Making the choice to move to Italy from San Francisco was not an easy one, but I knew the second I pulled my suitcase out of the closet that I was making the right decision. My empty luggage was hibernating patiently in the dark, but like a toothache it was a constant, dull and throbbing reminder I had been in one place for far too long. It was an insistent relic of where I’d been, and where I still wanted to go. I was accepted to a two-year Masters program, the initial portion located in northern Italy, and knew it was time to scratch the powerful itch to move, to see, to travel. So I packed my grey suitcase beyond the point of legal weight limits, lugged it across the ocean via Air France (which has touch screen on-demand movies… how far we’ve come), and landed in Bologna about a week ago.

Bologna, like any beloved city, has a few nicknames. It is sometimes called Bologna the Red, for its fiery rooftops and deep-seeded Communist tradition. With Europe’s oldest university, the city has also earned the prestigious Bologna the Learned- I’ve heard the city bristles with students from the fall through the summer. As of now, it’s still waking up from sleepy August, during which almost all store windows stay shuttered and residents escape to sea or mountain. It is also called Bologna the Fat, for its treasured salted meats, tortellini and general adoration of all things stuffed with meat and doused in heavy cream. (Gelato no doubt figures into this nickname: I have discovered a new flavor, which involves Nutella-covered doughnuts within a chocolate ice cream base. And I thought Americans had the monopoly on reckless gluttony…)

All these pet names are still just lip service to me, having been here less than a week. But I trust that over the course of the next nine months that I will be legal resident here (with finger prints at the local police station to prove it), it will become something entirely more personal. Here, at the beginning of my journey, I can only speculate how Bologna will be defined in my mind when I leave next summer: Bologna the Arduous? Bologna the Lonely? Bologna the Life-Altering? Whatever it will come to represent, I’ve made the crucial step. I heeded the quiet beckoning of an empty suitcase and followed it to my favorite boot-shaped nation. To quote from the lyrics of a song recently sent to me by a mentor and friend: the rest is still unwritten.