pack, an old Italian song drifts through the apartment — one of many that somehow became woven into the soundtrack of this journey.
Domenico Modugno’s wonderfully dramatic Eurovision-winning classic seems to relieve the stress of bubble-wrapping ceramics. It’s one of those songs you just can’t help but sing along to.
I suspect every country has songs that emotionally bypass logic and head straight for nostalgia.
Italy specialises in them.
At some point between the third chorus and juggling suitcase weight calculations, I realised I won’t ever hear this song again without immediately thinking about this year in Italy.
Because after more than 430 days living here, I've realised that I'm packing far more than just possessions.
I need to find space for a version of myself that no longer fits inside the old suitcases.
Sounds dramatic… sure.
Spending more than a year in Italy may have something to do with that. My internal monologue has become slightly more cinematic than it used to be. More Fellini than Netflix.
But there’s truth in it.
Every object suddenly feels attached to a memory.
A road trip.
A gallery.
A conversation.
A lunch with an unforgettable view and an incredible local wine whose name has completely escaped me. Damn it!
Looking around the apartment now, I realise most of what we've accumulated over the past year wasn't really "stuff".
It was evidence of movement.
And boy, did we move.
Mount Etna framed through the ruins of the ancient amphitheatre in Taormina, Sicily.
The Grand Tour
When we first arrived in Italy, I thought this experience would mostly be about travel.
The hilltop towns.
The food.
The wine.
The art.
The landscapes.
And yes… there’s been plenty of that.
One year. Thousands of kilometres. Hundreds of photo stops. Countless coffees and spritzes strategically consumed in exchange for access to the bagno.
According to Polarsteps, we travelled roughly 33,000km throughout Italy.
Long lunches that somehow drifted halfway into the afternoon. Old men playing endless games of Scopa (an Italian card game) in shaded piazzas. Road trips through Calabria and Sicily where getting lost often improved the day.
There were also trips to Rome to see Duran Duran at Circus Maximus. An unforgettable drive north to Trieste for Robbie Williams. Banksy, Picasso and Dalí exhibitions inside ancient castles. Tasting Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale DOP in Modena where vinegar (definitely not the Woolies home-brand variety) became a spiritual experience — especially drizzled over gelato, which still sounds ridiculous despite tasting incredible.
There were also hundreds of wrong turns (no ZTL fines… yet), bureaucratic adventures involving the elusive quest to attain one small plastic resident’s card, near cardiac arrests on Italian roads and conversations where five people spoke simultaneously yet still completely understood each other.
Italy can be exhausting.
Wonderfully exhausting.
But strangely, the thing I remember most now isn’t the distance travelled.
It’s the change in pace.
Monte Amiata in autumn — the kind of road that slows you down without asking permission.
The Pace of Things
Back in Australia, like many people who’ve spent decades in creative industries, I’d become very good at measuring life in deadlines, deliverables, notifications and urgency.
Everything scheduled, optimised and efficient.
Without realising it, I think I’d slowly trained myself to treat time as something to manage rather than experience.
Italy doesn’t quite cooperate with that mindset.
Here, a simple errand can absorb an entire afternoon. Lunch is treated with the seriousness of diplomatic negotiations. Entire towns pause in the afternoon simply because… they can.
At first it feels inefficient.
Then eventually you begin to wonder if perhaps they’re onto something.
During this slowing down, I began noticing things again. The simple things.
Light.
Textures.
The slow changing of seasons across vineyards, forests and rolling pastures.
Church bells echoing across valleys.
The sound of voices drifting through narrow stone streets at night. Italians genuinely do seem incapable of having quiet conversations and ending them quickly.
The strange joy of sitting in a piazza with absolutely nowhere else to be.
I’m not sure how long it’s been since I’d felt that.
Photography, watercolours and unemployed football managers attending job interviews. Not quite the creative roadmap I had in mind, but here we are.
Creativity & Curiosity
Once I slowed down enough to notice things again, creativity quietly returned too.
Not in some dramatic “Eat Pray Love” reinvention kind of way.
More like parts of myself that had gradually stiffened through routine suddenly becoming flexible again.
I started experimenting.
Watercolours.
Photography.
Writing more personally.
AI tools.
Football satire involving unemployed puppet managers attending job interviews.
That last one admittedly wasn’t part of the original Italian dream.
And no, I’m not pretending real life disappears once I land back in Australia. There’ll still be work, deadlines, clients and all the familiar realities waiting back home.
But Italy reminded me how important playfulness is.
Curiosity.
Experimentation.
Making things simply because the idea interests you.
At my age, that feels less indulgent and more necessary than it once did.
Of course, none of that happened in isolation.
It happened here.
Paciano gave us beautiful views. More importantly, it gave us lasting friendships.
Paciano
It wasn't long before Paciano stopped feeling like somewhere we were visiting and started feeling like home.
“Buongiorno” graduated to “ciao” with Pacianesi, particularly the older Italian men with their beaming smiles. Familiar faces appeared more often each day. Italians take their coffee rituals seriously, so running into the same people became part of village life.
And yet despite the language barrier, a sense of familiarity slowly formed around us.
Warmth doesn’t always require fluency.
Nor does belonging.
Sharing all of that with someone you love adds another layer entirely. Some memories land more deeply when there’s another person beside you saying:
“Can you believe this place exists?”
Or occasionally:
“Did you see the outfit on that woman?” Fashionista's note: boots-and-shorts season is coming!
People slowly shifted from strangers to familiar faces, walking companions and friends.
We joined the weekly Paciano walking group run by locals. It took us through forests, valleys and hidden corners of the countryside that only hunters seemed to know existed.
Every message in the group's WhatsApp chat arrives in Italian. There are a lot of messages. I still understand only a fraction of them, but we've made some lifelong friends in the ‘gruppo’.
And that’s the part nobody really tells you about living overseas.
Leaving a place is one thing.
Leaving people who were strangers only a year ago, but who you've shared village festivals with, made Christmas wreaths alongside, dogsat for and picked olives with, is another entirely.
I suspect that’s what will hit hardest once we’re back in Australia.
Not the scenery.
The people.
The friendships.
The feeling of being woven, even if only briefly, into the fabric of a place very different from the one you came from.
Our terrazza. The setting for countless sunsets, BBQs, conversations, glasses of vino and memories we'll carry long after we've left Italy.
Volare
In a few days we’ll lock the apartment one last time and begin the long trip back to Australia.
I already know part of me will remain here.
Looking back now through our Polarsteps map, the route reads like a visual diary stretching from one end of Italy to the other.
But the most important journey for me probably happened internally.
Over this past year, Italy has managed to loosen parts of me I didn’t even realise had become stuck.
It reminded me that curiosity has no use-by date.
You can still learn new things.
Still take risks.
Still embarrass yourself occasionally.
Still surprise yourself.
Perhaps that's why leaving feels even harder than I expected.
Because what started as a temporary adventure gradually became something far more meaningful.
Paciano now has a unique place in my emotional geography. A place tied forever to friendship, creativity, perspective and one very long Italian summer.
We’ll return.
At least once a year.
Maybe more.
Some places leave indelible marks on your life.
Italy certainly has on mine.
This chaotic, beautiful country gave me many things this year.
Time.
Friends.
Perspective.
And somehow, at my age… a new pair of wings.
