If and only if...

If and only if... in Turin

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my life, my clothes, attitude and laughter. I was riding a rented yellow bike, and I was probably wearing a pretty big smile. Everybody seemed to be smiling back. Ah, those charming vintage smiles! Back then I didn’t care. I was skimming through the streets of a crowded city as if they were the pages of a local newspaper, and it made me wonder: what kind of person would I’ve become if I had been born in that city, living la dolce vita?
If everyday life is built on stories within stories - that wicked literary device that makes this world seem more interesting than it actually is – then this means we all get to write our own stories, relying our invisible foundations on the shoulders of the cities we live in, all the places we visit and the mountains and sees we choose to explore. If asked to describe this technique in my own words, I would say without any shadow of a doubt that travel stories are like crammed Russian dolls holding hands in a mysterious way.
Now I’m rewriting those precise thoughts of that particular day, when I decided to head towards the cinema Romano. I’ve already written them once, in my mind, while I was looking around, watching, observing, as if I had to examine for the first time the heart of the city, the mesmerizing downtown. When you think something might go wrong, everything simply turns out to be right in the end, just like in Paolo Sorrentino’s film. But this story isn’t about Rome. Therefore let’s assume that all roads lead to... Turin. What places would he have chosen, if he had wished to tell the story of Turin? Would he have replaced the giraffe with an elephant? Or a bull maybe, considering that the rampant bull is its symbol. Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit. Bulls can be angry and dangerous.
Turin isn’t an angry and stressful city, even though you can’t say the same thing about the Italian drivers and football supporters. So shall we have an Italian breakfast at Petit Jardin bistrot? We could taste the best cappuccino and brioche with pistacchio cream, while staring at the beautiful Grand Madre church. It’s truly una grande bellezza, so there’s nothing odd about gazing. Then we can go for a walk in Parco del Valentino and get lost in the historical Borgo medievale, Palazzo Madama, Museo Egizio... Afterwards we can always return to our modern times and feel like home. How did I end up to live here? That is the question, dear Hamlet.