Getting to Rome

"Those of us who had not fallen asleep glanced casually down at the Alps. They lay beneath our wings like a model in a geological museum, and though it was July, many a summit was still white.  There comes over one sometimes a sense of the wonder and fantasy of this age, and, as I adjusted my chair to a more comfortable angle, I though how preposterous it was to be speeding through the sky to Rome, many of us unaware of the great barrier which awed and terrified our ancestors. While I looked down, trying in vain to identify the passes - the Mont Cenis, the St Gothard, the Great St Bernard and the Little, and the famous Brenner - a series of pictures flashed through my mind...Hannibal and his hungry elephants, Charles the Bald dying in the Mont Cenis, the Emperor Henry IV hurrying through the blizzards of January, 1077, to make peace with the Pope, while the Empress and her ladies were strapped into ex-hides and let down over the frozen slopes like bundles of hay.  'Would you like a glucose sweet or a peppermint?' asked the air hostess, as we crossed the Alps."
- HVMorton, A Traveller In Rome

Of course, I say that and I was absolutely asleep when we crossed the Alps.  But the point remains: traveling is such a different experience than it used to be. 

For example, after I wasn't able to get an upgrade to British Airways' Club World, I advanced to the BA lounge anyways.  It just so happened that my friends, Jamie and Emily Greaves, were on the London leg of my flight.  After a dramatic lie about how BA had lost my Club World status, we three were drinking gin and tonics, having a bit of lunch and a champagne toast to the expatriate lifestyle.  I breezed on and off the plane, since I almost never check luggage anymore.  Changed over in London, and arrived in Rome before dark.  There are things that I like to plan down to the last detail but for some reason, getting to my apartment from the airport is never high on that list.  I always have general idea of where I'm going, and a vague inclination of how to get there.  I boarded a train (train tickets have to be stamped BEFORE getting on the train) going in the direction of Trastevere and I surmised from the conversation between some of the passengers, that my stop was coming soon.  At the Trastevere station, I bought a tram ticket and took it (tram tickets must be stamped AFTER getting on the tram) one stop and then walked up the hill to root around for my apartment.  It was dark when I presented myself in front of 29F.  All this, and I hadn't spoken more than a sentence or two of Italian.

I tend to speak French at first, regardless of which foreign country I am located.  The trouble with that is, I don't actually speak French.  But all of my exclamations tend toward the French and it takes me a bit to get my Italian going.  My hostess, whose apartment and mine share a vestibule, is 60 and on leave from work because she is undergoing Chemotherapy.  Over a glass of red and a slice of cheese pie (HELLO), I was able to discern that Maria has lived in this flat for three years, after inheriting it from her parents.  She converted it into two apartments and seems pleased to have me occupying the studio.  She was a social worker for 35 years and the director of a school for the handicapped.  Since she has been ill, she mostly stays home and smokes cigarettes from her terrace with her cat who deigned to look at me but nothing more.  Next Tuesday, she and I are going to a lecture on the archaeological restoration of Campo Marzio. 

I've run down to the market and picked up a few groceries and what I hope is face wash.  I write this with Nutella and bread in hand.  Life is grand.