Category — MidLeap

The flight back to the states was alright.  The first leg from Florence to Amsterdam took us over the Alps on a clear day.

And we got cookies for breakfast.  I like cookies.

It was a quiet flight; not even close to full, so almost everyone got their own bank of seats.  I grabbed an exit row and frightened the nice flight attendant when he tried to debrief me in Italian.  Two hours later we were in the Amsterdam airport.  I think it’s an interesting place.  It’s got a museum on its upper floor, and has entertaining art sprinkled throughout.

What wasn’t so interesting was getting a note at the self-service transfer machine telling me I had to go see an agent.  It also told me that my flight was boarding – an hour and a half before the flight was leaving.  I’d chosen to take the non-direct flight back to Portland in order to have a little more time in Amsterdam, just in case.   The just in case, it turned out was a good idea, due to the combined factors of a Japanese tour group that was waiting in line at the agent desk, and the fact that I’d been flagged for security checks.

When I finally talked to the agent, she looked me up and down, told me I’d just been flagged, handed me my boarding pass and sent me on my way.  I arrived at the gate an hour before my flight, to find the reader board flashing “boarding.”  I thought this was a little extreme, but hopped into line.  The boarding process, it seems, was so long, because each person was being escorted from the line, by an agent, to one of about 6 tall, small desks for interrogation.  “Did you pack your bags?  When?  Where?  Are you carrying anything given to you by anyone?  Anything that you did not make with your own hands?  Anything you did not personally witness being produced in the factory?”

Now, I knew the easiest answer would be “no,” but I have this annoying compulsion to try to tell the truth.  I was carrying gifts from friends.  And while I could see the concern if it had been electronics or chemicals, I didn’t think that a jacket or poster was likely to compromise the international security of the flight.  Still, I’m not a professional, so I said, “well, yes, I have gifts from friends.”  She stopped cold and looked up from the ticket she had been examining.  “You do?”  Based on her reaction I’m guessing not a lot of people give that answer.  “What kind of gifts?”  “Well, like posters, but I packed them and I know what they are.”  “One moment please.”

I found this experience curious.  It was an international flight into the US at Christmas time.  I actually sat next to a woman who was visiting her daughter in Seattle.  Were people not bringing presents home?  Or did the airline really want people lying to them?  What?  One woman standing next to me had gift-wrapped presents in her carryon luggage.  What did she say?  If I couldn’t bring a poster given to me by a friend into the US without creating an international incident, it might be time to reconsider the rationality of our security systems.

The  security woman  stepped over to a man in a blazer with a walkie-talkie.  I understood enough to catch “poster” and “gift,” and was able to smile at him at the right time in the explanation to get a returned grin and nod.  From the extent of the conversation that ensued, I’m fairly certain that the woman who was interrogating me was somewhat new to the position, and being a little over-diligent.  I don’t really speak German, but I’d say the gist of the conversation was, “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.  Move along.”  She returned my ticket, said “Thank you ma’am, have a nice flight,” and I was on my way.  The guy next to me wasn’t so lucky.

He’d been there when I walked up to my little desk.  The poor soul only had carry-on luggage – and brown skin.  “You are visiting your parents?  And do they work?  Only your dad?  What does he do?  And your mother, what does she do?”  He was still being questioned by an agent with a Pakistani accent when I walked onto the plane.  I simultaneously chuckled and shook my head.

The flight from Amsterdam to Seattle was 10 and a half hours.  That’s too long.  ‘Nuf said.  We did have a lovely pasta dish and individual pizzas, as well as personal entertainment devices that allowed me to watch Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince over and over.  It almost made up for the ridiculously tight spaces between seats.  Almost…

There is one thing that makes the re-entry to the US less than glorious – the customs process.  I’ll say that it was better than my last experience in New York, but I was astounded by the baggage claim area and the insane pile-up of bags.

Apparently it’s common to have luggage stacked 3 or 4 deep, because there was an airport employee stationed just in front of the ramp where the baggage enters the carousel, waiting to position each bag in the mêlée.

After filling out several forms designed to make you lie, and reviewing the forms with at least 3 different people, I had my cheese-laden luggage in hand and was on my way to Portland.  My first ground view of the US made me smile.  I was back in the northwest for sure.

One short plane ride and I’d be back in Portland.  And that was a nice feeling.

My flight back to the US was an early one from the little Florence airport.  Florence is a couple of hours from Fornaci, and I had to be at the airport by about 5:30 AM, so I decided to spend the night in Florence.  Because the Florence airport is a small, regional one, there aren’t a lot of hotels that serve it.  We asked around, and found one that was about a 5-10 minute cab ride, and was safe and clean.

Deb and Tommy gave me a ride to the Fornaci train station, which I was pretty darn familiar with by now, and I hopped on a train to Florence.  I had a great moment at the Fornaci train station when a woman come up to me and ask me where to find the validation machine for the tickets.  It was a triumphant moment when I was able to understand the question and respond in Italian in a way that was actually helpful.

When I got to Florence – another train station I was pretty familiar with by now – I grabbed a cab to the hotel.  Once I confirmed that the cabbie knew where we were going, I settled in for the ride.  I prefer to sit up front in a cab when I’m alone.   Usually I’ll chat with the cabbie about the town, so I tried in Italian.  He was very nice, and we chatted back and forth, navigating my bad grammar together.  I recommended an art exhibit in town and he told me about growing up just outside Florence.

The hotel was in an industrial zone outside the tourist district of Florence.  When I walked in, I thought it might be deserted.  There was nobody to be seen.  Then a man appeared from an out-of-sight office to check me in.  I was pretty tired when I arrived, so I bid the front desk man “buona notte” and headed up to the room.  The room was Spartan, and I swear there was virtually nobody else staying in the big place.  It was a little creepy riding to the top floor in the teeny tiny elevator.  Fortunately the hotel attached its keys to huge, metal pieces that seemed perfect for use as a bludgeoning device.  This made me feel better.  Kind of.

After a long, hot shower, I found myself hungry and wandered back downstairs to seek out a little food.  The website and Rick Steves both showed almost nothing in the area.  I’d need a little help with this one.

The guy behind the desk pulled out a couple of business cards and pointed me down the road a little.  I’d have to walk, but there were a couple of pizza places about 5 minutes away.  “Just go right then left then down to the main street.  You’ll see the restaurants on the other side.”  Armed with my key fob, I headed out into a part of Florence that was different than the Florence I had seen before.

I walked quickly, hoping the area was safe and wondering if I should head back and have another Cliff Bar for dinner.  Until I saw a sign for military surveillance.  I was in the neighborhood of a military facility.  Suddenly, everything felt very safe.  I slowed down a little and even talked to a guy in a car who wanted directions.  I wasn’t really that helpful, but I tried.

When I finally reached the main street I was wondering if I’d ever find the restaurants.  There were a couple of American-style strip malls across the way, but nothing that really looked like a restaurant.  I checked the business cards.  Bingo.  One of the restaurants was just across the street.  The sign looked a little like a video arcade.  I was a little skeptical about the location, but I was hungry enough to forgive the strip-mall atmosphere, so I walked inside.

It was brightly lit, and filled with people picking-up to-go orders and long tables of apparent locals having dinner.  I sat down at a table with a salt and pomegranate centerpiece, and considered the menu.

Most everyone was ordering pizza, so I followed suit.  There were margherita, verdure, funghi, and a new one:  parmagiana.  Eggplant parmesan pizza.  Yum.  I hoped it was as good as it sounded.

It was.  The pizza was beautifully thin, with tomato sauce, mozzarella, thinly sliced, tender eggplant, and a healthy crust of parmesan on top.  The eggplant was juicy, so I ate most of this one with a knife and fork.  The crust was thin, but sturdy, making it possible for me to cut strips, fold them over and shove them in my mouth with the toppings inside like a little calzone.  I was perfectly content eating what I knew would be my last pizza of the trip (not counting the airplane pizza, which isn’t really in the same league).  I listened to the people around me and watched as the long table next to me ordered dessert.  It looked to be a birthday celebration or something similar.  The table was full of older couples, but the women sat at one end and the men at the other.

I got a preview of dessert as the men, who were closest to me, harassed the waitress over the dessert menu.  My entire trip I found it interesting the role that fruit played in almost every meal.  In people’s homes, a big basket of fruit would be placed on the table after a meal.  In restaurants, fruit was served, whether in a salad form or on its own, as dessert.  Pineapple, “annanas,” was commonly on the menu.  Cut lengthwise into thirds, the fruit would be sliced and served in the rind, sometimes drenched in a liqueur of some kind.  The men at tonight’s table ordered pineapple, except for one, who ordered an orange – which showed up by itself, rolling around a plain, white plate.

I like fruit, but it’s not what I had in mind for my last night in Italy.  I asked the waitress for the “dolce” and she started down a list.  Somewhere along the way I heard “pistachio torta.”  Yes, that one.  I’d had good luck with nut pies.  I hadn’t, however, experienced fluorescent green nut pies.

The minute it arrived I knew this wouldn’t be the best dessert of the trip, but, all things considered, it wasn’t bad.  There were even little pieces of pistachio in the unnaturally green gelatin.  Along with the caffe, it was a totally satisfactory dessert.

The pizza was excellent.  Probably ranks in the top 3 from the entire trip.  But the best part of dinner was the fact that I didn’t speak a word of English the whole time.  I don’t want to congratulate myself too much for making it through a few sentences, but it was nice.  My last night in Italy I was able to get myself to Florence, find a place to eat, and even get through a meal in Italian.  Like the rest of my trip, I had help from friends along the way (sometimes a lot of help), and in the end, I was able to do what I needed to on my own.  What more do I need than a place to sleep, a blunt instrument, and a really good pizza?

When my family first said they wanted to send a thank you box to my friends in Italy, I thought that was pretty great.  For the next couple of weeks, I got updates on what was going into the box, and provided info on the members of my extended Italian family.

I checked with my friends to see what the best way to ship the box would be.  We determined that something like UPS was much better than the postal system.  (My mom and aunt had spent 45 minutes in line one time only to find that they couldn’t actually buy extra stamps for the postcards they wanted to mail.)

Just before I headed to Venice I got emails from my mom and sister saying that the box had shipped.  It might arrive before I was away.  “I told them it had soap in it, and ‘personal hygiene items.’”  My sister, Cathy, had FedExed the box, and she and my mom had put a couple of bars of soap in for me, because I was having a hard time figuring out the Italian labels.  “I thought it was better than saying it had food items from Idaho.”  That sounded reasonable to me.  Shipping food items into Italy wasn’t probably something to advertise.

So I went to Venice and instructed the ladies not to open the box if it arrived while I was away.  When I got back I had a message from my sister:  the box had been detained when it arrived in Italy.  Apparently, the Italian Ministry of Healthy closely regulates the shipping of “personal hygiene items,” specifically soap.  Damn.  They needed someone from in the country to call.  It seems they had tried to contact me and had left a voicemail on my Italian cell.  Double damn.

I’d had a series of phone calls from blocked numbers while I was in a train station.  Thinking it was a friend playing tricks, I answered, “pronto!” to which they responded “pronto!”  We went back and forth for a while yelling pronto at each other.  Then I laughed manically and hung up.  After a few of these, I just let it go to voice mail.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to set up or retrieve messages, because the instructions were in Italian.  So I forgot about it.  It seems it was the government calling to talk about the box.  Great.  And I’d mocked them, laughed, hung up and ignored their message for about a week.  Excellent.  Well played.

So, Cathy sent me the phone number for FedEx Italy, and Sandra made the call.  Then she made another call as instructed by the FedEx people.  On that call she learned that we would need to fill out some paperwork, make a payment of 40 Euro (approximately $60), and fax the paperwork back, along with proof of payment.  They’d be sending an email shortly.  We had 3 days to complete our tasks.

“Why did she say there was soap in the box?”  Evidently it was the wrong thing to say.  Who knew?  “Do you really want to pay 40 Euro for the soap?  That’s expensive soap.”  I didn’t give a hoot about the soap at this point.  I wanted the gifts for everyone.  So we waited for the email.

The paperwork, it turned out, was 5 pages of questions about my province of birth (assuming I was Italian), my company’s location, the name of my warehouse, and the weight of the soap I was shipping.  They, apparently, thought I was a soap importer.

Assisted by my personal translator, I filled out the pages and signed.   Deb’s mom took me to the post office to pay the fine and get a receipt.  The woman behind the counter had never seen forms like ours before, and didn’t know what we would have to do to get our box.  She could take my money and give me a receipt, though.

I gathered all the papers and faxed it the number I’d been given.  If I’d have known the patron saint of mail, I’d have said a little prayer.

The day I left for Rome, we still hadn’t heard anything at all.  I was beginning to wonder if we’d ever  see the box.

I had a wonderful time in Rome .  When I got back, Bertie came to find me.  A box had arrived.

I went downstairs to retrieve it.  It was like Christmas.  The box was intact.  It was wonderful to see my mom’s handwriting on its top.  Tom and I opened it and spread its contents out on the kitchen table.

There were toys for the kids, and mugs for the ladies.  Jars of jam and mustard, and games appeared for everyone.  And there was soap.  The few small bars were the most interesting items to everyone.  “She should have told them it was books or something.”  The ladies found it pretty humorous that I’d had to pay so much for soap.

The next day, when I delivered a bag of goodies to Deb’s family in Barga, Ryo said that he’d had a box arrive as well.  And he’d had to pay a 35 Euro fee.  “What was in his box?” I asked Deb.  “Books.  His old used ones.”

Tonight’s vocab word is dormire.  It means to sleep.  Here it is in a sentence:

Stasera, ho bisogno di dormire invece di scrivere. Sogni d’oro!

Happy translating!

The best way to see Rome is from the back of a scooter.  I say the back, because you aren’t fully aware of the impending doom that is around every hairpin turn, swerve, screeching stop and turbo acceleration.  So long as you can get used to these and let go of the need to control anything, I think it’s the best way, for sure.

“Rome traffic is fluid, so don’t be afraid or anything.”  He’d picked me up at my hotel and buckled a helmet on my grinning head.  “You’re going to have the ride of your life.”  Now we were zipping down the street in front of the floodlit Colosseum.

“Oh, I’m not afraid,” I half-shouted, bumping helmets as I tried to get close enough for him to hear.  “I’m just holding on.”  It was true.  I was grinning ear-to-ear, but wasn’t about to let my grip slip off the little handles on either side of my thighs.

Fabio is another amazing Italy contact:  a friend of a friend, who after a couple of emails back and forth was taking me out to show me his city – from the back of his scooter.

“Tell me what you did today so I know what you’ve already seen.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!  I looked at him, unable to begin a sentence.  I’d seen quite a lot.  It had been a couple of the longest days of sightseeing I’d ever had.  I started down the list, but we got sidetracked, or he stopped listening or something happened, because we had cruised past the forum, palatine hill, and nameless other piazzas, and were now passing the Coliseum.  Fabio was narrating from the front seat.  This was simultaneously entertaining and nerve-racking.

“Oh yes, I saw this today, it’s beautiful.”  “You went inside, too?”  He was surprised.   “Yup.  It was great.”

“I’m trying to figure out how you did everything today.”  So was I.  “Well, I did coliseum, forum, palatine hill and the pantheon this morning and then the Vatican this afternoon.”  “But you didn’t do the Vatican museum today.”  It was more of a statement than a question.  “Oh no, I did.”  I’m not sure he believed me.  I’d also done the Sistine chapel, St. Peter’s and Trevi again.

“Well, have you seen the pyramid crypt?”  I’d only seen it in guidebooks.  So we headed there.  It’s a pyramid shaped crypt that makes up part of the wall of the non-catholic cemetery.  “It’s really a pyramid” I was informed.  Well, it certainly looked like a pyramid.

We next drove past the Circuis  Maximus, an old chariot racing track.  Then we drove up a hill to “the keyhole.”  I’d never heard of it, but Fabio assured me that it was a very famous place.  We pulled into what appeared to be a military-guarded parking lot.  Fabio took me over to a building on the edge of the lot closest to the military guys, and pointed to a large, round keyhole.  “Have a look.”

“This is the smallest sovereign nation on earth. You’ve heard of the order of Malta?  This is their place.”  I looked up and saw the Malta cross in concrete above the door.  Fabio told me this single building is the headquarters, and is its own sovereign entity.  That’s why it was guarded by guys in camo, who were watching us closely.  Fabio seemed terribly unconcerned.  This was his city.

“That’s the most famous view in Rome.”  I motioned for him to take a look.  He just smiled wryly.  “That’s alright.  I know it.”

He took me past several churches.  “That one is the oldest Christian church in Rome.”  “Those are all from 500.”  “That one is from 900.”  “Bellisima!” he declared as we rode past each.  The suffix ‘issima’ means ‘the most.’  Apparently every church in Rome is the most beautiful.  Or the most old.  Or something that the rest of the world has copied.  The Greek part of me wanted to say something about the fact that the Roman temples that many churches now inhabited were, in fact, modeled on the Greek temples of the ancient world.  I kept my mouth shut, though.  I was on the back of a scooter, getting a private tour of Rome, and I was happy to be there.

We’d decided to cross the river to a part of town I hadn’t seen yet.  Trastevere was a medieval part of town where people still live and work.   A bustling neighborhood that boasts its part of the medieval wall that used to be closed at night to keep out thieves.  We pulled up to a large, high building .  It had no paint and a very plain façade, except for the torches set in brackets, sending up large, flickering flames.

Fabio knew I was vegetarian and went out of his way to find a place that would accommodate me.  “I would have taken you to another place, but they would probably be unfriendly to a vegetarian.”  I pictured myself being slapped by a steak.  “Roman food is very…earthy,” he said, bringing his hand down through the air in front of him.  I reassured him that I can almost always find a pasta or pizza to make due with.  And this place we had come was a pizzeria.  More pizza!

We walked up a flight of steep, narrow stairs to a heavy door on the second floor, and pushed.  The inside of the restaurant was dark and had bare, rocky walls decorated with old, wooden farming equipment.

Tonight, Fabio ordered for us, explaining that I was vegetarian and that I didn’t drink.  It was nice not to have to struggle through the conversation with the waiter.

We started with bruschetta.  “You know what it is?”  Oh yes.  Terribly yummy toasted bread with stuff on it.  The only thing I had always wondered about was how to say the word.  Ours were lovely large, thick pieces of bread toasted perfectly so the inside was still chewy.  We had three.  One was a kind of garlic oil, one a chunky, marinated tomato, and one diced, seasoned mushrooms.

Fabio kept telling me to eat.  We were two lawyers, and I had someone across from me who wanted to talk politics.  Global politics, American politics, Italian politics, everything.  And in English.  We were talking about the past three US presidential elections, the state of Italian politics, the political situation at the time of the first two World Wars, pending US judicial decisions, military theory, and more.  The conversation and the bruschetta was excellent.

And then my pizza came.

As you can see the pizza in Rome is a little different than the pizza I’d been eating elsewhere.  It was thicker.  And the toppings were thicker.  Instead of the really thin slices of eggplant and peppers I’d had on almost all of my other pizzas, this one had thick, juicy slabs of eggplant, and mounds of peppers.

I don’t know if this was truly indicative of Roman pizza, but it was good.

The conversation continued on, winding through our careers.  We eventually found ourselves talking about happiness.  What was it?  Could you be happy bringing happiness to others?  Was happiness a collective or a personal experience?  Was it worthwhile pursuing.  Fabio is a smart guy.  We sparred regarding the functionality of lying, military force, and fear.  “I wish I was as sure as you are,” he said in response to some binary comment I’d made.  “Oh honey, I’m not sure about anything really.  I’m just trying to be happy.”  In the end we came to no conclusions and agreed that it was a good result.

We walked back out into the night, through a group of people smoking on the narrow stairs.  Italy passed laws banning smoking in places like restaurants, but they don’t seem to have mirrored the US laws that require smoking to take place away from the buildings.  “That’s horrible.  I would never do that,” said Fabio as we pushed our way through the crowd, and he took out a pack of cigarettes.

I asked him how he was a marathon runner who smoked and he assured me that it was just a myth that you coughed if you smoke.  I gave him a fair amount of crap, and he told me a story about hitting the wall at mile 20 in one of his races, and asking a guy on the side of the road for a cigarette.  The picture of him running with the cigarette made the local paper.

We headed to the river for a quick look at the view.  He seemed totally unconcerned as we wedged ourselves through tall young men drinking bottles of beer.  I paused to take a picture of the gorgeous river.

It was nice to have a guide.  I would never have come across the river at night by myself.  Not because of Rome, but because of me.

Fabio wanted to show me more of the neighborhood, so we walked the streets of Trastevere.  He pointed out more old buildings and beautiful churches, and insisted on taking a picture of me with one.

While he took the picture, a wild-looking dude walked up and opened his mouth right in front of the camera that was balanced on a bush.  Fabio stood up, looked at the guy, and said something to the effect of “now that’s not even funny.”  He was still dressed in his suit from work and looked like he was going to slap the dude, who just shrugged, laughed and walked off.  Fabio’s expression was far from amused.  I was chuckling a little at the interaction.

We walked a bit more, Fabio pointing out his old haunts, especially noting the place where he used to get late night pastry – now closed up.  This was truly a man after my own heart.  Politics and pastry in the same night.

We found the scooter and crossed the river again in search of an excellent cappuccino.  After several u-turns and dead ends (evidently they change the streets around in Rome on a regular basis), we were in a familiar piazza.  I asked him if he’d had the pizza at the little shop.  “You’ve eaten there?”  He was starting to sound like he didn’t believe everything I had done.  I had coffee in the piazza already, but at the place across the street from where we were headed.  It seemed I was one shop away from the purported best coffee in Rome.

We ordered a couple of coffees, and waited at the bar while Fabio explained that many Italians order a glass of water with their coffee in order to cleanse their palate.  I’d noticed the water but didn’t realize its purpose.  The coffee arrived and Fabio insisted on another picture.

“Well, at least you have proove that you were here.”

I can’t really say if the coffee was good.  Fabio seemed mildly pleased, but they had sugared the coffee for us, something I never do, so it was a very different experience.  It was like drinking a cup of flavored sugar, or something from Starbucks.  I finished it off, though, crunching the grains at the bottom of the cup.  I hadn’t had dessert, so the coffee would suffice.

We were in the neighborhood of the original location of Fabio’s university, as well as his high school.  His high school had been housed in the building where Galileo was held while he was on trial.  You could see the observatory where he was working at the time.  Pretty amazing.  Fabio took me around the corner from the coffee shop to show me a little fountain – one of many in Rome.  This one was frequented by students at the university before their exams.  Drinking from the fountain was supposed to bring good luck on the tests.

As I raised my camera to take a picture, Fabio reached out and pulled a bit of garbage from behind one of the concrete spheres, with a disgusted look on his face.  He took the garbage with us and found a garbage can.  This was his city, and he was clearly very proud of it.

It was now almost midnight and we both had early days in the morning.  So we climbed back on the scooter and headed back to my hotel.  I gave him a big American hug and offered to take him around Portland if we found ourselves there at the same time.  He agreed and hopped back on the scooter.  I’m not so sure we’ve got the oldest or most beautiful of anything in Portland, but maybe I could find a friend with a scooter.  Portland might look pretty cool from the back of a scooter.