Astray in Europe
or: A Couple of Naïfs Take a Trip
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“"You should be careful," she gently chided.” |
BY six o'clock Saturday morning we were up and I was almost in the shower. I say almost because this shower had a glitch. I turned the ultramodern, very elegant tap handle to the full hot position and shut the shower door to wait a few seconds for the water to warm up. To my delight steaming hot water streamed out almost immediately, so I tried to adjust for more cold. No change. Adjust again. Still steaming hot. Full cold and after several minutes -- far longer than seemed reasonable -- nary a drop of moderating cool.
So I dredged a few plumbing terms from the Oxford Minidictionary and headed for the front desk. It was early on a sunny Saturday in late June when France starts idling down for les grandes vacances, so I was not surprised to find the lobby deserted, nor that it took some effort to rouse the clerk, who was busy doing whatever it is desk clerks do in that hidden room behind the registration desk. When he finally emerged -- the same chap of oriental descent who had checked us in two days before -- I tried to explain my problem in French. He seemed to think my inadequate vocabulary was causing me to babble, so I switched to English. After a few more courteous expressions of incomprehension, he finally agreed to have a look. I escorted him the few short steps to our room (it was on the first floor just off the lobby); he turned the tap, and after a few seconds, voila! The water ran cold.
With a fine courtesy, he refrained from the least twitch of a disparaging look and returned to his cubby-hole. He surely thought we were a couple of ninnies. The only explanation we could make (for ourselves; the clerk wasn't interested) was that our room must have been next to the boiler room, and after a long night and few guests up and about, the heat from the hot water side of the system had bled into the cold water side. Doesn't seem likely, but otherwise we could only conclude -- along with our desk clerk -- that we were hallucinating.
After a sumptuous room-service breakfast of croissants, rolls, café-au-lait, yogurt, apples, and the usual condiments, all fresh and tasty, we lugged our duffle of dirty clothes to the hole-in-the-wall laundromat down the street. The place was barely roomy enough for four or five washers and a couple of driers along one wall, and a table, a couple of chairs, soap dispensers, and an operating panel on the opposite wall. (All the machines were operated from this one panel.) We had it to ourselves. Instructions posted on the wall above the washers were in French only, but clear and precise. Nevertheless, I managed to get the soap into the bleach receptacle of one of our machines. As we were discussing this, a heavyset fiftyish man came in carrying a small bundle. Thinking he might be the owner or manager, I asked him in French if the one machine seemed to be working all right.
"Sorry," he said, "I don't speak a word of French." He was a tourist from Canada who only wanted to wash his socks. As we were chatting, a wiry little gray-haired man came in who obviously was either the owner, the manager, or a gutsy petty thief, because the first thing he did was open the operating panel and collect the money. I asked him about the washer that didn't seem to be working properly and after taking a look, he explained in a rapid jargon that I could barely understand that I had put the soap in the wrong receptacle. Then he fixed it up and started the machine. He was taciturn, but quite helpful and not unfriendly.
We helped the Canadian get his wash started and chatted with him while the machines ran. He said he had been in France for a week and that yesterday he had taken the tour of the beaches. Today, he was going back to walk the length of Juno Beach. He said he worked for a company that made underwater electronic devices. He also said his work took him all over Europe and into Morocco. (Nevertheless, he claimed to know not an iota of French.)
After finishing our wash, we went looking for a post office to see about putting together a package (tickets, receipts, pamphlets, and such) to mail home. Minnie remembered seeing a post office in our wanderings about town, so we set out once again through the maze of little streets fully expecting to come upon something interesting even if we didn't find a post office. Sure enough, we soon stumbled on a street of used book stores and resale/"junque" shops. We browsed but decided to complete our post office mission before doing any serious shopping.
"Junque" Shops
After severely compromising our vow to minimize our walking that day, we finally gave in and asked a well-coiffed young woman in a flashy skirt and blouse for directions. Smoking a cigarette and leaning against a wall, she actually looked pretty much like a hooker. But it was only 11:00 AM, so we guessed she was a store clerk on break. In any case, she seemed to enjoy the minor diversion of giving us directions.
The only differences between the Caen post office and one in the U.S. were the yellow and blue color scheme and the language. There were the same lines of people patiently waiting to buy stamps and mail packages. There was the same row of clerks politely waiting on customers. And along one wall, the same shipping materials and collectors' stamps were in glass display cases. However, since we didn't know exactly how much we wanted to ship, we couldn't decide which size of box to buy, so we put that off for the present.
On the way back to the hotel, we came across a John Deere tractor leading a protest march. It was pulling a farm wagon on which a long-haired teen-ager in T-shirt and blue jeans was pounding away on a drum set. A dozen or so young children were also riding, their legs dangling over the sides of the wagon. A couple hundred marchers were being shepherded through the intersection by two motorcycle cops. The marchers were of all ages from pre-teens to portly gray-hairs. The weather was perfect for such a demonstration, and everyone seemed to be in a jolly mood, including one guy with a beat up old bugle trying to play "Roll Out the Barrel." He succeeded only to the point that we could guess what the tune was supposed to be. One of the marchers gave us a handout that said they were protesting environmentally unsafe disposal of wastes from meat processing plants.
Protesting Environmental Pollution
Back at the hotel, the world cup game between South Korea and Turkey was on TV. In keeping with our relaxed regimen for the day, we watched some of that and dozed a bit. After about an hour of rest, Minnie started a cross-stitch project and I decided to go to a nearby cybercafé that our Canadian friend from the laundromat had mentioned. (Cybercafés are shops that offer rental time on computers with internet connections.) The shop was a computer sales and repair store with four or five computers set up for internet connection. The manager was the same guy who would have been operating any small computer store at home, a gangly young man with shoulder length hair and a scraggly beard. He told me the rate (1.5 euro for each 15 minutes or portion thereof), wrote a password on a slip of paper, and pointed me to one of the computers. The connection was slow and of course the French keyboard layout was slightly different from ours, but I managed to delete my spam and send a short note to family and friends.
For dinner that evening we returned to the nearby rue Vaugeux. Again we walked the length of the small district examining the menus. As we strolled, we came across a sign that said before the war this area near the port had been a seedy part of town where sailors and other riffraff drank, fought, and otherwise carried on in dirty bars and other shady establishments. This time we decided on La Mere Michelle, which happened to be directly across from the Kouba where we had eaten two nights before. The cuisine was supposed to be French country, which was appealing to us. There were the usual tables on the small terrace, and a couple of steps down gave access to a small interior dining room with a tiny bar along one wall. At the back, a sign next to a steep set of enclosed spiral stairs said more tables were available on the second floor.
Although the Kouba was already doing a roaring business, we were the first customers at La Mere. It occurred to us that this might not be a good sign as to the quality of the place, but we decided to give it a go anyway. We sat a while watching people stroll by looking at the menus as we had done. We could see a group of thirty-somethings dining on the terrace of another restaurant a few yards up the street. They could have been graduate students or young faculty members of the university whose campus was just a few blocks away on the other side of the castle. As they ate and talked -- and used their cell phones -- a young bulldog made regular patrols of both their table and the inside of that establishment.
Dining in the rue Vaugeux
After what seemed like a reasonable time and no server in sight, I decided to see if La Mere was open for business. I stepped down to the interior dining room and could hear voices from upstairs, so I called out something that I hoped meant, "Is anyone up there?" When a woman's voice replied, I asked if they were open, and she said they were indeed. So I went back to our table, and soon a boyish looking dark-haired girl in loose knee-length trousers and a white blouse brought the menus.
As we discussed our options and checked the terminology in the minidictionary, a French family of several adults and a couple of kids took a table in the downstairs interior dining room. They seemed to be personal friends of the owners. One of the kids, a boy about eight years old, came out and started performing for us. He must have just come from a party because the tip of his nose was painted pink and cat whiskers were drawn on his cheeks. He wouldn't talk, but he hung around trying to get our attention. Every now and then his mother would yell at him to come back in, but before long, he would be out by our table again. At one point he crouched (being a cat and all) under the sandwich board where the Kouba across the way posted its menus. He provided a diversion while we waited for our dinner.
Un gentil petit chat
For our entrées (no starters) Minnie had a salmon-based something and I had a salad. Our main dishes were a kind of ham and potatoes casserole with cheese for Minnie, and I had something similar but with salmon. We each had a glass of white wine for an aperitif and another with our meal. To finish up, we ordered a cheese plate which, when it came, consisted of three huge wedges of different kinds of cheese, way too much for us to eat at one sitting. Unsure as to whether the "doggie bag" had yet arrived in Normandy, we chose a moment when no one seemed to be looking and dumped most of the cheese into one of the large Zip-Loc bags Minnie always carried for just such ad hoc occasions and tucked it into her purse.
We slept well again that night and had another great room service breakfast the next morning. As we left the hotel on our way to do a more thorough tour of the castle and visit the Musée des Beaux-Arts, we met our Canadian friend again. He said he had had a good day walking Juno Beach, but had lost his cell phone on the bus. He said he called the bus company and they found it, but he was supposed to catch a train at the time they set for him to meet someone to pick it up. We couldn't do anything to help him, so we wished him luck and continued on our way, maybe feeling a little smug about finding at least one other traveler -- an experienced traveler, or so he claimed -- who might be more inept than we.
We climbed the hill to the castle and walked along the walls viewing the city spread at our feet with its many church steeples stabbing into the horizon. Again, the weather was pleasant and as it was still early, there wasn't much of a crowd. A garden of medieval herbs provided a secluded corner to soak up a little sun and wonder which of the herbs were poisonous, as cautioned by a nearby sign.
Caen Castle
Duke William of Normandy started construction of the castle around 1047 after convincing certain relatives and friends that, though young and technically a bastard, he was indeed the Duke of Normandy. The question came up when he was a lad of seven and his dad, Duke Robert, decided to get right with the Lord and go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Before leaving, he told friends and family that if he did not return, the boy would be their next duke. But when word drifted back that Robert had died, many of his buddies and some of his relatives argued that it wasn't right for a stripling bastard to be their immediate feudal boss. Of course, the times being what they were, the debate was conducted in the rude language of cold steel and big horses.
With the help of some loyal friends and relatives, young William escaped various kidnapping and assassination attempts, and by the time he was nineteen or twenty, had developed considerable "eloquence" of his own. The battle that finally convinced the folks that he was indeed their boss was fought near a sleepy village on the banks of the river Orne. As a result, William made that village, Caen, his seat of government. To ensure that everyone understood this, he built a very large castle on a nearby 12-acre limestone outcropping. (A few years later he and his duchess, Mathilda, also sponsored construction of two additional emblems of feudal authority: the Abbey aux Hommes for him, and the Abbey aux Dames for her.)
In the centuries since, the castle has sometimes been battered to ruins, sometimes improved and modernized, sometimes left for decades deserted and crumbling. William's immediate descendents maintained and improved it as a Norman stronghold even though their capital was London. However, at the beginning of the 13th century, Philippe II of France took possession of it along with most of England's continental territories. Philippe made some improvements, but after that no one showed much interest in the castle till the middle of the 14th century when the 100 Years War broke out.
In that jolly time the castle was besieged three times, once by the English and twice by the French. It was severely damaged, though quickly repaired, each time. At last, however, with the economies of both England and France in ruins and European civilization staggering toward chaos, they sacrificed a virgin and let the war peter out. Caen castle once more went dormant and remained so till the Revolution decided in 1793 that it was a symbol of tyranny and made a half-hearted effort to raze it. After that it remained a Romantic ruin till 1870 when the army fitted it out as a regimental headquarters. Although it was severely damaged by allied bombing and shelling in 1944, most of it has now been restored to its medieval configuration. Today, not only restoration but considerable archeological work is being done there.
Unlike the history museum, which is housed in a restored building dating originally from early in the castle's history, the Musée des Beaux-Arts is a modern, long, low, glass-and-white-painted concrete structure dating from 1971. Located within the castle walls, this building replaced the original art museum which was destroyed in 1944 along with a large portion of its collection. Fortunately, however, most of the collection had been moved to a safer place.
Today, the Caen art museum is noted for its collection of paintings from the 15th to the 20th centuries including works by artists whose names even we were somewhat familiar with: Rubens and Monet, for example. It also has an extensive collection of engravings with works by such as Dürer and Rembrandt.
We looked at paintings and engravings till our feet were pretty sore, then walked back down the hill and had lunch at a sidewalk café. At the hotel, we met our Canadian friend yet again. He was standing with his luggage waiting for a taxi. He said he still didn't have his cell phone, but he thought he would be able to meet the person who was supposed to return it to him on his way to the train station.
Our Canadian Friend
We returned to our room, dozed, watched a little TV, did a little packing, and worked on our journal. For dinner, we ate the bread left over from breakfast and the cheese we had smuggled out of La Mere Michelle. The water was running hot out of both taps again, and in the morning, when we tried it again, it was the same. We stopped the drain just to see, and the roomy old fashioned tub was nearly full before the water began running cold.
On Monday morning, we mailed a package home, got packed, and checked out of the hotel. We arrived at the train station with just a little time to spare before the next direct train to Paris. We were a bit impatient waiting while the couple ahead of us in line argued with each other under the benevolent and patient eye of the ticket agent about whether it would be cheaper for them to travel by rail or rent a car. By the time we got to the window, it was almost noon, and our train was scheduled to leave at 12:17. We had discovered that the railroad would reserve hotel rooms, so asked about reserving a room in Rome. The clerk said he could do that and after working at it on his computer for some time, finally got it all arranged…we thought.
We hurried to our platform despairing that we had missed the train because it was already 12:17. However, it hadn't left yet, and we were able to scramble aboard. After some difficulty, we found our seats in a first class compartment and sat back for the fast smooth ride to Paris. When the conductor checked our tickets, I looked at them again and discovered that the clerk in Caen had misunderstood me. He had reserved a room for us in Rouen, France, not Rome, Italy.
There were four other people in the six passenger compartment: a middle-aged woman on our side next to the window, a young man maybe a student opposite her, a fortyish housewife type next to him, and a fiftyish husky man in a red shirt and canvas vest across from me next to the door. For the first part of the trip, everyone read or dozed. There was no general conversation.
After about an hour, the fortyish woman and the man in the vest dug sandwiches out of their bags and began eating them. This seemed like a good time to try to start a conversation, so I asked the man about getting from the Gare St-Lazare to the Gare de Bercy, which was identified on our tickets as our departure station. Although I spoke directly to the man, the woman in the window seat quickly joined in our conversation. Both were a little puzzled at first -- as was the other woman, who also joined in -- till I explained that we were catching a night train to Rome. The woman in the window seat then realized (or thought she did) that Bercy station was an annex of the Gare d'Orléans and that was where we should go. She said the Gare d'Orléans was quite far from the Gare St-Lazare, but that it would be very easy to get there by Metro. She was quite certain about all this.
At the Gare St-Lazare she and the others wished us a warm bon voyage. We took care of our personal needs (0.40 euros for the privilege), found the taxi stand (despite the advice of the woman on the train) because we didn't want to hassle with our luggage on the Metro, and waited in line as a steady stream of cabs loaded up and pulled out under drizzling skies. Our driver was a clean-shaven, well-groomed young man whose cab was equipped with more navigation equipment than the starship Enterprise. He gave most of his attention to a Global Positioning System screen on his dash that displayed a map of the area of Paris we were in with an arrow pointing to our position as we moved toward, then across, the Seine and he dodged through side streets and alleys to avoid traffic jams. (At least that was what he seemed to be doing.) When the GPS wasn't demanding his attention, he responded to digital readouts and vocal commands from cyberspace by tickling the keys of various other devices attached to the dash and talking quietly into a microphone, or maybe a cell phone, that we couldn't see. All his remaining attention, we sincerely hoped, was focused on the opposing drivers.
At the Bercy terminal, we found a relatively quiet corner where Minnie could mount guard on the luggage while I set out for the ticket counter to correct the mistake on our room reservations. I was second in line, so had a chance to size up the clerk as I waited. He was young, a little pudgy, very geeky. He must have been a beginner because watching over his shoulder was a slim, no-nonsense type thirtyish woman rather impatiently telling him what the stuff on his computer monitor meant.
When my turn came, I asked if they could handle room reservations, and when they said they could, I explained about the mistake. Their English probably was not as good as my French, but among us we were able to communicate pretty well. They studied their monitor a little, and finally the woman said I would have to go to the Gare de Lyon (which is the main station to which the Gare de Bercy is annexed, not the Gare d'Orléans). But right after she said this, she went off to tend to some other business, so the geek continued to work on my problem and finally told me he could get rooms for us for an additional three nights at the Rome Ibis. Then his no-nonsense boss came back and pointed a few things out to him. Like computer geeks everywhere, he had trouble believing he couldn't do it, but finally, he agreed that we would have to go to the Gare de Lyon. Since we had no idea where that was, we decided not to bother. We would take our chances after we got to Rome.
Next, we needed to stash our luggage so we could hunt out something to eat. Of course, the rental lockers were out of use for security reasons. Also, the station appeared to be quite new (which would explain why the folks on the train weren't familiar with it). In fact, it was still under construction in places. Although soon there would be a restaurant on the second floor, we could find no food service other than a couple of junk food vending machines.
Finally, we saw a man in a black suit with a red arm band marked "Sécurité" in black letters. He was apparently an immigrant, a black man, very dark, and speaking a French that I could barely understand. But he knew a few words of English, so I managed to ask him about a place to store our bags while we got something to eat. He replied that we could leave them with him, and he would watch after them till we got back. He seemed sincere, and a man hanging around the station with a "Sécurité" arm band wasn't likely to be a thief or a con artist, so spurred by the now dim memory of our breakfast croissants, we took him up on his offer. He showed us a corner where we could stack our bags and assured us they would be fine. At least, that's what we hoped he was saying.
As we left the station we noticed a Mercure hotel just across the street so we dropped by there to see if we could reserve rooms in Rome. The clerk, a young red-head with a tendency to freckles, very efficiently collected the information she needed, made the call, and got us set up. However, she couldn't get a room for Tuesday night, only the three following nights. So we would still have to spend one night in the Ibis. The clerk assured us that the Mercure was just a stone's throw from the Coliseum. We didn't know where the Ibis was or how much time and effort we would need to make the move.
The first open restaurant we came to was the Peanuts Café. It was a tiny sports bar with a couple of terrace tables, now glossy wet under the drizzle, and inside a small bar dimly illuminated in neon. We ordered toasted cheese sandwiches and beer. The sandwiches came open faced on half a loaf of bread. Neither of us could eat all of it, so we asked the waiter to wrap what we couldn't eat thinking we might finish them on the train.
Peanuts Café
Back at the station, our friendly Sécurité guard was keeping an eye on our stuff as promised. We thanked him and tipped him, and he continued with his official duties, which seemed to be only to wander around the station ready to help travelers in distress such as we. When the train finally backed slowly to the platform, we dragged our luggage most of its length to our sleeper car. This was not a gleaming chrome, glass and enamel bullet of a train. Outside and in, it harkened more to the 19th than to the 21st century. Except, of course, it was electric powered, so there was no dramatic huffing and chuffing and clouds of steam as in "The Orient Express."
Our compartment was at the end of the car, near to, and about the size of, the porter's miniscule compartment. There was a bench seat with ample room for two, but minimal leg room. One bunk was a shelf over the seat and the other a cubby-hole recessed into the opposite bulkhead. The only table space was a small shelf in the corner under the window. You lifted the hinged shelf to uncover an even smaller wash basin. The luggage rack was over the door between the bunks. A small ladder was provided to climb into the recessed bunk. I achieved access to the other bunk by stepping on a small shelf near the door. The compartment was compact and showing its age, but it was reasonably clean.
We stored our gear and opened our wine, and before long, the train slid gently out of the station. We quickly gained speed and soon were rocking through the French countryside. For quite a way we kept company with a moderately sized river with summer cottages tucked between it and the tracks on our side and large expensive looking homes with boat docks dotting the opposite bank. The fields, still visible in the light of the setting sun, were green with corn and yellow with wheat and mowed hay. It was still daylight when we made our first stop at Dijon for only a few minutes. Somewhere along the way we ate one of the sandwiches from the Peanuts. The porter came by to ask if we wanted to reserve a table in the dining car for dinner, but it was already so late that we elected to pass on that.
Night Train to Roma
The porter was almost a caricature of an Italian public service employee. In his late forties or early fifties, he was short, fat, and balding and sported a shaggy moustache. As soon as the train started, he removed his jacket to reveal a less than sparkling white shirt severely stressed by his ample paunch. He spent most of his time in his compartment reading a newspaper and smoking pungent cigars.
On the basis of a slight coolness emanating from a small grid on the window sill, we guessed our compartment was air conditioned. We tried to adjust a dial that seemed to be associated with the grid, but could detect no significant differences in the air flow no matter how we turned it. We could acquire less tentative ventilation by turning an ostentatiously robust crank to roll the window down. This was refreshing, but we could bear the noise of rushing air and thundering iron wheels only in short doses.
So we juggled the ventilation as the mood suited us. Sometimes we closed the door and opened the window; sometimes we opened the door and closed the window; sometimes we opened both door and window. However, the open door made us feel a bit like monkeys in the zoo as passengers squeezing by each other in the narrow passageway eyed us curiously.
I plugged the computer into a 220 outlet above the wash basin qua table. Typing was not easy. The little shelf was nearly shoulder high as I sat on the bench seat, and of course the train rocked and rolled quite a bit, making the subtle touches required by the laptop's finger-tip mouse pad almost impossible. Also, the computer kept switching to battery, evidently because the current flicked off and on unnoticeably as the engine's pantograph galloped across junctions in the overhead electrical line.
Finally, after sunset we went to bed with the window shut because of the noise and the door shut for privacy. Although the compartment was a bit stuffy, we were tired and slept well. I woke up once in the night when the train was stopped in a station. I sat looking out the window at a deserted platform dimly bathed in yellow light till the train started again, going in the opposite direction. Evidently some switching had been done, and now the first class cars were at the tail.
We were up and dressed at our usual six o'clock. I asked the porter if we could get some coffee and he said in about twenty minutes. A short time later he brought a miniscule tray with two tiny cups of coffee, two little plastic tubes of sugar, and a couple of midget croissants. He also brought our Eurailpasses, which he had kept overnight for some no doubt perfectly logical Italian administrative reason.
The sun was up, but low on the horizon and we were passing through mountainous country. We would emerge from a long tunnel to see a short flash of mountain valley with a village along the tracks, then plunge back into the darkness and noise of the next tunnel. Gradually, however, the geography tended more toward the horizontal and soon we were racing through broad plains with only occasional glimpses of mountains on the horizon.
The fields, the towns, the whole countryside seemed shabby and poorly maintained compared to what we had seen in France. There were more weeds along the fencerows and there was more junk and trash around the rail yards. 1970's style graffiti -- something we had seen only occasionally in France -- were everywhere. The factories and warehouses near the tracks were shabby and poorly maintained. In a word, the Italian landscape just did not bespeak the prosperity we had seen in Normandy and in the stretch between Paris and Dijon.
The train pulled into Roma Termini on schedule, and we headed for a restroom, then a water store. When we got to the taxi stand, there was a long line but it moved fast. Several beggars worked the line with what appeared to be little luck, although I did give half a euro to a guy working himself along lying on his back on some kind of roller cart. My comment to Minnie that I felt sorry for the poor bastard even though he was probably richer than anyone in the line got a chuckle from the woman in front of us.
When I told our driver we wanted to go to the Hotel Ibis, he didn't know what I was talking about. I showed him the entry in the Ibis catalog, and he got out his directory to find the street. I asked him if it was "distante," and he said, "Molte distante," and didn't seem too happy about it. In fact, it was way out on the Autostrada or outer belt.
The hotel was about what we expected. That is, it was very similar to a Mercure. However, this Ibis seemed to cater almost exclusively to business travelers and bus tours. There was no easy way to get to it or away from it except by auto and the parking lot was crowded with tour buses. Even walking wasn't very easy because there were few sidewalks in the neighborhood. From our seventh-floor window we looked down on a circular amphitheater of some kind where a couple of kids were playing with a soccer ball. Beyond that was a shabby looking neighborhood of one- and two-story frame houses with an occasional three- or four-story apartment building. Out to our left, we could see a complex of high-rise apartment buildings with more under construction. As the older neighborhood looked somewhat more inviting than the high-rises, we decided to get our first real taste of Rome in that direction. Up close it didn't look any better than from our seventh floor window. Trash littered the street sides; landscaping consisted mainly of unkempt weeds and thirsty looking shrubs; the houses were run down; and there were few sidewalks. Occasionally, we met other pedestrians: a woman pushing a baby carriage, an old man in a straw hat carrying a plastic grocery bag in each hand. We came to an intersection with a main thoroughfare and were accosted by a very persistent beggar. He was a skinny young guy with a cocky air about him. We shook him off pretty quickly, however, as he went for better pickings from people in cars stopped at the traffic light. We walked a little further before deciding to turn back because the only restaurant or café we had seen looked a bit too rough for our taste.
Roman Skyline
We returned to the hotel for lunch. The restaurant was pleasantly decorated in shades of peach, well-lit, and roomy. There were some thirty tables and a large buffet and still plenty of space between the tables. It was attractive, but after the first impression, we couldn't help noticing slightly off kilter details such as the cupboard doors in the base of the buffet table that were hung slightly askew, and some kind of alarm or climate control device tacked onto one of the pillars with its power supply cable snaking up through a rough hole in a ceiling panel.
It was our first meal in Italy so we had lasagna -- a huge one each with lots of cheese and ham and some great chianti to wash it down. As we ate, we decided that rather than pay another 30 euros to get to the Mercure, we would take a bus or the subway. After our meal, we went to the desk to see if we could get some information. Two young men in red blazers and a young woman with a man's haircut were on duty. One of the men was on the phone; the other was fiddling with some kind of office machine. The woman was with a customer. None of them looked up. I decided to wait them out and stood silently two or three minutes. Finally, the man who was fiddling with the machine looked up and greeted me. I smiled and said cheerfully, "You're very busy!"
"Yes. Sorry. Can I help you?"
"I just have a quick question. If you're too busy right now, I can come back later."
"Oh, no. It's OK."
Happy that I wouldn't be interrupting any important business, I explained that we wanted to go downtown, but we weren't driving, and we didn't want to take a taxi. He said it was very simple and gave me clear, precise directions for catching a bus at a stop "just 400 meters to the right on the main street after you leave the hotel." The No. 20 to Anagneli would take us directly to the Metro station. He also gave me a map of the Metro lines and explained which lines to take to get to the Colosseo station.
So with that settled, we decided to walk to the bus stop unburdened by our luggage just to be sure we knew what obstacles we would have to cross. Thankfully, this street did have a sidewalk, though it was broken in places and with weeds growing along the side. The street was a boulevard, its islands weed-grown and shaggy. We saw bus stops on both sides of the street at about our 400 meter mark. A man was standing on our side, apparently waiting for a bus. He was a young guy wearing wire-rimmed glasses and, unlike most of the young people we had seen, not very good looking, though fit enough. He said he didn't speak any English, but I managed to communicate in my meager Italian that we wanted directions. When he understood, he willingly and cheerfully explained that our stop was on the other side of the street and confirmed that it was the No. 20 to Anagneli.
On the way back we decided to check out a shopping mall that appeared to be associated with the apartment complex we could see from our room. It was like any low-end mall in the U.S. It wasn't very crowded but quite noisy with clusters of young people hanging out and joking with one another. They were dressed in the same style -- lots of leather and beads -- and had the same cocky air as American mall rats. Most of the clothing and accessories in the store windows looked pretty cheap.
Having exhausted the touring potential of the neighborhood, we returned to our room regretfully to waste away the rest of our first full day in Rome. Towards evening, we decided to get something to eat, but since we weren't really very hungry, we thought we would skip the restaurant and go to the lobby bar for a drink and a sandwich. Two of the tables in the bar were already occupied by several young men and women in dark business suits and carrying brief cases and three-ring binders. We were the only non-suits in the place, except one other young man with a shaved head who was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He was sitting at a separate table with one suit of each gender.
We waited a while for service, but as none seemed to be forthcoming, I went to the bar and waited to order beer from the bartender, who to that point had not seemed to be engaged in much of anything. After I showed up, he got busy preparing a tray for one of the tables of suits. Carefully he spread a napkin, then selected two glasses. Then he fixed a little bowl of snack food and finally some sort of alcoholic beverage, and delivered it to the table. All of this without so much as a glance to acknowledge my presence.
Finally, when he returned to the bar, he showed symptoms of a slight curiosity as to why I might be standing there. I asked him if he had Guinness, and he responded as though I were speaking a foreign language. So I ordered two glasses of tap beer. I asked him about sandwiches, but he managed to indicate that food was available in the restaurant downstairs. He filled two glasses and placed them on the bar with another little dish of snackies. I told him to charge it to our room, and he started filling out a form and adding up the cost by hand. As he worked -- it was quite a lengthy process -- I took the beer and snackies to our table. We finished our beer and, becoming bored with guessing what kind of con the two suits were laying on the T-shirt, we went to the restaurant for dinner.
The waiter was a short stocky man, gray at the temples and wearing a green blazer. He walked with a roll-of-the-shoulders similar to the snooty, cocksure style of the Le Carlotta waiters in Caen, but it didn't come off with quite the same flair. The bus boy's gait, like the green of his vest, matched the maître-d's. Both were amiable, attentive but not too attentive, and very efficient. We ordered only one dish each, Minnie a zupa de verdura (vegetable soup), and I had grouper broiled and served under sliced boiled potatoes, all swimming in an olive-oil based sauce. Both were very good as was the carafe of chilled white wine. We returned to our room and slept well.
The next morning after breakfast, we packed up, checked out, and set out for the bus stop. It was about 8:30 with a bright sun and already warm and humid. But it was pleasant out in the open, a fact that we did not fully appreciate till later. We hiked to the bus stop dragging our wheeled bags over and around the cracks, holes, and pits in the sidewalk, timing our dashes across both sides of the boulevard, and arriving at the bus stop in time to catch one of several buses parked there. A few other people were already aboard the No. 20 Anagneli, reading or looking idly about like commuters anywhere. The driver was reading a newspaper behind a Plexiglas shield that isolated him from any contact with the passengers. I interrupted him to ask if this was the bus to the Metro station. He frowned and nodded, so we went to sit down. Minnie reminded me that we hadn't paid a fare, but we could see no place to put change into the token collector. So I interrupted the driver's reading again to ask about that. He didn't speak English, but managed to indicate not only that I had to get a ticket at the station -- our destination -- but also that he really resented being disturbed and that we should just ride the bus and keep still.
After a couple of minutes one or two other passengers had boarded and just to be sure, I asked a young man wearing a dark polo shirt and carrying a soft-sided brief case if this was the bus to the Metro. He confirmed that it was, and a few minutes later we started the drive through suburban Rome in an area of characterless high rise apartment buildings and expanses of empty, weed-grown fields. After about twenty minutes, the bus pulled into a huge parking area with about 20 open structures that looked at first like large bus stop shelters side by side with room for one bus to drive between each. We pulled into the nearest spot and everyone got out. Our young man indicated by a nod that this was where we wanted to go, so we dragged our luggage out into the shelter structure which turned out to be an entrance to the underground station via a flight of marble stairs.
It was quite a large station, well lit and clean. We followed the signs to the treni through open sky-lighted courtyards lined with shops and plentifully equipped with benches. I showed our map to the young woman behind the counter at the bigletti/tickets window and said we wanted to go to the Colosseo station. A security officer near the turnstiles showed us how to insert our tickets to validate them and open the turnstile. However, since we were dragging a lot of luggage he directed us through a slot that had no turnstile. We dragged our bags to the platform which was very crowded as, despite our intention of waiting till after the rush hour, we were ahead of our time and seemed to have caught the spring tide of commuters. When the train came in, everyone on the crowded platform pushed into the cars as in any subway system in the world. We shoved our bags against the hand-hold poles and hung on.
It must have taken at least 45 minutes to go from the end of the line to the Termini, where Rome's two subway lines cross and where we had to change to get to the Colosseo station. At each station more people got on and only as we neared the Termini, did a few start to get off. So after three or four stations, we were packed in elbow to elbow. It was all we could do to hang on to the poles with one hand and keep the other hand on our luggage. We pressed the bags against the poles with our knees so they wouldn't go sliding away as the train made its jack rabbit starts and 2-G stops. We were glad that we had all our important documents in money belts. I also had my money clip with my credit card in one of my front trousers pockets and my wallet with half our cash in the other. Minnie's was in her big ol' purse which she carried bandoleer style and kept in front of her.
It was extremely hot and humid, and everyone was dripping sweat. Personal hygiene in Europe today is as good as ours, but close-packed crowds of sweating people, whether in New York, San Francisco, Paris, London, or Rome, can overcome even the finest antiperspirants. I, at least, could catch an occasional steamy vesper from the open windows (which admitted much more noise than ventilation). But poor Minnie, at only five feet tall, was down around arm-pit level to many of the passengers.
At the Termini station we forced ourselves and our bags out of the car along with the other exiting passengers and found an eddy in the hurrying crowd to collect our gear, our thoughts, and a breath of relatively fresh air. We decided it would be only a short taxi ride to the hotel and it would be worth it to avoid further hand-to-hand combat with commuting Romans. We followed the exit signs and came out on a large open square, which after a few steps we recognized as the Piazza dei Cinquecento where we had caught our taxi to the 'burbs on our arrival. Only then did we realize that the subway Termini station was also the railroad's Roma Termini. At the station door, a seedy character sidled up to us saying, "Taxi?" I made the mistake of making eye contact because we could see that the line at the taxi stand was as long as it had been the day before. He pursued: "Taxi? There is a taxi strike." We could see that taxis were unloading at the curb side and loading up at the taxi stand exactly as they had done the day before. I pointed to the unloading taxis and said, "What are those? We're going to get in that line." He emitted what we guessed was Italian for "I'm disappointed," and went in search of another sucker. Again, the line moved fairly quickly and again, it was being gleaned by panhandlers, some of whom we recognized from the day before.
Waiting for Taxis
This time our driver was about as loquacious as a statue of Caesar. As he loaded our bags, I said, "Hotel Mercure delta Colosseo" in my best accent. He was mute but he wheeled expertly through the, let's say, unpredictable Roman traffic, and pulled up at our hotel with 5.70 euros on the meter. I gave him seven and he unclammed long enough to indicate that he should get an extra two for the luggage. So I gave him another, and he seemed reasonably content.
We dragged our bags into the by now familiar marble, glass, and varnished wood environment of a Mercure lobby. The desk clerk was a skinny little man with close-clipped moustache and horn-rimmed glasses. He confirmed that we had a reservation and said the room wasn't ready yet, but we could wait in the lobby, etc., etc. There was an area separate from the reception desk with a couple of sofas and easy chairs and a large coffee table with magazines and newspapers on it. In one corner was a computer at which a teen-age girl was playing games. I went looking for a bar or some place where I could buy some water. The bar was just off the lobby. About half the tables were occupied by salesman types working on lap-top computers. No bartender was around, so I returned to the lobby without the water. After a few minutes the girl at the computer in the corner left. I sat down to it and logged onto the net. The only response to my note from Caen was from Pam. I replied to her saying we were in Rome and that this computer like the one in Caen was too slow to send photos.
After about a half hour, the clerk finally indicated that our room was ready. It was a third floor corner room overlooking the via de Labicana about two blocks from the Coliseum, a piece of which we could see at the end of the street. From the same window we could also look into a corner of the Parco del Colle Oppio immediately next door. (Opium Hill Park. I haven't found out yet why it's called that.)
Other than the great view, the room was about like our previous rooms with one significant exception. The bed was jammed between one wall and a three-foot diameter pillar at its foot. If I stretched out on one side of the bed, the top of my head was against the head board and the soles of my feet against the pillar. Fortunately, Minnie could fit into that slot with room to spare. There was also a minor peculiarity that had to do with the plumbing. When we pushed the flush button, the toilet would make a noise like it was very earnestly taking a deep breath; then it would exhale a small quantity of water; finally it would let go with a very thorough flushing followed by several seconds of self-satisfied gurgling.
Room at the Mercure
After resting a little, we decided to take a walk through the park, then find something to eat near the Coliseum. We walked up an alleyway between the hotel and the park and climbed a short flight of marble stairs to a narrow tree shaded pedestrian way that brought us to an entrance to the park. People were scattered all through the large park: families, groups of young people sitting on picnic tables, kids kicking soccer balls around, people walking their dogs. We didn't see anyone throwing Frisbies, but it looked pretty much like any other big city park, except there were no grassy areas and no sign of any attempt to maintain lawns. Lots of trees shaded the walkways from the hot Italian sun, but otherwise the landscaping consisted mostly of bare dirt and dead weeds. According to our guidebook this hill overlooking the Coliseum was the site of a large public bath in the 2nd century AD. It also said a lot of archeological work was being done there and that in the summer there were dances and concerts in the park. We didn't see signs of any of that other than a couple of fenced off ancient ruins.
After the park the first place we came to in the Piazza del Colosseo was the Royal Moat House Café where a young woman wearing an apron with the logo of the café on it politely invited us in English to sit at one of their sidewalk tables. Since food and drink was our objective and she wasn't in the least pushy, we accepted her invitation. She seemed to be a kind of "barker" for the place. She was very good at identifying people's nationalities as they came by. Americans and Brits she would address in English, Italians in Italian, Germans in German, French in French, and she was right every time.
We had salads, bread, wine, and water, then continued our stroll around the Coliseum. A few doors up the street from the Moat House, we saw a souvenir shop and went in to see if we could find a map of the downtown area. The manager said he had a very good map and opened one up to show us how clear it was and explain that it had a very good guide book attached. It seemed to be about what we were looking for, so I reached for my Visa card. But at that very moment our "barker" from the café came in and handed the card to me. I had left it on our lunch table.
"You should be careful," she gently chided.
Indeed.
We thanked her profusely, but she would not take an additional tip. We don't know how she found us inside that store, but bless her for that kind effort.
Our next objective was to secure seats for the trip to Munich. We needed to do that immediately because, as we had discovered in France, we might have to extend our room reservations if seats were not available on Saturday as we had planned. So we ended our stroll around the Coliseum at the Metro station just across the street and took the train back to the Termini. The line of people at the international travel window was long, more than three switchbacks in the airport style crowd management system. As we waited, the woman behind us started chatting with Minnie. She said she was from the Philippines and had been in Germany at a world social services workers' convention. She was now traveling in Europe for pleasure, and after Rome she was going to Spain. The woman behind her got into the conversation and said she was an Italian married to a German and living in Germany. She said she traveled back and forth between Dusseldorf and Rome once a month by air. She didn't say why she was in the line for train tickets. I said we had just come from France and we had found the train system there to be very efficient, and the personnel very helpful and eager to please. She said, "We don't like anything French."
As we slowly worked our way to the head of the line, Minnie decided to see if she could find some water and an ATM. She found some water but the ATM was out of order. "Welcome to Italy," said the Italian-German woman. This set her off about how good Germany was compared to Italy. She complained about the Italian civilization -- "nothing works," "all the validation of tickets," etc. -- and told us that her family gets tired of her always complaining and telling them how good Germany is. To tell the truth, we did, too.
The ticket agent told us no night train seats to Munich were available on Saturday so we had to make reservations for Sunday. The additional fee was only 26 euros for seats in a six-person compartment. We returned to the hotel and decided to take it easy for a while before going out to dinner. At about 7:30 we left to explore the neighborhood some more and find a restaurant. We finally selected a place with tables under a tent roof on one of the side streets. It was called the Pizzeria Imperiale, but in Rome the term pizzeria seems to apply to any ordinary restaurant. Only a couple of the other tables were occupied when we came in, but soon the place was nearly full. The maitre-d' was a young man in shirt sleeves with a short dark beard. Our waiter was also a bearded young man, a style we saw quite often, including police officers, security personnel, and railroad personnel. Our impression was that almost all Italians under forty years old were good looking and fit. But along about their fifth decade they seem to metamorphose into a short, fat, and homely race.
Most of the other patrons were groups of college-age girls, although there was a scattering of older couples. Just before we left, an elderly couple came in, he in a dark suit and tie and she in a black evening dress. But other than them, everyone was dressed informally, as were people in all the restaurants where we ate. We saw almost no suits and few jackets or neckties in Europe, except in hotel lobbies.
By the time we had finished eating, it was after 10:00. We returned to our room and hit the sack. On the next day, July 4, we would attack our third major goal of the trip: the American military cemetery in Nettuno where Minnie's brother is buried.