A Long Way
Home.

It is one of life's peculiar jokes that when you finally decide you need to change something, the opportunity that arrives is usually the one you don't want.

Someone called about a company in South Tyrol. Already international, they said, but determined to become more so. They wanted someone with international experience who also came from the region. I was living in Manhattan, well paid, established, and not remotely excited about returning home to work for a printer manufacturer.

They told me the name: Durst. I looked at the website. They sent a presentation. Printers. I was underwhelmed.

They persisted for six months. Eventually, passing through Innsbruck, I agreed to meet the CEO and owner. Two older gentlemen listened to my many opinions about what they should do differently. They smiled. I couldn't tell whether they agreed or were simply waiting for me to finish.

Only gradually did I realize they were far bigger than they appeared. A genuine hidden champion. They wanted me. The first offer was not especially good. I declined. They waited. I waited. Another two months passed.

During a visit to see Julia, I discussed the decision with her mother. We remained close friends, and she had an ear for things I preferred not to hear. She said I should do it. Not just for Julia. For myself. She could see I was lost.

Eventually I agreed. I remember being at a trade show at the Javits Center in September, still talking to customers for my American employer, with my start date in Brixen approaching. I had barely packed. I had spent months postponing the decision, and now there was no time left to think about it.

I flew back and started the next day.

It was a disaster.

The world I returned to was not the one I remembered. In New York, I could find a sandwich at two in the morning and walk into a bar at four. Back in South Tyrol, I discovered that entire towns had the unreasonable habit of going to sleep. I had left America because I was lost. Now I was super lost.

At least I had chosen Merano as my home, close to my daughter and her mother. I found a beautiful apartment in a Gründerzeit villa. The town was friendly. The building was elegant. There were mountains where Manhattan would have put another building. And, with the sort of humour life occasionally reserves for people who take themselves too seriously, the villa had a name.

Villa New York.

I had crossed the Atlantic to find my way home, and somehow ended up living in New York again.