Londoners in Rome: Day One

“Melissa left yesterday and I’ve missed her ever since,” I wrote in my journal. “As much as it sucks right now, we had an incredible weekend.” It was one that is worthy of recounting with the indelible pen of the internet. 

Melissa and her roommate, Abby, got into Rome the evening after I left them standing in the Florence train station in a crowd of European travelers.  The original plan was for me to meet them at McDonald's in Roma Termini at 8:00, so when I was let out of my High Renaissance class at 7:30, I power walked to the closest subway stop only to find that it was inexplicably closed.  I would find out later that there had been a fatality on the eastbound A-line tracks and that my route to the train station was closed because of it.  I needed to reach my disoriented guests as soon as I could, but was instead left standing in front of the closed entryway to the subway.  I was surprised to have to revert to a plan B when I had never expected to even need a plan B.

The power of hindsight is frustratingly revealing, especially when analyzing a quick travel audible.  This was one of those cases when I should have gotten on one of the “A-line replacement” buses but the line was huge and each arriving bus was full.  I quickly thought about the situation and decided to walk across Piazza del Popolo to the main taxi stand but was met with an equally intimidating line there as well.  At that point in late March, tourists were beginning to swarm the city to the point that I was ashamed to have ever been one of them.  The hoard of money-spenders plus the nonfunctioning Termini-bound A-line train made the next three taxi stands that I saw just as packed as the first.  It is a commentary on technology that my cell phone saved the situation; we babies of the baby-boomers are lost without a direct line of communication.  So because I could not continue past the Spanish Steps, the only solution I could come up with was for them to meet me at Piazza di Spagna.  With my charge hopefully making their way towards me, I took a deep breath, got a cornetto and an espresso from McDonald's because I hadn’t eaten since 12:30, and waited anxiously outside the stop for them.  They emerged twenty minutes later with their bags, happy to see me pacing the cobblestones right where I said I’d be.

           

My roommate Bob was a very skilled DJ was supposed to “spin” at school for the Temple Jam Session.  I had never seen Diefex play and beyond the blaring overflow from Bob’s headphones I had barely heard any of it either.  I thought the girls might like it so I made plans for the three of us to grab some food at Mondo Arancina (Rice Ball World) and to head to Temple’s campus just north of the world’s self-proclaimed center for Rice Balls for some awesome dub/experimental/industrial sounds. 

Again, this seemingly simple plan did not pan out the way we had hoped it would, but the adventure and unpredictability of it all was what made being abroad such a magically empowering experience.

I was left at the Piazza di Spagna metro stop with two girls and their luggage and unique knowledge of where their hostel was; as in, I was the only one who knew... in the world.  We managed to make our way closer to Termini to find their hostel, Hotel des Artistes.  With their luggage safely in the hotel of the artists, I could continue to hurry them to Temple’s campus for some good spins that I was worried would be over already. 

To add a bit of unpredictability to the night, Mondo Arancina was closed and the famously buttery, cheesy, fried balls of rice would be kept from our empty stomachs in a cruel display of early Italian business hours, forcing us to turn to our second, third and fourth choices that all had the same news for us.  This turned us reluctantly towards the only place that would serve us at 10:00 at night. Our 400^th choice: Burger King.  The reality that I had eaten at McDonald's and Burger King on the same day would have been shocking enough, but I was turned towards their neon lights in a concession of antithetical Roman culture, and that was the true blow to my Italian identity.  The place could have been in Federal Way, Washington, despite the presence of the Via Flaminio (the oldest main road in Rome) right outside the door, and our dissatisfaction with our first Roman meal together made us inhale it in a desire to get away from the place. 

We made it to Bob’s show fifteen minutes later with plenty of time to spare.  What I had thought would be mostly “Bob’s Show” was a bunch of standup comedians’ show too, who were interspersed amongst harmonica players, Italian rappers and guitarists.   Had I not been entertaining friends and therefore directly responsible for the happiness of my guests, I would have enjoyed this time more: 100 of the 102 people in the room understood the inside jokes that were made and time passed very slowly, while the two Londoners sat beside me, politely smiling along with the laughs but obviously eager to get out and explore the city.  It was an hour and a half before we finally saw the man himself throw on his headphones and ascend the makeshift stage, never changing his solemnly concentrated face as he plugged the speaker cord into his white macbook that I knew so well from its time spent next to me on our kitchen table.  Diefex put on a show that had everyone in the room dancing in their seats and inspired a “BOB, BOB, BOB…” chant that competed with the subwoofers.  Even with his headphones around his neck and the chant louder than the music, the man characteristically didn’t crack a smile in the face of widespread adoration.

That night we went to San Lorenzo, which I had never been to.  San Lorenzo is right next to Sapienza, the biggest school in Rome with 147,000 students.  It is therefore a college town in and of itself, with weird euro-hippy people everywhere, dogs running off their leashes and general mayhem happening all around.  The main area to hang out there at night is ironically in a central courtyard right in front of a church.  Hundreds of people stand on the cobblestones where they can take full advantage of the lack-of-an-open-container law, getting grande Peroni for two euros from a panini place, mirthfully screaming at each other and hanging out.  As much as I have talked up Melissa to my Rome friends and them to her this was a very important meeting for me.  Of course, they all loved her and she thinks they are the funniest people ever, which they are. Thanks to the Jam Session, I got to show off Melissa in front of people I never thought she would meet because practically all of Temple Rome bused there together in a triumphant display of happy camaraderie. We rarely stopped laughing or talking once we were there and the bad karma from two fast-food trips leveled itself out, as good friends became great beneath the spire of a Renaissance church.

We left San Lorenzo by 3:00, with the three of us splitting off from the fifty-person bus group to head towards their hostel.  Half and hour later, our stroll ended and Abby went to bed.  Melissa and I then had the chance to walk around the deserted streets alone for another half hour, before my now very lengthy journey home had to begin.  At  4:30 in the morning I had a few options: take two night buses across the city that involves waiting for an undetermined amount of time and sitting on a bus filled with an undetermined number of sketchy people who don’t stop staring at you beneath a hood with their arms crossed; wait an hour for the metro to open; or spend 15 euros on a comfortable taxi ride.  My dad always told me to throw money at the problem, so that’s what I did: I threw his money at the problem and got home by 5:00, ending the first of three nights as a host in Rome.

True Trust

A poem written and illustrated by me, Matt Morgan

Dedicated to my late friend, Bob Duncan

"Could be from a lifelong frustration
with things that when combined and put into conversation

were described as 'the world.' 

Your own ability allowed for increased hope 

and public expectation and when the world isn't a soft

enough medium for your hammer to be

absorbed, you live; when it breaks 

and cracks with your fist, you live. 

But the world is a ball of yarn, impervious to your falling iron 

that bounces off, more forceful with the strength 

of your arm, until your mallet's inertia turns on you with 

a wicked betrayal 

and the opportunity that was theirs is now 

yours.  And you will be forever the king of your world because of your 

decision to do what only you and fate could. And your clenched 

fist is only now relaxed, powerful in its absolute 

inability, the strings of the hearts you pulled wrapped gently 

around the limp fingers.  The last fall of 

the mallet that they once gripped vaulted you to where 

you needed to be. In this, the hearts of the heartstrings 

trust. In this, we are all warmly comforted. 

That they themselves don't fray, 

do not betray 

our trust 

in your decision."

A Florentine Meeting to Put Old Movies to Shame

After two days of constant stomach butterflies to finish 2 months and 25 days of her absence, I was able to meet my girlfriend Melissa in Florence. The Great Jan Gadeyne’s Roman History class that usually captures 100% of my most nerd-focused attention was for once not enjoyable, and I spent the time bouncing my knee, my mind wandering about seeing her instead of what it would be like to have walked the paths of the Palatine 2,000 years ago.  But the time passed and I eventually made it northwards to the city of the High Renaissance.

I pulled into the Firenze Santa Maria Novella station and power-walked to the Duomo calling Melissa as I walked.  I thought she would be close but it took her about 15 minutes to get there, leaving me squirming with anticipation on the steps thinking every person was her.  Finally, she came squealing across the square and we had a meeting to put old movies to shame.  It dawned on me while I was waiting on the steps that I was just completely dreaming and that this wasn’t really happening.  I was proven wrong as we collided on the steps of the greatest church of the Italian Renaissance.

It turned out that our friend Abby had gotten a few too many free bottles of wine at their hostel and had gone to sleep by 10:30 so just the two of us walked and talked all night long.  We got kebabs and ate them on the steps of Santa Croce while some Italian youths played soccer in the stone piazza that was ten short hours away from being packed with the chaos of daylight commerce.  While we were sitting there, a man stumbled up to the foot of the steps and looked at three empty beer bottles that had been abandoned on three consecutive steps.  After a second, he reached for the second one, which at a second glance had about two finger-widths of beer left, and picked it up.  Yes, about ten steps later, he put it to his lips and tossed it back without regard to Italian classiness. Our friend of the stairs had no worries about being without his sacred bella figura as he zigzagged into the night.

We then wandered back to a park not far from the hostel and added another bench to our collection.  We talked there, in the cold, until about 3:30, finally heading back for a few hours of sleep.

The next day, we conquered the stubborn ATM’s that had been overly prevalent and miserly the night before, allowing me to bail Melissa out of being stuck in a foreign country with no money and a frozen ATM card, which I was relieved to be able to do. We then got pasta for breakfast and Abby had her first blood orange.  Its hard to qualify what we did that day beyond just walking around a great city, stopping in an occasional church with each successive rain storm, and beginning to fill in the last three months of each others’ lives, with which we are usually so familiar.

           

I left late that afternoon after another lunch of pasta with plans for the girls to meet me at Roma Termini the next night.  On the train I called Melissa and gave her a plan to be a failsafe in case something went wrong when they got to Rome.  I was the only one with their hostel information so if my phone died or there was a badly timed transportation strike, they would still be able to reach me.  For something to be further detailed in another entry, I am very glad I made this call.  For friends as guests in my adoptive home country, I wouldn’t have liked them spending a night effectively alone without being able to reach me. 

Introduction: A Typical Weekend

I was abroad in Rome, Italy for four months, a time that allowed for sixteen weekends of potential adventures that may never present themselves to me again.  There was a lot of pressure that was built into these weekends, as if each one was an unopened Christmas present, infinite in its possibilities and thus challenging in its prospects. The challenge was like the dilemma of preteen Christmases, when I would pray that the box in front of me wasn’t filled with an itchy holiday sweater but the newest Pokemon game.  At home with the box in front of me, I was powerless over the truth of its contents and yet I was the simultaneous controller over its imagined identity.  My weekends abroad were symbolic in this way except that I had the power over the contents of each carefully wrapped weekend, filled with possibilities, all of them actual.

This is the story of one weekend in late march when too many possibilities were readily available for me, each one needing only the power of my attention to be realized.  First, I was offered a spot on a bus on its way to Switzerland where I could ski down some of the most beautiful slopes in the world.

“Dude this will be great,” one guy said to me. “The top of the mountain is in Switzerland and the bottom is in Italy. We have a lodge that’s in town and we can ski all day and drink all night!”

Somehow, the prospect of such a perfect weekend seemed to good to be true.  I hadn’t yet learned, after living functionally in Italy for two months, that something seemingly too good to be true can often become exactly that; a surreal experience perfected by permanent memory.  I had already collected dozens of moments that would seem too good to be true if not for my own memory of them, yet I procrastinated when presented with this next and potentially most vivid of opportunities.  The only reason that I am admitting my condemnable avoidance of skiing simultaneously in Italian and Swiss Alps is because the weekend that I was fated to have was one that I would not trade in for such adventurous frivolities.

As most weekends in Italy seem to go, one or two nights of drinking preceded the explorations of the later days.  With a European three day weekend, this strategy of free-time usage worked exceptionally well.   In the trend of the semester that was already two months deep, all of this particular weekend’s adventures began on Thursday night. It became a general consensus to head to the old Roman neighborhood and market area of Rome called Trastevere where a favorite bar called Stairs made its home on the Via della Scala.  

My roommate Adam’s girlfriend Christine was in town and the two of them didn’t want to do an open bar starting at 11:30 (sensibly) so they went with our friend Mike to a rare Italian beer bar called Bir & Fud.  The rest of us (me, Joe, Bob, Evan, Rachel, Bridget, Jacqui and James) got our open bar bracelets and had a great time taking over the place, trying new drinks celebrating the fact that we held ourselves responsible for putting Stairs out of business from our other 18 euro open bar trips. Bob, one of my suite-mates, had had a lot to drink before we left and needed the help of two guys to stand up in the alley while waiting for a cab.  Because we had only one other dude besides me (Joe) to help Bob back, I stayed with Evan and Rachel to satisfy our general rule of never leaving girls alone at night while Joe, Jacqui, Bridget and Bob piled into a taxi.  Joe hilariously describes this as the most stressful taxi ride ever: Bob couldn’t keep his head up so Joe held it with one hand, Jacqui chose this time to pester Joe to hold her hand in the front seat, and Bridget thought she might be sick so Joe had to roll down her window while sitting in the middle seat.  All of this is happening while Bob is drooling into Joe’s supporting hand.

Evan, Rachel and I meanwhile were making our way towards Largo Argentina and the N6 night bus, which drops us right in front of the Residence.  We made it there and set up camp on the curb 20 yards up the street from the bus stop.  After talking for a while (by this point it was close to 2:30 am), a kid from Temple, who Rachel knew from her Italian class, came tumbling across the street from the ruins where Caesar was killed and in which direction there are no direct routes to late night places whatsoever.  

Rachel called his attention with a yell, “Sam! Whatsup?!”  He responds with a dead stop and a “ohh woah! Hey guys…” He then proceeds to look at the recently-arrived N7 bus, saying “HEY! Our bus is here!”  All three of us yelled at him from the curb that the N7 is not our bus. Our yells didn’t make it through his alcoholic haze, and, with one look towards us on the curb, Sam jumped on the bus just as the doors closed.  Apparently he was next seen with a black eye at 5:30 AM.  I did later investigative work on what happened to Sam and his eye but the truth has been lost even in his own memory since he woke up in pain the next morning.

While sitting on the curb at that bus stop, another bus pulled up that was far enough away that we didn’t feel the need to get up off the curb.  As if in an ode to Italian laziness, the bus filled with its late night passengers, started to pull away from our curb and turned so slightly that its wheels passed not a foot in front of my feet.  

It was probably the nearest that I have been to death or to losing a foot if talking in terms of proximity, and it is only proper that such a tangible interaction with death and near injury would come from the slow Italian life-style that I had been immersed in for two months now.  Italians are famous solo-taskers.  If you are unlucky enough to be directly behind one whose cell phone rings, then prepare to either become overly familiar with their back or dart around them quickly as they will most likely stop dead in their tracks on any busy sidewalk, unable to speak and walk at the same time.  The native personality can be charming, such as when the owner of an alimentari gives you direct and friendly attention as he crafts your prosciutto sandwich with tomato, mozzarella and olive oil; but it is inversely frustrating and illogical when the elderly woman in front of you risks being tackled by a hurried American or when a bus driver risks the safety of your foot in exchange for an easier turning of the wheel.

The next night we wanted to take it easy, but the charms of the ancient city continued to be alluring so we left the fluorescent lights of our small apartment living and went out.  Trastevere was our destination again, but this time we walked to Bir & Fud where Adam and Mike had been the night before.  The place would become one of my favorite in the city, but not before some initial confusion.  I walked into the warmly lit, narrow room and the place was filled with loud Italians enjoying the entitled beer, or food.  I had heard a soundbite during the last 24-hours’ conversation that told me something about the place: it was a bar that had no labeled tabs, only four or five knowledgeable bartenders who could give you what you wanted when you didn’t even know.  This sounded perfect to me at the time but when I approached the bartender, I was lost behind a handicap of language that had me stuttering and glancing at my friend Evan, looking for help in communicating what I wanted.  My solution under the pressure of two waiting sets of eyes was to shrug, lift my hand in questioning and, with a pleading look let out, “um, beer?”  While Evan laughed at my stage fright, the bartender looked confused and responded with, “que?” I chuckled nervously for a few seconds until the bartender dropped his confused look and familiarly said to me, “I’m kidding man, I’m from the Valley.”

And so, with a sigh of relief, the best bar in Rome was opened up to me, glorious in its potential to teach me how to love beer and to appreciate what I learned about it.  The philosophy of the owner, the guy from the Valley, was to teach his customers about beer by asking for their general tastes and giving samples of any of his lagers, ales, stouts, IPAs, ESBs, bocks, wits, or porters.  My favorite was one stout called a Negra, dark black like coffee and smooth and sweet with a following bitter taste that is unique to beer.  After trying a few we went across the river of Italians and American students that had collected in the alley to another bar and got a few more stouts, which I found out are my favorite kinds of beer.  There we had some great conversation about the Mormons, about whom Mike is very knowledgeable, and we told some classic stories in the street outside the bar.  We got some sandwiches after seemingly three hours of straight laughing to cap the night off (Mike had two) and we met some Italians who were friendly and invited us to their DJ show the next weekend.  One great night that continued the impossibly enchanting allure of Rome.

It was onto Siena the next day and we got up at 7:30 to make our train.  It was cruel and unusual but we eventually made it to Termini and onto an 8:30 train to Florence with a transfer in Chiusy and finally on to Siena.  We got to Siena by 1:00 and asked around for tips on how to get into town and promptly board the #2 bus.  The woman had told us that the ride had told us that was about 20 minutes long so we didn’t question it when we were soon driving through Tuscan fields.  After some arguing, we second-guessed ourselves off the bus and found ourselves in the middle of a random Tuscan town, 10 km outside the city.  Because none of us had eaten breakfast or peed on the 5 hour train ride, we immediately set to finding such amenities.  Rachel and I got some pastries and went on a seemingly futile attempt to find a bathroom.  We went into the grocery store to ask and the first woman rattled off something in quick Italian so we walked away confused and unhelped, while the second guy told us in Italian that it was outside to the right and that we needed a key.  After ten minutes of waiting for the key the manager gave it to us.  We found three unmarked doors outside and two unmarked keys on the keychain.  It took us over 30 minutes to find a bathroom, in a shopping center.  

The eight of us (me, Bob, Joe, Mike, Evan, Haley, Bridget, Rachel) then made our way back to the stop where we found a small, old man waiting on the bench.  Mike accurately described him as a small alcoholic amputee Tuscan peasant, because he had two boxes of wine in his bag and only one arm.  He was old and kept chuckling when we were laughing amongst ourselves ten feet away.  We thought this was because he understood us and appreciated our stories, but according to Rachel, who was sitting next to him, his mirth was because he had been farting the whole time!

After the amusement and confusion of the afternoon, we finally made it into town.  We spent some time admiring the Campo and the Campenile before moving on to see the Duomo and its Baptistry.  Outside the Baptistry, half of our group was waiting for the rest to finish looking around when an American family of five started to go up the steep and lengthy stone stairway that led to the rest of the church.  The oldest girl, about 8 years old, took the hand of the youngest who was no more than 3, up the stairs by the hand.  She must have been pulling too hard because the young girl started tumbling down the stairs backwards.  Joe and I both let out girly yelps as the little girl fell violently from sharp step to sharp step.  The girl was literally heels over head, then head over heels, hurling down a flight of stairs that were solid marble.  She cried for a while and was fine but it was nonetheless one of the more startlingly graphic things I’ve ever seen.

On a much funnier note; we were walking with some giant gelati and passed a sweet-waffle store.  A woman was outside in a booth, hand making the waffles and Joe, who thinks that she is completely behind glass, pressed his face to the window and said in a think German accent, “OOHHH! Vaffles?!?” As if noticing here presence with the opening of his mouth, Joe turned immediately red with embarrassment and walked away to return to the welcoming cackles of the laughter of his friends.  It was raucous and breathtaking laughter at first, next becoming a topic of mirthful conversation, and it now rests as an engraved definition of the day for all eight witnesses of such slapstick comedy.

This weekend was a sixteenth of those that were available to me while in Italy, one year ago.  It is fun and nostalgically reminiscent to recount these memories of mine that are so powerfully a part of my personality and every-day character.  This weekend in late march was an example of what endless and surprising possibilities were available to us while abroad, the extent of which I still do not fully understand.  It is the purpose of lengthy writings such as this one, which could be further expanded into a small book with just my own memories, to explore the mysteries of possibility and the function of memory.  There will be more to come from this rememberer; he has too much to share and remains tethered to the infinite exploration of his own memory.