Travel Writing

How My Italy Became Italia

I would like to preface this narrative with a disclaimer.

Disclaimer:

I took Japanese for three years in high school. No other language. Ever.

Oh, wait. I lie.

In first grade I learned to count to ten in Spanish.

Narrative:

The first word I learned in Italian? Umbrello. Guess what it means. I laughed when my friend told me. Italian won’t be so hard, I thought. Maybe I should have focused on my inability to pronounce her last name correctly (Tartaglione) rather than the false sense of security that resulted from the resemblance of a few Italian words to certain English ones.

I bombarded her with questions, my tone demanding answers. She obliged. What’s the word for umbrella? Chemistry? Paper? Pen? Rain? Computer?

We sat in my dorm room, theoretically doing homework, chairs pushed up close to each other’s. My mind wandered far away from the general chemistry assignment filling up the computer screen. I looked past the rain outside my window to the sunny, verdant, rolling hills of Tuscany, and to the bright blue, sparkling Mediterranean, rushing against the coast of Italia.

Ah, Italy. How well I knew thee in my imagination. The Italy of movies and songs, TV shows and Americanized restaurants. Pasta, wine, olive oil, pizza…My fantasies consist of running through fields of green grass, stumbling on a convenient secluded and pristine pond and taking an impulsive swim bathing suit or no, making wine with the locals, stomping on grapes, getting invited to dinner by people I just met, learning Italian as quickly as a child who had spent the first few years of life here.

I will make memories, so help me God.

Now that I’m actually in Italy I have slightly more realistic expectations. However, some stereotypical Italian images have made their way into my brief jaunt into the country. An Italian grandmother did try to stuff me with food. Scooters have rushed passed me, causing my life to flash before my eyes. Siestas do exist. Young Italian couples do make out on the Spanish Steps, in subways, on buses, on street corners…Fashion does rule with a designer fist. Of course, these images can’t accurately represent such a diverse and colorful country as Italy, but they add flavor to the atmosphere in ways I couldn’t have prepared myself for.

Some experiences even blew my expectations out of the water. Gelato is just better than ice cream, especially when you eat it next to the Pantheon. Truffles taste like happiness. What else can I say? I just had to taste them for myself.

Everything feels different in person. Bernini, Cortona, Caravaggio…these artists can’t really be appreciated through photographs. Pictures of sculptures and paintings are not the interactive experience intended by the designer. The viewer needs to walk around Bernini’s sculptures to find out the whole story. To comprehend the vastness and illusion of Cortona’s salone fresco in Palazzo Barberini, the viewer needs to lie down on a couch and stare at the ceiling for half an hour. To understand the enormous gulf between Caravaggio and the other painters of the time the viewer needs to walk into an art gallery and have their eyes immediately drawn to the only Caravaggio in the room.

I don’t know how I fit into the great scheme that is Italy. Am I just a tourist, no better than a Rick Steves five-day tour group? Certainly I’m no native; I can barely order pizza. But I like to think that since I’ve shared a laugh with the women at the gelato place, returned a piece of luggage to a harried Italian couple at the train station, figured out the bus system, and made friends with an Italian grandmother, that I have a right to say that I’ve lived in Rome.

I’m no longer looking to have the right memories. I have plenty of perfectly wonderful ones.

Umbrello. Italy is kind of fun.

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Only Four Pictures Left In My Disposable Camera And All Of Rome Before Me

(1) Dove Termini? Dove Termini? I’m trying to find the train station. Actually, I’m trying to find the bus that goes to the train station. Do you know where it is? I was told the bus stop was close, just up on the main road. I think I passed it; I didn’t see a road that looked main enough. Now I just keep going. I don’t want to stop. It’s so hot, and my backpack weighs forty pounds, and it is only the second day of my trip. I can’t give up no matter how many scooters try to run me over. I don’t recognize anything. Lost. And alone for the first time. I have no map, but I bought a compass a few days ago, and I clipped it to the zipper on my bag. Head west and north. The subway ticket machine takes only exact change. The bancomat gives me fifties. Taxis are a waste of money. Too tired to stand. I need to sit down.

What are all these steps?
They can’t be the Spanish steps.
The Keats/Shelley house.

(2) Opening the door to the balcony of the apartment is like opening a portal to another place. Inside I can believe I am still in Seattle, but the sound that bursts through the open door pours itself into the cracks of the room, transforming it into the city of Rome. Transported thousands of miles in a second. Just like Star Trek, or so I wish. In the morning I hear the street cleaners, preparing the field of flowers for another day. Still in bed, I can hear the clang of metal as vendors set up shop and wait for their customers. The voices fill up the square and the space above it, where I live, until the hum of morning beckons me up to alertness. A peach and some yogurt sounds good. Late afternoon the campo is cleared away once again. The locals and tourists come out to play, so the voices stay and make themselves comfortable. They will be here almost until the street cleaners come back in the early morning.

While I sleep, I dream
of being in two places
at once. Forever.

(3) White Night. Early, at eleven, we leave the apartment. One boy, ten girls. If there is any trouble, he tells us that he can be the boyfriend, depending on which one needs help. I wear my 1 Euro dress that is too low cut, an expanse of white skin. But it is my only dress, and I like it. We weave through crowds of people: to the Piazza del Popolo! Getting there takes us past mobs of people, but I am still walking of my own volition; not yet bowing to the whim of the crowd. I can still control my path and purpose. I miss dodging through people; it’s like a game, an obstacle course. When I go back home, I must go to more concerts, where the crowds are. The acrobats perform from all the places in the world. The stage is not in Rome, but switches from France and Spain and everywhere else. An hour later we leave to get gelato. Plum and wine at San Crispino’s, my favorite combination so far. Sweet and tart. It takes us an hour to walk ten minutes. At two in the morning the crowds are much thicker, denser. Time to go back.

There, I can see a
tunnel of light. It is the
most beautiful thing.

(4) We lay on couches underneath Cortona’s frescoed sky in the large salone at Palazzo Barberini. The fresco is busy, like the bees prominently displayed in the middle. Propaganda produces the greatest art. There is so much of it in Rome. The walls stand bare and plain where lush tapestries once hung making the room feel warm. Now it feels like a museum, the main activity craning your neck upward, and creating echoes. It is a relief to lie down under the sky. Figures swirl above us. I call Immortality. You can be Minerva. You’re the one holding the crest. And you, you’re Divine Providence.

You know you are a
genius if you can hold your
fingers to your eye.