Thoughtful email received just now from the Villa Serbelloni, where this trip began:
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As some of you already know,
the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni is located in Lombardy, the Italian region most affected by the spread of Coronavirus. At a moment such as this, we don't want to take your time to talk about offers, booking flexibility, or the effort that is being made by our staff during these hard days to reassure our guests. Instead,
we think it is important to stop "the marketing noise" for a few weeks, and just listen to something incredibly spectacular that is happening right now:
Italians are known all over the world for being extroverted people who enjoy life and spending time with their loved ones. We’re also known for being loud, having a complicated bureaucracy and many regional differences that separate us. Nevertheless,
the current adversity is helping us to remember our deep nature as a population: people supporting each other "virtually" throughout the whole nation, Italians coming together trying to find solutions together, fast and efficient decision-making by our main institutions, and the excellent collaboration of our healthcare professionals.
That's what Italians are, above all: generous and creative people. Italians create music to be played on their balconies and help neighbours feel less sad, create new games to do with their bored children at home, create funny videos to distract worried grandparents who have to stay distant from almost everyone, create new intensive care areas in a rush to treat the growing number of sick citizens and increase the number of recovered citizens. Italians are creating an organizational model that is helping the most recently affected countries of the globe to deal with what we are already facing. And, most importantly,
Italians are happy to help.
One of the things that inspire Italians to be instinctively generous, is the beauty that surrounds all of us. We know we are lucky to live here because, as many Italian artists and scientists wrote during history,
beauty is the main fuel of creativity. We want to share this blessing because in Italy, there's enough beauty for everybody and it never runs out.
We now look back knowing that our Hotel, which is also our home, went through almost every global crisis of the last couple of centuries: 2 world wars, the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, 11 September, the 2008 subprime crisis...
and yet here we are, ready for the next season: as soon as the "green light" will turn on again, we'll open our doors to those who want to experience some of that beauty at first hand.
Adopt the Italian Style during this emergency: substitute a hug or a kiss to your loved ones with a song, donate what you can to your local communities and hospitals that are spending all their energies and resources to help others, and most importantly:
the better you respect the rules staying at home today, the sooner your next trip will come tomorrow.
Ci vediamo presto!
The Bucher family,
owners of the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni since 1918