Wow. What a weekend! As I said to Bridget at one point during the trip this weekend to Rome, “There’s nothing like a foreign country to put things in perspective.” 1) I find it endearing that I’ve come to consider Germany a kind of home to me (so I guess I really should’ve said “foreign foreign country,” as in a foreign country that’s more foreign to me than Germany already is), 2) In other words, I prefer being in a country in which I know at least half of the native language. Don’t get me wrong, Rome was really really fun and exciting!! But it killed me, not knowing italian.
Food:
OH MY GOODNESS, the food in Rome was to DIE for!!! They knows what they’s doin’. Pizza, pasta, gelato, oh my! NOM NOM NOM!!!
Scams:
All told, Bridget and I got scammed out of 15€. Don’t ever accept anything you didn’t ask for, in Rome . It will cost money.
Traffic:
Yes, I know I wasn’t driving anywhere or riding any trams or subways, but as a pedestrian who sometimes (okay, “always”) needed to cross the street, I was very much affected by the driving culture and habits of the local traffic. Let me just say that it was nice being able to jaywalk once again. Especially if there are NO CARS FOR MILES!!! In Walking:
Bridget and I walked EVERYWHERE!!! I actually mapped out (roughly) where she and I walked the entire weekend, and altogether, we walked 16,34 miles! With 12 on Saturday, alone!!! Our feet (and knees) were begging for a bullet to end the misery...
Public Water Fountains:
Boring, chronological revelation of events:
I wanted to travel to Karlsruhe (to meet up with Bridget) as cheaply as possible, so I used Mitfahrgelegenheit.de and carpooled with a guy (which also means that I had to take a complete day off, as opposed to most of a day). That website is kind of like a craigslist for people who want to carpool or trainpool. Type in where you’re coming from and going to, and it gives you a list of people, as well as their phone numbers or email addresses, and the times they’re traveling. He was nice! I tried to tell him why something like this website wouldn’t go over well in the states, but he just didn’t get it.
So, after lunchmeat sammiches in the hauptbahnhof in Karlsruhe, we train-ed it up for a half hour. THEN we walked out of that train station, and pulled out the print-out map Bridget had prepared. And tried to follow the directions to the bus stop. Well, we were standing there for 10+ minutes, ample time for the bus to get there. And would you know it, no such bus as what we needed showed up. One woman overheard us distressing about where we needed to be, and kindly told us we were waiting in the wrong spot, and that we needed to go back to the train station. Okay. Check. We go back from whence we came, and had at that point missed the bus. Wonderful. And the next bus doesn’t come for another FIFTY MINUTES!!! PANIC!!!! (because at this point, the gate for the flight closed in an hour, and the bus ride was supposed to take 20 minutes. PANIC!!!! So then we found the taxis. Gah. And guess what?! The fare wasn’t by the mile, it was by the minute!!! What a way to start off the trip, with a 30€ cab fare. But hey, we weren’t about to miss that flight. Not for the world. Plus, this is kind of how you learn how NOT to make future mistakes. As painful as it was, we are probably better for it.
The flight ended up not being as shady as I had thought it was going to be. I had spent all my worrying on the flight, that I hadn’t really stopped and realized that I should probably worry about other things too, like LODGING, FOR INSTANCE!? Oh my goodness, flying by the seat of our pants on the lodging thing was NOT a good idea. Bridget and I were trying to use couch surfing to find something, and by the time we left Karlsruhe and she checked her email one last time, we didn’t have a host yet. We REALLY should have booked a hostel or something right then and there. In order to check one’s email, one would need internet access, right? Yes? Yes. Welllll, we couldn’t find any in Rome. Anywhere. And we didn’t have ample time to search for it. Sooo we walked to an address of a guest house that Bridget wrote down (on Via Cavour (Via apparently means “street”)). Thusly we were introduced to the Italian street door system. Every door had a list with buttons to ring the bell. We rang the bell, and the (HUMONGOUS) door unlocked. We trekked upstairs, only to be rejected. No more room! Sigh. So we walk up the street, establishing our limit, since it was looking like we were going to have to man up and spend money for lodging. The first hotel we tried was waaaaaay too expensive. So we left. The next one was still waaaaaaaay expensive, but the man at the desk offered to call up a sister hotel who was cheaper and check to see if they had a vacancy. So we said sure! And waited while he jabbered on the phone in Italian. The bell boy spoke to him once he was off the phone, and then offered to drive us to the other place, at no charge. Sooo we said okay. On the sort walk to the vehicle, we told him what time it was, and he says “okay, I have 40 minutes until I stop work. My chief is very picky, he no like me to work overtime!” He drove a rickety old van, and the aforementioned driving habits of Italians was made terrifyingly apparent. Oh goodness. And he seemed to not care about the shifting gears, since I almost got whiplash, I’m sure of it. It was very exciting!! In the riding-a-rhinoceros-full-speed-through-a-dense-forest kind of way. I tried to get a picture of him. He talked the entire time, and ALSO in true Italian fashion, talked with his hand (the other was on the wheel). Which means he was gesturing out the window so we couldn’t really see it anyways, haha! :D He also kept repeating that this other hotel was in a nicer neighborhood, “it is much more quiet!” Except he pronounced “quiet” as kwee-et.
After an atrocious parking job (think almost 45° angle, one tire on the sidewalk), he walked us to the place, and we parted ways forever. We walked into this hotel, at the guy at the desk looked like he could play the part of Jafar. If only he had a ridiculous bulbous hat, and a parrot... Well, this place was a little bit too pricey yet, so we left. I told him sorry, and he laughed and “don’t be sorry, it’s okay if you don’t want to stay. You will leave and that will be okay!” I asked him when he closed (because I’m sure that German hotels definitely stop admitting patrons at a ridiculous hour like 7 PM or something), he laughed AGAIN and said “We never close!” Whaaaat!? Unheard of! In the land of Kroger-less, White Castle-less, “eat great, even late!”-less Inconvenience (aka, Germany), haben wir das GANZ nicht!!
Bridget and I totter off in a daze after receiving this unprecedented bit of knowledge, and proceed to check every hotel we pass for availability. We steered clear of the obviously swanky hotels, noticing for the first time the plaques outside their doors displaying how many stars each hotel had. There was one that took up a whole quarter of this plaza. It had to have had 16 stars or something. We checked a couple places, but they were booked. And we were hungry and getting frazzled by not having a place to sleep yet. THEN WE FOUND A TWO STAR HOTEL!! More importantly, it had a vacancy! And it was just below our limit, money-wise. Win! AND, they had a little computer thing in the lobby where Bridget was able to check her email for potential Couch Surfing hosts for Saturday night at least. While I watched the tv. Italian game show. Really confused. It didn’t make sense at all. Oh well. SO, we weren’t too far from Via Cavour (that first street we went down), so we walked there and ate in the patio section of one of the restaurants. It was lovely!! :D Though it was a mistake ordering wine. ‘Spensive!!! But the Pizza was OOHHHHH SO DELICIOUS!!!! àHotelàCRASH  |
| "Don't mind me, just tryin' to ride this horse!" |
We decided to walk along the “back roads” after a while, and it ended up being a win, since it was A) quieter, and B) shady-er, due to the more narrow streets, as well as the plentiful trees. Speaking of the trees, the trees in Rome were very beautiful! Plenty of full-foliaged trees (I believe they might be called “deciduous” (that word looks REALLY strange, by the way)), but also the scraggly half-evergreen-esque trees. They were everywhere. Along the way, my feet were threatening to start aching, and my knee protested slightly, and I was like “ooooh don’t you DARE! We’ve still got a lot of walking ahead of us, so don’t you start crying now!!” |
| Happy to have a place to sleep! :D |
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| 5 EURO picture |
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| FREE picture... and a stiff breeze, apparently :) |
Since we didn’t want to pay anything for sightseeing during this trip, we didn’t try to get inside the Colosseum. So we kept on moseying, 'til we eventually hit the river. Walk walk walk, oooh what’s that incredibly decrepit building over yonder? Let’s go check it out! Oh, it’s kind of boring, and we can’t figure out where to go to get to it, so hey, why not just keep walking north 'til we hit the Pantheon? Okay! But wait, here’s a souvenir shop! And an ice cream shop! Let’s stop at both! NOM NOM! We keep walking, past another super old batch of architecture, but the weird thing was that there were cats EVERYWHERE! We keep walking north, roughly in the direction of the Pantheon. Turn a corner, turn another corner, walk to the end of the block, and BOOM. We realize that we’ve been walking AROUND the Pantheon. Woah. Dude. Walk inside, and my camera starts giving sickly coughs. Wonderful. Trek over to the Trevi Fountain, where my camera keeps hacking up a lung. Some random guy offered to take our pictures (and didn’t charge us! Awesome!). Whelp, on to the Spanish Steps! Crowded. I lament my dead camera battery. Bridget and I are also huuuungry! We decide a trip back to Via Cavour was in order, since the souvenir shops were plentiful, and there was a second restaurant/pizzeria thing place we wanted to patronize. It was quite lovely, we sat out on the sidewalk again, but this time, to serenade us was a guy with a wimpy accordion. Dude, you’re gonna have to work harder if you want to compete with the violin/guitar duet we had last night... This time for dinner, we ordered pastas. Sitting next to us was a couple who turned out to be from Montana, in Italy for a long vacation. He must have drank about 5 beers while we were sitting next to them! Goodness!! And when they weren’t talking to us, I didn’t hear him say a word, he just let her do the talking. At the end of the meal, the waiter brought out these two things of lemon ice. Bridget and I were dubious of it, because we hadn’t ordered it, and tried to tell our Italian waiter such. He spouted off some gibberish. Probably on purpose. So we ate the things anyway. Yep, they cost money.3 km walk back to the hostel at 10 PM. Never once did I feel unsafe. And as soon as we walked in and asked for our room key, a 10-point crash was imminent. I lay in bed for about five minutes, extremely annoyed with the noisy people in the hallway (and generally everywhere else but our room), but beyond that, I was dead to the world.
Breakfast! YUMMY! Walk back to the room at 9:40, fuddle around with luggage. Bridget leaves to hop in the shower, and she’s not gone for 2 minutes, and there’s a knock at the door. Apparently check-out is at 10!! What?! YIKES! So I panic. I run down to the bathroom/showers and yell to Bridget “You almost out?!” “Sorta. Why?” “Check-out’s at 10! Like, right now!” “well, I can’t!” “I know!” and I turn around a bolt back to the room and pack all my stuff really quickly. Still panicking. Run back to the bathroom, and re-tell Bridget that check out is at ten, since she thought that earlier I was telling her to “check out this bug” or something. Haha! So I try to check out while Bridget gets her stuff together. The woman at the desk tells me that we still owe her money. WHAT?! PANIC!! I argue with her, saying “I don’t have the money any more. I already paid.” And she has no receipt of the transaction, and can’t find any proof, so I go to Bridget saying “do you have the receipt from when we paid yesterday? Because she’s saying we haven’t paid.” And Bridget’s face goes white, and looks exactly how I felt too. Then she says “Oh! We didn’t pay!” “well then what happened to my money! I gave it to you!” she grabs said wad of cash, and we go to the counter and settle our account. Phew! Alles im Butter! :D
We hung out at the train station for the next shuttle to the airport. While we wait, we take several tours of the facility, taking pictures of all the men who are wearing pink. I think Palermo’s (soccer team) color is pink. The one sure way to get a man to wear pink: make it the official color of a professional sports team.
Exeunt Rome.
I am exhausted.
Andere Theme:
I’m starting to become a pro at this workplace cafeteria thing. At the beginning of my co-op, I was going through the place super fast, and didn’t want to inconvenience anyone by trying to compare prices or seeing what each station offered for eats. But now, I realize that the Germans will take their time deciding whatever they want to. They’ll take the time, AND be in your way in the process, and they hardly mind what other people are doing. As long as they can collect enough information to satisfy their curiosity, or take enough time to load their plate to their precise satisfaction, it doesn’t matter who’s waiting on them, or who they are blocking. It almost seems like a mix between supreme self-confidence and blind arrogance.
Willner asked me this morning, “War Rom schön?” and I just stared slack-jawed at him, tryna figger out what in the world he just said. Because at first, I heard him say “Warum schön?” And ‘why beautiful’ is not a sentence, in any language. So after a couple seconds of brow-furrowing, it finally clicked, and the conversation was able to commence. It’s intriguing how, in that sort of situation, you realize what was said, since you can never tell when your brain shifts gears and starts attacking the information from a different direction/angle.
Coffee revelation: I was angrily staring at yet another single measly partial-cup of coffee left in the coffee pot in the break area, when the guy “in charge” of the coffee strolls by. So I stop him and ask if I can run the machine again, for a second use of the same grounds, and he says Yeah! But it won’t be as strong! (and I say) That doesn’t matter! (I’m thinking that it might taste better if it doesn’t have the capabilities of getting up and walking away on its own... yes the coffee is usually THAT strong... and he says) In that case, you don’t need to pay for it. Also, if there’s not a full cup left, that doesn’t cost anything, either. .....WIN!!!! So it’ll taste better, AND be free!!! I should do this more often! (Note, I didn’t say that out loud.)
As I type this (waaaaay at the beginning of the post), I have my bedroom window open, my door open, living room door open, kitchen door open, and the kitchen window open. It’s a regular ol’ wind tunnel! Key to comfort :D I also realize that I have them all propped or kept open, courtesy of my travel-sized contact solution, my shoes, a kitchen chair, and the handle of a kitchen cabinet!
IT IS NOW WAAAAY TOO LATE AT NIGHT!!! Ya’ll will have to wait for the pictures to which I was referring to in any of the above paragraphs. I am tarrd. (as in “tired,” said with a drawl)
6/1, 7:30 PM CET: Pictures have been added! :D
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