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Published: August 10th 2005
While flipping through some cultural magazine, I once read, “If you really want to know a country, work there.”
And I must admit, there is a lot of truth to that statement. For even though I had lived in Rome for 8 months prior to my current sojourn here, I feel that I know the city in a completely different way due to my experience in the last 10 weeks. As a student I may have wrapped up in the quilt of the neighborhood and the community, but as a worker I became woven into its fabric.
My day naturally starts at the bar across the street from my apartment, which I stumble into every morning eyes only half open, waiting for deliverance from my groggy nature with the 80 cent miracle that is Italian coffee. Hot, cold, macchiato, corretto with amaro...the mastermind between you and the espresso machine has 4 custom-made coffees going at any given time. And he knows my personal favorite...crema di caffè, complete with a sprinkling of cocoa on top of the dollop of sweetened cream for good presentation. However, this decoration seems almost trite, like slapping a bow on the Christmas present with one
hand while handing it to its recipient with the other, for I, standing up in a line with the other regulars, take my coffee Italian-style, swishing it around in a circular motion in my tiny cup and downing it within 30 seconds. The whole coffee experience from walking in the door to leaving lasts approximately 2 to 3 and a half minutes, depending on whether there is a line to order when I arrive. Of course, between that bar and my work, just a block and half to the right, there are naturally 3 more coffee bars, because what Italian could survive if they had to walk more than 5 meters from home or work without an espresso?
I greet the barber who is having his 9 am cigarette before I round the corner to work and say good morning to Signora Vincenza, the lady who guards over the entryway to the hotel palazzo and receives the mail. She strictly enforces every rule known to man and will have you quickly reeling to pack away your cell phone if she and the stern wag of her finger find you breaking the rules by, heaven forbid! talking on it in
the corridor.
When I head home for lunch, I know I will be greeted by familiar faces once again: sometimes it is the little old lady who lives on the third floor in my building who I met while holding the door one day. I love how she calls after me, “Signorina!”, whenever she sees me and how she talks to me in the formal tense. Every other Friday I get a wave from the old man who gets out his stationary bicycle contraption that he has hooked up to a whetting wheel, which he parks on the street corner two doors down from me to sharpen the pizzeria’s knives.
Then there is the neighborhood general store below my apartment where I occasionally stop for some prosciutto or pizza bianca to make a sandwich, the place where everybody knows my name. Greeted by a daily chorus of “Ciao Jenni”s when I walk in or walk by, I understand the feeling conveyed in the Cheers theme song and accordingly prefer to shop there and pay a lot more than to head 3 blocks down the road to the supermarket, where, after shopping twice weekly for the past 10 weeks,
the cashiers still haven’t recognized that I am not one of the hordes of tourists who stop in to load up on the 70 cent box wine.
And of course, there are the Carabinieri who man the car at the end of the street near the Quirinale, who make a point to drive by at least once per minute should I be standing outside my building talking to anyone male other than the grocery store cashier, who has long been trying to woo me with gifts of gelato, coffee, and pretty pink jewelry.
On Sundays the neighborhood rests, the streets are relatively quiet as the traffic of the work week ceases. And so, as any good neighbor would do, I follow suit. There are weekly choral concerts that last for hours coming from the Korean Evangelical Church at the end of the block. Some Sunday afternoons after a spectacular lunch I lie down and let the glorious strains pour in my window as I drift in and out of a beautiful siesta, and as my mind jumps from dream world to a hazy reality and back to dreaming once again, the tunes make me wonder if I have
perhaps been transported to heaven without remembering dying. And the St. Paul’s within the Walls church across from my work building, whose chimes ring a little one minute tune every half hour and can be heard everywhere within a 4 block radius? …Next time you see me, I can hum it for you by heart.
Yep, this is my neighborhood, and it’s an experience unlike any I have ever had before. Perhaps it’s just part of living in the city as opposed to living in small towns or suburbs…although honestly, these daily interactions give my big city neighborhood much more of a homey feeling than my small towns ever did in such a short span of time.
The work itself has been an - er, what shall I say,
interesting experience. Technically my job was supposed to consist of 4 to 6 hours a day of helping hotel customers check in and out, receiving payment, giving them tourist information, and assisting with website translation and internet marketing. Of course, now I realize why many of my questions before departure were left unanswered…it would have been much harder to convince me to take the job had I known the
Fountain in Villa Sciarra
Gotta love Italian park decor, it's always so classytruth about the position. In fact, even the past few days as I told my boss I was leaving, I continued to discover more of the sneakiness and lies that he uses to “do business.” Without giving the name of the hotel here (and only because I love Gianina, who cleans the rooms there, and wouldn’t want business to suffer to the point that she loses her job!) let’s just say that if you go to Rome and are approached at the train station by a man with a very horrible toupee who claims he is from tourist information but somehow is also able to drive you to the hotel he recommends and is mentioned by name in the guestbook on the table…beware: you are now in the territory of the R man, the big liar who is actually the owner of the place. I wondered why guests would always ask me if I owned the hotel, didn’t realize what his technique was for getting customers and that he had always been telling them that I was the proprietor of the establishment. So I was forced to always lie - a horrible, horrible job from that perspective, but what really
made it unbearable was the fact that the R man was verbally abusive and yelled at me and was very disrespectful to me, Gianina, and to the guests. Can you imagine actually opening the doors to guests’ rooms in the middle of the night and then commenting to them later on what they are doing in there? Or YELLING at guests? Or telling certain guests he didn’t like because of their ethnic background to leave the lounge area and to go into their rooms because he had friends coming down there and didn’t want them to see those guests??? Yes, he has done all these and a hundred other horrid examples, and I am SO happy to be done working with him!
However, despite the fact that R man is now on my ‘least favorite people in the world’ list, I don’t at all lament having come to Rome. It was my first experience working in the tourist industry, and to be honest, at the beginning I was a little annoyed with the “tourist” sector - it’s a much different mentality than interacting with most travelers you meet on the road. To be sure, I have definitely had those
Nice view
Taxicab window near Via Nazionale encounters with the annoying tourists, who are loud, obnoxious, and complain about everything that is different from their home country but in the same breath tell you how they want a “true Italian experience.” But for the most part, it has been a real pleasure to work in the tourist industry, to see Rome through a first-timer’s eyes again, to get the satisfaction of giving someone else the appreciation I have for Rome by my tips and suggestions for beholding the best the city has to offer. It has been refreshing in a way to get off the backpacker circuit where you meet so many people who have been everywhere, seen everything, and are generally already jaded and biased in their opinions about how people from certain countries are, not from ignorance, but rather based on their many encounters over the years. Instead I found many people on their first trip out of their country, perhaps a bit naïve about how things worked, but very open to the beauty of differences and eager to understand and break down stereotypes they may have had about people and places.
I often found myself becoming an impromptu tour guide of Rome when
The "4 Heads" Bridge
This bridge to the Isola Tiberina in the middle of the river is still the original structure from 12 BC or something like that. certain hotel guests would invite me to come out with them for dinner or a drink, and I continued to sharpen my gift of gab while inviting guests that rented the other room in my apartment for a chat and a cup of tea. In that respect I really had it all…meeting people from all over the world while I saw guests from 6 continents pass by my breakfast table, I had the benefits of traveling but without the trouble of lugging my backpack around everyday. I have received a list of email addresses and invitations should I “ever find myself in” such and such a place, not to mention advice, tips, comments, suggestions regarding a whole wealth of topics, such as natural health and eating for your blood type, organic farming on raised bed gardens, the state of British binge drinking in Spain and stag trips to Prague, a three hour overview of everywhere and everything to do in every part of Australia - ever, great real estate finds in Costa Rica, of feeling nationless being an Arabic Israeli, of the best dive sites and ecological wonders of Brazil, how to raise a tri-lingual child, tips for getting English
Italian bride
Rushing to the church teaching work and dealing with the inevitable stares in Korea, and, and, and….
I was also able to give back in some ways, helping certain young female travelers understand that there are actually “normal” Italian men out there apart from the the weirdos in the centro storico. Because this is where most of the Roman attractions are and because the big piazzas that are nice for evening strolls are also located here, many tourists only come into contact with the Romans that cruise these quarters. However, this makes for a very skewed view, because there are two sorts of men who seem to lurk in the centro storico: one sort is trying to rid you of your money by selling you handbags, sunglasses, flowers, or doodads that you don’t really want; the other sort would like to rid you of your virtue. Luckily, the first type is easy enough to handle, particularly when it becomes obvious you have no money with you. Unfortunately, the second type is not so easy to avoid, even when wearing dark sunglasses, headphones, and the most conservative clothes you own. But just as I get upset that a small percentage of young traveling females
engage in promiscuous and reckless behavior that creates stereotypes and makes traveling for the rest of us difficult, I would also have to stand up for the Italian male public and note that most of them are normal, polite, chivalrous, and even charming and respectful. However, you girls know that meat market bar you never want to go to because all the guys who go there are only there to prey on women? That’s the kind of guys who hang out in the centro storico. In non-touristed areas of Rome, I get all kinds of curious looks, but not one little Cassanova wannabe actually approaching or talking to me!
I met my favorites of the normal Romans when I signed up for a salsa class in Monteverde. I initially decided to take the course because I had never had the opportunity before to learn salsa from a female instructor, and because I thought it would help me find out which salsa clubs to go to. And these things it did, but I hadn’t anticipated getting to be so chummy with many of the 35 other students and in getting to know the Rome that people born and raised here
know. From discovering the Ostia beaches to watching Romeo & Juliet in Villa Borghese’s Globe Theater to paying homage to the city’s shaved ice vendors (the Grattachecche), I got to experience a lot more than just the ragingly fun salsa scene. (Since I have received a number of personal messages asking me about my salsa experiences in Central America, I have to leave this one here for you: the salsa scene in Rome is the better than anything I experienced there!) And even going out to Campo de’ Fiori at night seems a completely different experience in the company of the city’s natives, particularly when arriving with hair flying on the trademark of Roman transportation - the motorino.
As I sat waiting for my Roman chariot to pick me up for a last night out with some newfound friends, I reflected on all my newly discovered favorites, as well as the oldies but goodies. So if you find yourself in Rome one day, these are the “non-top 10 attractions” things I have to recommend: take a walk in leafy Gianicolo and have a picnic in Villa Pamphili before watching the sun set over the city from the Passegiata di
Il Vittoriano
The one thing you see from every part of Rome Gianicolo, wander alone in the refreshingly tourist-free streets of the Jewish Ghetto behind Piazza Campitelli; if you are a salsa dancer, you can’t miss twirling with 500 other salseros to live music under the stars at Tropical in the summertime; if you are in need of a retreat from the city, the Lago Albano and Castel Gandolfo are just the cure, or be like a real Roman and head for the beach (I personally found the free lounge chairs, showers, bathroom facilities, and clean sand at Spiaggia Attrezzata to be the most delightful). And for the culinary recommendations, I have to say you can’t go wrong with any pizza from Don Pacchino’s in Testaccio and that a hot day crammed in the Vatican with a thousand other tourists calls for a walk around the corner towards Via Gregorio VII to line up for a grattachecca at the stand that is generally jammed with locals. And what kind of culinary report in Italy could omit a recommendation for gelato? If you have only ONE gelato flavor to try ever, let it be the almond coconut flavor at Gelarmony on Via Marcantonio Colonna. Though this place is about a ten minute walk
from the Vatican, I never did see any other foreigners grace the halls of this gelato kingdom, though at night you don’t have to search for it too hard…just look for the hordes of Italians indulging outside. Of course, who would choose only one flavor when you can get so many other great Sicilian flavors there, like cannoli flavor, pistacchio, the devil’s cassata (with chocolate and hot peppers), cinnamon, and chocolate covered orange, along with 54 other “regular” flavors?
Somehow, between establishing my favorite spots here, my salsa buddies, and my relationship history, the oddities of Rome and the quirks of Italian culture that first-time visitors point out to me no longer seem so bizarre. Understanding the national obsession with the “bella figura” means that I am no longer surprised to see women wearing stiletto heels to take their kids for a walk in the park, or to meet men who are more obsessive about their appearance than any diva-like woman I’ve met in my life, or to find the abundance of heterosexual men who wear bright pink shirts. It no longer strikes me as odd or aggressive when I get constantly hit by flailing arms as the Italians
use their hands to “talk” and have actually found myself using this non-verbal conversation technique to make my point as well. I have embraced the chaos that ensues when you are together in a group of 10, with everyone talking at the same time, always talking louder and louder to be heard over the lot of the rest of them…hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Even Bohemian Trastevere, with its tightrope walker outside the church of Santa Maria, the barefoot hippies rolling their dogs in strollers past the nuns on their way to St. Peter’s, and the women with mullets squeezing through the thick night market jewelry stands past the guy revving up the Lamborghini though only going 2 mph with all the pedestrian traffic, seems to take its place among the ranks of normalcy now. Despite the weirdness, it all feels familiar. And it is precisely this comfort level, this lack of feeling like I am in a foreign place, that has made me decide it is time to move on from “my city.”
With all the emotions stirred up in me from being in Rome, I temporarily deluded myself into believing that this city had
One of my favorite evening strolls
The art market in Piazza Navona at night enough to tame me. Indeed, Rome is quite possibly the only city that I’ve ever been in that I feel I could really happily “settle down” in one day. But let’s face it: today is not that day. I had started applying for other jobs, but when interview time rolled around, I had to call and cancel, for the lure of unexplored lands is beckoning. So today I once again trade in my apartment keys for a backpack, my cell phone for email-only accessibility, my salsa dresses and heels for grubby slacks and tennis shoes, my stability for the unknown. As I board the train which I as yet have no ticket for to the Croatian lands of peak season “no vacancy”, I honestly have no idea where my next blog will come from, if I will end up buying a tent and camping among the throngs of packed hotel rooms on the Dalmatian coast or if I will make a detour for Sarajevo or southern Hungary upon finding no place to rest my head. But of course, this uncertainty only serves to heighten my excitement and sharpen my enjoyment of life’s every moment.
So I will throw my
Campidoglio
Graceful staircase built by Michelangelo to give patrons the idea they were gliding up to heaven coins in the Trevi Fountain and bid my bella città a bittersweet goodbye: one tear for sadness, one tear for the beautiful memories, and a radiant smile for my future travels on the roads that will one day, as all roads proverbially do, also lead me back to Rome.
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Love, love, love your writing. I'm not much of a traveler, have never been to Rome, but feel you've taken me there somehow. Can't wait for our next journey :)! Thanks-