August 7th, 2009

Orvieto, Italy

Friday, Aug. 7, 2009

Rome’s airport, as it turns out, looks just like any other airport. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but other than the fact that Italian was foremost on all the signs (with English being conveniently underneath), I could have been stepping off anywhere in the good old USA. Perhaps airport designers do this to reduce the immediate culture shock for visitors, if they care about that at all. Or it could be that they do this to lure you into a false sense of security.

I say the latter because the first thing I experienced after the Roman airport was the Roman traffic. One word: Insane. If you want a bit more elaboration, I would extend it to four words: Survival of the Fastest. It seems to me that the basic laws of Roman traffic are these:

1. Pretend your car is two square feet, even if it’s an SUV (which are rare and almost hideously monstrous in the city. I can see now the European perspective on American cars being too large and impractical).

2. Fastest/pushiest car wins. No Exceptions. The more you’re willing to fudge what are probably the actual laws, the faster you’ll get to the front of the line, which is the point.

3. Laws involving stop signs/lights etc. should probably be followed, but only grudgingly.

4. Your car doesn’t have unnecessary parts. The horn is for frequent use, especially upon lights turning green or cars which inexplicably stall/stop/don’t go immediately.

5. If you are on a motorcycle, moped, scooter, etc. (which are everywhere), ignore these and all other traffic laws. If you are physically able to do something to get you to your destination faster – go for it. It’s actually expected of you.

Shockingly, I didn’t witness any deaths. What I did witness was excessive lane-sharing (lanes are more of a suggestion, really, and a poor one at that). I also saw plenty of fast-paced merging (turn signals are useless unless you’ve been trying for more than 3 seconds already. But really, by the time you turn it on, you should be there already). And of course, there were motorcycles driving between lanes. One did this at a red light, the pulled out in front of the lead car and into the pedestrian walkway before the light changed. As one Italian put it: “Europeans are all good drivers. You have to be in order to survive.” I can see that. I also now understand the motivation for the invention of the Ferrari.

Once I got out of the shuttle that took me from the airport to the train station (in which I experienced the above traffic adventures), I was presented with a new can of worms. Using the Italian Railway. I use the kiosk to buy my ticket for the train. The advantage of this was that it was in English. The disadvantage was that I then had no one to ask about what to do next. I did know that I needed to validate the ticket (done at another kiosk, this one yellow), and eventually figured out how to do that. I then had about 40 minutes to find out where to go to meet my train. After asking several people for directions and help, I managed to decipher the schedule board and was able to compare it to my ticket. It is not true, by the way, that all Romans speak English – which I had heard before leaving. Either that or I talked to the only 6 non-English speaking Romans in the entire city. As far as how to use the railway, I had directions somewhere in one of my bags. I may even remember where. But where’s the fun in that? Anyway, I made it onto the train, lugging my bags into the car with the help of a girl about my age who smiled a lot and nodded. The smiling and nodding was to be the beginning of a trend.

I wound up sitting next to two Italian boys who seemed to be in high school, two Asian-Italian girls (about college-aged, I guessed), and a woman in her late 40’s with a baby. Whether or not the baby was hers was unclear, but the man she left on the binario (platform) and who looked to be about her age was “Da-Da”, so my guess is that it was indeed her bambino. Either way, she was none too happy that I’d left my two larger bags stacked on the floor since I couldn’t lift them. She first tried to scold me into lifting them onto the luggage racks above our heads (I think), but when I looked at her with what I can only imagine was an expression fairly akin to a confused cow and repeated “non parla italiano” a few times, she repeated my phrase exasperatedly, throwing up her hands in disappointment, as if I was her own disobedient and unruly child. But this setback did not deter her. She lost no time in scolding the two Italian boys to put my luggage up for me. The first thirty minutes of the trip was spent with her alternately glancing at my bags warily as if they were about to tumble off at a moment’s notice, glaring at me accusingly (I could see the “greedy American” look that I was paranoid about cross her face), and muttering to herself. From what I could interpret, the muttering had much to do with how many bags I had, why I had so many, and how over-sized they were. I understood much of what she was saying, but didn’t have the vocabulary to explain myself. Eventually she settled into taking care of her child and I took to looking out the windows at the Umbrian countryside. The girls had fallen asleep, and the boys were chatting about chemica and inglese and matimatica. They helped me with my bags again when I was ready to leave, and looked surprised at the number of bags I had (they’d only lifted two at the beginning of the trip, and I had 2 more). I think I muttered something about studying at the institute in Orvieto, and they seemed to understand, or accept that. More smiling and nodding – it was hard to tell what they thought.

My third adventure was upon reaching the platform at Orvieto. I hadn’t been able to reach my contact person yet, and since she was supposed to come pick me up, I was getting worried. (My previous attempt at using a pay phone had failed miserably). Fortunately, the station worker who helped me get my bags off the train also got another woman to call using the station’s phone and I reached Alba after a few attempts. (I admit to blubbering a bit when I heard English for the first time since leaving the plane. I wasn’t really even close to the point where I was crying with relief, but if I could have been overly-grateful to hear my own language, I probably was.)

From there, the trip was easy. Alba drove us straight to lunch, where I got to eat with some friends of mine before they left Orvieto. After lunch we went up to the old, unused (by nuns) convent where the rooms are, and I was shown to my temporary room, a 9’ by 9’ square room with two tables, one lamp table, one chair, three beds/cots, and one outlet. I was left alone while Alba joined the other students for the afternoon portion of the dig, and I took the opportunity to reorganize some of my things, shower, and sleep.

I woke up when the two Italian girls who would soon vacate my room returned to pack at what I’m guessing was about 5:30pm. We struggled through introductions (only one of them knew any English, and I would guess that it was maybe a year or two of school-English, probably taken in high school). After everyone else had showered, two of my friends and another UA student/employee who was on the dig came to pick me up so that we could go into town. They took me town to the bus stop that was available to take into the main part of town, and showed me how to buy tickets, and where the schedule was. Basically, there are three or four trips a day, and the bus is more of a van with 6 seats and some handle bars. Ours had the back door open the entire ride. First stop was for gelato. A piccolo cono - small cone - with two heaping scoops is 3 Euro, and absolutely fabulous. I had Raspberry and what basically translated to “fruit and cream”. We walked around while eating the gelato, and they pointed out various essentials like the farmacia and the grocery store, as well as some good ristorantes. While two of them checked email at an internet café, (more like a 7-11 meets deli with a small bar in the back), the girl I didn’t really know (Shana) and I went to the grocery store to pick up some fruit for the weekend, as meals aren’t provided except for dinner. When we returned, I was able to borrow a friends’ computer to check email and Facebook (the essentials), and send out a couple of quick messages. We had to walk back to dinner since we missed the last bus, but it really isn’t a long walk. It is however a 45 degree slope, so while easy enough to go down, I’ll not be taking it up to town if I can help it.

Dinner, like lunch, consisted of pasta and veggies. Unlike lunch, it was catered and had thinly sliced meat. I’m guessing meat isn’t as big a part of the Italian lifestyle, judging by the two meals I ate and the longing for steak that was rumbling about the hall. After dinner, we all sat around outside the dining hall playing guitar and singing songs like “Hotel California” and “Blowing in the Wind”. A couple other songs I recognized (also from the 60’s) were sung in Italian, and then there were some true Italian songs. But American songs seemed pretty popular. Soon enough we all wandered up to the rooms to pack, sleep, talk, watch movies, or whatever else people decided to do. End Day One.