← All chaptersBack to my website

RENATO ROSSI · Complete edition

Reading settings

The First Return to Italy

In the summer of 1953, I returned for the first time to the country where I was born. I was five years old. Until then, almost all of my conscious life had taken place in Belgium. I knew Italy mainly through my parents' stories. The names of family members. The memories that came alive during conversations around our table.

But this time, we were really going back. We traveled aboard a Wasteels train, like so many Italian families from Belgium who returned to their native region during those years. The train was packed. The entire family traveled together. Everyone carried luggage. Food for the journey. Drinks. And everything required for a trip far longer and more demanding than those we know today. Travelers often had to remain standing.

Some had even brought a chair so they could sit for a while along the way. Despite the discomfort, there was a special atmosphere on the train. People talked. Laughed. Sang. And played cards. The same anticipation could be felt in every carriage. People were returning to parents they had not seen for a long time. To brothers and sisters. To villages whose every street they still carried in their hearts. For the adults, it was a return.

For me, it was a discovery. When we arrived in Loreto Aprutino, I met family members who knew me through stories and photographs, but who were still almost strangers to me. Aunt Ida. Primo. And my mother's family, connected to the farm where her former life could still be felt. For the first time, I discovered the world my parents had come from. The place where they had lived as children. Where they had worked.

Where they had dreamed their first dreams. As a child, I did not yet fully understand its meaning. I only knew that people were happy to see us. That names I had heard so often at home suddenly had faces. And that Italy seemed both familiar and new to me. It was the country of my birth.

But Belgium was the country of my earliest memories. Perhaps during that journey I began to understand for the first time - without being able to name it - that a person can feel connected to more than one place. I did not have to choose between Italy and Belgium. Both countries would become part of me. Italy gave me my origins. Belgium gave me my life. That first return to Loreto Aprutino was therefore far more than a family visit.

It was my first encounter with my own roots. Roots I had not planted myself. But roots that would nourish me throughout my life.

Our family in Belgium in 1948, at the beginning of a new life.
Our family in Belgium in 1948, at the beginning of a new life.
With my beloved aunt Ida, my father's sister.
With my beloved aunt Ida, my father's sister.
An old photograph of a train journey to Italy organized by Wasteels. For many Italian families living in Belgium, it was the long-awaited return to their loved ones and their native country.
An old photograph of a train journey to Italy organized by Wasteels. For many Italian families living in Belgium, it was the long-awaited return to their loved ones and their native country.