I stayed on and continued watching for Viale Medaglie d’Oro. A few minutes later, the bus turned onto this street. I started feeling like a Roman and wondering why I had been so worried about finding my way home. But this street was long. I needed to get to Piazza Giovenale. Via Marziale and Via Galimberti connected it with Viale Medaglie d’Oro, so I watched carefully for these two streets.
Soon I was the only passenger left on the bus, and the driver and I had left Viale Medaglie d’Oro far behind. It was 3 a.m. The sun would rise in a few hours, so I figured the worst that could happen was that I would ride back and forth between the route’s two endpoints until it was light enough for me to feel comfortable stepping off on a street I recognized. Then I could walk the rest of the way to the bed and breakfast. The driver had a kind face, so I didn’t expect him to mind.
But when he parked on a side street in a residential area, turned around and noticed I was still sitting in my seat, it was obvious that he did mind. He said something in Italian that I couldn’t understand, so I made a loop with my pointer finger to indicate that I planned to ride back around. Annoyance replaced the kindness in his face. He turned to his left, looked out the open window and unleashed a mouthful of Italian—that language that sounds beautiful even when it’s about something you’d probably rather not hear.
When the driver had finished telling the night how much of a pain in the ass I was, he turned back around and asked, “Dove sta andando?”
I answered, “Viale Medaglie d’Oro,” and more poetic exasperation flowed from his tongue. Appearing to have given up on me, he turned the bus around and started his route back to Piazza Venezia. All I could do was sit back and wait for the sun to rise.
About 15 minutes later, the driver slowed down, looked back at me and indicated that he was turning onto Viale Medaglie d’Oro. He seemed to be asking where on this street I needed to go, so I moved to the seat closest to him and showed him my map. He pulled over, turned on the light, took the map in his hands and studied it closely.
With only kindness in his face, he drove slowly down the street looking for Via Galimberti. Each time he approached a side street, he stopped to read its sign, and his patience never wavered.
He finally stopped to pick up a passenger, and as the man stepped on board, the driver asked if he knew whether Via Galimberti was nearby. It was, and the passenger pointed it out to us. “Grazie” seemed such an inadequate expression for the gratitude I felt for the driver, but it was all I knew to say as I stepped off the bus.
During my short walk to the bed and breakfast, I wondered whether the driver had really been annoyed with me, or if it had simply seemed this way because his language sounds much more expressive than mine. It didn’t matter. By the time I got off the bus, he’d given me yet another example of the Italian friendliness that always amazes me.
The following night, I left the Easy Internet Café confident I would make it back to the bed and breakfast long before sunrise. This time, I knew exactly where to go.
BRAD O’BRIEN didn’t find a job in Rome, but by the time he left, he was helping other Americans figure out the bus routes. He has a B.A. and an M.A. in English from the University of South Carolina. Before deciding that the settled life wasn’t for him, he taught composition for three years at Francis Marion University. He lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, teaching English and planning his next overseas adventure.
Rome
Lost in Transit
gloria fallon
geneva had been a disaster, and the six of us couldn’t wait to get to Italy. A violent windstorm in Switzerland’s peaceful capital had blown away our plans for sightseeing: The river cruise was canceled, the Jet d’Eau fountain was shut down, and we were nearly flung from the top of a cathedral tower by what seemed to be a Category Four gust of wind.
So Italy looked golden and promising to the south, offering all the sightseeing a tourist could dream of in Rome, and gondola rides galore in Venice.
We came early to the Geneva train station, but when our train to Rome finally arrived, we couldn’t find our car. Under the enormous weight of our rucksacks, the six of us frantically began lumbering down the platform in search of Car 311. This ludicrous sight probably would have made me laugh if overnight trains to Rome had left Geneva every 15 minutes instead of once a day. We couldn’t afford to miss this train. When our search finally proved futile, I yelled, “Just get on!” and we scrambled into the nearest car. Well, me, Patty, Eileen and Stephanie did.
“Where’re Deb and Rachel?” Stephanie panted. As Eileen and I briefly cast obligatory looks around, certain that our friends had made the train, Patty slung off her rucksack and hopped back onto the platform to look for them. And with no warning, no “All aboard!,” no call to action that we typical English-speaking-only Americans could comprehend, the train doors shut. And the train started moving. Were only three of us on our way to Rome now?
And with no warning, no “All aboard!,” the train doors shut. And the train started moving.
Hunched and wild-eyed under my rucksack, I went barging down the narrow corridor and threw open the doors to the adjoining car. There were Deb and Rachel, but no sign of Patty. She had been left on the platform.
I started to panic. Not since our bacchanalian weekend in Amsterdam had I felt so sick. Could we stop the train? How would Patty get to Rome by herself? What would I do if I were left behind in a country where no one spoke English?
We regrouped in our crowded compartment and tried to put ourselves in Patty’s shoes. As her closest friend in the bunch, I knew that she carried her passport in the money holder she wore around her neck, so we were comforted knowing she at least had that. We got out our Eurail timetables and figured that, to make her way to Rome, she’d have to board a train that stopped in Milan. After some quick deliberation, we decided that Stephanie and Deb, with their faltering command of French (the best we could do), would go to Milan to meet the train we all hoped Patty would take. Satisfied that we had successfully planned her journey and arrival time at Roma Termini, we started to arrange our couchette for the night ahead.
As the designated keeper of Patty’s abandoned rucksack, I had to dig through her bag to find the alarm clock we all depended on. In our little group, each of us played a certain role, and Patty’s absence was noticeable. She was our cheerful traveler, the one we lovingly called “Pollyanna Patty.” She was happy to sightsee through rain and wind, and willing to share whatever she had when one of us was in need.
It was heartbreaking to rummage past the canary-yellow jacket she brought so she wouldn’t get lost in a crowd, and I sadly held up her favorite Yankees cap for all to see. We started sharing our favorite memories about Patty, until Eileen, the realist of the group, piped in, “She’s not dead, for God’s sake, just lost. We’re going to see her in a few hours.”
This lightened the mood a little, but we all had trouble falling asleep, not knowing where Patty was sleeping.
The next morning we awoke to the beautiful sight of the Italian countryside, with green rolling hills and sweet little cream houses topped with terracotta tile roofs. The gorgeous scenery wasn’t enough to lift our spirits, though, because now our group was down to three—Stephanie and Deb had switched to the Milan train in the middle of the night. Eileen, Rachel and I pulled into Roma Termini around 9:30 a.m. and sat down at the snack bar to wait for the rest of our group to arrive.
Not an hour later, a smiling Patty emerged from the Milan train, followed by Stephanie and Deb. We were overjoyed. Our plan had worked! We were together again! We crowded around Patty, hugging and kissing her and asking her how she spent the horrible night. We couldn’t