travelling back to EU

The second train from New Haven to Penn Station is about 6 or 7 cars, again quite comfortable and on time. On my laptop I watch Sokurov’s Moscow Elegy, I have never seen anything by this Russian director, I am somewhat suspicious of his fame to by mystical. I am struck by the images of Tarkosvsky in Italy that open the movie. I did not know it was a documentary. It is a paradoxical way to make my way back to Tuscany. From my backpack, I take out my three tomatoes and some pecocrino romano and have an early lunch as I watch Tonino Guerra conversing with Tarskovski. The sight of New York in the background is quite moving. As I get off, in a dustbin, I leave the knife I have been using for lunches since I got in the US. As I arrive early at the airport, it is still raining, I have a last American coffee at the Tuscany Coffee, the one nearest to the Lufthansa check in area. On all the tv screen they are showing the view from the elicopter of the place in Los Angeles where the private and family service for Michael Jackson is being held. After I check in it is instead the procession of black limousines that transports the corpse and the vips to the staples center. The commentator on CNN are amazed by the fact that the freeways have been closed for this very special convoy. The obvious comparison goes to the funerals of Elvis Presley. As I am about to board the young daughter of Michael Jackson, Paris, makes her very brief and moving speech, is she the only person with true feelings in that crowd?
As I board on the plane the speakers welcome us in German: even if I do not speak the language, I like the sound of it, and also, for reasons unclear to me, its sounds is familiar, and somehow tells me ‘welcome back home’. That’s however is the question, as an Italian song goes, la casa dov’é? At the Frankfurt airport, it is raining, I cannot resist using euros for the first time again for a cappuccino which, I know it now, stands midway between the Italian and the American ones.
As the small plane reaches the mountains, the clouds disappear, the sun is shining on the alpine lakes, some haze on the Padan Plain. I can already feel the hot July Italian sun preparing to hit me badly. Instead, south of the Po river, clouds reappear and when I land in Florence, it is warm, but it is under thirty degrees celsius, that is mild to be July.