Kimchi in Italy

“The first time I had kimchi was actually in Italy,” I professed in my signature joking tone to the group, which was received with surprised laughter.

“What? How did that happen?”

“No way, I don’t believe you!”

“What, why not?” I playfully pretended to be offended.

“Have you ever heard of an Italian making kimchi? Or anything preserved for that matter? No, Italians only do fresh,” Josh paused to kiss his fingers and wave his hand dramatically, “Mamma Mia!”

We sipped more wine and pulled out another board game to play and carried on with our night.

But it was the truth. I hadn’t told this group much about my past before meeting them since there were too many parts that I wasn’t too eager to share. My trip to Italy was a turning a point that personal history.

It was the summer when I thought the world was ending. And it was the year I thought my life was ending.

I was in my third year of university when I completely lost all direction in my life, but refused to let myself try a new path. I had committed to becoming a professional classical musician, and I was determined to go through with it. But I wasn’t willing to admit to myself that I was unhappy in my school, in my city or in my relationship. I didn’t want to accept that I was slipping, but I was drinking more, and alone more often than not. I was making up excuses to get professors to let me hand assignments in late. I would stay up late to study, when instead I would research other education programs, jobs, careers until I would close those tabs out of guilt that I was betraying the promise I made to my 16 year old self that I was going to do this.

Third year is when teachers would start nudging their students into the working world and expose them to auditions, jobs, grad school, and summer programs. One of the favourites of my school was a program in Italy, where singers would spend a month training with opera coaches to put on a series of performances at the end of the month.

Since I knew one thing for sure, that I didn’t want to be an opera singer, I expressed disinterest when my teacher brought it up in my voice lesson.

“Have you ever thought about writing opera though?” She poked. I hadn’t, but since I did like opera enough, I was intrigued.

She let me know that they also had a composition program, for only 10 days, dovetailing at the end of the singers’ month stay. I figured I might as well apply, so I sent my portfolio in November and completely forgot about it when I didn’t hear anything back by February, as my singer friends slowly started receiving acceptance and short list letters.

That year I took a good look at everything going wrong in my life: I was depressed, I had insomnia, I was drinking too much, battling an eating disorder, chronic anxiety, and loneliness. I knew I needed a drastic change in my life, but I still wasn’t willing to admit that it all came down to school and that I should really either drop out to switch programs. Instead I chose another drastic life change: veganism.

I was somehow shocked that limiting my food choices made my eating disorder worse, and that angrily calling out non-vegans online isolated me further into my loneliness.

Like all artists, I had this drive in me to change the world, or even save the world. I didn’t know how to do that - who possibly could? I was trapped inside a mental prison of forcing myself to pursue a degree that I wasn’t happy studying anymore, paired with wanting to make a big impact on the world and leaving my mark. In my stage of life, the only tools I really felt that I could utilize was recycling and changing my diet. And telling other people to recycle and change their diet.

That spring I dug myself even deeper into the isolation and anger pity party I kept throwing for myself. And again, instead of seeing the problems for what they were and finding a solution, I took a job working a campground. Alone. Which I saw as a great thing, because I was so angry at every single person in the world for not actively stepping into the pull beer rings off fish or suck carbon out of the sky, that I wanted peace and quiet from society to be alone in my campground office.

Then before I moved out to the cabin to start my summer job, I got an email from the opera school in Italy letting me know that I had been accepted to the composition program. Knowing that I had leftover student loans to cover the costs, I went for it. I now had 2 months to prepare for the trip while working full time.

While in my isolation, I rifled through the stack of books and magazines that had been collecting in the office over the years. I picked one out about Marie Curie and her research in radioactivity which, in part, lead to the creation of the atomic bomb. Something that my fragile, angry mind really didn’t need to learn about, but I didn’t know that at the time.

After finishing the book, it sparked a curiosity in me so I decided to use my delicate internet connection to research more about atomic bombs. This ended up being one of those “you don't know how much you don’t know” moments. I’d remembered vaguely learning about the Arms Race in high school, but I didn’t pay very close attention and my teacher glossed over the whole Cold War unit. And otherwise, I only knew about the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and was otherwise blissfully ignorant that nuclear weapons still existed - until then, I’d regarded them as relic of the past; an invention left behind in history.

So naturally, I was pretty disturbed to discover that I was wrong.

In addition to that, when I typed “nuclear bombs” into my Google Search bar, a bunch of VERY recent and current news popped up. And since I have a tendency to over-catastrophe everything, I equated this knowledge to “we’re all going to die today.” Which was not very good for my psyche.

A few weeks go by, and I’m on a flight to Rome, watching the clouds out my window and expecting to see a missile go flying by. I’ve since coined a term for myself: “doom-education” where you learn enough about a topic to really freak yourself out about it, but not enough to actually grasp the reality of the subject and it’s actually not very likely to be an immediate threat to yourself. Hence, I knew about ICBMs at this point, but I didn’t know what a flight trajectory for one would look like, or that there would be a lot warning signs in world news that one might be used soon, and that such news would likely affect airspace control and that I probably wouldn’t be sitting in that plane flying to Rome, watching for an ICBM in the clouds.

Something you’ll often hear when perusing travel blogs are anecdotes about Europe is how different the pace is from North America. And it’s very true, and I’m very certain that my exposure to this way of life is what changed, and maybe even saved, my life.

I’d been “warned” about the slower way of life before I travelled to Italy. The shopkeepers open and close following the rhythm of their own internal clock, and that municipal government members will only go into the office every couple of weeks to approve pending items. It sounded so romantic to me at the time of being regimented into a tight class schedule in the race to complete a degree in four years that I had no business taking to begin with.

But I didn’t really believe that this kind of slow, relaxed living could exist until I observed the confused, judgemental looks thrown my way as I ran through the train station with my silly rolling suitcase (I’ve learned my lesson, never do a suitcase for a 10 day trip again). I couldn’t fathom the idea of being late for my train, despite the fact that my ticket was good for four hours and the next train departed in two.

This kind of culture shock remained the theme of the duration of my stay. I felt like every local I met was like a mini Gandalf (“never late, nor early - arrive precisely when they mean to”). Although I was fascinated, I was still too deeply absorbed in North American hustle culture that I couldn’t even begin to embrace it. In fact, even once I’d returned home, I proceeded to fall deeper into my anxious rituals and depression through the remainder of that summer - bleeding into my school year and destroying my academics so much I was forced to take a fifth year.

Near the end of the program, one of the singer friends I’d met, Serena, invited a group of us to her AirBNB for a celebratory dinner. There we ate our regular dinner of fresh pasta, bruschetta, olives, bread, wine, arugula salad. We reminisced on how the performances had gone, and the other composers and I got to hear about the drama of rehearsals we’d missed by joining the program late.

Then Serena asked if anyone wanted to try her kimchi.

At this point, I’d never had kimchi before, but I knew it was similar to sauerkraut, which meant a lengthy fermentation. And even though I logically knew that Serena had been there for over a month, I couldn’t wrap my head around her having time to make kimchi. Yet, it seemed so fitting, in culture of slowing down and taking your time, it made sense that Serena would have the opportunity to let kimchi ferment in her AirBNB fridge while she attended her studies and rehearsals.

It took over five years, but the lessons of slow living vs. hustle culture have finally permeated their way into my life. I value my slow mornings, restrict Sundays to be a “me-day” and make a practice of replying to emails only when I have a thoughtful response ready to send. They’re small steps, but the mindset has gone a long way in improving my relationship with food, work, study, romance and my home. And therefore has significantly improved my mental illnesses and battles.

Although I think my exposure to slow living oversees is what kick my ass in gear to take my mental wellbeing seriously, it's something everyone could do with a little bit of in their lives. Just taking time to breathe and spend time doing anything but rushing out the door and living so much in the future that you lose track of yourself. Take time to ferment, like Serena's kimchi.

And to this day: it’s the best kimchi I’ve ever had.