(More Than Just Italy)

I

To find a vacant hotel room took me seven hours. I arrived on the train from Aeropuerto Romano into Florence with my backpack and oversized duffel bag somehow bulging with excess. I certainly didn’t know how to pack light back then. I looked ridiculous. My torso leaned heavy right in a sort of crippled strut as I tried to keep balance and move the mass with each step. The strap went diagonal across my chest and diagonal the other way went the strap of my camera bag. So I was there, in hustling, bustling Florence; foreign, lost, alone, excruciatingly over-packed, and I had to discover where my class was.
Outside the terminal, I saw a policeman and asked, “Dove Via de Rustici?” He didn’t recognize the name of the street so looked at the map I had. He ran his finger over the glossy paper that showed landmarks and the paths that led to them. Finally, the officer found it and told me a bunch of directions in rapid Italian. I watched his hand and listened for key words, street names and left or right, unable to understand all the words between. I said “Grazie mille” and started my trek clear across to the other side of Florence, luggage hanging on me every place luggage could.
I walked around the corner out of the train station to the road which was a big circle with four inlets and a statue standing proud in the middle. The traffic ran similar to how it does in the States, that is, look left then right then left again when crossing the street, but Italian drivers are a bit more sporadic. They will turn from any lane. They will straddle the lines. Mopeds will trickle through traffic to the front of the queue. And pedestrians have a rule of “cross at your own risk,” even when there is a crosswalk. I made my first crossing safely as I followed the cue of another person a few yards away from me. Already the luggage was dragging but I kept going, determined to find the class and certainly not look like an outsider, although, I was carrying a bag I could have fit all my six foot self in, a backpack bulging like a tortoise shell, and a bag of camera equipment. I was absolutely a tourist. I had unruly long hair nearly to my shoulders held back with a blue bandana. I was wearing a thrift store t-shirt and long, thrift store pants, with black and white no-brand sneakers. Believe me when I say, Italians, for the most part, but especially in Florence, do not wear thrift store, no name clothes and, if their hair is long, it is certainly not held back with a bandana. It will be long, shining clean brilliance, brushed – not a nappy, dirty mess. Italians in the city are keen on trends and high-expense clothes. So no, I wasn’t quite fitting in, but I knew Italian, which boded well for me – very well.
I continued walking in the direction of Via de Rustici but was truly lost. I kept looking at my map but never saw street signs until I realized they were chiseled into the brick of tall buildings at intersections. This discovery helped tremendously, although it still took me forever to find where I was going. I went this way and that, through traffic, through crowds, along the Arno which was still foreign to me. I found a school, but it was not the one I was supposed to find. I asked the lady behind the desk where Via de Rustici was. It was just as foreign to her, but she asked the next lady who came in and she pointed me back the direction I’d come from and told me quick directions. I told them thanks and walked out to find this impossible destination.
At this point I had well-defined grooves in my shoulders, aching and throbbing. My legs were wobbly, ready to collapse. But alas! Via de Rustici! I found the number for my classroom and buzzed outside the gate. No answer. I buzzed again. Still no answer. I saw there was an office in the adjoined building and rang that buzzer. They answered in Italian. Now, on the spot, I had to remember all my lessons, decipher what they were saying, explain my situation, and be let in, with no hand gestures to articulate my flabby words. But I was let in. I went upstairs, set my bags down, and the guy working the desk tried to get in contact with the office next door but had the same difficulty. He told me I could leave my things with him and get them the next day, which I did with overwhelming gratitude. I left the enormous duffle bag and my camera and took my backpack so I could have a change of clothes with me, toothbrush, toothpaste, et cetera.
I left the building and went on my weary way to explore Florence. My first day there by myself, I finally had so much less on my shoulders, I put a bit of a swagger in my steps. I tried to fit in. I refused to look twice at a street sign and never opened my map. I wandered aimlessly and, for some reason, proud. I soaked in the Italian jabbering all around: the British English from men in shorts and Birkenstocks with pulled high crew socks; English from ostentatious groups of people who didn’t care; Germans who spoke in the most powerful yet collected and soft voices among themselves. I looked in awe at the things that became so familiar to me in the time I spent there: The Duomo, Piazza de Republica, street vendors who scurried to gather their things as two policemen sauntered behind them and, behind the policemen who never looked over their shoulders, street vendors setting down their items to sell. I always knew that I would see two cops moseying when I saw twenty or so hurrying men with bundled blankets thrown over their shoulders like a sack of gifts. And the gypsies, who looked in as much despair as the Holy Mother, who were pregnant with pillows stuffed under their dresses, with painful eyes and scraggly braided pony-tails, jingled their cups for change until they saw the police coming. Then they would simply turn their backs to them, cease the jingling, and meander about their selected spot until the police were gone. All this I saw with wondering eyes my first day but it became very familiar routine in my following weeks. The Duomo became a meeting spot, the gypsies became a nuisance, the street vendors became stories of how my friends got screwed out of fifteen Euros.

I went back to Via de Rustici to see if the class had arrived. It hadn’t, so I decided to find a place to stay. I finally found a hotel, went to my room, unloaded, and laid down all night long. I tried to stay awake to keep a normal sleep schedule, but couldn’t and I was asleep by 8:30. I leisured around the next morning: went to the toilet, drew a bath, sat for twenty or thirty minutes. I was terribly sore from all the walking the day before. I clothed and threw the sheets across the bed, then headed downstairs to my complimentary breakfast. I ate the freshest fruit and pastries and drank the freshest juices I’d ever had. Italians take great pride in serving something that keeps you. Doesn’t keep you coming back or wanting more, but lets you enjoy your time eating. There’s no rush. And I savored it. I ate fresh meats and drank smooth coffee. I gorged myself on as much as I could fit, partly because I was so hungry having eaten nothing the night before, but mostly because it was too good to quit eating, and have to pay for food.
I reluctantly submitted to my overstuffed belly and went to my room to get ready for the day. I gathered my things, went down the elevator to check out, and went on to find my class.
I took my time getting there, stopped here and there to look into shops in town and enjoy the sunny, cool of an early-Italian-summer.
Expecting class to start leisurely as I had the first day, I lazily strolled to the gate I’d seen the day before and someone let me in this time.
Quick, “Oh, you must be Brian. I was just sending you an email to see where you were. Great! Class is just starting,” and she rushed me into a room full of my friends going over the list of what to do, what not to do, how to stay safe, and I interrupted. In fact, I walked through the door and the class roared in unison, “Brian!” and clapped for my arrival – flattering. And my professor in the far corner dropped her face into her hands and shook her head in a kind of “You had me worried sick, but of course you got lost.” Thus my entrance made. I found my seat next to my professor still shaking her head and told her, “Sorry I’m late.” We left for a quick tour of Florence shortly and I got a tour-guide story for places I’d first met the night before. They were confusing labyrinths yesterday, now history. Later they were landmarks.

* * *

I met Robby three weeks before we left for Italy. In that time between introductions and flight across the Atlantic we realized we shared two classes, Italian and Philosophy of Social and Behavioral Sciences. (We were both desperately behind in Tolstoy’s War and Peace for that class but agreed that the professor was brilliant.) We hung out together quite often and he agreed to live with my roommates and me in the upcoming semester. When he got back from Italy, Robby had two days to move from his old apartment into his new one. But Robby would have waited that long to start moving even if he’d been in town.
The simplest yet most vague word to describe Robby is that he is an artist. A classical musician with a knack for all instruments with strings, Robby plays guitar, bass, piano, and, his favorite, viola. His strengths are found more in writing music than speaking words, although his Italian was always better than my own. If you ask Robby a question or suggest plans, his eyes will widen, the corners of his mouth will come to center creating a blank stare, he’ll tilt his head slightly to the right, turn his eyes upward as if to rummage his mess of thoughts and plans and potential plans and ideas and recent concerns and music theory and Beethoven and physics, one corner of his mouth will raise, his eyes will return to yours, the smile will grow ever better and more pleased with his decision, and he’ll say to you, “Yeah. Yeah, ok. Cool,” and you’ll have a new roommate. That’s how simply his “big,” “Life decisions” are made. If you want to go to the bar, he’ll probably meet you later because he was about to practice “this song” or watch “this movie.” And by “later,” Robby probably means he’ll be ready to hang out when the bars are closing. He stays awake through the night and sleeps when he gets around to it, busy most often with creating something. He made blinds out of branches, painted a vortex into the wall of his house, composes music, and in Italy, he kept a brilliant journal of his adventures.

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