Money Grabbers
Music venues in Italy, Sardinia no exception, are loud and vibrant spaces filled with inhibitions like dancing in the aisles by oneself or with others, on the stage with no one or everyone because nobody judges or cares. The jazz club was exhilarating and for a moment I felt myself slip out of my body and into a perfectly choreographed movie. A movie set in a small Italian town with no Americans whatsoever but me — solo io — and here the isolation was thrilling! I loved being here alone. I drifted back to my bartending days in Rochester, New York with low lights and dank basement night clubs open long after the bars closed, thick with cigar smoke and big tipping mafia men, drinking shots of whiskey, playing cards, dazzling women with free drinks and cocaine, gangsters beating up other gangsters with music turned up too loud to hear. This was a different crowd however, and I didn’t know until that moment just how dangerous my past had been. Suddenly I felt grateful to be alive, let alone here. So much so that I put down my drink to sing and dance solo in the aisle with Camilla.
Seaside Glamping
The next morning, out of curiosity, we took a stroll through town and passed the laundromat. I noticed a crude handwritten sign in the window and stopped to read it. Written in Italian, I looked it up in my translator and it said, “We know who you are. We have you on video.” I pictured my face on the local Vada news. I shielded it with a shirt as we headed back to the car, running again, but this time not from a bunch of hooting Italian men, instead from the town of our new rental and soon possibly the local law enforcement! The whole saga left me reeling. Clearly my best laid plans hadn’t worked. Clearly, I needed to adopt a new traveling protocol: always check for uninvited house guests! And while my appetite for travel wasn’t going anywhere, my appetite for camping was. It was time for a change.
Channeling Susanna
I thought about the stars I used to gaze at in the clear, untampered night skies of dark Mediterranean nights like glinting diamonds, unfiltered, no smog or light to compete with. I’d push my feet and hands deep into the warm sand and linger over a soft blanket, the one I bought on the beach one day from the Moroccan man who gave a free scarf to the little boy with the hair down to his waist and no shirt on. He danced with his little scraw legs in the sand. I thought his parents were gypsies, but it didn’t matter. Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t. Only at first, I thought he was a girl, and when they told me otherwise, I glanced over and realized that the man from Morocco went back to his tent on the beach to sleep every night. That one day and night stood out to me, hearing only air and wind and water washing ashore, teasing my feet. The gypsies speaking intermediary English to the Moroccan man with him speaking back. And how nobody cared or judged or even interrupted because a common language was spoken, which was Love. It was the kind of air and acceptance you remembered as a child, because it was that long ago since you took a clean, deep breath so easily in, and even easier out. Easy. No stress. No judgments. Just sounds.
Casa di Susanna
Shortly after my party and having had some time to bond with my new second home, I felt it was time to give her a name. Casa di Susanna. I even painted a welcome sign on the metal gate to my terrace with two little butterflies in the background. Once I had it fixed up and fully staged, I took some pictures and put it on Airbnb, the home exchange, and Booking.com. It didn’t take long for the requests to come pouring in. So much so, that I hired a manager friend of another friend, Maurizio, to take care of things when I was away. He was the perfect one to do it—professional, polite, organized. He stepped right up and in and before long we seemed to have a well-oiled machine with it fully booked in tourist season. But even well-oiled machines can get a little rusty, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Poltu Cuadu.
Looking for Paradise
But the best laid plans are not always serendipitous. In this case, I am still unclear as to which portion was divine intervention, dumb luck, or my lack of radar. In all directions there were many moving parts, and navigating language barriers would be tricky. I was sure of one thing though: they were all salivating to sell something to this female house hunting foreigner who was in it on her own. I guarded myself with as much caution and care as a single, female, house-hunting foreigner could, but it would never be enough.
Home Exchange Healing
Wandering around someone else’s home and in their space is far different from wandering around a hotel room where there is rarely anything worth contemplating, deeply or superficially. But in someone’s personal home, it is as if you come to channel them because by the time you get there, you have a good sense for them with back-and-forth communication…Once you arrive, all these small vibes continue to flood in and reverberate through the home. Things that really tell you who they are and by now you are curious as heck, all demarcated by the art on the walls, spices in the pantry, coffee selection (Illy or Folgers?), coffee makers (stove top espresso or elite Nespresso machine?), even the wine and other alcohol they drink, or don’t drink. Books on the bookshelves and the authors (poetry, fiction, memoir, and in what languages). Even the bric-a-brac around the house, usually acquired on their travels, will unravel stories about who they are in sometimes fascinating and always interesting detail by screaming stories at you. I am always intrigued by this aspect of home exchange travel and this was no exception. Here is what I discovered about the owners of the home where I would spend the next 10 days.
Back to Solo
A return to my solo traveling self would only be had with a comfort level established from deep within, to crystallize in an inner peace that only I can realize. Knowing who I am as a solo traveler and making peace with it would be key. As a fiercely independent woman, as someone who never needed a “someone else” to feel complete, I’ve always felt myself to be a package of my own making. The freedom of home exchange works directly into this package. Forget that the digs are free, because at the end of it, I probably spend as much money as anyone else does on a guided tour or a cruise or some other package because I’ve seen the numbers. But my stays are longer, and my experiences are richer. I have friends around the world now, and I belong to an exclusive club driven by a single idea: swapping homes.