Christmas in Rome: "Kate, the baby Jesus is missing!"

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(There are two blogs I've been meaning to write (one about my birthday trip to Dunkerque and the other about my weekend spent visiting châteaux in the Loire Valley), but I doubt I'll get around to them. Sorry. Instead, I'm skipping right to Christmas in Rome.)


After six weeks of working hard, shaping the young minds of rural, northern France, it was time for me to have another two week break. I know, life's rough.

I booked train tickets for me and Peter to head down to Roma ages ago. They were really cheap, and taking an overnight train seemed like a fun adventure. So, I packed up my suitcase and headed in to Paris a couple days before our train was set to leave. We ran around the city, buying various food items for our trip, visiting a Christmas market, and I was able to see Peter sing with his choir for their Christmas concert.

Monday evening, Peter and I packed up our stuff (I didn't have much, but he was leaving France after being in Paris for four months, so he had a lot of stuff) and schlepped it through the métro, over to the Bercy train station. We get there only to find out our train has been delayed three hours. We think, okay, it could be worse. Let's break out the pasta salad, sandwiches, and waffles and soon we'll be on the train. Then it started to get colder (the train station is mostly outdoors), so we moved upstairs to an indoor waiting room. After watching many back-to-back episodes of "Glee," we started to figure out that perhaps this was going to be a bit more serious than just a few hours' delay. The train employees started handing out boxed meals and my butt started to go numb from sitting on cold tile floors for hours on end. Fun times, let me tell you.

Eventually, they pushed back the delay to four hours, then told us our train would be arriving about 11:30pm (when we should have left a bit before 7pm). FINALLY the train showed up, everyone piled on, and we set off for Italia about midnight.

Peter and I had second class tickets, so we slept in a little compartment that had two set of triple bunkbeds. At first, it was just us and a French woman, but then at 2am, we stopped near Dijon (as in the mustard) and picked up another French woman, a Ukrainian woman, and her 3-year-old daughter. After some creative rearranging of luggage (there is pretty much no room to put anything in the compartment other than six bodies), we fell asleep.

I woke up about 8am to find out that we had been sitting at the Italian border for two hours already due to lots of snow on the tracks and a lack of electricity on the train. Fabulous. We tried to get some more information, but all the train employees pretended like they didn't speak your language, whether it was French, English or Italian. Word spread that we weren't going to be leaving until the next morning, someone else said we'd be leaving later that day, and I finally got one employee to tell me it'd be two to four more hours. We collected our free breakfast tickets (they were trying to prevent a mutiny at this point), and I got some croissants and cappuccino for the other travelers in my compartment. Just as I was stacking up the cappuccinos, an official told us we were leaving in fifteen minutes. I head back to the train, and as soon as I set down the food (about six minutes after the fifteen minute announcement was made), the train started moving. Hopefully we didn't leave too many people behind.

We continued to move (slowly) through the Italian countryside. We often lost power or stopped at train stations for what seemed like ages. Fortunately, Peter and I had bought too much food, and we were able to share our food and not end up hungry and miserable. After several naps, an impromptu English lesson, and much glaring at the obnoxious Italian men staying next to us and taking up the entire tiny hallway, we finally made it to Rome at nearly 7pm (when we should have arrived a bit after 10am). Sarah met us at the train station, got us on a metro, but realized we'd never get all of luggage on the bus at a time that still falls under rush hour. Thank God Silvio was still in town, so he picked us up and drove us back to the apartment. Not only did he carry my suitcase up two flights of stairs, but he also made us pizza. I pretty much love him.

Wednesday, Peter and I wandered around Vatican City while Sarah was at her work holiday lunch. We saw the inside of St. Peter's (even though I was wearing a skirt that fell several inches above my knee...I was already practicing walking while having my scarf wrapped around my knees but they waved me through). We saw all the cool things - the Swiss guards, the wax models of dead popes, the ridiculously ornate interior, etc. We saw all the chairs set up outside for Christmas Eve mass (the one where the crazy lady jumped the barrier and knocked over the pope...too bad we missed it!) and there were people running around setting up last minute decorations. They had a huge manger scene set up inside, complete with moving parts and cool lighting. Peter leaned over to me and whispered, "Kate...the baby Jesus isn't there!" I had to explain that there was no scandalous theft at the Vatican but rather that baby Jesus doesn't show up until he's born on Christmas day.

We chose instead to go to midnight mass at Sant'Ireneo, which was right up the street from Sarah and Silvio's apartment, instead of having to shell out lots of euros to get to and from mass at St. Peter's. Jess arrived from Israel about 10:30pm, so we threw some clothes on and headed up the street. Turns out it was standing room only, and we were shoved into a back corner. The mass was (obviously) all in Italian, but Catholic mass is pretty much the same everywhere and Jess and Sarah kept me informed of the important things I was missing. The important parts of mass included them hoisting up the plastic baby Jesus à la Lion King (I was waiting for them to start singing the Circle of Life) and then playing some serious tambourine music. And then we had to walk home in the pouring rain.

Christmas Day itself was very low key. We stayed in our pajamas all day and ate lots of Israeli chocolate balls, called family members, and watched almost the entire two seasons of True Blood. We had a secret Santa gift exchange, which included some wonderful things, like a furry purple squirrel pin and yarmulkes straight from the Holy Land for everyone. Sarah wanted a "traditional" Christmas dinner...but our best efforts at that failed. Turns out the lamb we bought was bad (though we tried to cover it up with honey and curry), so we ended up eating imported macaroni and cheese, green beans, fried plantains, and more chocolate balls, all washed down with some red wine. Delicious.

The day after Christmas in Italy is St. Stephen's Day, so we suffered again from a lack of public transportation. We made it in to Centro (the city centre) and saw the important sights, like the Colosseum, the Jewish ghetto, the Forum, Trevi Founation, and various piazzas around town. We saw the Christmas market in Piazza Navona, which was pretty much selling nothing little dolls of La Befana (a witch that's sort of like the Italian version of Santa Claus) and junky toys. Peter bought a doughnut that was about the size of a pizza, and then we all ate pizza for dinner. Important life lesson learned: I cannot live in Italy due to the fact that I would weigh 800lbs from eating all the delicious food.

Sadly, we all had to go our separate ways early on the morning of the 27th. Peter caught a flight back to Buffalo, Sarah got on a train to Foggia to spend a few days with Silvio and his family, and Jess had to fly back to Israel. I cancelled my train ticket and bought a one way plane ticket back to Paris. If my return train ended up being nine hours late like the first train, I would miss my flight to Japan. Plus, I didn't feel like reliving the 24 hour train experience again quite so soon.

Fortunately, Saudi Airlines had a decent last minute deal in an attempt to fill up the back part of the plane. It was a very interesting experience. The flight attendants all wore veil-hat combinations, the movies were censored to bleep out any swearing and blur out any exposed shoulders, chests or legs of actresses, and they said a prayer the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) said before embarking on a journey. Also, whenever the pilot spoke over the intercom, he said "inchallah" (if God wants it) about every other word...which, despite listening to that word non-stop in Senegal for four months, still sort of freaks me out. We WILL be arriving in Paris...there is no inchallah about it, thank you very much.

And so ends my Christmas...nothing terribly exciting or important. Just friends getting together when going home wasn't really an option. We're going to see "Avatar" tomorrow morning (in 3-D! and I get to keep the glasses!), then it's back to airport I go for the next leg of my journey...Japan!

I miss you all! Gros bisous.

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Comments

[anonymous]

Hello Kate, I couldn't stop laughing at the Baby Jesus a la Lion King. I can just imagine all of the lovely smells on the long train ride. Love you, Mom

[Karin]

Love the pictures
Kevin needs a pair of those boxers!

[HeartandSeoul]

We will arrive in Paris... INCHALLAH! BAHAHAHAHA. I nearly died of the lulz.

[Aunt Marie]

Christmas in Italy
I loved your commentary on Rome and Christmas. You had me laughing so hard I was crying. What an adventure you had. I hope our trip goes a little easier, but your's sounds so adventurous. Love you, aunt marie.