Strange feelings...

There's a certain strangeness in the untimely return to a home that you've made your peace with leaving.
A month ago, I *knew* I was seeing Lugano for the last time, at least for a long time. Maybe I'd return there in some distant future, a real person, with a job, with a life, with a new set of eyes. I'd look at the lake, stare up at the mountains, and think to myself: Ah. When I was young and wild and this was my home... And what a beautiful home it was.
Maybe it's just me...
Poetic musings aside, returning seemed natural. I boarded a flight to Malpensa, as I had done dozens of times before, and put myself on autopilot. I knew I would land by noon, waltz through customs (ha! who am I kidding? this is Italy, customs isn't a thing) and catch a 12:15 bus, getting me to Lugano by 1 and up at Franklin by 1:30, at the latest. No concerns about misplaced or incorrect directions, just sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.
And what an odd flight it was (seems to be a trend on this trip) the flight was completely full, not a single empty seat, and it seemed that half the passengers were carrying instruments. By my count, just in my direct line of sight, there were 2 banjos, 2 guitars, a saxophone, a trombone, a trumpet, a flute, and something that looked kind of bagpipe-ish. There was also a large man in a tuxedo...he isn't an instrument, but is certainly worth mentioning. And only a couple of them seemed to know eachother. I eavesdropped for nearly an hour in hopes of a clue, but there was nothing... It didn't help that they were speaking danish :-/
Flash forward one flight/busride and I'm in Lugano, like I never left, like I'm just getting home from a weekend trip all road-weary and full of stories...only I don't have keys...or a bed...or a clean change of clothes...and campus is a ghost town... It's very strange.
Novia meets me at the train station, we buy chicken legs from the supermarket, and walk up to Airone (one of the dorms being used for summer housing)
We curl up on her bed with Hercules the animated series loaded on YouTube and our chicken legs in hand and revel in our reunion.
When Alessandra gets out of class, we hitch a ride with her dad up to the Herman Hesse trail, a walking path in a neighborhood above Sorengo where, apparently, Herman Hesse did much of his musing, and did some musing of our own (and by musing, I mean wandering, goofing off, and taking pictures)
Then we explored the graveyard where he is buried, an extravagant array of stone sculptures and old photographs, some of the graves dating back as far as the 1600s. It's hard not to get lost in the vast maze if it all.
Cross it off the Franklin bucket list (you know, the one I never completed despite my proximity to everything on it...)
Later that evening, it was Eurocup time!! I know, you didn't know I was so in to football/soccer and now every post mentions the match in some way...I guess I just get caught up in the spirit of the continent... Anyway: Italy vs England! And, of course, being in Switaly, watching the game in an Italian household, eating pasta, we were rooting for the hometeam.
And I'm going to say it: most uneventful game ever. But Italy won after overtime and penalty kicks, England cried on the queen's shoulder, we cried with joy that the game was over and we could go to bed, and Switzerland cried because in the next match they would have to pick between Germany and Italy...like picking a favorite child...
So then it was bedtime, I slept forever, woke up, got a sandwich from Valf (a little deli/corner store near the Franklin campus whose sandwiches often haunt my dreams) and sat in the sunshine, devouring it with the joy of a thousand kids on Christmas. I'm pretty sure other things happened...but now I'm distracted by the memory of sandwiches and may be drooling slightly on my trusty wifi enabled device, which is making the screen all slobbery and hard to type on...
Whatever... The next day was my birthday! Woo! Older!
I had a brilliant plan to go to SwissMiniature, but upon realizing it was 20 CHF to get in, 10 to get there, and all my people were in class so I couldn't drag them with me, it lost some appeal. Instead, I read in the great outdoors and basked in the last warm country of my adventure (until the US...but we don't talk about that)
Evening came and I dragged my peeps out to dinner at Giardino (the restaurant under the dorm I lived in the last two years at Franklin) there was pizza and ice cream and good friends and a poorly prepared toast. It was like the classiest 6-year-old birthday party ever, and I was 100% happy with that.
Time flies...the next day was my last full day in Lugano. Novia and I walked downtown with the intention of kebabs, but upon deciding it was too hot for piles o' meat, got mango gelato instead...gelato is food, right?
That night we had a farewell/graduation/birthday dinner at the spaghetti store, a restaurant on the lake that is apparently a Lugano staple... Accidental bucket list addition and subtraction...with whoever was still around. Good food, good people, good conversation, a good final excursion in my Switalian home. We strolled along the lake with our gelato, talking about the strangeness of saying goodbye.
One flight to sweden later: greetings from Stockholm.