I met Laura in London shortly before the pandemic began. Before living in the UK, I used to live in Italy. So when I met Laura, an Italian, at a friend’s party, we hit it off immediately. She came from a town called Termoli, in Molise region. We had breakfast together many times at our favourite Italian bar in London and chatted a lot. We talked about everyday life in the UK, Japan, my time in Italy, among other things. But, somehow we always ended up talking about Molise.

I had been all over Italy, but I had never heard of a region called Molise before Laura mentioned it. The more she told me about it, the more I wondered why I had never been there before. There is surely an Italy there that I do not know about yet. I promised her that I would go to Molise to visit her on my next holiday. Unfortunately, at about the same time the pandemic broke out. Travel restrictions. Shortly afterwards, I had to return to Japan for family reasons. Thus, Italy became a distant presence, leaving me with a longing for Molise…..