Calabria is an unusual region in some ways "surreal", which boasts numerous records, including many unique.

It is the region with the highest unemployment rate, but at the same time it has the cleanest air and the highest biodiversity in Europe.

There is no mad rush to tourism, but it has more than 800 kilometers of coastline from which rise high mountain peaks, from which you can even ski while contemplating the landscape.

There are very few industries, few inhabitants, but a nature that reigns supreme and uncontested... There are canyons and waterfalls, ancient cities and megaliths.

Not to mention the food: this year the New York Times has even elected it the region where you eat best in Italy: not so much for the recipes (which are in reality poor enough) as for the quality of raw materials. With each passing year, the world takes notice of this forgotten region, and almost shyly it seeks an approach that is not at all obvious. You have to have a slightly peculiar view of the world to love this place.

One must be able to see, and not just look! You have to search through the small streets of the ancient villages perched on the hills overlooking the two seas, without fear of being projected into an ancient world, still protected, sometimes naive, but with a great desire to look into the future. When I left Milan to move here, I was always met with disappointment by most of my acquaintances, who saw my move as a sort of escape, a "spiritual" retreat to get away from a hectic and assaultive place like my city.

Actually, I have nothing against Milan: I was born and grew up there, I met the people who are still part of my emotional sphere, and it is from there that my origins start. But life is short, and the planet is too big to confine existence to a small part of the world. I wanted to raise my children in an "enchanted" place but one that wasn't necessarily disconnected from reality. And I especially wanted to stay in Italy because, despite everything, I love this country! It wasn't easy to restart everything from scratch: inventing a job, looking for a house in which to raise two children, entering into the psychology of the place, being accepted by the inhabitants and at the same time accepting many cultural aspects that are light years away from mine and my existential view.

Yet, almost 7 years later, here I am writing a chapter of my life that wants to praise, and thank, this wonderful place. Because, despite a thousand difficulties, the more I look at what is happening in the world, the happier I am to live in this land. And I'm not alone: more and more people are deciding to break away from the dominant system and opt for an alternative choice, made more of moments and less of things.

Those who have made this choice, as I have, know it well. In my own town, where there are little more than 200 of us, there are people who come from the most disparate parts, and they all seem to have come out of some novel. After all, to live here you need fantasy, love, and enchantment: you still have to know to marvel at the beauty of nature when, in spring, it wildly covers every inch of land with flowers of every kind.

You have to be able to feel a kind of reverence when the north winds blow in winter and fill the skies with rainbows. You still have to be able to be excited when pairs of dolphins ply the seas and turtles reach the water after their eggs hatch. And then there is the sky ... a sky that anyone who has passed through these parts cannot forget. All shades of blue are manifested from dawn to dusk: even the clouds look like those in cartoons. Sometimes soft and frothy, sometimes carved by the winds. And then there's the sea... omnipresent, even from the highest mountain peaks.

After all, Calabria is a great mountain that plunges into water: it is green, very green, always in bloom. It is rich in springs, rivers and torrents that descend to the valley to divide the boundaries of each village. The village where I live, is perhaps one of the closest to the sea: from the top of a hill, nestled between two rivers that, from the mountains, give origin to a valley, I got my house.

A classic local house, built with river stones, with walls almost a meter thick, surrounded by trees, centuries-old oaks, and lots and lots of greenery. On the horizon the Ionian Sea, behind the mountains, and around the village and the river. Wherever your eyes may stray, it's always a beautiful sight. Not even two kilometers, and here is the beach, which for at least six months is my refuge, my gym, my meditation, my reference when it comes to making important decisions ... my fun. A special sea, clean, populated by fish, crystal clear, deep, very deep!

For years people have asked me, how can you stay in a place where there is nothing? Nothing? This "nothing" is everything! It's everything worth being on this planet for. No, I'm not Calabrese ..., none of my relatives are Calabrese, and I didn't even marry a Calabrese. Quite simply, this place has enraptured me with its beauty, with its stubbornness, with its being so raw and at the same time imbued with magic.

I chose it, I faced it, I even challenged it when it put me at the crossroads of the choices that happen only rarely in life ... and I'm still here, happy to have chosen the most difficult but most exciting one...

Thanks to this sea full of life, to the dominant green, to the people of my small village and those nearby; thanks to the river that makes me fall asleep every night and thanks to that piece of fertile land where I grow the best vegetables in the world.

Thanks to the intoxicating scents of spring, which I thought were exclusive to some exotic island, and thanks to all this nature that doesn't give a damn about man and his rules and takes over everything it wants.

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Ginevra Dell'Orso