Author: Josephine Hastings
Woohoo! We’re a little more than halfway through our Italian adventure this summer, and I think all of us are truly trying to take advantage of this incredible opportunity. Collectively, we’ve traveled from the Amalfi Coast all the way up to Munich and Budapest. And that’s just on the weekends. 
Our daily lives are full of reading, experimenting, synthesizing, and computing. My roommate Alex and I have fallen into a little routine, getting sandwiches almost every day from a tiny Parisian style café on the University of Modena campus. We’ve gotten to know the staff there, and they’re slowly teaching us Italian through our orders (sandwich is tramezzini, I think).
One of the biggest differences I’ve noticed after living here for a month is the lifestyle. There’s this built-in care and thoughtfulness toward everyday things like eating and caffeinating, where people actually carve out time to sit, think, or just socialize. It slows everything down in the best way and lets you really focus on the people and culture around you.
There’s something sacred about pausing to really taste what’s in front of you or follow a conversation as it shifts. Those small moments have a way of settling into memory before you even realize they’ve become important.
One of my favorite weekends so far was the trip to Munich with Alex. We spent hours walking around the Residenz, the old royal palace, just completely blown away by how over-the-top and beautiful everything was. Every room felt like its own world, ceilings covered in gold, entire walls made of mirrors, rooms that looked like they hadn’t changed in hundreds of years. After that, we just wandered around the city, grabbing coffee, rummaging through markets, and ending the day with dinner a spot recommended to us for their classic Munich dish, schweinshaxe (pig knuckles).
We’ve also been meeting so many people, both in our departments and totally outside of it. Some of the best little memories have come from random train conversations or grabbing coffee with someone we just met in the lab. There’s a kind of quiet magic in experiencing a place not as a tourist, but through the rhythms and habits of the locals.
Another one of my favorite weekends was in Pescara, where I traveled with a group of friends and stayed with their families. We spent entire days at the beach, swimming, snacking on focaccia and taralli, and just laying in the sun with no real plan. At night we’d walk along the water, eat way too much gelato, and take in the (much cooler) Adriatic atmosphere, a very different experience than roaming around the Modena city-center.
Adopting even a small part of someone else’s way of living can quietly reshape your own. Since being here, I’ve started to notice the way I move through my day changing, slower, more intentional, and more tuned in to the moments that matter.
