Eerste Dag
I wake up at 4am, am at Centraal Station by 5am, Schiphol by 5.45, and on the plane by 6.45 / 7am. Online check-in is also the best invention ever. + Lufthansa = amazing.
Everybody always says that on 'international' flights (including intra-EU / EC flights) they're constantly feeding you, but the truth is that they're constantly paying attention to you. Plus you pay a fraction of the cost to go roughly the same distance (for instance, Amsterdam - Napoli is roughly 910 miles, and DC - St Louis is roughly 878 miles...but a round trip deal for that, my friends, would be many hundreds of dollars, or at least several, even though you're intra-country!)...wait, okay, let me rephrase: you pay much less to go just as far--and you are lavished with attention and goodies! Here is how my flights go:
6.45 / 7am. Boarding my Lufthansa vlucht naar Munich. I enter the plane and the crew member standing at the entrance zegt, 'Morgen.' She says it with a funny accent by pronouncing the 'n' at the end and saying the 'g' like we do in English. I wonder if she is from Belgium, and I say 'Morgen' back to her, the correct way, and then ponder on the possibility that she is American or some other English-speaker (Canadian?) and she just doesn't have the accent down right. Then I pass the label inside the plane that says this craft was named after some tiny little town in Germany, and it dawns on me: she wasn't speaking Dutch at all! Silly Germans.
I sleep as much as I can. There is no one sitting next to me. It is great. Somehow, I always get the view-of-the-wing seat.
De vlucht aan komst in München om 8.25, but it seems like all these European flights use little shuttle buses to get back and forth between the planes and the airports, so we're not in the building until a little after 9, and I'm glad because I don't have to waste too much time waiting for my 9.25 vlucht naar Napoli. I wonder why the Schiphol airport is 'award-winning' (the best airport in Europe!) and Munich isn't. Seems pretty nice to me.
Although! So crazy! We get off the plane and are boarding the little bus and, not only can I see my breath when I breathe out of my mouth...but I can see my breath when I breath out of my nose. And by 'see my breath', I mean, I am a dragon. It is cold in Munich. Who knew? It wasn't that bad in Amsterdam! And aren't we more Northern?
Lufthansa, like every other friggin' airline company under the Sun (and their moms?), contracts out other planes and companies to do some of their work. I think this one is called 'AirDolomiti' or something like that--it's an Italian flight, run by Italians, and I'm so tired and confused and dazed and thrown off by the earlier German (not Dutch!) speaking that I'm even more confused when the flight crew greets me with 'Caio!' as I board the plane. I whisper, 'Hoi', to them in a delirious manner, and then they confuse me some more by asking, 'Journalista?' (newspaper?). I look at them perplexed and answer, 'Nee'. Then I wonder if they even understood me.
(Also, to back-track: on my German flight...the crew translated everything into German & English--and then used a recording for Dutch! What is that! Also, that Dutch speaker had a BAD accent. Like, a bad automated teacher who was overdoing everything. So stilted and geez...oh man, that accent was BAD. I was like, cringing for the Dutch and German people alike).
But (to return), that is sort of the beginning of the point of the airline story: they have so many little freebee gifts! I walk in, they have newspapers of many different languages all lined up, and people in front and behind are taking them, and then I go to sit down...and this is a picture of the aircraft inside:
I fall asleep on this flight, too, with my articles for class and a pen dangling out of my hand, hanging over my legs in front of me. I am glad I drank some Airborne / Emergen-C before getting on the flight. When I wake up, people around me are drinking coffee and orange juice and water out of little containers in bright raspberry-covered boxes. It's like a strange fairytale land. I'm mildly disappointed I missed me turn, but it doesn't matter much, because then I would have to pee anyway. I look out my window (there's no one next to me on this flight, too--and I always get aisle seats because I have to pee frequently and am mildly claustrophobic)...and I see the Alps.
I literally wake up to see the Alps outside my window. Just in time, too :) And then I look at the seat between myself and the window...and there's a little rectangular raspberry-covered box waiting, placed there, just for me. Next to it, closer to the window, lies my article for class, though my pen is still dangling in front of me in my hand. The image of a kind crew member leaning down and picking up my fallen papers and placing them gently, gingerly, on the seat beside me, along with a waiting gift, fills my head and I am full of love and kindness back.
For the record, when the Italians speak English on the flight, there's no understanding that they're even speaking English. It's like, thickly Italian-accented English words, slurred all together to the point that the English becomes Italian again. I catch one or two words in a sentence that allow me to identify it as 'English'.
As the plane is landing, I glance around to see what the Italians are wearing so I'll know how cold / hot / moderate it is. Weather.com says it's supposed to be a high of 14-16 degrees, but I see quilted winter coats with fur-lined hoods all around me. It can't possibly be that cold--it can't possibly! I put on my small summer jacket, then go for my autumn coat. I wonder if I should combine the two: people are making me nervous!
We arrive (de vlucht aan komst) om 11.05 uur, and my phone won't call Alex, but it will text her. We spend a little bit of time figuring out where we both are, and then I'm outside and it's HOT! I am sweating (these Italians are CRAZY! Winter coats? Fur? Are you kidding me? I had to take *all* my coats off!) and Alex is in her car, being bullied into driving away by a strict Italian security guard. I flag her down with my scarf (unnecessary due to the warmth then), and I get it and: IT'S REUNION! :) :) :)
Alex and I have not actually see each other since Senior year of High School. It's THAT type of Reunion. AWESOME type!
We drive away from the airport and toward her home, and I'm getting an eye-full of Southern Italian architecture. Also of Italian driving. Lines on the road mean nothing. Absolutely nothing. Also, if there's a speed min / max (which there are), you really can't tell. People going absolutely any speed they please--30mph, 80mph, anything goes. Well, sort of. You'll definitely get tailgated and people zip around any which way without any turn signals. Alex jokes that they can always tell she's American because she uses her turn signals.
Alex speaks REALLY good Italian, btw. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but I haven't seen her for 2.5 years, so seeing her level of functionality and knowledge &c. is incredible to me. Of course, the Italians don't speak any (ANY) English, so it is total immersion--but the other Americans in the area (on base, particularly: and other internationals on the bases) do not know Italian and aren't learning, so she could easily just communicate with them (especially because it's such a large international community--four bases in the area). Her accent is really great, too. She says sometimes she feels Italian, and I can see it even in the way she uses her hands to speak--like a native would, not like a foreigner who's trying to explain what they're saying. That's how I talk :) All her little gestures lend itself to the depth of her Italian understanding.
Vrijdag 15 november we hang out, I see her house and meet her two wonderful puppies (dogs) and her dad (so funny and nice!), and we talk and laugh and confide and think and talk some more. Her dad comes home with tickets for us to go visit Roma tomorrow, because we intend to see an art gallery there with an exhibition by one of her favourite artists (David Stoupakis), and Alex and I go out and have some real Italian food around nearby. The Italian way of making eggplant is THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER. Thinly sliced, crisp, oiled and salted and I don't even know but it's AMAZING. She tells me that it's easy to be vegetarian / vegan in Italië because they eat all their meats and pasta / veggies separately, and you can get the cheese on the side easily. I'm glad she's able to do all the cheese-less ordering for me, though, because like I said: the Italians speak null Engels! Plus, to all those U.S. pizza-buyers who think cheeseless pizza is weird, apparently it's the national cuisine hobby to eat cheeseless pizza: just marinara sauce, garlic, and basil / oregano, and you are SET, my friend. Plus it's not weird to order a veggie pizza sans the leche-products.
It's good, kids. But, more importantly: it's CHEAP.
Our meal: 2 drinks, 2 entrees, 1 appetizer. € 15. Amsterdam: 1 entree. € 15. There is a difference there.
Crazy Italians.
We watch Final Destination and I hide my face a lot and then we go to sleep. I don't have nightmares or stay up late scared over the movie! I'm very proud of myself, and we discuss the various ways in which the ending should have been revised: i.e. what? Pregnancy was clearly the answer. DUH, kids!
Tweede Dag
Zaterdag, our trein vertrek om 8.42 naar Roma, so we're up by 7am to get ready and drive to the treinstation met haar vader. We get a little lost due to some roads blocked by construction, but we get there, the train is a little late and not listed on any signboards (yet everyone seems to know what's happening), and then we're onboard! It's like a Harry Potter train, with 6-person cabins and a little narrow aisle down the right side where a person with a food / drink cart comes down. We try to remember whose seats we're sitting in: in the most recent movie, post-Hermione's anger with Ron, I am sitting in Harry's seat, and she in Ron's. I'm pretty sure pre-anger, I am in Hermione's seat, because Harry Potter always comes in late with his melodramatic face, going:
'GUYS. I just saw Draco Malfoy and he's trying to kill me'
with that little aghast shocked scandalised determined conspiring melodramatic intense face he has. You know the one. With the wide eyes and confused eyebrows (confused because they don't know whether to be determined, angry, intent, set, or bewildered / surprised, and frustrated with his friends for not understanding) and gaping mouth. Plus his gestures are always really stiff like: this unsure robot with an important message is moving toward you now.
Anyway. He always enters late. And he always has some ridiculous adventure to recount.
I want to buy Harry Potter in Nederlands (1: Harry Potter en de Steen der Wijzen) so I can read it and hear it read aloud via audiotapes. My Spanish housemate is doing that with English and it's working for him.
***I LOVE speaking in English in Italië. It's so great because I've never had a secret language before, but because no one understands English, it's like...we're liberated. We're completely free to do and say and think whatever we like because only we two will know. We can make disparaging comments, or wonder aloud about the other people on the train, or just talk about our personal pasts and thoughts and feelings and confidential things, and no one will know our words.
Also: I have learned that I have forgotten how to say anything in any language besides Dutch or English. And by 'anything', I mean, the important everyday words like: Please, Thank You, Sorry, and even No. Seriously. I can't say anything but 'Nee' anymore, unless I'm speaking English to English-speakers. Also, Accents. Don't possess any other accent but Dutch and English anymore.
I'm kind of proud of myself in a sick way. It makes me feel more Dutch? More integrated?
We find Rome and it's SUPER huge. Like, the maps for Amsterdam show it as being really large, but that's only because there's so many friggin streets all condensed into a small area, and not always in an organised fashion, so you really need some room to explain the geography (and street names, which largely change every block or two). But, of course, Amsterdam is very small. So, I got used to that, and I saw the map, and I was like, yeah, this is the same size as Amsterdam!
Well, no, it is not.
It is not the same size as Amsterdam.
Rome is very large, as anyone who knew anything about Rome (myself obviously excluded) would know or guess or imagine. It's HUGE! And the traffic patterns have not gotten any better. Wow--there are cars and buses and metros and people people people tour buses (wow...tour buses!) and lots of old things coexisting non-challantly in the city, and I'm reminded of New York and how I haven't seen like a *real* big city in forever. I love Amsterdam, and I would choose its version any day, but it was exciting and surprising to be in a big-time fast-paced hustle-bustle city again. Rome is HUGE.
I've got my camera out full-time now, and we're looking like tourists, but that's fine. Creepy Italian guys are everywhere. We head off to find the Gallery, which ends up being closed, but we meet some nice people along the way who give us directions (or, Alex directions, since she's the one a-speakin' Italian!). The Gallery is very pretty, with great graffiti, and we hang out for a while calling the number on the door, because it should be open, but it's not, so we take some pictures, sit down, prey on locals (naw, just kidding), and then head off to find the Colosseum.
You cannot drink the water in Italië. So we don't.
When we reach the Colosseum, we start to get a little lost because so many ancient-timey Romany things are happening at once (I mean, they're happening ALL over the city, but, now it's not just like lots of walls and some random structures--it's like, the big-time dealios &c.), so I call out to some Americans walking by to help us out, and they look at us strangely and start to continue on. Alex calls out, 'NO SERIOUSLY. We need your help' and then they finally pay attention to us--but c'mon, now! If we're speaking English with American accents to you in Italië, I think you can count on the idea that we're not just creepy Italian men trying to pick you up. SERIOUSLY.
(btdubs, as for not even noticing the incredibly old UNBELIEVABLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE age of the surroundings, here's a picture of a gas station just sort of, y'know, existing in front of an old Roman wall. What's up. Hey, cool):
The Colosseum is gorgeous. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did--I mainly wanted to see it because, how can I be in Rome and not see it? I thought no one would forgive me. But this thing is ginormous, and you walk up, and the first thing you thinkbreatheseefeel is just incredible age, and you know how I love age. So, here's the Colosseum:
Then we try to walk back to the Termini treinstation, thinking our train leaves at 6pm (actually 6.24pm), and as we try to weave our way away from the Colosseum, it increasingly feels like being in The Prisoner (remember that show? traumatised me when I was younger), and we're slowly losing time. Finally at 5.30 we ask where a metro station is (right below us, right in front of the Colosseum--we had actually started to make a bit of progress at this point), and it costs us--I kid you not--a single euro each to ride the metro for 75 minuten. One euro. A single euro. I still cannot even believe it. What?!
Anyway, we get to the station, but the problem is: there had been wonderful nice horseys right around the Colosseum--and we discover that Alex must be allergic! All my Allegra and Singulair is at her home, so we have to sit there and wait as she dabs at her eyes with tissues and tries not to look like she's crying :( I feel badly that I can't do anything to help, and I know how awful it feels to have allergic reactions. In the middle of visiting Rome, it can't be fun.
We get home, make some Indian curry, and then we go exploring local shopping centres with her daddy. Italië looks cute dressed up for Christmas:
Derde Dag
Alex takes me into Napoli today, but I sleep so long and then we have lunch at home that we don't leave the house until 4pm! We reach town as the lights are coming on, and that's my favourite time anyway, so we'ze all good, chicas :)
First off, we find my name listed on a random street sign (one of the few), with an icon for a Ford dealership right next to it, so we don't really know what my name is indicating, but then we wander, ask where the water is (the coast! the sea!), go back to the car and finagle with the GPS system until we can find the nearest shore.
The city by the shore is *beautiful*. It's not technically 'Napoli', really, although a random town-sign listed by some abandoned building or other claims it is. I take pictures of doors where I go, because my mother's family is Italian / Sicilian, and she would love to be in my spot right now, and she has asked me for pictures of doors (presumably in the Netherlands). So I take pictures of doors for her here. I cannot recreate the experience, but I can try. But we wander around, and ask for directions to the water's edge, and bump into 3 old men whom Alex asks. One says he'll lead us there, and so we go, and they carry on a conversation in Italian and Alex translates for me when there's a pause. He's a sweet old man, and his skin is wrinkly and worn, like leather, and all I can think is, he reminds me of my grandfather he reminds me of my grandfather he reminds me of my grandfather. He's so small, and his eyes are so bright, and his skin is just so wrinkled. He has a sparkle to him, and he wears an artist's sort of berret hat (not quite a berret), the same as my grandfather used to wear, if I remember correctly from stories and photos. He's just small and wiry.
He leads us to the coast, and there are boats lined up everywhere against a shoreline tinged with rocks, and to our right, on a rising hill, Napoli is shining with lights on all over. My grandfather used to take pictures of rocks and shorelines and boats. We have pictures he took (and drew) of piers and docks, especially in Gran Manan, in our house. He would have loved this place. He loved Spain and Puerto Rico, anyway.
The man carries around an assortment of photos he's taken in his pocketbag, and he takes them out and shows us several times as we walk with him. There are some of religious processions, some of the city, and many of the waterside. The ones of the waterside could be siblings of my grandfather's. I tell Alex over and over that he reminds me of my grandfather, and then we're sitting down with the man in his special sacred thinking spot by the sea, and I say, everything in this moment is overflowing with my grandfather. I can touch and taste him everywhere. He's in the sea air ('Breeeeathe that salt air!', which, I do--I stand by the railing on the cobblestone and motion to the man that I am breathing in and out and he says, in Italian, it is pure air: you come here to breathe pure air if you are sick), in the boats and gruffness, gritty dirtiness of the city, in the rocks and in the old man. And in the photographs. And so Alex tells him, You remind her of her grandfather. And he says, Of course, because I am old and she is young! He is eccentric and quirky, with a quickness of step and sharpness of mind and attitude. He says constantly, there is no respect for this city. Look at the filth and the trash and the garbage--this place should be a paradise, but there is no respect for the city. I speak to him two or three times in broken Spanish ('La ciudad es de arte', 'Tu tienes un muy bueno...profile', 'solo touristas') and even try some Italian, and sometimes I can understand what he's saying and Alex doesn't need to translate. He says, this is the way it should be: natural communication, without people having to learn a hundred languages. Alex tells me that. I frequently am looking at him and he says things with shining eyes and I smile back, but hesitate because I have no idea what he's saying! He learns that I am learning photography, and using Alex's camera, tries to teach me. I feel uncomfortable because this is her camera, and because it is silly that he is teaching me--since he has never even seen what she is capable of, and he would be astounded, utterly overwhelmed by her genius and ability. But then again, she doesn't need his help, and so he helps me. He tries to compensate for the fact that I don't speak Italian and am often unable to participate in the conversations by turning and communicating with me at times.
His name is Raphael, but his friends call him Rafe-Cafe, and he is gentle but gruff. I hug him once unexpectedly, and though he was awkward, Alex says he was smiling. Later, I kiss his cheek, and I am overwhelmed by how much of my grandfather this moment radiates. He is maybe 60 or 70 years old, and his photographs are from decades ago. He offers me one of his photographs to take with me, to choose. I shuffle through and one falls out and--like Tarot--this is the one I must take. I ask him to sign it for me, and, deferentially and somewhat abashedly, he does.
We stood in the inlet spot, where the waves are making the arc further onto the land. There are boats and stairways there now, and a little collection of small, one-room fishermen's dwellings. The little outpost on the portion of land jutting into the water was right ahead of us, but there are some factories there now, too.
There are creepy weird religious icons and shrines EVERYWHERE. Creepy.
On the way home we get stuck under some overpasses (which go waaaaay high in the sky--they're terrifying and do not look safe), and lose the GPS signal. So we're riding for a bit, and it looks like the set of iRobot where all the sheds are piled up next to and on top of each other, where the robots pop out of. I'm thinking zombie crack and heroine addicts are going to pop out with weapons, but they don't. Alex says it looks like the set of Will Smith's other recent disaster movie (the one with the dog? I forget the title), but I don't know because I didn't see it. I was worried about the dog.
Anyway, those overpasses are scary. We make it home and I'm in bed by 1.30am.
Vierde Dag (maandag)
I wake up at 4.30am and Alex's daddy drives me to the airport. Repeat the flights from Amsterdam naar Italië, only in reverse. I get home, and I forget how to speak Dutch a little, and then I go to sleep :)
Love,
Miranda
