Albania 22: Ode to Italy

[NOTE: This blog/diary of Mykel's Italian-Albanian trip starts several entries before this one. Due to the oddities of Blogging, the entries appear in reverse order. Because much of the reportage is based on the previous days, I recommend reading from the start, at the entry ALBANIA 1. Also, because this computer lacks search capabilities, and my brain needs a RAM boost, I fear I may repeat some tales better told previously... repeat some tales better told previously. Let me know if that happens.]

"We must remember that we are vulnerable to the repetition of our insights so that they tend to come to us not as confirmation of something we already know but as genuine discoveries each and every time.” – E.L. Doctorow

So, I got little sleep in Naples. On the floor in the bedroom of an office with a roommate near death's door with some kind of contagious glandular disease... He sleeps constantly-- when he's not rasping for some drug or other. I can never do anything in that room for fear of disturbing him. I can't even turn on the lights.

I try to stay away all day. Museums, castles, the myriad bookstores and bookstalls of Naples. But I feel like I'm walking in circles. I even call my dentist to schedule an appointment to reattach my gold inlay. Remember? It pulled loose the third night in Albania. I put it in an empty Zyrtec case, and stuffed it between the condoms in my wallet. It sure as hell won't be disturbed there.

I want to go out at night. I've got a couch-surfing host, Fabio, who took me out my first night in town. We went to bars, clubs, met people. Since then, I've hardly seen him. He's not even my official host. He's the friend of my host, Maurizio, who I saw on that first night and haven't seen since. That guy never answers his phone, and when I text him, he calls Fabio instead of me.

Tomorrow I'm going to have to move to a hostel. A girl is coming to stay and she has priority. I wonder if Fabio will put my roommate's moribund body on the street. It's been raining on and off (mostly on) since I got here, fitting weather for my mood in this country.

Is that tingle in my throat psychosomatic or the start of an even more fitting end to fucking Italy?

[NOTE: I do not want to disparage Fabio. He is as good as the circumstances permitted. He tries hard. It's just not in the cards.]

Ah well, I have my backpack protector chain link with cable, so a move to a hostel won't be so bad. As it turns out, (the ONLY (good) luck I have in Italy) the expected girl-guest calls to tell Fabio that she'll be a day late. I can stay another night in the deadly disease ward.

Maybe I can go out with my new friends. Meet that sexy Luxembourg girl again. Go drinking in the bars for my last night in Naples. Yeah right.

Fabio is visiting Mom and I'm on my own. But before I leave, he's gonna call this American girl, Jeanne, who is also traveling to Rome tomorrow. That way, I'll have company.

He gives her a call and turns the phone over to me. I usually keep away from Americans when I travel, but since I've made NO friends here in Italy... even an American is better than nothing. We agree to meet at the train station, in front of the ticket booth, 45 minutes before the train leaves. She tells me she'll be wearing a black leather jacket (always a good sign!). I tell her I look like Dick Tracy.

[NOTE 2: Lately I usually use “Inspector Gadget” rather than Dick Tracy. Seem like more people know who he is these days. But Jeane seems to me like a Dick Tracy kinda girl.]

That night, before I lay down the mattress on the floor of the leper's room, I look one last time at the gold bit of dentistry in my wallet.

It is gone.

Disappeared.

That's at least a thousand dollars. Poof.

Impossible. Never touched. Even if it fell out of my wallet, it couldn't be missed. It's just disappeared in the morass that is Italy. I know it's unfair to blame the country for the disappearance, but I do.

The next morning, Fabio comes early to make me coffee and say good-bye. Then I'm off to the subway and the train station. It takes me a full quarter hour to navigate the labyrinthine station asking several times for biglietti, and getting a different answer each time. I reach the ticket window about 10 minutes late. It doesn't matter, because Jeanne is half an hour later.

So we meet, buy tickets, run for the train. We make it. Are we on time? No. But the train is even later than we are.

I chain my bags to the seat and sit opposite Jeanne. There are two seats on each side of the aisle. Jeanne and I face each other with a table in the middle. Next to each of us is an Italian female. Both pretty. One completely is lost in her cellphone texting, the other in her iPod.

Jeanne and I talk. I ask her how she knows Fabio. She tells me she's a couch-surfer who originally stayed there, but left because the man had roaming hands.

“I thought I was beyond that stage,” she says. “I figured men would just see me like a mother. Which I am... did I tell you my daughter lives in New York?... But he was just... Italian. I don't know. But I couldn't stay there.”

I tsk-tsk properly. Then change the subject slightly.

“I don't know where I'll be staying in Rome,” I tell her. “I contacted several couch surfers there, but I got form rejections... or no answers at all.”

[Note 3: Rome is where I first ran into the STROKE ME couch-surfers. This is a group of people who want poor couch-surfing travelers to read through their profiles carefully, and refer to something in it, before sending a request to stay on the couch. They want to be stroked.

Gee, you're a 60 year old punk rocker who's written two books? What a coincidence. So am I!

I can only imagine these egotists have never had to contact dozens of hosts themselves. Sometimes, you have to send out scores of requests for one positive answer. Can you imagine having to read each profile before writing and then being rejected? It could take hours! It's easier to find a hostel!

And in Rome, it seems like all the hosts are males. All the guests leaving RAVE reviews for those hosts, are females.]

“I'm staying at a hostel,” Jeanne tells me. “It's called THE BEEHIVE. It's fifteen euros a night in the dorm room. Maybe they'll have space for you.”

“Sure,” I tell her. “I can stay in a dorm one night. My bag locks with a steel cable.”

She laughs.

When we get out of the train, she follows some computer directions to the dorm. We find it quite easily. They have space for me, they say. But not in a dorm room. I have to take a private room with two beds. I have to pay for both beds. 70€ a night.

That's more than I paid the kidnapper in Albania! And this room doesn't even have a toilet or shower. Just a sink to piss in.

Fuck it! It's one night. My last in this fuckin' country. I'll take it.

I set my phone to wake me up at 6 AM to catch the train to the plane. I go to bed at 9, wake up mysteriously at 12:30, then switch beds to get my money's worth. Then, I get up at 6, piss in the sink, and head for the airport.

Ok, it's time to go through security, my least favorite activity in one of my least favorite locations (an airport) in one of my least favorite countries (except Torino).

I take off my coat, my shoes, empty my pockets, take the computer out of its bag, take off my belt, heft my steel cable-protected bag onto the x-ray conveyor. I walk through the metal detector. It beeps.

“Spread your arms and legs,” says the uniformed man on the other end. He runs the electronic paddle over my body finding the gold inlay in my back pocket. Yeah right.

Actually, it's a one lek coin, left over from the Albanian part of this trip.

From the x-ray machine, I go through immigration. They stamp my passport; then on to a final customs inspection. Uh oh, I get the female.

MYKEL'S TRAVEL LAW NUMBER 431: Female customs officers are always trouble.

She's looking at my bag. She holds the metal that protects it. With obvious pride, she calls over an older male colleague. She points to the cable and then motions to her neck, like she was hanging herself. (I only wish she had.) The man nods and she turns to me

“You cannot take this,” she says. “You have to send this bag.”

Send? I think. How the fuck can I send it? This is just too much. I hate Italy. I hate Italy. I hate Italy.

I find myself saying it out loud. Feeling the rage bubble up inside. I fish for the key. Unlock the cable. Pull it off the protector and its cable.

“Take it!” I say. “I'll leave it here. Just take it! I only want to get out of here.”

I throw it onto her desk. She talks with the inspector and tells him I'm leaving the cable here. He seems surprised. Then the woman gets out her gunpowder testing kit, rubs some on a pad, rubs my bag with the pad, and feeds it to the testing machine. Much to her annoyance, it comes back negative.

I'm at the gate, waiting, an hour early. Every 5 minutes the public address system announces another gate change. It seems as if no planes ever leave from their scheduled locations. Mine is no exception. Before changing gates, I go to the restaurant counter for my last Italian meal. It is one of those pressed sandwiches. This one is slightly warm on the outside. Inside, it's as cold as the refrigerator it was kept in.

It doesn't matter if the plane leaves late. I have a five hour layover in Amsterdam. It does matter that, at the gate, there's another security check. Temper (barely) in check, I go through the gate and board the plane.

  While flying to Holland, I compose bad poetry:

Ah Italy, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

I hate thee for thy

Train waiting room passport checks

Phone calls not returned

Lying ticket agents

Luggage security stolen by airport security

Seventy Euro hostel rooms with no toilets

Cars that don't stop at crosswalks

Drive-by shaving-cream attacks

Penises of Pompeii without signs to them

Grilled cheese and a Fanta for 10 Euros

Being the place I discovered my gold inlay went missing

Rooming with a leper

Having more tourists than natives

Having beggars who, when you give them something, ask for more

Closed ticket windows with use machine  signs, next to machines that give error messages see clerk at ticket window

Roman couch surfers who want to be individually stroked

Male couch-surfing hosts whose guests are only females

Airport change-of-gate announcements every 5 minutes

Airport and plane waiting rooms without electrical sockets

Africans afraid of being photographed

Citizens who ignore calls of Help! Police!

Pressed sandwiches, ice cold on the inside

Promises of nights out on the town, beer and bars... only promises

Vesuvius, what are you waiting for?

========================================

NOTES:  Below are some notes from this trip that I forgot to include in the original posts

  -->I'm guessing the cellphone quality is really bad in Albania, though Jim Ballushi does a commercial for, EAGLE, one of their cellphone companies.

People yell into the phones as if their voices have to carry directly to the listener, without the intermediary of microwaves. Or maybe, as if the receiver lived in on the top floor of the building on the other side of the street from the phone, and the caller had to speak directly to him, from the street.

  --> In the bus from Berati to Tirana, my window is fogged... it looks permanent. I can only make out impressionistic views of the countryside. For the passengers in front of me, the glass is perfect. The glass is always cleaner on the other side of the seat.

-->Unused first line for something I haven't written yet: I think the trouble started when Plato refused to have sex with Socrates.

  -->“A computer is not an instrument.” --Andi in Tirana

-> De të të vras o të qifsha nonën! (Albanian for: I want to kill you you mother fucker.)

  -->When you travel, you always see foreign versions of people you know, or famous people. I've already seen the Albanian version of my sister. Today, I saw the Albanian Jack Nicholson. Too bad it's dangerous to just pull out a camera and shoot. I learned that lesson in Italy.

  -->Fancy restaurants in Albania do not have Albanian beer, though they might have Budweiser. The usual choice is Heiniken, Becks, or Stella.

  --> I don't see people pissing in the streets in Albania. Despite all the coffee... despite all the bars... despite the high numbers of … er... older gentlemen...despite the crazies. I haven't seen one street pisser... or even smelled the remains of one (other than me).

  -->I really like the way Albanian adolescent guys show friendship. The casually walk with their arms around each other's shoulders. They'll touch each other in conversation. They'll even walk arm-in-arm. In individuality America, they'd be asking for a homo-baiting. But here, it's as natural as kicking a rock.

--> Tired of the child beggars, in Italy, I finally see an old woman to give change to. I give her 30 cents. That's more than I give the bums in New York. She asks for still more. It triggers THE RAGE.

I want my money back! You ungrateful bitch!

The reason you give money is to feel good. To get thank yous!! Asking for more spoils the whole thing. What's the matter with you!

--> Albanian and Italian souvlakis have french fries and mayonnaise in them. It's part of the dish. The locals expect it. Weird, huh?

-end-

visit Mykels homepage here

Albania 6: Death In Venice

[NOTE: This blog/diary of Mykel's Italian-Albanian trip starts several entries below this one. Due to the oddities of Blogging, the entries appear in reverse order. As much of the reportage is built on the previous days, I recommend reading from the start, at the entry ALBANIA 1.]

ROME (Coldsore day 3)

  I start writing this in the train from Rome to Bari, that's tomorrow, as far as this narrative goes. Today was my day to explore Rome, recover a bit from the flight, meet the Romans. Yeah, right

  As I'm staying in a Bed and Breakfast in The Vatican, the day starts naturally with breakfast. Actually, it starts much earlier... 3AM, when my jet lag wakes me up and I play on the internet for some hours... mostly Facebooking my friends and uploading my diary. What else is there to do at 3AM in Vatican City. Jee-zus! Can you imagine?

  Well, maybe there is something. As I wandered the streets yesterday, I managed to run into a club that looked right up my alley:

But I forgot exactly where the place was... and with my coldsore, a lap dance is all I'm gonna get... and that's not enough for me. (My favorite activities all are impeded by lipwelts. Right Topher?)

About 6AM I fall back asleep and am awakened about 10:30 by a knock on the door.

“Mykel,” I recognize the voice. It's the hippie hostess of my B&B. “You are telephone.”

It's Helen. Calling from Nice to check up on me. She booked the B&B and paid for it! She also bought my boat tickets. Yow! Wadda gal.

“Did I wake you?” she asks.

I nod into the phone.

“But it's 10:30!!” she says.

“Jet lag.” I answer.

She asks about my day, and suggests I see a special church made from the bones of catholic monks. And also there's a statue, the ecstasy of Saint somebody-or-other.

“You'll love that one,” she tells me. “It's supposed to be some divine ecstasy. but you'll see... she laughes...it's just ecstasy.

Both those attractions are on the Via Veneto. It's a famous street, and even in my Pimsleur Italian lesson: Scuzi, dove via Veneto? But it's not on my map! At least it's not listed among the streets on my map. OK, I'll find it.

After breakfast I ask the hostess how to get to Rome from The Vatican.

“You bus numero sixty-four. Tutto e bus numbero sixty-four,” she says.

Since I have to go to the Vatican train station for a ticket to Bari anyway, I figure I'll get the bus from there. I buy the ticket and get on bus 64.

  It winds it's way past buildings and statues and churches and monuments older than I am. About 1900 years older. It is impressive... at first... but then it's... well... buildings and statues and churches and monuments... then more of the same.

As I contemplate this, the bus doors open and in walks a very fat man, about 40. Accompanying him is God. I wish I had the balls to whip it out right there... my camera, I mean. You could see what I'm talking about. About 18, he has a face that belongs on a bar of soap. Not a hint of a whisker. Longish, light brown hair, eyebrows a shade darker. Eyes the color of... well of heaven. My tastes usually don't run to blue eyes... or even white people in general, but this... This is Death In Venice. Death in Venice in Rome.

“Excuse me,” he could say. “Would you mind scooping out your right eye and throwing it at that old woman over there?”

“My right eye?” I'd answer, “you sure you only want that one?”

After him, what else is there to see? Who needs eyes?

There is a seat open next to me. The fat guy takes it. God sits 2 seats away. He won't look at me because of my coldsore.

I get off bus 64 at the Termini, the main train station. God gets off there too. As does everyone else on the bus. I lose him in the crowd.

So, I do the Coliseum. Just the outside. It's $20 to get in. That's almost the same as Graceland. I bet it's a fuck of a lot more than the Romans originally paid... and they got to see Christians thrown to the lions. Hell, I'd pay $20 to see Christians thrown to the lions, but not to look at the old stones where people sat 2000 years to look at Christians thrown to the lions.

After I circumnavigate the building (reminds me of walking around Yankee Stadium), I head for the subway. Before I buy the ticket, I ask the attractive, supremely unfriendly seller, “Scuzzi, dove via Veneto.”

“Get off at...” and she tells me the name of the stop... and goes back to her conversation with her fellow tobaconnist/ticket agent. Must be my coldsore.

  I take the subway to the right place, get out. Then, I see the problem. Via Veneto is actually Via Victorio Veneto! There it is on my map, under Victorio... I shudda known right? Makes me wonder if some maps of NYC list Madison Avenue under JAMES.

I walk the length of the Avenue and see nothing but expensive restaurants. You know how the cheapest places have no table clothes? Next cheapest: red and white checked table clothes. Then finally, the white ones? Nuh uh! Tables on this street have BLACK table clothes. It's a month's salary just to sit down. Finding neither bones nor ecstasy, I take intrepid Bus Number 64 back to my B&B. Maybe he'll get on again. He doesn't.

  I take a nap, then go out for dinner. The same place where those attractive German girls ignored me last night. They aren't there this time. What are there are a bunch of American tourists. Shouting, making demands on the waitress, acting like Americans. It embarrasses me. After 15 minutes sitting their. yet more of them show up.

  “I see you found it,” shouts one guy, big as a cowboy, as he walks in. “You didn't take the bus, did you?”

  One of the guys already sitting at the table, gray beard, body like a bowling pin, answers, “Oh no,” he says. “I followed your advice. Took the train.”

“Good,” answers the first guy, “that Bus Number 64 is notorious. The locals call it The Pickpocket Express.”

  I finish eating, pay my bill and go back to the hotel to charge my phone and computer. I plug in the computer. A fuse blows and all the lights go out

To Mykel's Homepage

Albania 5: First Day in Rome

[NOTE: This blog/diary of Mykel's Italian-Albanian trip starts several entries below this one. Due to the oddities of Blogging, the entries appear in reverse order. As much of the reportage is built on the previous day, I recommend reading from the start, at the entry ALBANIA 1.]

ROME (Coldsore day 2)

 Actually, I'm staying in The Vatican. Helen found me the bed and breakfast. It's run by a 40-something named Lisa who chants Nam Ryoko whatever every day. She's skinny, with a hippy aura that follows her like a puppy on a leash. The B&B is probably her apartment, redone after the kids left. There are two guest rooms, mine has a recently installed bathroom with a shower and one of those dual-flush toilets-- heavy and light. It's rare that I get to use HEAVY for the first week or so of my travels overseas. It's in a non-descript building off of a main road near St. Pietro.  

Customs and immigration was maybe the easiest of any country outside of Canada. Not a word. Just a blank page PROP! goes the stamp. That's it. Then ,following Helen's directions (figuring out the St. Peter was Sante Peitro, was easy. But figuring out that S. St. Peter was Stazione San Peitro took some doing. That first train gave me a glimmer of hope for Rome. It was a graffiti train, just like the ones in NYC back in the 70s when NYC was good. 

When I got to the station though. My troubles returned. No map. I asked the ticket seller (in English) if he knew where via S. (another S, and this one wasn't Stazione!) Telesforo was. He shrugged and told me Polizia, pointing in back of him.

I went out to the tracks. There was a small sign-- blue on white-- Polizia. It was over a closed door. I turned the handle. It was locked. Now what? How to find a street I don't know... in a place I don't know... without a map. I tried the handle again. Still locked. I start to walk out on the street. Maybe I'll ask a bus driver. There's a rattle behind me. The locked door opens. A cop looks out. Youngish, not very friendly: Que? he says... or maybe it was che.

  “I non parlo Italiano...” I start.

  “Do you speak English?” he says.

  I feel myself redden. “Do you know where something Telesforo is?” I ask.

  “No,” he says, “sorry.” Then he shuts the door. Maybe he didn't like my coldsore.

I head off again when the door rattles and the same cop sticks his head out. He motions for me to come over. I stand in the doorway. He calls to someone invisible inside and says something in Italian ending with Telesforo.

  “No,” comes the reply from inside.

  Instead of closing the door, though the voice comes over with a book of maps. He's a someone chubbier version of his cohort.

[NOTE: I write this in a restaurant having my first spaghetti dinner in Italy. The waitress just passed and I asked her for pan.  That's probably the wrong word, but she understood. She took the three slices of bread from the table she was serving, and moved them to my table.]

  Together, the cops look through the book, going from map to index and back to map again. Then, the thinner one starts to explain to me... “go out the station and then turn left, then walk a bit and look for...” The fatter guy frowns at him and says something in Italian.

  “You forget that I said,” the skinny guy tells me. “Take the bus. Number 64. Two stop. One two. That's all.”

  “I capiche,” I tell him. “Multo gracie.”

  The rest is history... or actually present, since I'm still checked in to the B&B.

  After dumping my bags, I set out on a small walk, just to check out the neighborhood, and see the Piazza St. Pietro. For those who don't know. The Vatican, is an independent country within the city of Rome. It doesn't have its own money, but it does have its own laws and its own postage stamps. I guess it's a Catholic country.

In a way, it looks like the East Village. Everybody except tourists wears black. The only addition, is the clerical collar for men and whatever they call those nun-hats for women. There are more priests here than... I donno, probably anywhere. Inside the church grounds, priests of every size and color walk around, joke, take pictures, mop sweat, just like real everyday people.

Inside, the grounds are surrounded by columns and imposing buildings with lots of statues. There is a large open space. in the middle In that space is a fenced-off area. In that area is a platform with a speaker's podium. The podium is set between two saints, at least one of whom is St. Peter (or Sante Pietro).  

That figures.

What doesn't figure, is the giant Panasonic TV screens at the base of each statue. At first I think they're to televise miracles as they happen... or maybe to broadcast the Pope's nightly address. In any case, they sure look weird. And out of place.

  Then I see that there are chairs, maybe a hundred. Then a notice, posted about some event... I get it. It's the canonization. It will be here that St. Leper of Hawaii will be inaugurated into the Catholic pantheon of miracle makers.

  I look for my ancient friend from the plane. She's probably, not here yet. I don't think this thing starts until tomorrow.

After another walk around the area, and a long hike through the city (learning the rule: If a street ends in a staircase, DON'T TAKE IT. If you do, you'll have to retrace your steps because staircase-ending streets never go ANYWHERE.)I head back to Lise's B&B, take a nap until about 8, then go out for dinner.

  In the only crowded restaurant on a street of empty restaurants, I eat lasagna, dad's favorite food. And it's damn good. I sit outside, at a table next to the sidewalk. To my right, three Teutonic maidens, enjoy their pasta. Their accents sounds right out of North Germany, nothing Austrian or Bavarian about these girls. I look their way, letting my eyes caress... I clear my throat. They barely glance at me.

  Normally, they'd be begging for my body, but it's just this goddamn coldsore! I know it.