Enjoy the show
When I was first offered the opportunity to take part in this new adventure, I had a zillion ideas, so many that, when the time to think about the subject of my first article actually came, I went blank: where to start?
At this point, as you often do in such situations, I decided to rely on my good old friend Internet. I was looking for I am not too sure what, maybe some sort of order in all that was crossing my mind, a starting point, an inspiration: just about anything would have done! This is how, by pure chance, I happened to bump into all these profiles, pages and groups where local people complained, to put it mildly, about this little corner of the world of ours. They complained about the long queues and the traffic on the main road, they complained about the differentiated waste collection, they complained about the conditions of the road surface, they complained just about everything.
I am not saying that these problems don’t exist and that we don’t urgently need to do something about them, but, in the meantime, why don’t we just stop for a minute and focus on the fact that the whole world is actually envious of this little corner of the world of ours?
For many years I have had the privilege to work with the people who have been choosing Lake Como as their holiday destination and I can assure you that most of them went back home with their eyes and their hearts full of the beauty surrounding us and certainly most of them are dying to come back, if they haven’t already done so.
Since the 17th century, Lake Como has been a favourite stop of the “Grand Tour of Europe”, the traditional trip undertaken by the descendants of European aristocracy as an educational rite of passage, it has hosted kings, queens and heads of state (Napoleon, Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill), it has inspired artists, writers and music composers (Lord Byron, Stendhal, Giuseppe Verdi), it has attracted film directors, screenwriters and set designers who then realized world-wide famous movies (Casinò Royale, Star Wars, A Month By The Lake) and it has welcomed celebrities who chose the shores of our lake as their second home (one for all, George Clooney). I could carry on with this list forever, but I am going to finish with American writer and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who, while admiring the scenery from the steps of Villa Carlotta wrote:
“I ask myself, Is this a dream?
Will it all vanish into air?
Is there a land of such supreme
And perfect beauty anywhere?”
The “Sagra of San Giovanni” is coming soon, which means it is that time of the year when everything (so to speak!!!) stops, when we all feel we belong to something, when we all feel involved and overwhelmed by this extraordinary event…and what if we pretended that “the fireworks of the island” took place every day? If so, then let’s just stop and enjoy the show!