If I had to sum up this past week in one phrase, it would have to be “welcome mat.”
I had never really thought about welcome mats until I traveled through Italy and Switzerland last week over Fall Break. But when I saw one in the doorway of the plane, it struck a chord in my mind.
I never really liked welcome mats. Ever since I was a child, I figured that if people had to place a rubber square on their doorsteps to create an air of friendliness in their houses, they probably weren’t very welcoming to begin with. The most elaborate welcome mats lived on the doorsteps of my grumpiest neighbors — usually the worst Halloween-candy givers in town.
If someone had told me prior to last Sunday that a welcome mat on an Irish plane would someday encourage a semi-epiphany in my life, I’d call that person crazy. It’s strange, but that’s what happened.
To fully explain, we must start from the top.
We landed in Venice on Monday to start our Italian adventure. We stayed in a campsite off the island, and it was fantastic. The sun was shining on old guys in itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny European man bikinis strutting their stuff along the park. We roamed the small streets all day, drank cappuccinos, ate pasta and did a little shopping for people back home.
I’m no manager of the great gift-giving department, but I wanted to get my friends and family some nice souvenirs from the trip. I thought sending home some real authentic Italian pasta would be a great gift for my grandparents until I realized that I almost purchased a bag of colorful pasta shaped as male body parts (and I’m not talking about elbows). I was so excited to buy something in Venice that I overlooked the sign above the bags that read “Sexy Pasta,” as well as the actual shape of the contents inside. Luckily for my grandparents, I put it back and decided that giving gifts during the Christmas and birthday offseasons is overrated.
The next stop was Rome. Seeing the Coliseum in all its glory up close was surreal. It was much better than the replica I made of it for seventh-grade history class. It was made of sugar cubes, and when it rained overnight the water came in through the window and dissolved a major part of my project’s foundation.
Once inside the Coliseum, I felt as if I had gone back in time. This feeling quickly faded when I walked back outside and a distressed man dressed as a Roman warrior tried to sell us tickets to his personal tour of the area that would take place in a mysterious location up the street.
Florence was the next place on the vacation trail, and once we got there, I never wanted to leave. I learned the crucial Italian phrases –“yes,” “no,” “keep the wine flowing, please” — on a tour of the Tuscan countryside and its wineries.
Although I was convinced the Leaning Tower of Pisa would topple over the moment I went inside, we climbed to the top. On the way up, I decided ordering the No. 3 special at the Leaning Tower of Pizza on Route 1 in Saugus was a much better plan than navigating the narrow, spiral staircase filled with out-of-shape tourists inside the tower. But the view from the top made the climb well worth it.
Finally, an eight-and-a-half hour train ride brought us into Zurich, Switzerland, where there was Swiss chocolate and cheese aplenty. Although our hostel canceled our reservations at the last minute, we found a place the night we arrived that was right in the middle of all the action. We ventured into the Alps by day and partied with crazy locals by night. With two nights under our belts, we learned that the Swiss only serve drinks the size of your head, chocolate will never taste as good as it does in Zurich — and a lot of other things we can’t remember because they only serve drinks the size of your head.
It was one of the most amazing weeks of my life, but by Sunday afternoon I was ready to sleep in my own bed again. While boarding the plane to Dublin, I noticed a welcome mat in the doorway. It had a picture of an Irish cottage on it and read “Home Sweet Home” on the bottom. Initially, I didn’t think anything of it. Then, when I sat down and prepared to freak out about takeoff, I imagined plopping down in my own bed once again and realized that for the first time in my life I was going home to a place that was not Boston.
All of the welcome mats I had wiped my sneakers on in the past made more sense. Whether they said “Home Sweet Home,” “Home is Where the Heart Is” or some other Hallmark-esque adage, they all illustrate the same message: As long as you wipe the dirt off your shoes on the mat before you enter, home is where you want it to be.
