Once more, thanks to Ale, Antonio, Chiara, Claudio, Conrad, Emanuele, Luca, Martino, Maurizio, Roberto, Robi: this is for you. 'Cause we made a promise, we swore we'd always remember: no retreat, baby, no surrender...
Start from the end, as usual. On the contrary, actually begins with a little 'time after the end, just the morning of October 23. Or rather, from lunchtime on 23 October, when my father comes to wake up and I do not know to what strange reason they are convinced of being in bed in my old house, the one where we now live in my paternal grandparents, and that the sunlight coming from behind me, as in my old room, instead of the door to my right. It is a strange thing, which I had never happened before, and that strikes me, as if all this crazy trip was just a dream (in fact my countdown of the departure read: My American Dream), and indeed, as if everything that happened to me over the past three years, from that blessed October 8, 2006, had been a fantasy, and it was eventually arrived in the morning, time to get up and start again life, the * real *. The fact is that everything has a precise match, and this is more than any other thing that left me puzzled, because 2006 was also the year when we moved into this new house, bigger, where my grandparents lived there first. That is to say that I do not believe in coincidences, especially in this kind of coincidences. Among other things, in the early afternoon of that day when I was running out to fix mesh different, and generally trying to put some 'order in the room, listening to Brand New Day that Joshua Radin (was also at the Hard Rock Calling this year, I later discovered), which has a couple of verses very responsive to how I feel right now: It's a brand new day, for the first time in Such A long, long time I know I'll be okay . And then, just as those words rang me are turned towards the opposite building (* sigh *) and a rainbow appeared in the sky big beautiful (and yes, I know it seems a typical scene from the movie, but it really happened) . Okay, the trip is over, I'm back in Italy, but as I say, I go back to the person changed, head high, and with a couple of important achievements in more. Not bad, actually, to be "just" a journey.
On October 7, all these things do not yet know, nor I would ever come to imagine, including making the commitment, while I am sleepless tossing and turning in bed in the middle of the night, with a ridiculous hot enough outside, I had some thought at the head, except that I finally saw this land America with my own eyes and not through photographs or videos of others who were. And this was in itself a great thing, if you think that my love story with the new continent begins with far more time than three years since my father took me to see Toy Story at the cinema and I fell in love, before Woody lived in the house where Andy and his family, a typical American house, so to speak, of course white. That was the spark, which in the years after other episodes more or less significant than they took me to learn more about the capitals of American states to the provincial Italian. Then 16 years old On The Road had come to shed new gasoline on a fire that actually had in recent times a bit 'weakening, because beliefs a little' details that I had printed on his head, and from that moment I was clear that it was not London calling, but the land that stretches from New York to Los Angeles.
When outside turns to day, I get up on him with an agitation that I do not know how to explain, he even think that it is a kind of fear for the long flight, or to find the fact that so many miles away from home, trying to distract me get dressed and go before mine in the English Steps, where I have an appointment with Clare, with a strange feeling of deja-vu because we had done exactly the same things a little less than three months ago, when after the concert in Rome had to fly to Turin .
Between breakfast and barely got it down the story of food from Italy to be delivered overseas half we arrive at Heathrow, where it obviously already embarkation-storage problems begin: the type over the dealer is asking us the code ESTA, we look briefly banned, before you answer, frankly, we did not, since the site was expressly told that it was not necessary to take him back, "No, no," she repeats, "Now you can not give it to me, but once there I'll ask. " Panico. Luckily I had decided to bring my pc back, and with the key we redo the procedure and time to write good code (infinite) past the critical time we take two sandwiches and head to the check-in: panic # 2, row mileage and (of course) confusing, with only four open ports. Let's look at the clock and we realize that is terribly late, are 12:30, and so, for the series "The Springsteen and the code" and the suggestion of my father, jump like the most normal thing in the world (or like someone holding the same place there before) something like five hundred people lined up outside the check-in, so that there remains little in front of a hundred. Twenty minutes later we run to our boarding gate with sweatshirts and backpacks in hand, but when we get there we see it closed: panic # 3; luckily at that moment we hear our names resound in the air, we turn and identify the ' employees who speak into the microphone: the last hundred meters at breakneck speed, we send you the documents and with an expression somewhere between disgusted snob and condemn us: "Thank God you arrived, you were deleting", and in my head ill was followed by a devilish laugh Dracula style. Another ride to the entrance (dramatic) on the plane, before getting exhausted on our seats (also forgetting to turn off cell phones and buckle up) and try to resume a regular breathing. We look at him and think that if this is not even on the first day ... For the series (and the fact was never more appropriate): " We can make it if we run . After two minutes the plane takes off. During the flight, at some point you approach a lady, my peeps pads of translations that Chiara was reading, and ecstatic states, "What precise calligraphy (dance, nda ), I wish I could write like that! What are poems? "To which we look at each other puzzled, before replying:" No, I have not written myself, are ... er, text ..."; she is still a bit 'to secure the sheet, and then goes away: find out shortly after that she was a hostess, but without a uniform is always a hostess. The rest of the flight path goes quiet, and I think to myself that fate has a really strange way to take their revenge, making a stop right in Paris: in 2007, Magic Tour at the beginning, I was made to convince to buy a ticket for December 17 of the show just Paris, the penultimate leg of the European Union, among other things, but a week before I had heard that there would be 18 task in math class, moved to another date I do not even remember why, it did not at first seemed to me a problem, not even be there without thinking much about I decided that I would have jumped as if nothing had happened, but then recover it later, but unfortunately there happened in those ten days the class council, where even before that time had never talked about anything, the math teacher came out of the speech task in class, and my father who was representing the parents of course heard of it, and that in short words the poor French trip went to hell in a hurry, and even if my father saw me down in an impressive way, said that if I found two tickets to London (two days later) I would have accompanied him, was not sufficient to do anything because the Tickets were obviously impossible to find, so I spent the 17 night locked in my room with the pc off and me in bed to feel It's My Life and No Surrender in rotation for two hours in a row, the duration of the show, more or less. The next day, finished the task (which, for the record, I say be not only the worst result in five years of high school, but even my lowest score ever), I took those two yellow cards and we wrote above, with black permanent marker: " We busted out of class, Had To Get Away From These fools, we learned more from a three-minute record baby, Than We Learned EVER IN SCHOOL! "and as a sort of ritual, it burned a little bit on the short side and I promised myself that I would never miss a concert, never from that moment on I would let someone or something you put something between me and my passions. This whole story reminds me just at that moment, and it makes me a strange feeling, because usually if there are any coincidences, the returns in my life I realize now, but back in August when we had booked the flight and had bed of the airport in Paris, was not on any bell in my head (although it can be explained in part whereas there that afternoon we decided to buy a ticket in the middle of a tug-general, thinking about everything and the opposite of everything on the length of the period and any possible implications and consequences) . I am exempt from this accumulation of memories by the return of the hostess without uniform, who came to check if we had their seatbelts fastened, the seat upright and closed the coffee table, "we are going to land," took the opportunity to ask ourselves if these songs the we had to sing after we exchanged a look with amusement, the answer yes.
The Charles De Gaulle turns out to be a great bell'aeroporto, but of little practical if you're in a hurry and you have to go from one terminal to another, from a map that we had been given to Heathrow we had more or less understood that the boarding of the flight to New York was the E, ie in front of 'F, the one where we're coming out now: shame "in front" corresponds to something like a mile, a mile to go strictly on foot and that includes have to return to all controls (in Italy when we were told that no, we should not) run, then go over the controls (thank goodness there was no confusion in Rome), we note that the flight, very obviously, is delayed by half an hour, and mistakenly think we have some ' time to go to the bathroom and get something to eat, since the food given to us on the plane had been branded as an "unidentified." Yeah, right. The time to get out of the bathroom and we see that the queue for boarding the flight to New York moves already: farewell meal, we put in the queue and after about twenty minutes we sat in our seats, which with one stroke of luck are not indifferent sull'Upper Desk, a sort of second class that resembles the first, we have window seat, the seats are large and comfortable, there is space between each row and the other, we can also put things on the side and are also waiting for pillow and blanket. This is because not only traveling on an airliner, but the big beast is a Boeing 747-400, just like those you see in the movies! Needless to say, I take a dozen pictures in a couple of minutes, the only word that comes from the mouth for a while 'time is: "Figaaaaaaaaaaaataaaaaaaaa !!!", which also makes it very well my mood that moment I had never been beyond Europe, of course, is found on a thing like that maybe helped me to really achieve, for the first time, that yes, indeed I was really going to America was not a fancy that.
The Boeing 747-400 on the Paris-New York
Chiara and me before leaving 
* Lunch * Remains of unidentified servitoci on the flight to NY
Eight hour trip pass more or less so, between my exclamation of surprise to the other, for the most disparate things: the ability to choose between five or six films in their original brand new (I reviewed Whatever Works of Woody Allen at a distance of ten days after I had seen at home), the food served at regular intervals, the display with the reporting of miles covered, the remaining, outside temperature, time to destination and the departure, the question on which we traveled and altitude, a snowflake that is printed on the window and remains there until landing and other nice things about this line, and after that you see for the first time maybe I am a bit 'banal, but so be it. Needless to say, even to talk to sleep with all that stuff to see and remember. During the flight the aircraft had caught up, so we landed at 7 pm at the John F. Kennedy of New York City, ladies and gentlemen. But one thing I will never forget is when the plane began to fall more and more, and the window I began to glimpse the rugged coast of Maine before, and then Long Island, and then decreased as the proportion, all the roads, and diners, and neon signs, and parking lots, and houses, el ' ocean, and offshore buoys, ships and military ... In short, all amabaradà n you see in the movies and always belonged to my imagination I saw the American materialized there, before my eyes, like a kind of plastic on the move, and then I thought, "Shit, this is America "with a lump in my throat absurd, that there really is not that just put me to cry with my face stuck to the frosted window, looking all these things, and while the sun was setting and placid red horizon, giving a more mystical aura to everything that was delineating landscape before my eyes. And here, the plane's engines shut off, the captain warned us that we have reached, people begins to rise: in shock I put on my jacket, and then the leather jacket, I stand up, take a backpack that Clare gives me, I go down the stairs, walk through the corridor that leads to acceptance, I'm in line to pass the checks, holding the two layers immigration officers that they had completed during the flight, there are three TV on and tuned in on CNN, with subtitles, where two columnists talk the increase of crime in Chicago, the row is longish, but hey, this is America, in the blink of an eye open another four or five inputs and you're done, after a few minutes it's our turn. We ask for the documents (and no, the code did not need their ESTA), the two layers, a few signature, photograph it, we take the fingerprints of both hands, asking if we are there for tourism, at which time I can escape from was absorbed as I was and still say, "No, we've like to see Springsteen Some shows ...", and type the word Springsteen smiles, says something like" Wonderful ", it returns the documents with the green card stapled inside and wishes us "Enjoy your shows." Yes, this is America, baby.
recovered almost immediately from the area we leave the baggage acceptance, not without a moment of panic when they stop us and ask us shortly before we deliver the food, "No" to respond with honest and sincere, the type and trusts let us go, fifty yards and we are in terminal B, the time of a call and rinsed Ale and Claudio on the phone, they arrived almost four hours ago and are in New York, around and after a short consultation, we decide that there is nothing to take the train and metro with all the luggage together, and we opt to stay at the airport waiting for Mauritius and Antonio, whose plane landed in Amsterdam for 8, and once set try to reach our motel in some way, somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. So we come to the board where there are written for flights arriving and check the time: no, let's try provenance: none; we look puzzled, I could not believe that the end may have done on a flight from Amsterdam, we found after that it only showed the board incoming flights at that terminal (which by the way we felt was the only one for flights outside) and that in total there were more than ten terminals. Having established this, and laughing about, let us go on chairs and wait for the arrival of our fellow adventurers, who arrive an hour later. Just the time greeting and throw down something that we're out ... then go back ten seconds later: cabbage, that icy wind! We choose to do so the way to take a taxi from the inside, we go out, there is one out there waiting for us, we ask the price to go to New Jersey (who the heck is in New Jersey, not just landed in America!?) , splitting the race there are $ 10 each, accept and install on. Being aboard a yellow cab in New York is another of those things that are priceless for me, for obvious reasons, I look inside every detail as if I were watching a famous painting. The taxi driver side, but the time to enter the stream of cars approaching, he asked Maurice if he knows who sits in front of the phone number and zip code of where we want to go, fortunately he had with him in the trunk but there 's had: been for me, I would have stayed at JFK, not only because I did not even address this motel, but even I had indicated earlier in Italy and then to immigration at the airport as a residence for the period of residence address a pastry (which I had with me only and exclusively because they had launched a pastry with the tastes of our favorites). Off again, this time permanently. The two speak a bit in front ', the taxi driver asks where we come from, is a question and then puts on a CD of Latin music, and takes the time on the inside of the car roof, the scene of a paradox for us, but soon discover that this is the everyday life around here, for a bit 'Resume and when I say that you can not turn off and I am enchanted to watch the traffic, until I realize that we are on a road with a sign saying: "Manhattan." At first I did not say anything, maybe the road is so named and has nothing to do with New York, who knows? I have just arrived, I can not pretend to know myself already moving, of course!, I think, and I go back to savor the journey. Ten minutes later the man the wheel comes up with a phrase like: "I'm taking a ride in New York, okay?" who keeps silent consents have thought, mistaking our silence puzzled with an affirmative answer, and so in a quarter ' now we come to Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building and Times Square (from a somewhat 'angle, but oh well), yet what strikes me most are the buildings, those with fire escapes so special, the gates to reach them you have to climb a few steps, the curtains drawn, the deserted streets with cars parked near the curb, the plants on the windowsills ... Again, all my American imagination become reality, given finally with my own eyes, with images that overlap in my mind of films ranging from "You've Got Mail (You've Got Mail) to New York New York via West Side Story, and so on: they are so delighted that I can hardly breathe. Soon after, however, we leave behind New York, and quickly flip the Lincoln Tunnel, and we're in New Jersey, this land that for the vast majority of people do not count for anything and that the rest of America gets around to us and milestone imperative that we make a little 'home from home in these two weeks. Now, however, the fatigue began to be felt, I still look out the window but without the things I remain impressed in mind but when we pass at Giants Stadium, in fact, AI Giants Stadium, because in addition to the old building with the blue sign and the banner of the concerts there is also illuminated the new, rising to no more than five feet distance on the other hand, is a moment, the time to realize it and we are already over, nothing around, and a few minutes later the taxi driver turns, exits the Turnpike and approached the entrance of our Comfort Inn. A little 'displaced by the lights after so much darkness, out of the car and retrieved the luggage, we pay for and the type tells us they are $ 15 each, not 10, the explanation is simple, the extras are $ 5 tip, which learn quickly America gives you always, no matter who you think. We're not there to discuss, and we pay we get, we make a rapid check-in and go to room, time to open the bags and throw on the bed or near (in the room there were two!) Arriving at Ale and Claudio leave their luggage, and tell us that going to take some photos to the Giants in the evening, we go together? We decline the invitation, see you tomorrow, we are very tired, but one thing I can not resist, I turn on the TV, are a quarter to eleven, beak Letterman on CBS, and I can not help but smile: yes, it is true, this is just America ...
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