My Apullia, is not mine—but it’s better this way.
“Sentiti a casa,” the bakery owner told me as he handed me a piece of focaccia while I roamed around with my camera documenting their process. “Make yourself at home.”
That’s how everyone from Apulia makes me feel— through words, through actions, they make me feel at home.
Almost five years since I had been back and my week in Italy felt like no time had passed. The family I had lived with then, is my family now. The region I barely knew of, felt like mine. The southern Italian culture I had begun to discover, I have begun to understand even deeper. Its beauty, its warmth, but also its ocmplexities that push and pull people together and apart.
In Altamura I had a full weekend of roaming the city center with the family, watching Italian TV on the couch, cheering on the twins at their basketball tournament, and running into the nonni and zii around town. But the kids are no longer bambini— they had cell phones and walked to school by themselves. They hung out with their friends in the main piazza and would come home just in time for dinner. Life, especially in this city, is social, and you start learning how to be open early on.
After my weekend with the family, I spent an afternoon in the forest at a cheese bar run by Vito Dicecca. I had been in touch with him for years, after I went to his family’s cheese shop in Altamura in 2017. Finally since I was back in town I made sure to stop by. While his partner Roberta and I caught up like old friends (though we were meeting for the first time) and chatted about the complexities of southern Italian culture, Vito made me a handful of cheese-based dishes to photogrph and experience. Over some wine “more natural than natural wine,” we talked about work-life balance, about the desire to create something meaningful while trying to live a good life at the same time, about the south, about the forest, about dreams and possibiltie.s
For 20 hours I wandered south to the city of Lecce. I wondered when I could come back for longer because a few hours is not enough to understand how a city moves— and maybe I only like to travel when I’m able to feel like I belong?
On my last night in Bari, I got drinks and dinner with a friend of a friend and her frineds. It was a real uascèzze (jovial gathering of friends around food). House wine and cured meats, cheeses, and rustic bread. I understood most of the conversations, and even when I didn’t it was just nice to expand my ears.
As I got on my train to head to the airport the morning after, the frined I had met for the first time the night before texted me: “You’re always welcome here. Hopefully, next time you come I'll have my own place so you can stay with me. I’ll introduce you to my family too.”
***
But as much as I feel at home, this is not my home, and so when I stumble into this world I come without any baggage, without a complicated relationship to its culture (that complexity I’ve reserved for my actual home countries!).
I can waltz in as an adopted cousin, a new member of the friend group, a potential partner in crime, and be met with open arms.
So maybe, even when it pains me to leave a part of myself behind, maybe, for now, it’s better this way. È meglio così.
And instead, I can take with me what I can— the relationships, the warmth, the openness, the lightness, the ways in which they make me feel at home— and learn to give everyone the same in return. <3
*****
Una canzone
This song became the soundtrack to my trip. My friend from Apullia, now living and thriving in LA, chef/musician Francesco Allegro made it a few years ago. It’s in a dialect, so I don’t understand it. “Uagliò” simply means “boy”, and it’s a term of endearment friends call one another in the south. (like “dude” maybe?). I heard it every day around town, and this song became the bridge between my two worlds. The video below pulls you between two worlds in the same way:
love this, shab ♥️