THE JANUS
Editor's Note: Presented here are three accounts of the recent trip to Italy jointly sponsored by AFS Travel and AFS Archives and organized by Intercultura, the AFS Partner in Italy. Two accounts were written from the point of view of the travelers, the other by the director of Intercultura. We thought you might enjoy the contrasting styles and tones of these accounts. You will notice also that the list of participants contains the names of two ladies who are not drivers' wives but indeed were AFS volunteers, in the AFS Scholarship Programs. Miki Rakay and Bertha Masor rate a special welcome in this number of The Janus, as does Cristina Zavaroni, a returnee of the program from Italy to Indianapolis, IN in 1989-90.
This trip was proposed by the drivers who had taken the weU-orchestrated Ten Days in England Trip, laid out and checked in person by Dan Hastings of AFS Travel, working with AFS EnglandItaly was different. To get the most out of the trip, we had to relax and enjoy III dolce MIll Italian style. But first, our New York send off at Sardi's (courtesy AFS USA) to accustom our palates to Italian cuisine: what a marvelous thrill to meet both today's volunteers carrying on a tradition and old friends instantly fifty years younger. Most marvelous of all, Liv Biddle's stories seemed to have accumulated an aura of truth with age. This augured our fate for the mad whirl of the next two weeks of long late dinners and early departures. Two or three days we had huge celebratory lunches and dinners both! We were treated beyond our deserts and despite our demurs as the heroic founders of the international educational exchange programs. AFS "volunteers" and former exchange students from every city in Italy, It seemed, competed to feed us the fullest with the finest food and wine to be had. In Naples we dined In our old convalescent villa, now a celebrated restaurant. Our fifty.year-old memories of the place were like the blind men describing the elephant. I remembered the wrought iron spindles of the open staircase, someone else the tiled fireplace, another the large bay window from which we had watched Vesuvius erupting. The stone wall (which I had forgotten), scattered rooms, and stone-age sound system garbled the first five speeches so badly (including one by a member of parliament) that the U.s. Consul and I intelligently did without. But intelligence wasn't the watchword. These speeches were more for show than tell, at midnight, no less. 0Ilss was the watchword, which included our wearing AFS ties and crossed.flags badges. I did one more speech, much abbreviated, in Rome, thankfully at the beginning so I didn't have to hold back on the vino for the next four hours.