A hoopy frood who knows where his towel is
Surprise, bitches—this is still a travel blog! So I fucked up: I’m flying by the seat of my pants, and that usually works out fine. Call it privilege. But tonight it wore out: everyone and their mother and law is staying in Rome this weekend, unsurprisingly: it’s spring (Easter) break, after all. And I missed the via crucis on Friday, so I’m clearly so invested in the Roman-ness of the holiday. But I’ve fallen in love with Rome, and I’d like to stay a few nights more. Now, why I waited until today to book a room for tonight, I don’t know: I knew that I should be booking, looking, whatever. But I didn’t: I had some SICP exercises to do, and some realy good books to read. And god, the food.
So I didn’t book a room until today, which was a fuckup. I guess I was used to the idea that when I needed a room one would be available: there’s always something. But it seems as though, for tonight in Rome, there really isn’t anything for less than 1000 Euro. So I fucked up. Even this morning, as I was checking out, I knew that I should probably shower. I showered yesterday afternoon, but I figured this moring surely there’ll be another shower. I found a place for tomorrow, but for tonight I’m pretty much shit out of luck.
Now, this is all the whining of a priviledged bratty kid on rumspringa in Italy whose laissez faire attitudes landed him in a small inconvenience: I have plenty of money, so I can eat. I still have my stuff, including the machine I’m typing this on. I have my passport. I have my clothes and my wits and my A1 Italian. I know some people here, though not too well. I’m not sure what the tactic is: it’s an adventure.
On the one hand, this is a lesson: book your shit in advance; plan—don’t let the world catch you with you pants down. On the other hand, I’m having an absolutely terrific time. This is some Hitchhiker’s Guide shit: I have my towel, for god’s sake—it’s even freshly cleaned. As an aside, here’s a protip: travel with a plain white towel like the hotel linen. That way, when you stay somewhere nice enough to provide clean towels, you can trade it in for a clean one. If there aren’t towels, then you have one. I think that Douglas Adams got the classic “always have a towel” advice from Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe, the inspiration for his comedy. But I don’t have a copy around and can’t verify it.
Not everyone’s trips are so antic-ful: there’s a school of travellers I see around here (Europe) who come to “party”. To them, Europe’s a disjointed series of party spots linked by trains and cobblestone streets. These people are generally boring and can afford the debauchery. They have beds in the hostel. On the other hand, I’ve met people who swore that if you work some you can get something to eat—if you know what to do, whom to ask, you don’t have to pay anything to travel Europe. I met a guy in Amsterdam who’d been on the road that way for years—this was through Esperanto. Now there was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants motherfucker. When I saw him he was staying in a anarchist flophouse in Amsterdam with the agonizingly cool teenagers who lived, breathed, and were edge. “Rich tourists, fuck off/, said the sign on the wall. ”Rich tourist"—that’s me. Oops.
I guess this is the sort of bullshit I set out to Europe to do: antics and wildness. I’ll probably sneak, tonight, into the party at the hostel I stayed at last week. I know the folks there, and they’ll be up all night. I even still have the wrist band, so I’ll give it a shot. We’ll see whether they’re happy to see me—I sorta blew them off, but god does “party, party, party” get tiresome: see my comments above about the party spots—this was one of them. On the other hand, they’re super attractive people down at the party hostel. They’re hot and they know it.
In the end, I don’t think I’m gonna get an expensive room tonight; I may get some camping gear at some point, trade in this for that. A tarp’d be nice, or a bedroll of some sort. I guess that’s what the towel’s for. I have a booking for a hostel tomorrow, so it’s not open-ended: I just have to fuck around tonight and see what’s up. If I can make it to the morning, it’ll be cool. It’s appropriate, on holy Saturday, that I don’t have a place to sleep. I’ll keep a vigil with the disciples until the early morning, when we’ll go up and (hopefully) find the tomb empty. Happy Easter everyone, from your correspondent in Rome.
Con’t: so life is a rediculous adventure. For those of you who don’t have the patience for my bullshit, I found a room for the night. Here’s the long version: I walked to the Vatican for the Easter vigil today, on foot. With all my shit on me. I considered in my mini pilgrimage across the city to see the beginning of the new liturgical year. I spent a lot of the day in a park—lord knows which. I’m not a fucking journalist, so sue me. It was a park with little white flowers blooming and people lying, waiting. At the proper time of midday a man prayed to the kaaba (spelling?), facing east. There were many napping who weren’t going anywhere in particular but where they were. I was there with them, in the ruins of Trajan’s baths. It was warm and sunny; Rome has palm trees—did you know that? Today made sense of the quasi-tropical flora.
From there I walked to the Vatican. It’s not that far, but I had my heavy-ass laptop bag on me and that was a drag. I stopped for a snack or two along the way—pilgrimages aren’t necessarily ascetic, are they? I’m not at all sure what the difference is between a pilgrim and a tourist anyway: I’ve met plenty of people who may well have been both. So I made it to the Vatican in time for the Easter vigil. For those of you out of the know, a Roman Catholic church is without light for all of lent, or as dark as it can be while making the necessary concessions to practicality (they are Roman Catholic, after all). But the vigil, the night before Easter, reintroduces light to the church, literally and symbolically (Roman Catholic indeed). I wanted to go to the Vatican for this most holy of events, not least because I missed the services around the passion because I’m a schlub. Ma vabbè—it can be that way sometimes.
So I went today and couldn’t enter the basilica because I don’t know why. But the cops said I couldn’t so I couldn’t. Vabbè. I stood outside and listened to the service piped out to us in the piazza and took some nice (in my opinion) photos. I got through the pope’s sermon but gave up when they started in on the baptisms—it’s not the same to stand outside and listen to the service on the radio as it is to be in there with the action.
I had dinner at a place called Bukowski’s—vegetarian lasagne and pork tartare. Several glasses of wine (I quit quitting drinking but I’m not sure how I feel about it yet). It was delicious and the music was good—lots of Nirvana, which is my shit.
After dinner I had an digestivo of god-knows-what brown liquor: I swear it always tastes like the cough medicine I had as a kid: syrupy and sweet that coats your insides and stirs your head. I sat across from this Italian couple and their American friend who it turns out is an essayist (review forthcoming, not that she asked for my opinion. Whom am I kidding: she’ll never read this anyway). While the girls were out smoking, the guy and I got to chatting and he invited me to sit with them. I don’t know—it went alright (it’s so easy to abuse m-dashes: it’s an easy way to make a runon sentence look sophisticated). I mentioned that I had nowhere to sleep tonight, and the essayist invited her friends to sleep over (she had been an exchange student in his house oh so many years ago and they were delighted to be reuinited), so I’m staying in their rented bedroom. The girl was terribly apologetic: “it has no windows!”. But it’s a bed indoors, so I’m happy. Now that’s an adventure—I told you everything would work out fine. As an aside, I tried to get a copy of this collection of essays, Soon I’ll Be From The Soil Someday by Eleanor Amicucci, but she only has them available in hard copy, and the shipping to Italy is on the order of weeks. I’d pay full price for an electronic copy since I met her and I want to read them, but it doesn’t seem as though that’s an option. We’ll see whether I see her again and, if so, whether I can weasel a copy out of her. In any case, is this what’s in store for me? I guess everyone has a book nowadays, and it’s easier than ever to publish under your own steam: it doesn’t seem attached to any particular publishing house. I’m interested to see what they have to say: they’re about “plants and death”. Fascinating, no?
