Day 31 - Florence

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Day 31
Thursday Aug 1, 1997
Staring at the ceiling. It was 6 something in the whatever. The Chinese dudes in the cots beside me were still asleep; their snores reverberating off the walls shook my cot. Once again, with the dawning rays of the sun I opened my eyes and immediately succumbed to the unyielding Venetian heat. No mas...I give up. I just couldn’t bear another day there. I couldn’t remain on that awful battlefield. The marauding tourist hoard was too challenging an enemy. There were just too many of them. Venice is a beautiful, ancient city with countless interesting attractions and a million reasons to stay. While I had merely scratched the surface by experiencing what the place offered, my sanity and serenity was too important. Trudging around town, hot as a sonofabitch, expending my energy by gawking at gondolas, or wading through the thundering torment provided me with no solace. Therefore, with eyes open, I rose, packed up my gear and hit the road.

Military camp of Julius Ceasar. Michelangelo’s David with the nice pecs and oversized…hands. The Uffizi. The Palazzo Vecchio. The epicentre of the Italian Renaissance. The Duomo. A place to stop somewhere halfway between Rome and Venice. There are a million reasons why I left Venice, but I decided to stop in Florence for one reason and one reason only. Y. When the young lady that I was chatting up on the train ride got off the train, I got off the train. Simple. Easy. Next stop. Florence.

The young lady’s name was Jill. She had been my seat companion since Venice. Cute, British, had all her teeth. I enjoyed her company and felt a desire to explore merger talks between our two corporations. In the past 4 hours, we spilled our ‘guts’ (history, likes, dislikes, favourite colour etc) in a bland traverse through middle Italy. However, the train stopped in Florence. She was getting off. I desperately wanted to get off too. Here was my plan. Together we would leave the train, I would follow her to the main terminal, maintain our friendly conversation and once we arrived outside at the taxi depot I would con her into joining me by staying at the same hostel. Once she was in the cab she would be trapped….my charm would entice her to follow me anywhere. The train pulled into the station. We grabbed our bags, walked down the aisle and descended the stairs. Woohoo. Everything was going to plan. We stepped off the train….and then…everything went to hell. Like the antelope of the Sahara who are startled upon seeing the lion, her ears perked up as she heard my suggestion, instantly she ran off, bounded into her own cab and disappeared into traffic. Drat.

I was on my own...again. Turning to the good book, I selected theVilla Camerata for the next accommodations. As I was in Italy, I was going to stay in an Italian villa…how fitting? Villa? What is a “villa” anyways? Good question. I pictured an olive coloured building, surrounded by an olive orchard with scantily clad olive-skinned beauties serving me grapes (not olives…I hate olives) while their stout father (short little fingers too) looked on in disgust and their mother (how can I describe her...very womamly) made me pasta ala olio.

After about one half hour on the road, the bus stopped. I had arrived. Yet, surveying my surroundings, I didn’t see any olive trees. I couldn’t see the building and couldn’t even tell if it was painted olive. No olive-skinned honeys. No juicy grapes. Nothing…only the staple tourist fare… Yank backpackers. I was expecting Italian oasis and found an arid scrubland. It looked like I had just arrived in a third-world country. There was very little grass. No flowers. Lots of dust. Couple trees. A scattering of picnic tables. It was rather underwhelming.

I entered the hostel and, thankfully, immediately found a few convenient amenities. There was a rather large cafeteria, a snack bar and most importantly, a fully stocked bar. The villa was also equipped with televisions for the dull, internet capability to send joke e-mails to faraway friends, daily ‘Movie Night’ and a series of couches to court young ladies upon. My guess is that it was once a villa and now it is just a youth hostel.

After checking in and ditching my gear, I immediately returned via bus to central Florence and planned to conduct a quick overview tour of the city. I do this in every city that I visit. A two or three hour wander is all it takes. I don’t actually visit the attractions, rather just stroll past and prioritize them for the next day. There is method to my madness. A quick overview tour allows me to eliminate the crap and identify the good stuff hence maximizing my exploring efficiency. So I strapped on my trusty man-bag, grabbed my camera and returned back down the dusty lane.

Within moments, I joined a gaggle of fellow hostellers and together we ventured out to investigate the city. The gang of American misfits included Travis, Mariella (whom I only remember because she had nice gams), Rene and a few others whom were wholly unremarkable and do not justify inclusion in this work. Rene was 45 years old. She was travelling around Europe by herself and staying in youth hostels. I think that she elected youth hostels over hotels for more than just trying to reduce her accommodation expenses. She was desperately trying to relive her lost youth. You see, Rene was a teacher in real life. Being single with a respectable income, she saved up her cash and set out to discover all the cultures she was teaching about back home. The fact that she was alone related to being an irritating, know-it-all. Rene promoted this self image that she was seasoned and adequately educated and thus could vomit her lefty opinions on all those around her. Immediately, identifying me as a medium to boost her opinion of herself she viciously prodded me, a fellow pseudo-intellectual, with her whacked-out insights on every geopolitical and social-economic topic that oozed from the dark recesses of her grey to her flapping lips. The trigger to our talk? After learning I was Canadian, she immediately wanted to know the opinions of this odd chap from the Great White North.

Americans and Canadians are different. In many ways we may be similar; like we both inhabit parts of North America; English is our main language; we both make fun of the French (albeit different French people) and both share a common history of ridding the land of that longstanding scourge; native Americans and Canadians. But we are different in so many ways. Americans tend to have a very high opinion of themselves. Canadians tend to have a relatively low opinion of themselves on everything except our free dismal health care system and hockey. We put “u”s in words where the Yanks don’t; favourite vs favorite, endeavour vs. try, honour vs. honor. Canadians follow American culture and politics closely. Americans follow American culture and politics closely. We pronounce our words differently. Consider the word “about”…Americans say “a-bowt”, Canadians say “a-boot”. When thirsty, Canadians order “a coke”. Americans like to order “soda paps”. There are another million and one differences between our societies and cultures. However, today I would learn that Rene was most interested in proving to herself that there must be at least one person from that socialist country to the north who would agree with her wacky lefty views. Why did it have to be me?

There I was, trapped on a bus, with thirty minutes to go until we arrived in central Florence. I, me, Mark Carmichael, had to represent the thoughts, opinions and judgements of an entire nation. Great. Where do I start? She started slowly with her outrageous Marxist mutterings and quickly descended into the absurd. Upon initial challenge, I absorbed her blatant leftist blatherings and returned my own inferences and references and deference’s. Being informed, comparatively articulate and armed with the innate ability to bombard my opponents with bafflegab, I fared rather well. As my father taught me in my youth the secret to sales success…“bullshit baffles brains”. I followed this code during my encounter with the walking irritant. Rene hit me with topics such as abortion, drug needle exchange policies, ethnics and ethics, the relative morality of the general Canadian populace followed up with a pointless rant on the evils of pornography, unfair child labour practices and the exploitation of the children by business. See…it was the bus ride from hell. Fer christ’s sake, unfair child labour practices? Give me a break. All I care about is that my shoes don’t fall apart as I am cutting to the hoop. I can give two grains of rice for the poor vagrant who slaved 14 straight hours lacing the puppies up. The inconsiderate little punk should be grateful and be jumping for joy in his rags and cardboard sandals that at least he has a job.

After the 30 minutes of sheer torture, the bus finally came to a stop. I leaped out and tried to get as far as I could from her. Problem. She and the posse were all going to see David. Shitzers. My solitary overview tour of Florence was to be delayed. Michaelangelo’s David...I had to see Michelangelo’s David. This would be the first true global masterpiece that I saw while in Europe. Sure, I have visited other museums, galleries and cathedrals, however in art there are a few items that can be considered as permanent members of the Art Hall of Fame. The naked Italian with the rock-hard pecs and abs was one of them. I followed the gang to the Galleria dell’Accademia.

Declaration: David is the most beautiful piece of art that I have ever laid my eyes upon. Now listen…..I am NOT a homosexual but this marble sculpture of a naked man was truly beautiful. Remember, I am not gay. And there is nothing wrong with being gay or having the occasional gay thought (only if it involves two or three lesbo-bicurious nymphomaniacs). It is just that David was…well…umm….sorry…’umm’ is a bad word to use. It is just that David is a handsome fellow……..a rather fabulous chunk of stone. Aside of being a big manly man, the museum displayed other chunks of carved stone but none that merited neither prose nor accolades.

Travis was the other commanche in our tribe of wanderers. He hailed from Los Angeles, California. He was good folk. Good people. The first thing he uttered after seeing David was, “Let's go get a beer.” Oh yeah! After the idiocy spewed by Rene, this Yank sounded like a genius. So off we went searching for a bar. Leave the womin’ behine un go huntin’ fer yun girlies un suds. After relentlessly traversing the Florentine capital for a 'booze can', we were gradually becoming more and more distraught. At every turn we were coming up empty-handed. Our hands desperately needed something to hold...something cold, frothy. It was starting to get desperate when it everything suddenly became clear…when one needs booze, he must think like the people who like booze the best. He must think like an Irishman. Three minutes later we turned a corner and directly before us...an Irish pub.

One, two, three, two…..too……..tree….ukay…uan more…..fore pints later and the pair of us were pissed. There is nothing like time spent killing time and brain cells in a deluge of Becks fine Irish lager. Travis and I enjoyed the warm summer afternoon, chilling out on a patio and sampling the best Ireland has to offer...in Italy. Travis was a pretty cool drinking companion. Not as arrogant as the average Yank...we spent the afternoon chatting about guy stuff; chicks, Italian chicks, German chicks, Yank chicks, Canadian chicks and beer. After finishing our last of many rounds we stumbled out into the streets. As prearranged, in our foggy haze we searched for the hostel womin’. Our plans were to join them for dinner at a local restaurant. We discovered them....where else? Shopping in the market.

Being in Florence Italy, naturally we chose an Italian restaurant for our evening fare. Could there be a more fitting choice? Although I think that the meal was probably the 7th straight pasta meal, I truly enjoyed this one. We ordered five different kinds of pasta and shared them amongst the group. Wow! Good food. Then…as were settling up with the waitress I tossed in my portion of the bill. I think at least one or two did a Jerry and tallied up the amount in the pot before adding just enough to make it even. “No tip for you, Mr. Waiter!” I quickly vacated the restaurant with the knowledge that I will never get good service in this city ever again. Cheap wankers!

The broads head back home, while Travis and I decided to use our time more wisely...find more beer. I don’t know what their problem was, however we ended up empty handed. Either the Florentine do not like to enjoy a nice late night pint now and then or we were just too hammered to find them. Distraught and thirsty, we returned to the compound. To our dismay, even the hostel bar was closed when we arrived. Although I was pretty desperate for a few more drops of liquid merriment, Travis took it to extremes. Upon discovering that the bar was closed he ran around the compound looking for a chance late night entrance. While McGyver continued his booze hunt I ran into the Scottish lad that I met earlier in the day. Alexander Ferguson (as Scottish a name as one can get!) was on the same bus that drove us to the hostel earlier in the day. Pretty cool guy. We teamed up to chit-chat with the female hostellers. The night ended abruptly when some comrade with a flashlight corralled the herd back into their respective pens for the evening. Light out! Now!!!

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