As I write this blog I am siting on a high-speed train from Rome to Milan reflecting on the unforgettable weekend I just experienced.
Friday I was planning on taking the night train from Zuerich to Rome, which was scheduled to leave at 21:23. Because I’m an idiot and cannot manage to add/subtract or wrap my head around the concept of military time, I showed up at Hauptbahnhof at quarter to ten thinking I had left myself plenty of time to find my platform, grab a bottle of water, and get comfy in my couchette. I pulled aside a train-looking man and asked him which platform this train was leaving from and he kindly told me “Es schon weg” ( it already left) I promptly began to cry. He talked me down and explained an alternative route to me which would get me into Rome an hour later and that made me stop crying. J I wrote Mandy an email including my new arrival time and hopped on the train to Chiasso. I had a minor layover there and after meeting a guy from Steamboat who handed me over to some policemen for protection, I made friends with some other young backpackers: two guys from Bombay, a guy from Singapore, and a guy from Newfoundland. They filled me in on canyoning in Interlaken, hangliding, skydiving, and all of the other adventury things one can do there. I took the train from Chiasso to Milan (on which an old Italian man, who set down newspapers before sitting on the train seats, commented on how big my feet were) jumped on the Metro to Milano Centrale and hopped a train to Roma. On the train I met a nice Egyptian guy who taught me some important Italian phrases and invited me to come visit him in Florence. After he left the train my cabin was infiltrated with Americans. For the record, after living in Switzerland for a month and a half and adjusting to the way things are there, the way people are there, it was a little weird spending a few hours with these ladies. I can see how we can seem a little…irritating to other people. One of the women spilled white wine on an Italian lady that was also in the cabin, they were making fun of the Italian accent/telling stories about all the problems they were having with it and gossiping about everyones’ business…I was a little embarrassed to be an American on that train ride. I also met a cute Italian guy on that train who told me “You are very beautiful.” He tried to convince me to come to Naples with him…I was tempted. I got off the train and went to the Nike store where Mandy and I were to meet, but as the train was significantly later than it was supposed to be she was of course not there and I needed to find some internet to get in touch with her. I talked to the guys at the Nike store who had told me that there had been a very beautiful blond girl standing outside earlier but she had left. Then a nice Romanian guy from the Nike store took a break to go help me find internet. He was very nice, and we are now facebook friends J I got in touch with Mandy in an internet café, and took a cab to her place. We met up with Mandy’s friend Megan and went sightseeing. We went to the Pantheon, the Colleseum, Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, Piazza Navona (where we proceeded to get Henna tats), the Roman Forum, and Campo de Fiori where there was a HUGE Europride (gaypride) parade/party going down. Beautiful people dressed in really bright colors, wearing angel wings and hotpants (one guy was wearing a priest outfit and angel wings J) were dancing on floats to Katy Perry’s I kissed a Girl amongst other wonderful dance beats. It was wonderful. In the evening we had pasta for dinner at their flat and proceeded to Scholars, an Irish pub on Via del Corso. The music selection there was top notch, and the Italians would come up to us and ask, “What is this song called?” and we’d say, “Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey,” and they’d say, “Believe in Me?” “No, Don’t Stop Believing” and it would go back and forth like this for a while; it was beautiful. We met a few italain students from Naples named Alexandro, Carmela, and Francesco. I was quite fond of Francesco…he was a very beautiful Italian creature who didn’t speak a word of English. We had a great time with them singing American classic rock: Sweet Home Alabama, Don’t Stop Believin’, All Summer Long...etc. We exchanged coasters with information at the end of the night and were going to meet up again on Sunday night. All three of them are also now my facebook friends. SUNDAY: Got up, showered, ate some yummy bruschetta and tiramisu for breakfast and headed to the Vatican. We went to mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica (which is a beautiful building). When it was time for communion I went up to be blessed and did the hand crossy/crossy thing that in English means “I’m not planning on taking communion” but the priest gave it to me anyways: maybe there’s an Italian body language way of saying “no communion please.” Afterwards we checked out the catacombs; they were really neat and saw the tomb of John Paul IV. After that, the rest of the girls went grocery shopping and I went to the Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. Both of which were beautiful. I met the girls back at the apartment at 7:30 and took Mandy out to dinner for squash Gnochi which were delicious. After dinner we met up with a group of students and went to dessert (I had some yummy Ricotta thing with candied fruit…the candy fruit was somewhat weird but the waiter told me it was from Cicily and was excelente, so I had to try it. After that we went to a nearby piazza and watched the street performers. One guy did slapstick comedy that was really funny and only mildly crude. Another performer was dressed as a Sphinx, and there was a group of jugglers with colorful, glowing clubs that were really good. MONDAY: woke up said bye to Mandy and walked to the Vatican Museum because I wanted to see the Sistine Chapel. It was beautiful but different from what I was expecting. After that I took the Metro to the Palatino Hill where I saw the house of Augustus, lots of ruins, and a very pretty overlook of the whole forum/contantine arch/colleseum. After that I went to the Colleseum and hung out there for a while before heading back to the train station and getting on the fast train to Milan. In Milan I am scheduled to take a train to Zuerich, arriving at 10:30 tonight. Well as it turns out, as things generally seem to turn out in Italy, the train will be arriving in Milano 80 minutes late, conveniently causing me to miss my connection to Zuerich. Customer service will pay for me to stay in a hotel here in Milano and I will take the first train out of here in the morning after sending an apologetic email to the derm dept. According to a girl from Illinois that I met on the metro in Roma there is a saying that goes, in heaven the police are British, the cooks are French, the engineers are German, the administrators are Swiss, and the lovers are Italian, and in Hell the police are German, the cooks are British, the engineers are Italian, the administrators are French, and the lovers are Swiss ……..I suppose you take the good with the bad. How can you expect the world’s most beautiful, tanned, love-loving people to also keep their trains running on time. In a world of choices and priorities I’d put kissing skills, love, tan-ness, tiramisu, pasta, and courtship over punctual trams any day J (not that I don’t absolutely adore punctual trams and die Schweiz)
As a sidenote: After this trip I think I was born in the wrong country. The passion (at least from what I’ve seen here in the past couple days) here is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. People are passionate about their food and about love, especially love, like I’ve never seen before. Everyone is so open and warm it’s really beautiful. The streets may not be as clean as Zuerich’s but the way the language sounds, the way everything is done with passion and intention, the hand movements, the inter-human interaction is all very beautiful. I will learn Italian and live here someday, for an undefined period of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment