Just then, the Italian man came running back up to me, tapped me on the shoulder and began explaining something very rapidly. It was all jibberish to me, completely in Italian. I realized then how much I had taken for granted how well I actually spoke French. I think I had been frustrated for so long because I wasn't able to have sophisticated political discussions with friends, the way I might in English, and therefore thought of myself as completely incoherent in French. But once I was in a country where I knew none of the language at all, it occurred to me that I really knew quite a lot of French, had never been in dire need of being able to explain my situation, and could always understand simple directions back in Paris. I guess I had also sort of thought that knowing some French would mean I could at least understand some Italian, those Romance languages being so similar and all, but this was not the case at all. I started racking my brain for any Italian words I knew: "Grazie mille"? "Arrivaderci"? "Buongiorno principesse"? No, no good at all. I had nothing. I might as well have been trying to speak Chinese. I didn't even know how to say "I don't speak Italian" in Italian, which made me feel completely impotent.
All I could do was shake my head and look confused. He sighed, but looked determined to get his point across. "No Italiano?" he asked. "No Italiano," I replied. "English... ou Francais?" I asked hopefully. He shook his head. Then he turned to the crowd of demonstrators behind us, motioned for them to be quiet, and shouted, in Italian, "Does anyone here speak English?" Silence. "Or French?" A small voice piped up from about twenty feet away, "Si, Francese!", and out walked a breathtakingly beautiful Italian woman, in Gucci heels and a gray wool pashmina draped elegantly around her shoulders. She walked over to us and the man began explaining something, and she nodded knowingly and turned to me with a warm smile, and began speaking French: "You are looking for the 280 bus?" Oh, how sweet it was to hear a familiar language! I had never loved French more than at that moment. "Yes, the 280 bus to Trastevere." She frowned, "I think you pick it up right here, but it might be too late. You are all alone?"
"Yes, I am."
"You have to be careful! It is not safe to be a woman alone. Not late at night!"
"I know," I tried to explain, "my plane was very late..."
But she didn't hear my explanation, because she had started walking out into the parking lot to see if my bus was scheduled to come anytime soon. After checking a half a dozen signs, she came back, shaking her head.
"No, it is too late for the bus. It's dangerous for you to stay here too long, I think."
I agreed, but I didn't know what other options I had. Try to catch a taxi? The Metro? Was it even still running? She started to confer with some of her friends, who had begun gathering around us as we spoke, and shortly came back over to me.
"Here -- we have decided. You can go with Fabricio, he will take you to Trastevere."
"He has a taxi?"
She laughed, "No, no! In his car -- you can go with him in his car, he will take you there."
Obviously I wasn't comfortable with this at all. If there is one thing on my list of never-dos, it's get in a car with a strange man at an Italian bus stop. I shook my head worriedly, and told her I couldn't do that. She smiled. "Of course, of course you are smart, you don't know this man. Here -- Fabricio, can I borrow your car?" Fabricio shrugged with true Italian indifference, took a puff of his cigarette, and tossed his car keys to her. The women put her arm around me and said, "There, I will take you, and you are safe with me, right?" I didn't know what to say to that. I hardly knew this woman, except to know she was extremely well dressed and bilingual. But she looked strikingly like Audrey Hepburn, which made it hard not to trust her, and I really had no other options at all to get to my hostel, which was God-knows-how-far-away in a city I didn't know. I took a deep breath and said yes, thank you, that would be great. She spent five minutes saying "Ciao!" and giving hugs and kisses to everyone in the group, as though she were going on some long voyage, then she and Fabricio grabbed my bags and helped to put them in a silver Fiat sitting in the nearby lot. We climbed in and headed off.
She chatted away the whole time in French (French with an Italian accent - even better than the original!) and explained that she was Fatima, from a very Catholic family, and works as a PR Consultant in Milan (hence the great fashion sense). She was at the bus stop tonight because she was volunteering with a Catholic group that distributes bread and spaghetti to Afghani immigrants, and reads passages from the Bible after they have eaten. She spoke no English at all, but I was surprised to find how easily I could carry on a conversation in French when there was no other option, and how well I could explain myself - where I was from, what I was doing there, where I was going. Things I had always thought were incredibly primitive and unimpressive until I saw what it was like to not know any words at all. Soon enough we arrived in Trastevere, and she started looking for the address, 1A Via San Francesco di Sales. Down narrow cobbled streets she veered and halted, stopping to look for numbers, and on a couple of occasions shifted into reverse and went barrelling backwards down one-way alleys. Finally, she stopped: "This is number 10, right here. Number one is very close by. I cannot get there going this direction, and the bastard behind me won't let me go backwards. So here I must leave you!" I thanked her, profusely, and didn't know what to say to her for having totally saved me. She gave me her phone numbers, home and mobile, and instructed me to call her at any time if I ever needed anything in Rome. We bade each other goodnight and I walked on towards my hostel. What a way to start my Roman Holiday.
The building was easy enough to find, and I climbed up the stairs to the third floor where I found an old Italian woman manning the front desk. As an aside, I can't express how much better it is to travel with an iPhone than without it. Last time I came to Europe, I had printed up all of our hotel reservations, train itineraries and tour bookings and stapled them to the inside of a manila folder that we carried with us everywhere. Practical, sure, but not always useful when you are in dire straights, like when we arrived in Vienna at midnight and our hostel had closed, and every hotel room in the city was booked because of an EU convention, so we slept in the train station. This time, I have the ability to communicate at any time, figure out where I am using Google Maps, reread directions given to me via email, etc. I was able to email the hostel at 6pm when I knew that I was going to be arriving after 10pm, when they close -- I received a reply email within ten minutes saying that was totally fine, and they would wait up for me. (The fact that email penetration is infinitely deeper in Europe now than it was three years ago plays a role in this as well). I can no longer imagine travelling without the technology. Thought my night was a little rough around the edges, without the phone I think I would have been truly desperate.
So, the lady at reception greeted me, handed me my key and led me down the hallway to my room, 212 Vega (all the rooms are named after stars - I'm in between Ursa Minora and Bellatrix. I'm really glad I'm not staying in Bellatrix.) I completely lucked out with this hostel - or, more accurately, in knowing Dan, who knows Rome really well and helped me to find it. It's an ex-convent that is now run as Orsa Maggiore Casa Internazionale delle Donne, an all-women's hostel that feels like an exceptionally clean, quiet college dorm. I'm paying €24 a night to stay in a four bed dorm, but there's almost nobody else here so I actually have the room all to myself, which is incredible. I don't have a bathroom ensuite, but all of the showers are in individual rooms (Rauner-style), so it's not quite as, uh, "communal" as being in a real dorm. The walls are super thick, and everyone here (I think I've counted four other guests, besides me) is incredibly quiet and considerate. Alas! How wonderful it is to belong to an international community of Women Against Door Slamming and Other Unneccessary Loud Noises. It is so cheap and so nice, the location is perfectly situated around cute little shops and restaurants on the quiet side of the Tiber near the Vatican. I can't believe how lucky I got.
All of this adds up to my time in Rome, so far, being extremely relaxing. I get to sleep -- a lot. Anyone who knows me ought to know that lots of sleep a happy Moira makes. My room has blackout curtains - what luxury! I've been sleeping in until 9:30 each morning, which gives me just enough time to take advantage of the free breakfast that ends at 10. After breakfast and a shower, I head out to explore Rome on foot. (Rome is a time for me to be frugal, in order to make up for some of the extravaganace of Chamonix, so I'm trying to only spend my money on food, which in Italy is abundant and cheap). The weather has been absolutely amazing, 65 degrees, sunny and beautiful the last two days. I went from Winter Wonderland to Summer Vacation overnight, it seems. I love to just walk around Rome, grab a slice of pizza to enjoy on the steps beside a fountain in a beautiful piazza, or a lemon gelato to savor on the elegant walk down the Via Veneto with it's designer shops and posh Italian shoppers, and soak up the sunshine. I actually feel like I'm on a vacation! In the afternoons I can take a long siesta in my warm, dark, quiet hostel room, which, though reminiscent of my real life, feels like a genuinely Italian way to spend the day.
Yesterday was my day for taking in Ancient Rome, so I strolled around the Palatine Hill and the Colosseum and had a picnic lunch in the Circus Massima, where dozens of locals were playing soccer in the sun. I had a black cherry gelato in the Piazza Navona, and later I happily had my picture taken with a Roman Centurion outside of the Colosseum. (If, like me, you are interested to know more about the plight of the Roman Centurion in these difficult economic times, click here.)
Today I walked from my hostel to the Vatican, and though I considered going in, I decided against it on the grounds that I had been before and could find better things to do with my time and money than stand in line in the hot sun with a bunch of Japanese tourists taking pictures of everything from trash cans to Swiss Guards to toilet signs. On my way from the Piazza del Poppolo to try to find the Spanish Steps, I was approached by a small, dark-skinned Mediterranean man, probably in his 40s, who asked if I spoke any Spanish. "No, sorry..." I replied, "Anglais ou Francais?" He laughed, and said "My English is very, very bad! Do you know how to get to the Spanish steps?" His English was not bad
at all, actually, and I explained that I was heading that way and we could walk together. His name was Fabian, and he was from Barcelona, in Rome just for a couple weeks teaching an Architecture course at the University of Rome and leaving in a couple of hours. We walked together to the Spanish Steps, he told me about the history of the architecture and what made them so significant (they just looked like stairs to me), and then invited me for a glass of wine before he was to catch his train to the airport. I accepted, and we briefly sat for a glass of Pinot Grigio (I figured I should be drinking Italian wine in Italy) and he told me about the time he spent studying in New Orleans, which is his favorite city in the world, and his two sons, 10 and 6, who live in Toulouse with their mother. When it was time for him to go, he began telling me some strange set of stories about how it is tradition, in Barcelona, that if you are out with a lady and she orders white wine, you must get very, very drunk, because if she lives in Barcelona, it won't matter anyway! (No idea.) He then tried to tell me that the other Barcelona tradition is that when you are parting, you give each other four kisses - one for you, one for me, one for the baby and one for San Sebastian! Again, totally confused, until he started trying to kiss me and I had to say "No! No! Enough!" He looked deeply offended, and brusquely said "Okay, ciao," before walking off towards the bus stop. Sigh... les hommes sont les hommes...After a week of Italian and Savoyard food, so heavy on the potatoes, cheeses and pastas, I was feeling really ready for a dinner with a little more meat and some fresh vegetables tonight. I was hoping to go somewhere to get a nice steak with broccoli on the side, or something like that, in lieu of pasta carbonara or cheese ravioli. I saw that my hostel has a partnership with the restaurant downstairs, which allows guests to partake in "Happy Food" from 7pm to 8pm and have a two course meal with wine for only €8. I decided to take advantage of this incredibly cheap offer, and went downstairs to check it out earlier this evening. Before I got to the door, a craggy, dark-skinned woman smoking a cigarette on the patio stopped me and asked where I was from. (Here, even more so than in Paris, I must look totally foreign. See photo above for skin tone comparison.) I told her Alaska, and she became frenetically excited: "Alaska! Alaska! Alaska! Belissimo! On my list of things to do! Things to do before I die! There are only three things! The Sahara - Tokyo - and ALASKA!" I had to laugh, and she asked me all sorts of questions, about the weather, and the people, and Sarah Palin. She was Christina, from Argentina originally (near the Colombian border) but has lived in Italy for thirty years. She wanted to know all about me, growing up in Alaska, about the midnight sun and the cold winters and whether I go dog sledding. She asked me where I was staying in Rome; "Upstairs," I told her, "in a hostel."
"You are paying money for it?"
"Well... yes."
"No, no! You must stay with me! I live right here - right next door! You won't have to pay any money, I have lots and lots of room and I am gone all day so you can have the house all to yourself. Come, come, you must stay with me!"
I thought this was incredibly friendly, and generous, to say the least, and I laughed and thanked her, but I didn't think I would be able to get my money back from the hostel if I left early (and, truth be told, I love my living situation in the convent, and really wouldn't be comfortable randomly moving in with someone I just met. Although it was a super nice offer, and probably would have made for a great story.) She didn't seem offended, but said she hoped we would meet again before I left so she could hear many more stories about Alaska.
When I finally got inside the restaurant, I found that "Happy Food" was a loose sort of agreement, whereby hostel residents get to eat whatever is leftover from earlier in the evening, and have no choice in the dish prepared. It turned out tonight's dish was meatball marinara with grilled tomatoes, which satisfied my lust for meat and vegetables just fine. For the super cheap price, I had no complaints, and walked back upstairs full and happy and ready for another long, quiet night of sleep in my clean, quaint convent. La dolce vita!
