You might be wondering why I haven't posted in a while. Well, aside from going to a birthday party on Friday night, I just discovered that the University of Southern California requires its scholarship applicants to apply by December 1st and have to write an additional essay while their film program also requires me to make a video for them. UCLA is much along the same lines, but due on Saturday, so I'm going to be rather occupied until that's all done. I'm starting to worry that I'll never get around to describing my time in Chester...
Anyhow, I'll try to burn through this maddening setback as quickly as I can while preserving my sanity. If you hear a gunshot, it's already too late.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Friday, November 15, 2013
The Best of Times
Where was I? Oh, right! I should mention that after I had booked our hostel and whatnot that first night for the trip, my companion decided that she wanted to spend an extra day in Rome and thus spend only one day in Venice. In hindsight, I should not have assented, but I thought "Why not?" I checked the train times and discovered that the cheapest one from Rome to Venice at the end of that extra day would cost us each $42 and would deposit us near Venice (not even in Venice) at around 10:30pm. Aside from being more expensive than the other tickets we had planned to get, we also would have needed to forfeit about 40 euros for the night that we would have spent in Rome and it was impossible to book a hostel for that night in Venice, as they required that you check in by 11pm. In an alien city, there was no way we could have managed that. This meant that we would have to spend one night outdoors in Venice. I looked up from my computer and explained the situation to my companion. "Are you still sure you want to spend another day in Rome?""Yeah."
"You sure? We're going to have to sleep in shifts in Venice and it's going to be colder there. You okay with that?"
"Yeah, I'm fine with it." I shrugged and made all of the arrangements. To me, spending the whole night awake in Venice sounded like fun! I thought that we could stick to the main, well lit streets and tour the place in the dark to stay awake and warm while also killing time and perhaps experiencing the mystique that the city is famous for.
The extra day was a bit of a disappointment. We had wanted to get into St. Peter's Basilica, since we had spent all of the previous day in the Vatican and hadn't the time. When we arrived, however, we discovered a line of people that stretched from the basilica's entrance, wrapped all of the way around the square, and poked into the street while a new sign stated that the basilica would close at 1pm. Unless we had arrived at perhaps 7am, we would never have gotten through and thus decided to head straight to the Pantheon and other miscellaneous sights.
We boarded our train without difficulty and I volunteered to take the first shift staying awake while Eleanor (I'm sick of calling her "my traveling buddy") caught some Zs. I had intended to work on my application to Chapman University, but found my eyes drawn to the passing landscape time and again. I'll probably never get another chance to see this, I thought, so why waste the view when I can put this application off for another day? When Eleanor awoke at dusk, I curled up on the seats and let the train's sounds and rocking lull me to sleep. That is until another four people stepped into our compartment about ten minutes later. Fate had decided that I was not to sleep during this trip. I returned to editing until we departed at the Mestre station where I made a point of not showing anything valuable considering the plethora of *ahem* shabby people hanging around and sleeping on cardboard mats.
I was excited when we reached Venice, late as it was and tired as I felt. The city lay in a soft darkness, as streetlamps stretched out to brush the buildings with light and touch the water. We had hoped to sleep in the train station, but were kicked out around 1am when we discovered that the building closed down until 4am. Thus without a place to be, I encouraged a rather bushed Eleanor to wander as I had planned earlier. Grumbling, she agreed until we crossed the first bridge about one hundred meters from the station, at which point she refused to go further. "I want to stay in a public place where there are people and lights," she said looking at the bus station we had arrived at. Her logic was practical and I saw the sense in it, but I still wanted to go about the city. Still, she refused to budge from the wall where she had deposited herself, so I joined her. I tried to make conversation to no avail and my jokes and banter were met either with silence or bitter remarks. When I brought up the Donner Party and discovered that she didn't know of this incident, I couldn't help but chuckle. Everyone I know in the US has at least heard one joke about the Donner Party (a group of pioneers on the California Trail who became trapped in the mountains, due to snow, and resorted to cannibalism).
"You seriously don't know about the Donner Party?" I ask, still chuckling.
"No, and you're making me feel stupid and it's not cool."
Christ, I thought. Sorry I opened my mouth. Deciding that I should just leave Miss Not-Quite-Sleep-Deprived Grumpy Pants to herself, I pulled out my copy of All Quiet On The Western Front and started to read. After about a page, she decided to start talking. I joined in, but her end of the conversation soon dropped again and I resumed reading. Then she resumed talking. This cycle must have repeated itself four times with us checking our watches all the while to see when we could return to the station. Around 3:00, with Eleanor complaining that she couldn't sleep, was cold, and had nothing to do, I revisited the wandering option. This time, she agreed! She agreed to wander back over the bridge we had crossed earlier and to "wander back to the train station" where we were to sit for an hour before the doors opened. Well, we got there and 4:00 came and went, or so I thought. Eleanor was again sleeping, leaving me to stand watch, and it slowly dawned on me that, oh happy day!, we had gained another hour due to daylight savings time. Eleanor slept straight through it, but I felt every single minute press down on my shoulders as the boredom and fatigue set in. In short, the station reopened, it was still freezing inside, I slept, awoke shivering to discover that Eleanor had dozed off on her shift (nothing stolen), and then began to wander Venice around 6am.
I was elated to go out at first light, as the city was permeated with a dense fog that I wanted to delve through. We bought a map of the city for five euros and, trust me, it was the best investment we made on the entire trip. Aside from not being able to see a hundred feet ahead of me, Venice has no rhyme and little reason to the street layout. The names have been known to change over time (some of them are renamed almost yearly) and I don't think that Venice has even heard of "Urban Planning," nor has it decided whether or not it wants to be like a city or a mouse maze. I, however, love mazes and almost never turn down a challenge. I must say that I was glad for my years with the scouts, to be sure.
Wandering the streets and doing my best to ignore Eleanor's apathy, I forgot my fatigue as I raced down narrow alleyways. Blind corners divulged hidden wonders glimpsed between the buildings. I could be running through a trench of brickwork and glimpse down an alleyway to discover a church spire, standing alone and defying the clutter of buildings below. Some bridges that I crossed spanned massive canals in great arcs of architectural wonder, while others were barely a meter across and lent both a sense of relief from the crush of buildings and a sense of intimacy as I stood above the water with both shores just an arm's length away. Paths that I struggled to fit through would explode out into great plazas dominated by churches and monuments. Best of all, no matter where or when I wandered, be it with others or alone, I felt safe. I was always on guard, but the only time I felt the smallest prickle of apprehension was when three swindlers toting fake designer handbags walked toward me in a deserted alley and they hardly glanced at me.
What was even better was when Eleanor, exhausted, turned into our hostel around 4pm where we discovered that it cost another five euros each to get some sheets and blankets for the night. Deciding not to pay, we settled Eleanor, both griping about the lack of sheets, before I took off again. I left my bag behind and, unencumbered, felt revitalized! I was a free man! To top it all off, I managed to rendezvous with the German girl that I had met in Rome and we spent a couple of pleasant and fun hours together. In a city that complicated with only a map and a compass in hand, I was in my element and thus readily and shamelessly showed off. Night fell and, after a time, we parted ways at the Canale di San Marco.
Venice transforms at night. During the day it is either a mist-shrouded or sunlit mosaic of color and architecture. At night, I witnessed again the lamplight touched buildings and water. Now, however, the clamorous sightseers had turned to romantic couples while the swindlers all about cast spinning green and blue lights into the air in Saint Marc's plaza. The lights would drift down, twirling in the gentle breeze and shining amongst the few stars that pierced through the subtle ambient glow. I stayed there for I know not how long, watching the people come and go before turning to the side streets again, buying a bottle of wine, some cheese, and more grapes to bring back to the hostel.
On my way back, I got a message from Eleanor. "Hey Matt, can you come back as soon as you can? Some guys were in here earlier and took the couch. They gave me a bad vibe and I swear there is one of those hustling Indian guys." I told her to lock the door, but she couldn't because I had the keys (duh). "They're all outside my room talking now." I told her to move the bed in front of the closed doors and, since there was no lamp in the room or any convenient rocks, I told her to grab one of the stone and metal models of the Coliseum that I had picked up in Rome and keep it hidden as, just in case the guys did break in, the model would be a more effective weapon if they didn't know about it. Anyhow, frantic and in a part of the city that I had not yet visited, I made a series of short sprints, stopping after every other alley to navigate, and trying to keep the wine from tearing through the plastic bag in my hand. I happened to pass a few guys walking down the street carrying a red couch that looked suspiciously like the one from the hostel, but I saw no unconscious, chloroformed person on it and pressed forward to find a very anxious Eleanor safe and sound in the room. We locked the door and, at this point mostly to ease her nerves, drank the wine as we watched "Zoolander" on my computer and feasted on the groceries. The long day finally over and with about half of a bottle of wine in each of us, we were both ever so grateful for our sheet-less beds while we drifted to sleep in my favorite of the two cities.
"You sure? We're going to have to sleep in shifts in Venice and it's going to be colder there. You okay with that?"
"Yeah, I'm fine with it." I shrugged and made all of the arrangements. To me, spending the whole night awake in Venice sounded like fun! I thought that we could stick to the main, well lit streets and tour the place in the dark to stay awake and warm while also killing time and perhaps experiencing the mystique that the city is famous for.
The extra day was a bit of a disappointment. We had wanted to get into St. Peter's Basilica, since we had spent all of the previous day in the Vatican and hadn't the time. When we arrived, however, we discovered a line of people that stretched from the basilica's entrance, wrapped all of the way around the square, and poked into the street while a new sign stated that the basilica would close at 1pm. Unless we had arrived at perhaps 7am, we would never have gotten through and thus decided to head straight to the Pantheon and other miscellaneous sights.
We boarded our train without difficulty and I volunteered to take the first shift staying awake while Eleanor (I'm sick of calling her "my traveling buddy") caught some Zs. I had intended to work on my application to Chapman University, but found my eyes drawn to the passing landscape time and again. I'll probably never get another chance to see this, I thought, so why waste the view when I can put this application off for another day? When Eleanor awoke at dusk, I curled up on the seats and let the train's sounds and rocking lull me to sleep. That is until another four people stepped into our compartment about ten minutes later. Fate had decided that I was not to sleep during this trip. I returned to editing until we departed at the Mestre station where I made a point of not showing anything valuable considering the plethora of *ahem* shabby people hanging around and sleeping on cardboard mats.
I was excited when we reached Venice, late as it was and tired as I felt. The city lay in a soft darkness, as streetlamps stretched out to brush the buildings with light and touch the water. We had hoped to sleep in the train station, but were kicked out around 1am when we discovered that the building closed down until 4am. Thus without a place to be, I encouraged a rather bushed Eleanor to wander as I had planned earlier. Grumbling, she agreed until we crossed the first bridge about one hundred meters from the station, at which point she refused to go further. "I want to stay in a public place where there are people and lights," she said looking at the bus station we had arrived at. Her logic was practical and I saw the sense in it, but I still wanted to go about the city. Still, she refused to budge from the wall where she had deposited herself, so I joined her. I tried to make conversation to no avail and my jokes and banter were met either with silence or bitter remarks. When I brought up the Donner Party and discovered that she didn't know of this incident, I couldn't help but chuckle. Everyone I know in the US has at least heard one joke about the Donner Party (a group of pioneers on the California Trail who became trapped in the mountains, due to snow, and resorted to cannibalism).
"You seriously don't know about the Donner Party?" I ask, still chuckling.
"No, and you're making me feel stupid and it's not cool."
Christ, I thought. Sorry I opened my mouth. Deciding that I should just leave Miss Not-Quite-Sleep-Deprived Grumpy Pants to herself, I pulled out my copy of All Quiet On The Western Front and started to read. After about a page, she decided to start talking. I joined in, but her end of the conversation soon dropped again and I resumed reading. Then she resumed talking. This cycle must have repeated itself four times with us checking our watches all the while to see when we could return to the station. Around 3:00, with Eleanor complaining that she couldn't sleep, was cold, and had nothing to do, I revisited the wandering option. This time, she agreed! She agreed to wander back over the bridge we had crossed earlier and to "wander back to the train station" where we were to sit for an hour before the doors opened. Well, we got there and 4:00 came and went, or so I thought. Eleanor was again sleeping, leaving me to stand watch, and it slowly dawned on me that, oh happy day!, we had gained another hour due to daylight savings time. Eleanor slept straight through it, but I felt every single minute press down on my shoulders as the boredom and fatigue set in. In short, the station reopened, it was still freezing inside, I slept, awoke shivering to discover that Eleanor had dozed off on her shift (nothing stolen), and then began to wander Venice around 6am.
I was elated to go out at first light, as the city was permeated with a dense fog that I wanted to delve through. We bought a map of the city for five euros and, trust me, it was the best investment we made on the entire trip. Aside from not being able to see a hundred feet ahead of me, Venice has no rhyme and little reason to the street layout. The names have been known to change over time (some of them are renamed almost yearly) and I don't think that Venice has even heard of "Urban Planning," nor has it decided whether or not it wants to be like a city or a mouse maze. I, however, love mazes and almost never turn down a challenge. I must say that I was glad for my years with the scouts, to be sure.
Wandering the streets and doing my best to ignore Eleanor's apathy, I forgot my fatigue as I raced down narrow alleyways. Blind corners divulged hidden wonders glimpsed between the buildings. I could be running through a trench of brickwork and glimpse down an alleyway to discover a church spire, standing alone and defying the clutter of buildings below. Some bridges that I crossed spanned massive canals in great arcs of architectural wonder, while others were barely a meter across and lent both a sense of relief from the crush of buildings and a sense of intimacy as I stood above the water with both shores just an arm's length away. Paths that I struggled to fit through would explode out into great plazas dominated by churches and monuments. Best of all, no matter where or when I wandered, be it with others or alone, I felt safe. I was always on guard, but the only time I felt the smallest prickle of apprehension was when three swindlers toting fake designer handbags walked toward me in a deserted alley and they hardly glanced at me.
What was even better was when Eleanor, exhausted, turned into our hostel around 4pm where we discovered that it cost another five euros each to get some sheets and blankets for the night. Deciding not to pay, we settled Eleanor, both griping about the lack of sheets, before I took off again. I left my bag behind and, unencumbered, felt revitalized! I was a free man! To top it all off, I managed to rendezvous with the German girl that I had met in Rome and we spent a couple of pleasant and fun hours together. In a city that complicated with only a map and a compass in hand, I was in my element and thus readily and shamelessly showed off. Night fell and, after a time, we parted ways at the Canale di San Marco.
Venice transforms at night. During the day it is either a mist-shrouded or sunlit mosaic of color and architecture. At night, I witnessed again the lamplight touched buildings and water. Now, however, the clamorous sightseers had turned to romantic couples while the swindlers all about cast spinning green and blue lights into the air in Saint Marc's plaza. The lights would drift down, twirling in the gentle breeze and shining amongst the few stars that pierced through the subtle ambient glow. I stayed there for I know not how long, watching the people come and go before turning to the side streets again, buying a bottle of wine, some cheese, and more grapes to bring back to the hostel.
On my way back, I got a message from Eleanor. "Hey Matt, can you come back as soon as you can? Some guys were in here earlier and took the couch. They gave me a bad vibe and I swear there is one of those hustling Indian guys." I told her to lock the door, but she couldn't because I had the keys (duh). "They're all outside my room talking now." I told her to move the bed in front of the closed doors and, since there was no lamp in the room or any convenient rocks, I told her to grab one of the stone and metal models of the Coliseum that I had picked up in Rome and keep it hidden as, just in case the guys did break in, the model would be a more effective weapon if they didn't know about it. Anyhow, frantic and in a part of the city that I had not yet visited, I made a series of short sprints, stopping after every other alley to navigate, and trying to keep the wine from tearing through the plastic bag in my hand. I happened to pass a few guys walking down the street carrying a red couch that looked suspiciously like the one from the hostel, but I saw no unconscious, chloroformed person on it and pressed forward to find a very anxious Eleanor safe and sound in the room. We locked the door and, at this point mostly to ease her nerves, drank the wine as we watched "Zoolander" on my computer and feasted on the groceries. The long day finally over and with about half of a bottle of wine in each of us, we were both ever so grateful for our sheet-less beds while we drifted to sleep in my favorite of the two cities.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Don't Trust The Romans
Imagine waking up at 7am on a Tuesday, attending classes before catching a train at 10:30pm, going through airport security at 2am, and then boarding a flight to Rome at 7am on Wednesday. You have an hour's respite during the train ride and another two during the flight, so you feel decent by the time you arrive in Rome that morning and thus decide to wander around the coast while waiting to meet a stranger arriving on another flight ten hours later. That was my journey to Rome.
By 9pm, when I had met my travel companion (a rather quiet girl), I was physically tired and mentally exhausted, so is it entirely out of the ordinary that I didn't bat an eye when the taxi driver told us that it would cost 80 euros to get to our hotel? Of course it's out of the ordinary! It's absolutely ridiculous! I had just been thinking an hour before about how my plane ticket was 70 euros, so why didn't my brain, no matter how addled, pick up on this!? Furthermore, why didn't it clue in when the cab driver charged us 90 euros upon reaching our destination!? For that matter, why didn't my companion notice? At least she'd had enough sleep that day! Either way, we emptied our wallets for this skinner. Even if I had identified the scam, what does one do in that situation? Do you try to negotiate with an unreasonable man? Do you shout him down and denounce him in the street? Do you kick him in his manhood so that he doesn't spawn any more odious fleecers into the world? I don't know. All I know is that once the realization hit me thirty minutes later, I'd wished that I'd taken the third option. My temper flared even higher when we discovered that our travel agency had TARFU (military slang for "Totally And Royally Fucked Up") our hotel reservation. These guys had booked us for the wrong MONTH! I had booked us for October 23rd through the 26th and these guys stuck us in November. If you are traveling, I would not advise "Travel Republic." The clerk behind the desk said that they had one room open for 84 euros, but after the taxi driver, I was in no mood to spend that much again.
With that in mind, I booked an emergency reservation at a B & B a mile down the road and ran to ensure that we had a place to stay. I ran through Rome at 10pm in a button down shirt, dress pants, and nice shoes. I had to stop and ask for directions, but after dodging traffic, grinding my soles into the pavement, and apologizing to pedestrians, I reached the place. Breathless, I rang their doorbell.
Nothing.
I rang again.
Nothing.
I stood there for at least twenty minutes ringing their bell and shouting "Please open the door" in Italian. Their website said that they would accept check-ins until 10:30pm, so when 10:40 rolled around with no response, I turned and left. I tried one of the nearby youth hostels that I'd noticed online with the same result and, defeated, began to walk back to the hotel where I had left my companion. Then the anger crept back. I wanted to break something, or punch one of the sketchy guys walking toward me down the sidewalk. At that point of sleeplessness, I was demented enough that I might have done it. Then I saw another hotel sign. I sprinted across the street and asked if they had any openings. "One opening. 95 euros for the night." I thanked them and left. I tried another place. "Sí. 105 euros for the night." Another place "90 euros." Everywhere I went, the prices were extraordinary and most didn't even include breakfast. I ran around until about 11:45 at night, my frustration driving my legs forward and down, as if I were kicking the earth and pulverizing it for the misfortune that it had dealt us that night. In the end, viciousness spent and thus resigned, I returned to the first hotel and checked in. I spent another two hours booking a hostel for the next few nights and awoke fatigued and embittered.
That day, we walked around the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, and the other ruins in that area, both too drowsy to really appreciate it. I still enjoyed it, but, between you and me, trying to speak with my companion was often like talking to a brick. Aside from that wet blanket, I could not help but notice that Rome was stunning in the sunshine. I won't go into details about the location, as any of you could just look for photos online or, I don't know, read a Dan Brown book to gain some sense of the experience. I will mention, however, that the entire place was littered with people dressed in ridiculous outfits and passing themselves off as street performers whilst they milled around. One of the dozens of men dressed as roman soldiers there beckoned to us. "Do you two want a picture?" My friend and I looked at each other, shrugged, and nodded to him. He made a series of grim and some funny posses with us involved. All of the while, we were each keeping close track of his hands, making sure that they didn't wander toward our pockets. When it ended without a theft, I was in a rather good mood and thanked him. Just as we were turning to leave, though, he put his hand on my shoulder and held out his other palm, showing a twenty euro note. "Five euros per photo."
I gave him my best "You've got to be joking" look. "Uh, no." I said and tried to walk off. He tightened his grip on my shoulder and began to insist. I twisted away and said "Look, I don't even have five euros!" I pulled out my wallet and hid my cash behind a traveler's check, showing only about eighty cents. He pointed to the check and I said as loudly and slowly as possible "That's not money! It doesn't work until I sign it! You can't use it!" Just to shut him up, I gave him fifty cents before walking off. The day only really improved at lunch, where I had one of the best spaghetti carbonaras that I have ever eaten (chewy pasta is superior to what us non-Italians cook), yet the day was still dampened by our drained state and the fact that we were surrounded by con artists. In my opinion, it took until that night, when we arrived at the hostel, to find our first honest roman.
Our host was not the owner, but a manager and was quite hospitable, as was the rest of the motley staff (his pregnant English girlfriend, another Italian, and a Pakistani). That night, while my travel buddy was in the lobby/kitchen/sitting room and was I shaving down the hall, two girls burst in asking in accented English if there was anywhere that they could stay for the night. There was room for one of them, according to the manager, but the other was out of luck. Both seemed rather distressed and the older of the two kept asking for somewhere to use the internet so that they could find somewhere else for her friend. The manager directed her to a pay per minute place downstairs. I popped my shaving cream-covered face into the hall and said "You could just use my laptop." Both of the girls jumped at the sight and stammered a thank you. Wouldn't you know it though, my computer had locked, so I walked out into the hall and into the kitchen/sitting room place... thing to open it. "Excuse me, shaving cream-covered guy coming through. Watch your feet and hair." That got a few laughs and the girls began to relax a bit as I walked away and left them with my female companion. Once I'd cleaned myself up I returned to find all three chatting. It turns out that the two of them had only met the day before when they both arrived to stay with this couchsurfing host (couchsurfing is a travelers' networking site where you can ask to stay for free with a local host wherever you're traveling, so long as you're willing to spend time with them and maybe cook them a meal or something). These two soon discovered, however, that their host was a creep, as he made advances on the older one during the day and wanted to sleep in the same bed as the younger one at night. Thus the hasty evacuation and desperate need for a place to stay. The elder of the two (25 year old Lithuanian) turned out to be teaching primary school students near Liverpool while the younger (18 year old German) was doing something of a work-study in Italy and was en-route to Milan. We sorted the younger one out, chatted with the both of them for quite some time, and agreed to meet the younger in Venice three days hence. The next day, we went to the Vatican before meeting the elder again and wandered around Rome for some time, sealing the night by each buying a bottle of wine, some brie cheese, a banana, and some crackers. The uncorking was a battle for me (two of the corks had expanded below the bottles' necks, expanded, and jammed) while the others dished out the food. With a mighty heave, each cork came out followed by a thin, white fog of pressurized wine vapor. The crackers were a strange tomato infused creation while the red wine that I had bought for myself was clearly not what I remembered having back at home. To our unaccustomed palates, the stuff was vile. Rather than sip it, I just downed the stuff in shots and asked for sips of my friends' white wine once. I gave a small glass of my poison to another tenant who didn't even down what I gave him (so I did) and we all had a great time being tipsy before throwing out the empty bottles at the end and crashing. How my companion woke with a headache and I didn't remains a mystery to me.
Wow, that went on for longer than I had anticipated. I shall tell you tomorrow of my brief time in Venice, the night we spent homeless, and my reunion with the upset German girl. Until then, ciao!
By 9pm, when I had met my travel companion (a rather quiet girl), I was physically tired and mentally exhausted, so is it entirely out of the ordinary that I didn't bat an eye when the taxi driver told us that it would cost 80 euros to get to our hotel? Of course it's out of the ordinary! It's absolutely ridiculous! I had just been thinking an hour before about how my plane ticket was 70 euros, so why didn't my brain, no matter how addled, pick up on this!? Furthermore, why didn't it clue in when the cab driver charged us 90 euros upon reaching our destination!? For that matter, why didn't my companion notice? At least she'd had enough sleep that day! Either way, we emptied our wallets for this skinner. Even if I had identified the scam, what does one do in that situation? Do you try to negotiate with an unreasonable man? Do you shout him down and denounce him in the street? Do you kick him in his manhood so that he doesn't spawn any more odious fleecers into the world? I don't know. All I know is that once the realization hit me thirty minutes later, I'd wished that I'd taken the third option. My temper flared even higher when we discovered that our travel agency had TARFU (military slang for "Totally And Royally Fucked Up") our hotel reservation. These guys had booked us for the wrong MONTH! I had booked us for October 23rd through the 26th and these guys stuck us in November. If you are traveling, I would not advise "Travel Republic." The clerk behind the desk said that they had one room open for 84 euros, but after the taxi driver, I was in no mood to spend that much again.
With that in mind, I booked an emergency reservation at a B & B a mile down the road and ran to ensure that we had a place to stay. I ran through Rome at 10pm in a button down shirt, dress pants, and nice shoes. I had to stop and ask for directions, but after dodging traffic, grinding my soles into the pavement, and apologizing to pedestrians, I reached the place. Breathless, I rang their doorbell.
Nothing.
I rang again.
Nothing.
I stood there for at least twenty minutes ringing their bell and shouting "Please open the door" in Italian. Their website said that they would accept check-ins until 10:30pm, so when 10:40 rolled around with no response, I turned and left. I tried one of the nearby youth hostels that I'd noticed online with the same result and, defeated, began to walk back to the hotel where I had left my companion. Then the anger crept back. I wanted to break something, or punch one of the sketchy guys walking toward me down the sidewalk. At that point of sleeplessness, I was demented enough that I might have done it. Then I saw another hotel sign. I sprinted across the street and asked if they had any openings. "One opening. 95 euros for the night." I thanked them and left. I tried another place. "Sí. 105 euros for the night." Another place "90 euros." Everywhere I went, the prices were extraordinary and most didn't even include breakfast. I ran around until about 11:45 at night, my frustration driving my legs forward and down, as if I were kicking the earth and pulverizing it for the misfortune that it had dealt us that night. In the end, viciousness spent and thus resigned, I returned to the first hotel and checked in. I spent another two hours booking a hostel for the next few nights and awoke fatigued and embittered.
That day, we walked around the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, and the other ruins in that area, both too drowsy to really appreciate it. I still enjoyed it, but, between you and me, trying to speak with my companion was often like talking to a brick. Aside from that wet blanket, I could not help but notice that Rome was stunning in the sunshine. I won't go into details about the location, as any of you could just look for photos online or, I don't know, read a Dan Brown book to gain some sense of the experience. I will mention, however, that the entire place was littered with people dressed in ridiculous outfits and passing themselves off as street performers whilst they milled around. One of the dozens of men dressed as roman soldiers there beckoned to us. "Do you two want a picture?" My friend and I looked at each other, shrugged, and nodded to him. He made a series of grim and some funny posses with us involved. All of the while, we were each keeping close track of his hands, making sure that they didn't wander toward our pockets. When it ended without a theft, I was in a rather good mood and thanked him. Just as we were turning to leave, though, he put his hand on my shoulder and held out his other palm, showing a twenty euro note. "Five euros per photo."
I gave him my best "You've got to be joking" look. "Uh, no." I said and tried to walk off. He tightened his grip on my shoulder and began to insist. I twisted away and said "Look, I don't even have five euros!" I pulled out my wallet and hid my cash behind a traveler's check, showing only about eighty cents. He pointed to the check and I said as loudly and slowly as possible "That's not money! It doesn't work until I sign it! You can't use it!" Just to shut him up, I gave him fifty cents before walking off. The day only really improved at lunch, where I had one of the best spaghetti carbonaras that I have ever eaten (chewy pasta is superior to what us non-Italians cook), yet the day was still dampened by our drained state and the fact that we were surrounded by con artists. In my opinion, it took until that night, when we arrived at the hostel, to find our first honest roman.
Our host was not the owner, but a manager and was quite hospitable, as was the rest of the motley staff (his pregnant English girlfriend, another Italian, and a Pakistani). That night, while my travel buddy was in the lobby/kitchen/sitting room and was I shaving down the hall, two girls burst in asking in accented English if there was anywhere that they could stay for the night. There was room for one of them, according to the manager, but the other was out of luck. Both seemed rather distressed and the older of the two kept asking for somewhere to use the internet so that they could find somewhere else for her friend. The manager directed her to a pay per minute place downstairs. I popped my shaving cream-covered face into the hall and said "You could just use my laptop." Both of the girls jumped at the sight and stammered a thank you. Wouldn't you know it though, my computer had locked, so I walked out into the hall and into the kitchen/sitting room place... thing to open it. "Excuse me, shaving cream-covered guy coming through. Watch your feet and hair." That got a few laughs and the girls began to relax a bit as I walked away and left them with my female companion. Once I'd cleaned myself up I returned to find all three chatting. It turns out that the two of them had only met the day before when they both arrived to stay with this couchsurfing host (couchsurfing is a travelers' networking site where you can ask to stay for free with a local host wherever you're traveling, so long as you're willing to spend time with them and maybe cook them a meal or something). These two soon discovered, however, that their host was a creep, as he made advances on the older one during the day and wanted to sleep in the same bed as the younger one at night. Thus the hasty evacuation and desperate need for a place to stay. The elder of the two (25 year old Lithuanian) turned out to be teaching primary school students near Liverpool while the younger (18 year old German) was doing something of a work-study in Italy and was en-route to Milan. We sorted the younger one out, chatted with the both of them for quite some time, and agreed to meet the younger in Venice three days hence. The next day, we went to the Vatican before meeting the elder again and wandered around Rome for some time, sealing the night by each buying a bottle of wine, some brie cheese, a banana, and some crackers. The uncorking was a battle for me (two of the corks had expanded below the bottles' necks, expanded, and jammed) while the others dished out the food. With a mighty heave, each cork came out followed by a thin, white fog of pressurized wine vapor. The crackers were a strange tomato infused creation while the red wine that I had bought for myself was clearly not what I remembered having back at home. To our unaccustomed palates, the stuff was vile. Rather than sip it, I just downed the stuff in shots and asked for sips of my friends' white wine once. I gave a small glass of my poison to another tenant who didn't even down what I gave him (so I did) and we all had a great time being tipsy before throwing out the empty bottles at the end and crashing. How my companion woke with a headache and I didn't remains a mystery to me.
Wow, that went on for longer than I had anticipated. I shall tell you tomorrow of my brief time in Venice, the night we spent homeless, and my reunion with the upset German girl. Until then, ciao!
Sunday, November 10, 2013
You Miss Me?
I am a wooly-headed, gullible, sleep-addled imbecile with no situational awareness or any sort of common sense or rationality. Whew. I just wanted to get that off of my chest. You'll see my reasoning in just a minute.
I have just returned to school from half-term, during which I was in Italy and Chester. I had spotty internet at times, but I will admit that I probably could have posted had I not crawled into bed exhausted each night, often around 4 or 5am. I shall leave two posts for the time I missed in recompense so that I can give both parts of the trip justice and so that I don't bore you guys with a long ramble by giving you a break in the middle.
I have to say that Manchester airport is one of the best I have ever seen. It is clean, well lit and maintained, and has tons of places to shop that are reasonably priced while the ceiling tiles are weird semi-transparent grates shaded into patterns of leaves and vines that veil the wiring and pipes behind them. Forget all of that though, THEY HAVE AN ENORMOUS ALCOHOL SECTION!!! I have never seen so much alcohol in an entire airport before and this was all just within two-hundred square feet floorspace! Apparently, since the UK airports are duty-free zones, alcohol's a lot cheaper and is thus a big seller! I'm not even sure if you can buy a whole bottle of wine to bring onto the plane in America, but here I'd bet that you could buy a whole carton of whiskey without anyone batting an eye! Past that there were more stands and shelves selling a variety of products and I couldn't help but wonder if I'd been thrown back into a mall at home. To top it all off, as I was walking through, I noticed that all traffic had to follow a strip of beige tiles that wound back and forth through the whole thing, forcing everyone past all of the goods for a much longer time than necessary. That, to me, was the best part. Just looking at the setup, I had to give silent praise to whoever engineered this so that potential customers are exposed to the tempting, cheaper products for a long time (possibly while waiting in line to get through the area) and thus improving the airport's profits. Furthermore, I bet that the vendors closest to the tile strip have to pay at least double what the further removed merchants have to pay, as they are more conspicuous and thus more likely to profit. In any situation, the airport rakes in the dough. To me, that was kind of entertaining, or at least it was at 2am after two hours of sleep since 7:00 the previous morning. To make it even better, they didn't force us to take off our shoes or jewelry at security. I like England!
While there, I met an affable Romanian guy (25 years old?) from Mehadia (I think) named Dragosh, aka Dragos. Awesome name, right? It's like something straight out of the Song of Ice and Fire books (Game of Thrones to you TV goers)! Having nothing to do, we chatted and walked around together for the eight hours before our flights. He told me about his life and his troubles with work and trying to do weekend university courses. The worst part, listening to him, was that he had "no vocation." This prevented him from making any set plan that he could advance, other than to become the mayor of his town, which left him in a rut. While we talked for quite some time, I don't tend to trust anyone for weeks, no less someone I'd met in a train station four hours before. Thus, when he started relaxing in a massage chair, I wanted to test him a bit by pretending to fall asleep while lying on a bench to see if he would try to take anything. I remained vigilant, watching him through my eyelashes as he leaned back. I watched, carefully observing... and waiting... and the next thing I knew he was waking me up. Shit. Well so much for that. He didn't take anything, though, so it's all good and we continued to talk. He was just generally a really nice guy, from what I could tell, though when he asked to see my passport, I told him it was buried deep in my bag as I pretended to drowse. Forgive my paranoia! One last note on this guy, he also thinks that the Tea Partiers in the US are nut jobs! I'm sorry you crazy fools, but the world outside of the US (and most of the US) thinks that you're absolutely batty!
Before my flight to Italy, I had spent the entire week with, at most, five hours of sleep per night after which I had to stay awake for another thirty-six hours on the Tuesday I left school, as my train left at 10:30pm and my flight left the next day at 7am. I counted my nap on the train as a blessing and felt decent once I arrived in the Fiumicino airport. However, I needed to wait for another ten hours before my rendezvous's flight came in. I went through the fastest customs ever (the guy barely glanced at each passport before waving nearly one hundred people through in two minutes) and decided to wander the coastal town of Fiumicino. When getting onto the bus, the first thing I noticed was that the Italians drive on the correct side of the road, as in the RIGHT side. Get with the program England! The landscape and architecture that we passed reminded me a lot of southern California and New Mexico. Honestly, if you had dropped me there and not shown me a sign, I would have guessed that I was in LA. Much of the place was in disrepair (I was wondering if I'd stepped into a ghetto), but all I had to do was cross one street to find rotting, chipped walls giving way to picturesque stretches of cafés, restaurants, and shops on a plaza. Here I was introduced to the wonders of gelato, which is vastly superior to American ice cream in flavor, but lacks our variety, and Italian pizza which is no different to ours aside from a thinner crust and better ingredients. Just a margarita pizza with no seasonings in the sauce was equal to or better than whatever I'd get at home with a bunch of herbs in it, as the tomatoes are just more flavorful in Italy (which is backwards since they are a New World fruit). I tried stumbling through some of the Italian that Dragos had tried to teach me (he lived in Italy for nine years) to order another gelato elsewhere, but I guess that it was so obvious that I was an English speaker that the clerk started to stumble through English to help me. I'm not even sure what flavor I got then. What does "Nocciola" mean?
I meandered past the various shops and restaurants nearby, taking in the sights and having a laugh at the "Old Wild West Steakhouse" in the dead center of the street (it looked very little like what I'd find back in New Mexico). Soon, however, the rhythmic washing of waves reached my ears. Like a dog following the distant call of a bird, I was led to the coastline. I found a wide stone path that stretched over the shore and ended in a spacious circle that hovered over the water, supported by thick shafts of stone and hedged by carved railings on all sides. I did not enter the circle at first. I stood at its edge where the straight bricks began to curve and I hesitated. I felt... relieved to be there. Imagine a man returning home and reuniting with a friend, that he had not seen or thought of in years, to discover that he had felt solitary without this companion. That is much how I felt standing there. Something that felt like a long held breath escaped from me and I shuddered. I could not bring myself to cross into the circle and surround myself with the ocean, much as the returning man might fear to speak with his friend after so many years of negligent silence. A wave crashed over the rocks and I took a step through the intangible barrier. I took another and another and I was elated! I wanted to dance and run to the edge of the railing to look out over the sea and call for joy "I'm back!" However, my superego got the better of me and I contented myself with plastering an idiotic smile across my face. I am not a sailor, nor a marine biologist, nor do I even particularly like fish (save sushi), so I would never have imagined that seeing the ocean again after these months would have such a profound effect on me. Now, weeks later, I still think of the sea and wonder when I shall hear it again and smell the air. That's another thing; I have spent most of my life by the sea, so I grew up accustomed to the smell that everyone else found so novel. That day, in Fiumicino, I smelled the ocean for the first time in my memory. Of course everyone, myself included, noticed the odors of low tide and when the quahogers hauled in their catch nearby, but never before can I recall smelling the brine.
Naturally, I went to the shore after that, kissed the Mediterranean's water just to say that I'd done it, wished I'd brought a swimsuit, and stayed within sight of the ocean for the next five hours. When I went to eat, I made sure to find a place with a view of the sea just so that I could soak it all in (and the restaurant made a good half calzone, half pizza thing while they kept playing American hits from the '50s by Sam Cook and the rest, which I got a kick out of). I walked back to the stone pier to discover that I was about an hour shy of sunset, yet found myself staying there the entire time.
A man had set up a stool and was playing the guitar for all present as the sun began to sink. I looked out again, the soft music behind me, the warm wind before me, the murmuring of the ocean all around, and all of it painted in oranges, greens, and blues. This would be a wonderful place to bring a girl, I couldn't help but think. If I had one that is. I turned back around and saw a couple settle near my left while the pretty girl began to dance to the guitar. She's got the right idea at least. I considered joining her, but decided to just let her boyfriend enjoy the scene. She looked like she was having fun though...
Aside from that, the guitarist made me laugh by playing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and "The Entertainer" in the middle of his more traditional tunes while I noticed another man who, I kid you not, was unable to turn left. I am not imaginative enough to make this stuff up. Soon I had to depart, and I passed a limber girl doing rather impressive tricks on roller-skates, several couples, and then myself had to hit the emergency stop on a bus and caused an old lady to fall over. Well, shit.
Have a good night one and all! I shall post again tomorrow night so that you can catch up on my exploits, homework be damned! Tune in tomorrow night to discover why I stated earlier that "I am a wooly-headed, gullible, sleep-addled imbecile with no situational awareness or any sort of common sense or rationality."
I have just returned to school from half-term, during which I was in Italy and Chester. I had spotty internet at times, but I will admit that I probably could have posted had I not crawled into bed exhausted each night, often around 4 or 5am. I shall leave two posts for the time I missed in recompense so that I can give both parts of the trip justice and so that I don't bore you guys with a long ramble by giving you a break in the middle.
I have to say that Manchester airport is one of the best I have ever seen. It is clean, well lit and maintained, and has tons of places to shop that are reasonably priced while the ceiling tiles are weird semi-transparent grates shaded into patterns of leaves and vines that veil the wiring and pipes behind them. Forget all of that though, THEY HAVE AN ENORMOUS ALCOHOL SECTION!!! I have never seen so much alcohol in an entire airport before and this was all just within two-hundred square feet floorspace! Apparently, since the UK airports are duty-free zones, alcohol's a lot cheaper and is thus a big seller! I'm not even sure if you can buy a whole bottle of wine to bring onto the plane in America, but here I'd bet that you could buy a whole carton of whiskey without anyone batting an eye! Past that there were more stands and shelves selling a variety of products and I couldn't help but wonder if I'd been thrown back into a mall at home. To top it all off, as I was walking through, I noticed that all traffic had to follow a strip of beige tiles that wound back and forth through the whole thing, forcing everyone past all of the goods for a much longer time than necessary. That, to me, was the best part. Just looking at the setup, I had to give silent praise to whoever engineered this so that potential customers are exposed to the tempting, cheaper products for a long time (possibly while waiting in line to get through the area) and thus improving the airport's profits. Furthermore, I bet that the vendors closest to the tile strip have to pay at least double what the further removed merchants have to pay, as they are more conspicuous and thus more likely to profit. In any situation, the airport rakes in the dough. To me, that was kind of entertaining, or at least it was at 2am after two hours of sleep since 7:00 the previous morning. To make it even better, they didn't force us to take off our shoes or jewelry at security. I like England!
While there, I met an affable Romanian guy (25 years old?) from Mehadia (I think) named Dragosh, aka Dragos. Awesome name, right? It's like something straight out of the Song of Ice and Fire books (Game of Thrones to you TV goers)! Having nothing to do, we chatted and walked around together for the eight hours before our flights. He told me about his life and his troubles with work and trying to do weekend university courses. The worst part, listening to him, was that he had "no vocation." This prevented him from making any set plan that he could advance, other than to become the mayor of his town, which left him in a rut. While we talked for quite some time, I don't tend to trust anyone for weeks, no less someone I'd met in a train station four hours before. Thus, when he started relaxing in a massage chair, I wanted to test him a bit by pretending to fall asleep while lying on a bench to see if he would try to take anything. I remained vigilant, watching him through my eyelashes as he leaned back. I watched, carefully observing... and waiting... and the next thing I knew he was waking me up. Shit. Well so much for that. He didn't take anything, though, so it's all good and we continued to talk. He was just generally a really nice guy, from what I could tell, though when he asked to see my passport, I told him it was buried deep in my bag as I pretended to drowse. Forgive my paranoia! One last note on this guy, he also thinks that the Tea Partiers in the US are nut jobs! I'm sorry you crazy fools, but the world outside of the US (and most of the US) thinks that you're absolutely batty!
Before my flight to Italy, I had spent the entire week with, at most, five hours of sleep per night after which I had to stay awake for another thirty-six hours on the Tuesday I left school, as my train left at 10:30pm and my flight left the next day at 7am. I counted my nap on the train as a blessing and felt decent once I arrived in the Fiumicino airport. However, I needed to wait for another ten hours before my rendezvous's flight came in. I went through the fastest customs ever (the guy barely glanced at each passport before waving nearly one hundred people through in two minutes) and decided to wander the coastal town of Fiumicino. When getting onto the bus, the first thing I noticed was that the Italians drive on the correct side of the road, as in the RIGHT side. Get with the program England! The landscape and architecture that we passed reminded me a lot of southern California and New Mexico. Honestly, if you had dropped me there and not shown me a sign, I would have guessed that I was in LA. Much of the place was in disrepair (I was wondering if I'd stepped into a ghetto), but all I had to do was cross one street to find rotting, chipped walls giving way to picturesque stretches of cafés, restaurants, and shops on a plaza. Here I was introduced to the wonders of gelato, which is vastly superior to American ice cream in flavor, but lacks our variety, and Italian pizza which is no different to ours aside from a thinner crust and better ingredients. Just a margarita pizza with no seasonings in the sauce was equal to or better than whatever I'd get at home with a bunch of herbs in it, as the tomatoes are just more flavorful in Italy (which is backwards since they are a New World fruit). I tried stumbling through some of the Italian that Dragos had tried to teach me (he lived in Italy for nine years) to order another gelato elsewhere, but I guess that it was so obvious that I was an English speaker that the clerk started to stumble through English to help me. I'm not even sure what flavor I got then. What does "Nocciola" mean?
I meandered past the various shops and restaurants nearby, taking in the sights and having a laugh at the "Old Wild West Steakhouse" in the dead center of the street (it looked very little like what I'd find back in New Mexico). Soon, however, the rhythmic washing of waves reached my ears. Like a dog following the distant call of a bird, I was led to the coastline. I found a wide stone path that stretched over the shore and ended in a spacious circle that hovered over the water, supported by thick shafts of stone and hedged by carved railings on all sides. I did not enter the circle at first. I stood at its edge where the straight bricks began to curve and I hesitated. I felt... relieved to be there. Imagine a man returning home and reuniting with a friend, that he had not seen or thought of in years, to discover that he had felt solitary without this companion. That is much how I felt standing there. Something that felt like a long held breath escaped from me and I shuddered. I could not bring myself to cross into the circle and surround myself with the ocean, much as the returning man might fear to speak with his friend after so many years of negligent silence. A wave crashed over the rocks and I took a step through the intangible barrier. I took another and another and I was elated! I wanted to dance and run to the edge of the railing to look out over the sea and call for joy "I'm back!" However, my superego got the better of me and I contented myself with plastering an idiotic smile across my face. I am not a sailor, nor a marine biologist, nor do I even particularly like fish (save sushi), so I would never have imagined that seeing the ocean again after these months would have such a profound effect on me. Now, weeks later, I still think of the sea and wonder when I shall hear it again and smell the air. That's another thing; I have spent most of my life by the sea, so I grew up accustomed to the smell that everyone else found so novel. That day, in Fiumicino, I smelled the ocean for the first time in my memory. Of course everyone, myself included, noticed the odors of low tide and when the quahogers hauled in their catch nearby, but never before can I recall smelling the brine.
Naturally, I went to the shore after that, kissed the Mediterranean's water just to say that I'd done it, wished I'd brought a swimsuit, and stayed within sight of the ocean for the next five hours. When I went to eat, I made sure to find a place with a view of the sea just so that I could soak it all in (and the restaurant made a good half calzone, half pizza thing while they kept playing American hits from the '50s by Sam Cook and the rest, which I got a kick out of). I walked back to the stone pier to discover that I was about an hour shy of sunset, yet found myself staying there the entire time.
A man had set up a stool and was playing the guitar for all present as the sun began to sink. I looked out again, the soft music behind me, the warm wind before me, the murmuring of the ocean all around, and all of it painted in oranges, greens, and blues. This would be a wonderful place to bring a girl, I couldn't help but think. If I had one that is. I turned back around and saw a couple settle near my left while the pretty girl began to dance to the guitar. She's got the right idea at least. I considered joining her, but decided to just let her boyfriend enjoy the scene. She looked like she was having fun though...
Aside from that, the guitarist made me laugh by playing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and "The Entertainer" in the middle of his more traditional tunes while I noticed another man who, I kid you not, was unable to turn left. I am not imaginative enough to make this stuff up. Soon I had to depart, and I passed a limber girl doing rather impressive tricks on roller-skates, several couples, and then myself had to hit the emergency stop on a bus and caused an old lady to fall over. Well, shit.
Have a good night one and all! I shall post again tomorrow night so that you can catch up on my exploits, homework be damned! Tune in tomorrow night to discover why I stated earlier that "I am a wooly-headed, gullible, sleep-addled imbecile with no situational awareness or any sort of common sense or rationality."
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