A teacher's musings about the places she ends up

His name was Carlo, a white-haired Italian bus driver who owned his own Mercedes bus. On my first trip out of America, to Europe, Carlo became a necessary part of my introduction to other cultures. His English was limited, but everything he had to say was important and filled with life and love.

When we were in Italy, Carlo insisted he take his little traveling troupe to a local restaurant in Florence. He had been going on and on about their food, and would sometimes run out of adequate English words to describe the dishes served. Carlo took us to a little house tucked away down a side street of Florence, which didn’t look anything like a restaurant; it barely looked as if it would accommodate us.

When we got inside, we were welcomed by a hostess, who was more than eager to sit us in a large family room in the back of the establishment. The restaurant looked like a little house inside, with a stone fireplace and tables sporadically placed about the main dining area. For a little, hidden eatery, every table was occupied by a happy diner, all munching on over-sized, colorful plates of food.

Carlo insisted on ordering us a true, Florentine steak. The meat was extremely rare, and the aroma of rosemary quickly filled the air along with the conversations of our experiences so far. Carlo cut a piece of that steak for everyone, and bragged that the whole steak cost about seventy Euros, which none of us could believe. It fed the whole table and while we each tasted the delicate and buttery meat, Carlo broke back into his stories of his sons and his dreams and how he always wanted to be a bus driver and own his own bus.

When we left Europe, we all took a piece of Carlo home with us. He insisted that we write him, and even gave out his address. He invited us back to Italy in particular and encouraged us to find him if we returned. His name was Carlo, and my first experience in Europe wouldn’t had been the same without him.