The trip up to Munich on the train is a replay of the KLM flight over to Rome. A drunken revel all the way — one that continues unabated on arrival in Munich where we will have to find our own lodgings. We never even consider spending the money for a place to stay and decide that we will either remain awake the entire weekend or sleep in the train station.
The Munich Oktoberfest, which started in 1810, is the world’s largest fair, drawing 6 million visitors a year. It is held in a spacious city park of forty-two hectares, called the Theresienwiese (Field of Therese), where Bavarian breweries set up massive tents. In 2006, the six major breweries sold 6.1 million mugs of beer at Oktoberfest. In addition to beer, typical German food is also served in the tents, including chicken, sausage, roasted oxtails, cheese noodles, and sauerkraut.
The first night, we find our way to the park where the Oktoberfest tents have been set up. Each brewery tent seats thousands of patrons at long tables, where that company’s beer is served. The three of us begin in the Hofbrau tent, which seats ten thousand people. We are astonished at the level of noise and the size of the waitresses. Each buxom matron carries three huge one-litre crockery beer steins in each hand as she serves, and God help the poor slob who gets in the way when one of these fleshy steamrollers is coming down the aisle. Everyone is shouting and singing and drinking and arguing like there are a whole lot of bad memories to be drowned out as soon as possible. We have no hope of keeping up with the drinkers around us, being North American neophytes with teaspoon-sized bellies. Nevertheless, we manage to down enough beer to float ourselves out of the park hours later when the tents start closing down.
As we head out of the park, tens of thousands of drinkers (the tents can seat a total of about a hundred thousand) are exiting at the same time. At the edge of the park, a small building serves as a public urinal. A stream of urine two feet wide and an inch deep is flowing out the door of the crowded, overused building, running down the hill and into the street. Everyone is drunk, some more than others. Young men and old are falling down in their own piss and not getting up (these are referred to as “beer corpses”), or being dragged away by their stumbling friends. Others are vomiting where they stand or kneeling on the churned-up ground. It resembles a scene from Dante’s Inferno, grotesque, overwhelming in its visceral, animal-like frenzy.
Our plan to sleep in the train station is quickly quashed by the police who come through and roughly toss out any drunks or malingerers. “Raus! Raus!” they shout, kicking stragglers with their high, shiny leather boots. Luckily, we have met a couple of friendly German fellows from Frankfurt, Jochen and Karl. They tell us we can sleep in their VW bug while they are in their rented room. They explain that they would happily sneak us in, but the landlady keeps close watch. The next morning, Michael, Wally, and I unbend ourselves from the Beetle and, not so much hungover as still drunk, go for breakfast with our new German friends. Another day of drinking lies ahead.
The train ride back to Rome proves to be significantly quieter than the journey up.
Perugia/Assisi
Taking a journey alone is a necessary part of every young man’s education. In early November, I decide to go on my own over a long weekend to two small cities in the hilly Umbria region due north of Rome. Perugia and Assisi are about halfway to Florence and I am able to hitchhike there easily in a day.
This is my introduction to Italian drivers, from the inside of the vehicle, that is, and my final ride is from a young, handsome Lothario who appears at one with his sports car as he delights in taking the twisting turns at top speed. Luckily, he has the skills required, downshifting into curves and accelerating out of them, the car hugging the road with the balance of a cat chasing down its prey along a balcony railing. I am pleasantly surprised by his obvious skill, for the Roman drivers were a scourge on every pedestrian daring to take the city by foot. We North American students quickly learned the rule of the road in Rome: “If you are killed while crossing in the crosswalk, the driver must pay for your funeral. If you are killed outside the crosswalk, the driver faces no such liability.”
In any case, I arrive in Perugia in one piece. The driver drops me at the train station and since it is dinnertime and I don’t know any better, I enter the station to take a meal. With the innocence of youth, I sit at the counter and order the fish of the day off the menu. The chunk of dogfish served to me by the harried waiter is bony and smells fishy as a men’s public toilet. I remember that I once had the misfortune to catch a dogfish while visiting Long Island with my parents when I was a young teenager. The damnable thing flopped about the dock barking. Barking, for god’s sakes. Its head, mostly mouth, was three times the size of its body. A freak of a fish. I recall gingerly nudging it back into the sea with my foot.
Holding my nose, I dig into my plateful of reeking fish. If the Italians can eat it, I tell myself, so can I.
Later, after walking into the centro area of the city, taking in the lovely views over the wide valleys below as I climb up the ancient streets, I find a place to stay. The room is in the second-floor apartment of an elderly couple at the top of a narrow staircase. As the pleasant matronly woman with a friendly smile is signing me in, I discover I’ve left my passport in Rome. I’m stunned. How many times was I told never to forget my passport when travelling? By my parents, by the school authorities in Rome, by the government officials who issued it in Chicago, by the Italian passport officials at the airport. Never, ever, forget your passport! I was left with the impression that a forgotten passport would lead to having to sleep on the street or in jail, perhaps getting mugged, maybe murdered. Never forget your passport!
“Scusi, signora, ma …” I try to explain in my halting Italian that my passport, my lifeline, my veritable identity itself does not exist on my person, but is back at the university in Rome.
Instead of immediately telephoning the police, she shrugs, waves a hand at the air, says, “Non problema,” and signs me in.
I go to my bedroom that is just down the hall from their sitting room where the old man relaxes in an easy chair, reading a newspaper while she putters about in the kitchen doing this and that. As I enter the bedroom, throw my knapsack down and test the bed, I’m starting to notice that my stomach is not happy. In fact, it feels as if it’s barking like a fish that wants out. And, in fact, it begins to feel as if a fish with rows upon rows of stiletto-like teeth is desperately trying to chew its way to freedom. Within minutes I am doubled over with intense cramps that threaten to tear me open. What to do? What to do? I’ve already been more of a problem for these good people than is justified for the mere handful of lire they receive for a night’s lodging. But I have no choice.
Out of the room I go, holding my stomach, and, once again, test my halting Italian on this motherly saint of infinite patience. She is all concern and knowing care. Immediately, she digs a package out of a cupboard, rips it open, pours the contents into a glass of water, and motions for me to drink. I gulp it down without hesitation. I’ll try anything to allay the pain twisting in my guts. Within moments, my stomach has settled and I am filled with gratitude for the easy compassion of this mother away from home.
If you are travelling alone, and you are young and innocent and lucky, I learn that the world will sometimes take care of you.
In mid-afternoon of the next day, after giving Perugia a cursory going-over, I head down the road for Assisi. A short ride brings me out into the countryside of low, rolling hills and wide, fertile fields with higher hills in the distance. I walk down the quiet road lined with trees, sticking my thumb out when the odd car or truck passes. Assisi is only twenty-five kilometres east of Perugia and, since the autumn day is warm and sunny, I don’t mind walking part of the distance, my knapsack light on my back.
In fact, it is a glorious day. A woman passes me with a large wooden wine barrel balanced on her head. I nod as we pass one another walking alongside the road. She doesn’t nod, for obvious reasons, but smiles instead. I stop and look about and suck the clear air deep into my lungs. I notice the light. There is something peculiar about the light here. I have never in my life seen the world lit with such clarity. The air sparkles. The sky, the trees, the nearby fields, and distant hills all glow with a luminosity and a radiance I have never experienced anywhere before. The sky is the deepest