24 Hours in Cremona by Julia Conrad My fifth month teaching English in a small northern Italian city called Varese, a place no tourist has or should ever step foot, I took up the habit of describing the “state of my soul” at the top of my diary entries. That January my soul was: a walrus, a decaffeinated tea bag in cold water, permafrosted tundra (my sex life the permafrost), a used tissue at the bottom of a backpack, rotting.