Amalfi showed me I have been wrong my whole life

The ferry is on its way back to Salerno, and the wind tangling my hair makes me immediately regret not tying it up before I climbed the stairs to the upper deck. There are only a few people on the ferry with me, snapping pictures of each other and, when the captain blesses us by coming closer to the shore, of Cetara and Vietri sul Mare. I am on my way back home from what has probably been one of the best weekends of my life so far. I’m rediscovering my home country as an Italian who has lived in Britain for over ten years, meaning I now see it with a renewed sense of awe - an awe for what I used to take for granted throughout my childhood and teenage years.

You see, we have this thing, us Northern Italians. The world sees us simply as Italians, but what we actually are is Northern Italians. The reasons are pretty simple, I’d say. We grew up in cold, industrial regions like Lombardy and Piedmont. Our summers only really began once school was out and we could finally go spend a few weeks or months by the sea. While playing with other kids on the beach, you could always tell us apart from the non-Northern children. Our skin would be either still pale or bright red and sensitive to the touch after just a few days in the sun, while the other kids would tan effortlessly and weren’t plagued by the obsessive routine of covering every inch of skin in sunscreen. They had already been going to the beach well before we arrived from up north - sneaking off in between lessons, taking their first dips in March and their last ones as late as October.

Politics did what they do best back when I was a child: they tried hard to divide the North from the South by reinforcing familiar stereotypes - like who was “lazy” and who wasn’t - or by showing infographics in colours so vivid, we just knew the South was the worst, no matter what the topic was.

Then there was school. The vast majority of my teachers throughout the years came from the South - because “real jobs” are in the North. And the kids with slightly different accents? When we asked why they’d leave the warmth of the South, they’d shrug and say, “My parents had to move up here for better opportunities.”

I have to admit, I had my reservations the first time I went down to Naples. Even after years of travelling, meeting Italians from across the boot, and educating myself, I still had that lingering feeling: that what I’d find would be dirty, rough, and maybe even dangerous. Because that’s what they’d been planting in my tiny brain since I was a toddler. Of course (duh!) the reality couldn’t have been more different. Yes, Naples is different from my hometown. But it’s still my homeland. I think of that long weekend often, especially when I need to bring some peace to my overworked brain here in England. It’s hard, you see, to accept that you’ve been so damn wrong your whole damn life.

So now, thanks to this wild new challenge I’ve taken on, freelance travel writing, I’ve made it my mission to write about the beautiful corners of my own country. Some might see it as an easy win. But honestly? Most of what’s out there is the same tired content over and over again, fuelling over tourism and the very frustration that rightfully drives tourists mad. Italy has still a lot to offer and a whole lot to teach to anyone. My job, I think when we see Salerno fast approaching, is to make sure I do it justice and to show that, after all, we are all crazy and unhinged Italians.