Travel Diary – More Italy
I was trying to decide if I needed something for dinner. So I went down to the front desk to ask about Internet access. Dialup is the only option. Argh. Wireless routers are cheap these days, even in Italy… And almost in passing I asked where the restraunt was, and I was told that it was closed on the weekends. He offered to call me a taxi to go to a local pizzeria, which I declined.
OK, So I am passing the chance to eat one of the five major food groups [Pizza]. But I did not have any cash on me, and I would prefer to explore during daylight. [Now that I have seen the place, I am glad I did not venture out. I would have died of fright]
Monday morning now and I have just had breakfast. I suspect that apart from the Coffee, the breakfast is more French than Italian, with the main fare being croissants. Not that I am complaining, it is just that I never viewed that as being an Italian staple food.
The hotel has Muzak piped throughout many of the public areas. OK, so it is not really Muzak but that is the impression that I get of it. During breakfast it mostly had people speaking in what I assume is Italian, until a Lionel Ritchie song came on, followed by a new version of the classic Bob Dylan song “Knockin’ on Heavens Door”.
Thinking more about the hotel I would call this place non-classical Italian architecture. Apparently it is not normal to have carpets in hotel rooms. But there is a huge amount of marble and similar stone in the hotel. If only they had a hotel directory, and Internet Access.
News this morning is that Alitalia have agreements with the unions, so in all likelihood I will be able to fly home starting Friday. Italy is certainly not what I expected. I am glad that I do not have to live here. I cannot believe the traffic… It is just chaotic.
The best way to describe things? Well, imagine the worst rude traffic behavior you can imagine. The sort that causes road rage. The type of road rage where the judge lets the aggressive person off because the person was so inconsiderate. Well, that type of driving is accepted driving practice here. Not just accepted but required. Without a toot of a horn.
Tee intersections are considered to be places where traffic merges. I could not believe it.
I have a new love for Sydney traffic. I just love it so much… I am staying in a hotel on the eastern side of the city, just near the ring road, near the road to Tivoli.
So today I spent most of the day in an office in a residential district under a house built just after the war without permits on land gifted by the pope to people from his home district in the south of Italy. Lunch was at a café with luke warm Lasagna with vegetables, and dinner was at a restraunt and consisted of Pizza… Italian Pizza is different – they just put slabs of the topping on the Pizza…
The café reminded me of a milkbar in some country town but with more people, and without all the normal milkbar foods.
On the way home from the restraunt, my host needed to stop off to buy himself some cigarettes. Anyway he purchased them from a vending machine outside a supermarket. Next to a condom vending machine. I am not sure yet if this is exactly what I expected, or exactly what I didn’t expect. Hard to tell.
Overnight I had a few phone calls to deal with… The first two were very important and expected so I left the ringer on so the phone rang at 12:30AM. Fortunately the person who rang thought that it was only 10:30 PM. After those calls I turned the ringer off, since I wanted to know if I got a call and I was awake. So I got a call at 4:30AM, and I must have been very lightly sleeping since the sound of the phone vibrate motor woke me. Then another call at 7:00 AM and another at 8:10AM. This is the busiest my phone has been for a while.
The call at 4:30AM basically started “Hi, It’s Tom Here… Where are you?”. He worked out I was not in Oz since the phone had a different ring to it, and knew I was somewhere in Europe from that but was not quite sure where.
Italian Coffee is nice but takes some getting used to. It is served in glasses about the size of whiskey shot glasses, and is rather concentrated. Sugar is not an option since it is so concentrated. It takes some getting used to – since coffee is a diuretic – meaning that it causes you to loose fluid. And when I normally drink coffee I reduce my other fluid intake accordingly. But you cannot do that with Italian coffee, and must drink more fluids to compensate. Strangely you cannot get a regular cup of coffee most places, except on Alitalia. There you cannot get a cup of the concentrated stuff.
Lunch Tuesday was salami from the local market with Philadelphia cream cheese on a roll. This was really nice. The best way to describe the shop was a bit larger than the Corner Store of old. Maybe about the size of a convenience store, but without the modern show fittings, and the brutal fluorescent lighting.
Simpson’s Fans will be impressed to know that Italy has copied one of the strange ideas from one of the episodes. There is an episode that has Homer Simpson as the head of the Stone Cutters. Homer is told the ‘Real’ emergency number is 912, and not 911. Seems that Italy has two numbers – 112 and 113 I think.
The 112 number is for the calibari, or the military police. 113 is for the normal police. But it is not that easy. Not all places have the 113 police, but all have the 112 police. The 112 police have military discipline, and are likely to greet you before arresting you. The 113 are more likely to arrest you before asking a question, and will then proceed to steal your wallet. Well, maybe not, buy you get the general idea. Another way to think of it is that 112 keeps Order, and 113 keeps the Law.
Last night I was due to go into the centre of Rome for some sighting, but thanks to a number of things, not the least was traffic gridlock we put it off until this afternoon. My host has arranged a ‘Personal Guide’ to show me around Rome, in a large black Mercedes. I kid you not. I should note that the guide is his brother-in-law, but still.
One of the problems was that my host needed to take someone to an underground. This was a 2-3 Km trip each way, and ended up taking about an hour. Unfortunately this is not uncommon. It was so bad that he rang saying he was one KM from the office on his way back, and estimated it would take 10-15 minutes since the traffic was improving. He was right.
The person was actually an Italian Military Officer who had come from Florence to meet with me, and hear what I had to say. At one stage my host and he were having a conversation discussing things in Italian, being used to more quickly exchange ideas. And they were only speaking in Italian. What was bizarre was that I interrupted and said something like ‘No, what I was saying was…’. And you need to remember I basically know zero Italian, but thanks to body language and the occasional word that I did understand I worked out what they were saying.
This morning I saw the weather report for Australia. It is “Mostly Fine” which is an interesting report given the size of the country. I am just wondering if they describe Australians as “Mostly Harmless”. If you don’t know what I am talking about there, then you need to re-read “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”.
Last night I had dinner in the hotel restaurant. For starters I had a platter of thinly sliced meat, on top of rock melon. I think the meat was some type of smoked port. Main course was a pasta dish. Not sure exactly what it was, but it was nice. Followed by tiramisu. Very nice.
There are cultural differences in hotels here. In the USA if you go to a restaurant, you will be asked to sign the bill after your meal, and asked if you want to leave a tip. In Italy, they do not even show you the bill after the meal if you are adding the meal to your room bill.
Yesterday at the office we were talking about the various movies. I suggested “Looking for Alibrandi” which of course is an Australian film about a 17 year old schoolgirl, of Italian heritage. They had never heard of it, even though it had been released in Italy. Part of the problem was that it had been renamed for the Italian marker, to the equivalent of “Three Generations”.
Oh, and in my honor, one of the guys in the office came to work wearing his Wallaby’s jersey, signed by David Campese. This was fine until I pointed out to everyone that this was normally work in Oz in Winter. And the temperature yesterday was in the mid to high 20’s.