Trust Fiorella: there's a life after Erasmus (outside Italy)
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Elisa VincenzoniHere we are again talking, this time not only about (as we did in the previous post) but also with Fiorella about Erasmus, borders and periods of life. Fiorella welcome on Eurogeneration. If you had to summarize in five words your Erasmus experience, which ones would you choose? Hi Adriano and thank you for your hospitality. The stereotype prescribes alcohol, sex, parties, friends and fun.
But I believe that a year spent living in a foreign country is not (only) this but much more: the intention to put yourself to test, the desire to have confrontation with others, to start from zero and create a new life, more mature and conscious. Ops: they’re no five words!
Two years have passed since 2004/2005 and Alicante. Did you get over the Erasmus syndrome?
I’d say it gets worse and worse every year! After the most critical phase, just after coming back, the syndrome gets "more normal" but it always stays with you. However, it’s a positive thing: the mainspring that pushes me towards new experiences and makes me always leave with a edge over the others.
What do you do now? Do you manage to express that babelianity gained in Spain?
Waiting for the umpteenth, and I hope final, departure for Spain (again!) or North Italy in October I deal with graphic and communications. This year I could improve my knowledge in this field thanks to a project sponsored by the region Calabria (named G.B.Vico). It enabled me to work for 4 months in Madrid for an art gallery: another fantastic experience abroad. I met wonderful people and I could better express that babelianity that is a bit too much compromised in my homeland (mainly in the South and above all in Cava, but that’s a different matter, that you know as well as I do)
Do you keep in contact with your friends from Erasmus?
Yes, but on alternate phases: it’s complicated to fill the distance and manage to get to see each other. Anyway, thanks to messenger and e-mails we keep in contact and sometimes we even get together once more.
Did you manage to discuss with them about the subjects that you recall in your "Antropologia dell’Erasmus"?
I did more: I could bring them over to the discussion of my thesis! In Alicante everybody knew I was writing a thesis on Erasmus, they read it (entirely, to my great astonishment) and my greatest satisfaction, when I graduated, was to see all of my friends from Erasmus and my university mates – them too Erasmus students, in different cities - get emotional with me while I was ending the discussion accompanied by the music of "Tornano in mente" by Alex Britti: "They will strongly come back in my mind, the moments that I lived intensively, and all the people that I met somehow will come back. It could see nothing to you but it means that something is still there". I hope I managed to communicate to all Erasmus students that "something that is still there", after two years and – I hope – still after many more.
Translated from Flucht nach vorne: Es gibt ein Leben nach Erasmus