In April 2017, I married Nicola, after years of living together and without the need for grand declarations, because some decisions take their time to mature and then, all of a sudden, become inevitable. A health issue in the family reminded us that time is precious, so we chose not to postpone: we got married while the people we loved could be there, could smile with us. And it was exactly the way I wanted it to be.
A few weeks later, I was on the couch, casually flipping through a magazine, when I came across an article that stopped me in my tracks. It told the story of a hospitality school in a former monastery in the Netherlands, the International Butler Academy. Discipline, elegance, absolute attention to detail. I couldn’t explain why, but I immediately felt it was for me. It was one of those intuitions that make no noise yet leave you no choice.
I filled out the application almost instinctively. Soon after, the response arrived: I had been accepted.
At that point, I had to tell Nicola, my husband of just a few months, that I had decided to leave for three months to live in a castle with complete strangers, to learn a craft that seemed from another era. He listened, smiled, and simply accompanied me. We set off together by car, as if on a small, improvised adventure.
When we arrived, however, reality was far less romantic than I had imagined: dormitories, shared bathrooms, strict rules. Nicola looked at me and suggested we turn back. I, on the other hand, immediately understood that I had to stay, because that feeling was familiar, it was the same one I had when I decided to create Sentieritalia, starting from a pair of boots I had seen almost by chance and transforming, with stubbornness, them into a project rooted in material, tradition, and beauty.
The three months at the academy were intense, at times grueling. We slept little, expectations were high, and we learned to pay attention to every detail. During one exercise, we had to set a perfect table, but there weren’t enough tools for everyone. Time was running out, no one helped me, so I found a simple solution: I measured with my fingers. When they asked me how I had done it, I answered naturally. That was the moment I truly understood what elegance means: not rigidity, but the ability to adapt without losing precision.
In the end, I received a commendation, but what truly mattered was completing something that had initially seemed out of place in my life. Every time I set a table or imagined a future devoted to hospitality, I knew it all began there, from that choice to stay.
Because dreams almost never arrive in the most convenient or predictable way. Sometimes they appear suddenly, between the pages of a magazine, and they ask only to be followed with discipline, vision, and a little courage.
