I’ve left Bucharest for Venice … for a dream. I was thinking about my future, I was planning, somehow, a career. I was so proud of myself! I was standing on my own 2 feet not even thinking that if I was doing that it was thanks to the education my parents gave me.

Than I’ve left Venice for Modena … for love. “What a setback” I thought.  My parents taught me that love makes you do stupid things. And even though I knew it was stupid I did it anyway, because I was in love.

Fast forward 17 years I’m still in love and … I have the most amazing career. 

And even if my job is completely different than what I thought I wanted to do, even though I still miss Venice, I know that I’ve done the right thing and made the right choices.

Last week we’ve went back there, were my adult life started, there were I fall in love, there where everything changed. 

We’ve kept it simple: 2 analog camera (one as old as I am and another that’s almost 20 years older than Filippo) and lots of Kodak TRI-X 400 film.

We forget how much we change during our lifetime. And we haven’t started to realize how the pandemic changed us. And I would like to say that I found Venice to be the same as always but even She changed. 

The canals were almost clean and we’ve seen fishes (for the first time). [Not dolphins, that just bullshit.] But what left me speechless were the streets! “Le calle” where a river of people used to force you move in one direction only, they were almost empty. 

I’ve lived there for 3 years and this was the first time I was able to notice different buildings, different paths, different points of view.

I still have goosebumps thinking about it.