Astray in Europe
or: A Couple of Naïfs Take a Trip
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“At that point the day took an ugly turn.” |
ON Sunday, July 7, we took the night train to Munich. Although we rested well the night before and got up late, did our tour of the Forums, had a good meal at a jolly café, and caught our train as scheduled, it was not an entirely good day. But this is a peripatetic narrative, so we must deal with pitfalls and near disaster in due sequence one step at a time.
We had slept late and arrived at the hotel breakfast room just before closing time at about ten o'clock. The buffet style service definitely was not the so-called "continental breakfast" one finds at a U.S. Motel 8. Every morning we had our choice of eggs, scrambled, boiled, or on special request, fried; sliced boiled potatoes; ham, bacon, and sausage; several kinds of bread, rolls, and croissants; a variety of fruits, juices, and dry cereals; and of course strong coffee and milk. For this, our last breakfast in Rome, we hoped that a substantial and late breakfast would obviate a need to eat again till mid afternoon. Then, if we could find a good hearty lunch/dinner, we would be able to get by with only a snack before boarding the train at half-past nine o'clock that evening.
Roman Forum
Despite our misfortunes with our first room in Rome, which we had reserved from Paris, we still didn't have the nerve to resuscitate our original romantic dream of hopping aboard chuffing trains in gloomy and mysterious stations and finding lodgings for the next night when we arrived in yet another ancient and vibrant European city the next morning. For this leg of the trip, too, we had the desk clerk at our hotel reserve a room for us with the same chain in Munich. However, this time we quizzed the clerk and examined a map pretty closely to try to assure ourselves that we would be within walking distance of both the bahnhof (train station) and the Hofbrauhaus (the famous beer hall). Then, we checked out and left our luggage in the hotel storage room while we set out to do the Forums.
There are two sets of Forums: the Roman (or Republican) Forum and the five Imperial Forums. All served as civic centers with buildings for public meetings (basilicas), temples dedicated to the gods and goddesses, government offices, and public monuments to honor Rome's heroes and political leaders. The Roman Forum evolved over a long period prior to the Christian era, especially in the last couple of centuries BC when the Republic was climbing both to the apex of its power and the brink over which it would tumble into imperial dictatorship. After the Ides of March, 44 BC, and the consequent absolute control of the government that Octavian (also called Augustus) achieved before 23 BC, a series of brand spanking new forums were created.
Actually, Caesar started work on the first of these two years before his death as an expansion of the Republican Forum. The others were built by Augustus (ruled 31 BC to 14 AD), Nerva (96 to 98), and Trajan (98 to 117). They, too, were designed for public use, but perhaps more importantly as far as the individual emperors were concerned, they commemorated the men who had them built. In each, statues of the relevant emperor were prominently displayed, and the temples were dedicated to the emperor's favorite gods and goddesses. For example, there was a bronze equestrian statue of Trajan in his Forum that was so big that it was said that no other ruler ever tried to match it. Scholars estimate it was forty feet high from the hooves of the horse to the plume of the helmet, but it disappeared during the Middle Ages, no doubt to be recycled into canons.
We made an interesting, though self conducted, tour with the help of our guide book, maps, and signs posted at some of the major monuments in English as well as Italian. It must be confessed, we had not done our homework, so we were unable to fully appreciate most of the isolated arches, broken columns, and piles of rock we saw that day. Even so, the experience has been wonderfully fruitful in giving visceral substance to our later reading about the Forums. It also brought to life for me the few scraps of information I had retained from a course in ancient and medieval architecture I had audited at Washington University several years before. Of course, we couldn't see everything. There are hundreds of ruins in the 15 or 20 acres of the Forums and the 30 or 40 adjacent acres where the remains of antique structures have been exposed.
Via dei Fori Imperiali on a Sunday morning
Our first target was Trajan's Forum with its famous column and marketplace. This was a walk of a few blocks from our hotel, past the Coliseum and along the via dei Fori Imperiali. This is a heavily traveled straight, wide, half-mile strip of blacktop slashed by Mussolini through one edge of the Forums as yet another grandiose tribute to the new Italian empire he hoped to build. That it spoiled a few ancient ruins and destroyed a few irreplaceable relics was of little concern to Il Duce. He cleared away or paved over monuments that had survived 2,000 years of natural disaster and barbarian invasion, not to speak of countless wars. Even so, ancient Rome was so big and Italy's Fascist period was so short that Il Duce managed only enough damage to provide an appropriate monument to his own brand of barbarism. His boulevard marred the forums, but did not despoil them.
Augustus
On this 21st century Sunday morning, we were first of all pleasantly surprised at how quiet the city had become in the neighborhood of the Coliseum. The boulevard was blocked off and closed to auto traffic. Instead, Sunday strollers like us could walk leisurely along down the middle of the street, if we wished, while occasional bicyclists glided silently among us. Evidently closing the street was the standard procedure on Sundays. We even found it convenient to cross for a closer look at four billboard-size maps on a high, otherwise blank brick wall that had piqued our curiosity the day before. They turned out to be a set of sophomoric depictions of the expansion of Rome from its beginnings till it maxed out in the reign of Trajan. Mussolini installed them, our guidebook said, as a part of the background for the parades he liked to hold on his new boulevard.
A short distance further along we crossed the street again and entered a field of ruins that, according to the map in our guide book, should have been four of the Imperial Forums. But as we stood there in the hot and humid noontime stillness, basically all we could see was...well...ruins. There was a statue of Augustus standing at street side in the skimpy shade of a yew tree. We recognized him by his Roman kilt and chest armor (like Charlton Heston's costume during his own imperial period), and also by the plaque on the pedestal that said, "Augustus." At the far end of this patch of ruins, maybe a couple of hundred yards off, we could see the curved red-brick walls of Trajan's Market.
Trajan's Market and Nero's Tower
The market was built into the side of the Quirinal, one of the famous "seven hills," and served as a retaining wall at that side of Trajan's Forum. From where we were standing, six levels of the structure were visible. Above it stood a broad, square, nearly windowless tower extending perhaps sixty feet above the market's tile roof. This was the Military Tower, Rome's leaning tower, built in the late 12th or early 13th centuries. It had been a part of the fortifications of a ducal palace and later came into the possession of the Church. Built on three levels, it lost its third level (now restored) and developed a slight list in the earthquake of 1348. It is sometimes called Nero's Tower because modern mythology has it that this was the tower from which Nero (ruled 54-68) watched Rome burn. Go figure.
Another view of the Roman Forum
As near as we could make out from our maps, we were standing either in the Forum of Vespasian or the Forum of Nerva. Some parts of this area were blocked off by iron rail fences and others were situated some twenty feet lower than street level. We walked on concrete slabs and around low stubs of stone walls, some possibly ancient, some obviously modern. I tried to get an artsy photo of a group of a dozen porcelain tiles clinging to a two-foot high fragment of wall. Later, we learned that Europeans didn't learn how to make porcelain till the 17th or 18th century. Clearly we were not among the ruins of ancient temples but in those of a later structure built over them. Further along, we were able to look down into a larger area more satisfyingly littered with fragments of marble stairways, pieces of thick stone walls, and occasional columns, battered but standing, and supporting nothing.
Ancient tiles?
Trajan's Column was a half block off the via dei Fori Imperiali. Since Trajan's was the last of the Imperial Forums to be built (finished early in the second century AD), it was the largest and most elaborate. It had a larger basilica and a more lavish temple than the others. It also included two magnificent libraries, one for Latin works and one for Greek, and of course, just outside its boundaries was the handsome and sturdy market place.
In ancient times, the column was situated in a narrow courtyard between the two libraries so that -- it has been suggested -- the upper portion could be viewed from the library roofs, which still would have been considerably below the top of the 100-foot column on its 25-foot base. Today, the top of the base is perhaps ten feet higher than the elevation of the surrounding modern streets. Our guidebook said that the inscription over the door in the base is one of the finest examples of the letter form on which the modern Roman family of type styles, is based. All that remains of the libraries are some enigmatic brick arches that once were part of their basements and foundations.
Trajan's Column
The column was unique and famous from the beginning, not only because of its height but also because of its design. The base served as a sepulcher for Trajan's funeral ashes and also gave access to a spiral stairway inside the column that led to an observation platform at the top. The column itself was constructed of 20 marble blocks attached to each other by a system of iron dowels held firmly in place by lead tamping. Although medieval "miners" removed some of the metal (and damaged the outer surface of the column in the process), this system clearly was good enough to hold the monument together over the centuries despite many earthquakes, some of which shook parts off nearby buildings, viz. the Coliseum.
Detail of Trajan's Column
The column commemorated Trajan's victories in Dacia (modern Romania). It is covered by a continuous relief sculpture winding round the shaft from bottom to top like an open scroll. This frieze depicts the Dacian campaigns and includes more than 2,000 human figures. It is so detailed that it is an important source of information about the Roman army of the time and how it operated. Upon Trajan's death, a statue of him was perched on top of the column, but the Pope replaced that in 1588 with a statue of Saint Peter facing toward St Peter's Cathedral a couple miles away on the other side of the Tiber.
Unhappily, during our visit, the column was under repair. Not that anyone was actually working on it on a Sunday, but the entire base and lower portion of the shaft were enclosed in a network of scaffolding. And though our guidebook implied that it was possible for modern tourists to gain access to the interior and climb the spiral staircase, nothing of the sort was available to us. Even so, I was able to get a couple of photos of some of the sculpture and a shot of the shaft seeming to rise from the roof of a nearby snack-stand.
Having done the column, we headed for the market place. We had read that Trajan's Market, located as it was just yards from the forum where high-powered civic business was done, probably housed merchants dealing in luxury goods and catering to the wealthy senatorial class. Government offices such as the one responsible for managing the flow of grain and other foodstuffs into the city (which in Trajan's time probably had a population of around one million) may also have been housed in the multistory market complex. We walked around the edge of the ruins till we came to a stairway that seemed to lead down to the lower levels. We saw no sign that this was an entrance to the market complex, but a man stationed at the bottom of the stairs handed us tickets and a brochure. We didn't know why. There was no charge. Maybe he was a panhandler. If so, his effort was wasted on us.
The place was nearly deserted with only two or three other people strolling along as we entered a narrow curving street that was paved with large, flat, smooth stones. In ancient times, the bare brick exterior walls on both sides were probably clad in marble. The dingy interior walls of the tiny rooms that served as shops would no doubt have been whitewashed and hung with tapestries or other decorations. We tried to imagine the street filled with arrogant Roman citizens shopping for golden trinkets and brightly colored silken fabrics from far away Egypt and Persia as sharp-eyed Phoenician merchants enticed them with exaggerated praise of their goods. But in our brand-new 21st century, the only denizen we came across was a cat dozing in the shade.
Cat on guard duty in Trajan's Market
We wandered along the street, then out into the open space
that once was the Forum, then back into the jumble of stone-paved
walkways and steps. In some places we could see where the ancient
structure had been modified during the middle ages for defensive
purposes. Additional structures had been added above these fortifications,
some of them with glazed windows that clearly indicated current
occupation. After a while, we passed another man with tickets
and brochures and emerged into a narrow modern street where ancient
ruins with blank holes for windows and doors stood side-by-side
with working boutiques, cafés, and apartment buildings,
some of which seemed to incorporate into their structures some
of the smaller columns and lintels of the ancients. It was a truly
charming neighborhood, and no doubt if one could spare an arm
and a leg, it would be very pleasant to live there.
Trajan's Market
From Trajan's Market, we walked back past the column to the Victor Emanuel Monument which faces onto the Piazza Venezia, and whose backside beetles over the Roman Forums some distance below. Construction of this be-columned and be-statued structure of white marble began in the 1880s and lasted decades. It was named after, and dedicated to Victor Emanuel II, the 19th century king under whom the peninsula became a country and gained its independence after centuries of torment by petty kings, dukes, popes, and such who laid claim to various pieces of it and were glad to inflict a bit of burning and pillaging to prove title.
Victor Emanuel Monument
Sadly, however, the magnificence of the monument doesn't get much respect. Most writers of guide books love to point out how garish it is in contrast with the comparatively subdued and modest ruins of the ancients and the much more artistic Piazza del Campidoglio nearby, which was designed by Michelangelo. They like to call it, not altogether inaptly, the "wedding cake" by reference to its elaborate and brilliantly white exterior, or the "typewriter" by reference to the broad sweep of curved steps mounting from street level to the base of its many columned facade. They list the important ancient monuments that were razed to make room for it and point out that the museum it houses was founded shortly after the turn of the 20th century, but was not opened to the public till 1970.
We climbed the elaborate steps, admired the many statues, took a picture of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier at ten-power telephoto, and under the scowling gaze of an adequate number of cops remained sedate and respectful of bearing as requested by the signs posted about. Inside, the museum was large and spacious. It seemed to be reasonably organized, but it wasn't very meaningful to us, ignorant as we were of modern Italian history and the "Risorgimento" (literally "revival," but when capitalized, the term for the struggle for independence).
Guard at Tomb of Unknown
I would not disparage either the building or its contents, but because everything about it was so, well, Italian, it's easy to see why people who claim to have good taste sneer at it. Its flamboyance did seem misplaced and a bit overdone; the sailor guarding the Tomb of the Unknown stood half at ease with his assault rifle at sling arms and his uniform a tad tousled; the attitude of the cops outside seemed less than gracious; and the relatively few tourists who ventured inside strolled glassy-eyed past endless displays of flags, banners, and ensigns representing the eternal glory earned by hundreds of long forgotten battaglioni and brigate in thousands of equally obscure battles.
From the "Vittoriano," a nick-name derived from both the word for victory (vittoria) and the name of the king, we made our way back along the via dei Fori Imperiali and followed other tourists to the entrance to the Roman -- also called the Republican -- Forum. By now it was well past noon, and the Italian sun was relentless in this shallow hollow where tourists perspired copiously and ancient bric-a-brac baked somnolently. The entrance walkway led us to the Sacre Via at a point in the field of ruins that we had first seen from Tito's Arch on our second day in the city. As I said, we hadn't done our homework, so we weren't up to speed on the details of what we were seeing. In addition, we were getting tired and more than slightly parboiled. So regrettably, we missed much of the immediate value of the experience.
Via Sacre and Arch of Septemus Severus
Nevertheless, we would be able to say we had been there. We also
have a few photos, and if the tenth of a euro we had tossed into
the Trevi Fountain works, we will go back for another, more informed
look. Along this stretch of the Sacre Via the paving is
partially restored. Patches of slightly convex, smooth, eighteen-inch
diameter paving stones, which were uncomfortable to walk on, could
be avoided by walking on the crushed gravel of the unrestored
portions. To the west at the top of a slight rise in the roadway
was the Arch of Septemus Severus. Beyond that and on a higher
elevation, the brown brick walls of the present-day city council
chambers built on top of, and incorporating, the remains of the
ancient Tabularium, or state archives. These buildings
are on the Capitoline, perhaps the most important of the "seven
hills," in that it was supposed to be the center of the original
town founded by Romulus and Remus and served as the religious
center of both the Republic and the Empire. The Piazza Campidoglio,
(Capitol Plaza), now modified by Michelangelo, marked the
center of this activity.
But we were mere pilgrims sweating through the sun and unaware of much of this grandeur. We missed a chance for a good look at the ruins of the Vestals' House because a row of trees blocked the view in that direction, and as I said, our attention was drawn to the Arch of Septemus Severus. We headed that direction passing on our right the extensive remains of the Basilica Aemilia, which in ancient times was a law court, and on our left the partially restored paving of the Republican Forum, center of communal business prior to the Empire.
As we climbed the slight grade to the Arch and joined the loose crowd of tourists catching a little relief from the sun by standing in its shade, we saw a sign which indicated that the plain building of brown brick to our right was the Curia. It was a tall, nearly cubical building maybe fifty or sixty feet on a side and, according to our guide book, not quite seventy feet high. There was a single twenty-foot high entrance in the center and three large windows screened with decorative ironwork half way up its face. A low Grecian pediment topped it off.
Feeling slightly refreshed by our pause in the only apparent spot of shade in the whole basin, we went to have a look at the Curia's interior. It was as Spartan inside as out with bare brick walls and a great volume of space right up to the roof. The floor was inlaid tile. Chunks of statuary had been placed along both sides, but visitors were restricted to a small area near the door. Placards explained that the statuary had been recovered from nearby ruins and told a little about the history of the building itself.
Center of Government in the late Empire
At first, we imagined dignified men sporting togas and big noses debating the issues of the day as they stood on low stone platforms on each side of the room. Here, we thought, was where the great issues of Roman history were thrashed out: what to do about the ferocious and bizarre Celts in the north; how to stave off the Goths and other barbarians along the Rhine and the Danube; whether to invade Carthage to protect the vital grain resources in Africa; how to pay for the constant fighting with the intractable Jews in the East; whether to adopt Christianity as the state religion and outlaw the pagan religions; how to pay for armies in all corners of the known world without overburdening the senatorial class with taxes. This, we thought, was where Julius Caesar was assassinated, where Cicero, Catullus, and Horace moved men's hearts with their oratory; where Virgil and Ovid walked.
But we were quickly disillusioned by the information on the placards and in our guidebook. The location was right, but the building we were standing in was so new that it had a role only in a small portion of ancient Rome's history. It dated only to the late third century AD when the Empire had risen as high as it would go and was teetering on the edge of a two hundred year fall. Long after the fall, in the seventh century, the structure had become a church, and it was restored again in the 18th century before archeologists in the 1930s returned it to their best guess as to its appearance in the year 275 or thereabouts.
Even so, it probably was the location of the famous debate in 382 when the urbane, sophisticated, classically educated pagan, Symmachus, lost to the fiery, dogmatic, equally well educated but Christian Saint Ambrose. The topic? Whether to remove the ancient statues of the traditional gods from the legislative hall and eliminate financial support for their cults. Very likely, too, these polished tile floors (or something like them) were stained by the muddy boots of Gothic officers in 410 as they negotiated fruitlessly for three days with the city fathers before turning their hoards loose to pillage the city in an event that later inspired Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, to write "The Two Cities," one of the seminal treatises of the early Church.
By this time, it was mid afternoon, and once again we were long past our planned limit of two hours per uninterrupted gawk-session. We needed to sit down, and we needed to eat. So we found another restaurant in the neighborhood just east of the Coliseum. Here, the waiter was an energetic, good natured young man. When he brought the menu, we ordered glasses of wine and water and told him we wanted only a "light lunch." That is, "light" from the Italian perspective. We had discovered that what the Italians considered a light meal would be for us more than adequately substantial. When I asked if there was a rest room we could use, the waiter waited patiently as I formulated the question in my limping Italian and replied in Italian even though later, when my Italian proved inadequate, he switched easily to an excellent English.
Several of the other tables were occupied, including one by another family of Americans. This time it was the parents and two boys in their late teens. They were having a good time joking around with the waiter. Indeed all the restaurant personnel were cheerful and jolly and the whole place vibrated with good feeling, except one narrow-faced, hawk-nosed man sitting alone at a table in an out-of-the-way corner. He watched the action, neither smiling nor frowning particularly, holding the stem of a small glass with one hand resting on his table. We noticed after a while that the maitre-d', a lean tall guy with a deep bass voice who made a game of flirting with every passing female, would occasionally exchange a word with this dour observer. From this we guessed he was the owner, descended from his Quirinal Hill condo for a mid-afternoon apéritif and informal inspection.
Minnie ordered an appetizer of thick bread toasted with olive oil and served with chopped vegetables, and I ordered a small salad. For the main course, she had lasagna and I had spaghetti, dishes which on the Italian menu are considered only appetizers. As we ate, the American family reached the dessert course, and the waiter brought out a small pastry with candles for one of the boys' birthday. They had a good time as the maitre-d' took pictures with their camera, and the waiter posed behind the boys, hands on their shoulders. A little later the waiter brought out a bottle of a pale green alcoholic drink to toast the birthday. We enjoyed the show as well as the excellent food.
We lingered over our meal till after five o'clock, then went to the hotel to get our luggage and take the Metro to Roma Termini. We expected little crowding late on a Sunday afternoon and were comforted when we found only a scattering of passengers on the Coliseum station platform. But when the train arrived, it was packed like a workday rush-hour express. Pushing and shoving like everyone else, we managed to force both our luggage and ourselves through the door. Roma Termini was the second stop, so the ride -- with us clinging to our bags with one hand and holding onto a stanchion with the other while our fellow sweaty passengers crushed against us and pushed past us to exit and enter the car at the intermediate station -- was mercifully short.
Metro station
At the station we first went to the information office to find out what track our train would be leaving on. The office was fairly large with about eight information stations, although only three were manned. We found a place where Minnie could guard the luggage while I took a number and prepared to wait. I was number 094; the number being served, according to the sign on the wall behind the information stations, was 023. Since only 10 or 15 people were in the room, we assumed that most of the intervening 71 people had changed their minds and left.
From the corner where Minnie was posted, we couldn't see the sign that flashed the next number to be served, so I stepped further out among a half dozen other people standing between the service counter and a row of chairs at the back of the room. These were occupied by people who either were waiting for their numbers, or (as Minnie discovered in chatting with the woman sitting next to her) they were waiting for their train there because the room was air conditioned. Not that the air conditioning, if indeed there was any, was doing anything useful.
I watched the sign as the numbers climbed rather rapidly...because most of them went unanswered...through the thirties and forties and finally into the sixties. I was keeping Minnie posted on progress and quite expected to get the answer to my simple question pretty quickly. But then the numbers inexplicably skipped to the 880s. I uttered an expletive and asked the clerk who was pushing the buttons what happened to 094. She was a dour looking school-marm type and vouchsafed the not very comforting information that it would come back around.
I returned to my place, and the guy standing next to me asked me what she had said. I told him, and he showed me his number, 117. He said he had a simple question that required a simple answer and was about to give up waiting. We exchanged jokes about the seemingly haphazard Italian system for doing things. He was from Scotland and said he had been to Connecticut and found it very expensive. I told him about our trip and said we were planning to spend the last week in England. He said the British rail system is as bad or worse than the Italian system. He finally gave up and left, but I hung in, and eventually the numbers did get back to two digits and even arrived at 094 with the clerk whose acquaintance I had already made.
I showed her our tickets and asked her about the train. She said after studying her computer monitor an alarmingly long time that it usually departed on Track 9, but I should check the board at the track. I thanked her and went over to Minnie to pick up our luggage.
At that point the day took an ugly turn. My wallet seemed to be missing, and after a thorough search, we had to acknowledge that it was indeed gone. We guessed that my pocket had been picked on the Metro. Either that, or I left the wallet at the hotel. We considered calling the hotel, but we didn't have the number and couldn't find a phone book. Since it was only a short distance, we decided it would be worth the investment for me to take a taxi back to the hotel in case that was where I left it. We found a quiet corner of the station where Minnie could stay with the luggage, and I went out to the taxi stand.
I tried to ask the clerk at the desk if my wallet had been found there, but she understood only that I wanted to pick something up from storage and said I needed a receipt chit. As I fumbled with my little Italian and her less English to explain what had happened, the manager, who was the same gentleman with whom we had checked the bags out, came out to the desk. He knew English, but when I asked him about the wallet, he said, that no, it had not been left. He said he remembered me taking it out to get the receipts for the luggage, but that I had put it back into my pocket.
Normally, I carried my money clip in my left front pocket and my wallet in my right front pocket. These pockets were deep and not likely to be picked. Most likely I had absent mindedly put the wallet into my left hip pocket, which is where I was accustomed to carrying it most of my life. It was fat with the calendar and all, and easy pickings on a crowded Metro train. The thought crossed my mind that I might have left it on the hotel checkout desk, but it seemed very unlikely that the desk clerk would have found it and kept it.
When I returned to the railroad station, we decided that our only other chance would be to find the Metro lost and found office, and arrange to have it mailed to us in case it was returned. We realized that if there was a lost and found office and it was open, which seemed unlikely, chances of the wallet showing up there were about the same as our winning the SuperEnalotto, for which, of course, we had never bought a ticket. Even so, we had time before our train would leave, and we wanted to pull all the strings.
First, I tried to explain to a passing cop, a young man with a scraggly beard, baggy uniform, and a cell phone to his ear, but he thought I was saying I had lost my Metro ticket and directed me to a nearby Tabacchi (tobacco store) where tickets were sold. Finally, by wandering around (Minnie remaining at her post with the luggage) I found the police station. It was a little room in the train station headhouse with a plate-glass window overlooking the midway.
Through this window the cops could see a portion of the midway and a couple of the railheads. The window was equipped with a baffle system like those in some theater ticket booths so that a person could talk through it without exposing the people inside to gunfire or spittle or whatnot. The room was about fifteen feet square. A single fluorescent ceiling fixture shed a glare on dingy blue-green walls and two cops sitting at an aged gray-metal desk. Another cop was standing at the back of the room looking extremely bored. All three were overweight and unfriendly looking, the way some cops get when they're approaching middle age and still pounding a beat.
I yelled through the window and after a while one of the cops at the desk glanced over his shoulder at me. I managed to get him to understand that I had lost my wallet in the Metro and wanted to know if there was a lost and found office somewhere in the Termini. The standing cop just shrugged his shoulders and returned to his study of vacant space. The slightly interested desk-ridden cop pulled the other two into a discussion which I hoped had something to do with my problem.
This was how matters stood when another cop drove up behind me in a golf cart. The two uninterested cops cut the discussion short, came out, and climbed aboard, one sitting next to the driver and the other sitting on a rear-facing rumble seat. As they were about to drive off, the interested cop hollered something at them through the window. The cop on the rumble seat responded with an assenting gesture and motioned to me to sit next to him. I didn't know where they were going, but evidently they were going to try to help me. I thanked the interested cop and climbed aboard.
We drove along the midway gleaning a few mildly curious glances from people who may have wondered if the cops had nabbed a...pickpocket? I thought I should get out my radio and tell Minnie what was happening, but I didn't want to risk piquing the cops' curiosity a little too much. We stopped in front of a tourist information office, and the cops indicated that that was where I should make my inquiries. I thanked them and went in. Actually, while they didn't take as much interest in my little problem as I would have liked, I have to admit that I was pretty stressed and probably wanted more than was reasonable. After all, what else could they have done? And they were kind enough to give me a lift to the only place, probably, where there was a chance that I could get some help...or at least deal with someone in English.
This information office was new to us. The only one we had noticed was the one with the Scotsman, although this one was clearly marked and not in a particularly out-of-the-way location. Here, there was no line of resignedly patient travelers, and the clerk spoke nearly unaccented English. She said she thought the Metro had a lost and found office, but all their offices were probably closed because it was Sunday. But just to be sure, she tried to call and got no answer. So she wrote a number on a green Post-It note and suggested that I call them from Munich. I had to be content with that and made my way back to the corner where Minnie was guarding our luggage. It was still only about seven o'clock, but we couldn't think of anything else to do, so we decamped to the Track 9 platform to wait for our train.
It was too early for either the information board at the railhead or the larger schedule hung over the midway to show the 9:37 for Munich. Interestingly, although operation of European railroads is very high-tech, and computers and digital readouts are everywhere, all the readouts at the railheads that we saw looked like the electro-mechanical information boards I remembered seeing when I was stationed in Germany with the Army in 1956-57. They seemed to work by means of characters printed on tabs attached to wheels like address cards in a small Roladex. Imagine several of these little "Roladex" wheels lined up side-by-side on a single axle. As the axle turns, the cards flip over rapidly till the wheels stop one by one to display one character each. The traveler sees the flutter of the rapidly spinning cards, then as the wheels stop, the letters appear one at a time in random sequence. First a "u," say, then an "e," then an "n," and so on till when all the wheels have stopped, the word "Munchen," for example, has appeared. Numbers to form a time such as "21:37" are similarly displayed.
I don't know anything about the mechanics of these boards, how each wheel is made to stop at the desired character, for example. I only mention this because of the effect they had on us -- me, anyway. Every time such a readout would start fluttering, I, being the weary, insecure, lifelong victim of the fear of being late that I am, would suffer a minor fit of anxiety that usually was relieved gradually as the destination and time of departure I wanted to see were spelled out. Sometimes, however, momentary panic would ensue as I slowly realized that the name of some completely irrelevant city was appearing.
We parked our bags at a convenient bench with the information board in sight and sat down. The bench was not actually a seat as such, but a square niche cut through the marble base of one of the pillars supporting the canopy over the platform. Even so, it was at a convenient height for sitting, and we could stack the smaller bags in it and sit next to them with the larger bag at our feet. I was a bit edgy, understandably I think, considering our recent adventure with the billfold.
Parked in a niche in a pillar
As I walked around a little, I thought I heard a couple speaking English and decided to try to see if they, too, were waiting for the 9:37 to Munich. The woman was a dark haired, rather plain housewife type; the man was sun-burnt of face and more graying of hair. He did indeed speak English, but with an accent that I couldn't place. At first I thought it was Australian, but after a little that didn't seem right. At any rate, I asked him if this was where the train for Munich would leave. He said he thought it was, but seemed as uncertain as I.
I went back to Minnie with this unreassuring information, and we continued to wait there. We noticed that there was a McDonald's in the headhouse, and Minnie said she was a little hungry, so I went over to buy her a Big Mac and take a picture. The only difference between this McDonald's and the one on Mid Rivers Mall Drive in St. Peters was the language, although the names of the sandwiches -- Big Mac, Chicken McNuggets, Crispy McBacon -- were apparently untranslatable. Minnie said the Big Mac tasted the same, too.
McDonald's in Roma Termini. 280 gr. is a little over half a pound.
Some time around eight o'clock, the big information board started showing our train to Munich at 9:37. This was reassuring to us as we had already noticed that more and more people were arriving at the platform. When a train arrived on Track 10, the crowd became even denser. Some time after 8:30, however, the Track 9 board began fluttering, and when it stopped indicated that a train for Naples was arriving there. Of course, that set off my already frazzled nerves, especially when I saw that the Aussie, or whatever he was, appeared to be equally concerned. As I was looking around considering what to do to get information, Minnie noticed a little portable information booth had been set up a little further back on the midway. It was manned by a man and a woman in the blue uniform of the Italian railroad company. I went over to ask them about our train and waited till they finished arguing with a middle eastern looking guy who apparently didn't want to believe whatever it was they were telling him.
I waited patiently while they finished that argument, which the woman seemed to be done with first. I started to ask her about the train, but she shrugged and gestured to the guy. By that time he was occupied with someone else, but that argument didn't last very long, so I asked him about the 9:37 to Munich. He checked a page in his three-ring binder and said it would leave from Track 9 on schedule. I pointed out that the information board said the train to Naples would be arriving there shortly. He said that was right, but it would depart at nine, and another train from Naples to Munich would pull in at 9:15 and leave on schedule at 9:37. Although I had some lingering doubts based on our trip to Nettuno about the Italians' ability to turn two trains around in such a short time, he was clear and seemed certain about what he said.
As I returned to where Minnie had been sitting, I heard an old woman shouting something, and when I came around the pillar, there was an old hag flopping her duffle into the place where Minnie, who was now standing nearby, should have been sitting next to our smaller bags. She said the hag had come up and started yelling and telling her to move, so she did. "I thought maybe people weren't supposed to sit there," she said. I was about to give the old bitch what for, but Minnie didn't want to make a scene, and I realized she was right. Little could be gained by attacking an elderly scraggly-haired female thing in a crowd of her compatriots. I said some angry things at her just to vent, which of course fazed her not a bit.
By now it was nine o'clock, the sun had set, and as though on an equally reliable schedule, the train to Naples pulled in, then out, and our train from Naples for Munich pulled in as predicted at 9:15. We dragged our luggage to our car and lifted it on board, then wrestled it down the narrow corridor looking for seats 61 and 62. Since this was a couchette car (French for "little bed"), it was compartmentalized with six passengers per compartment. The compartments were numbered in single digits, 1, 2, 3, etc., on little placards that were hard to see in the dim light. We were puzzled as to how we were to find seats 61 and 62 till someone came out of compartment 5 and showed us that the one we were standing in front of was 6, and therefore our seats, 61 and 62, would be in it.
We struggled with the door till someone inside unlocked it. Then we saw that the other four passengers had already gone to bed. The compartment was dark, but we were able to make out that the two bottom bunks were not occupied. Someone finally turned a light on, and we got our bags stowed with the help of the people in the top bunks. Plastic covered packets on our bunks were obviously sheets and pillow cases. We opened them and tried to spread them on the bunks, but were having some difficulty. The young woman in the bunk above mine asked in English if she could help us. We gladly replied affirmatively, and she explained that there was only one sheet which was designed so that one lay on one half and pulled the other half up over one's feet for a top cover.
There was no question of changing into pajamas, so we removed our shoes and crawled into the narrow, shallow, aptly named couchettes, each of us trying ineffectively to keep half the sheet under us and the other half over us. The compartment was stifling hot despite the open window because the blind was pulled down to block the station lights, which now seemed relatively bright. The girl who had helped us asked where we were from and we told her. She said they (she and the other three were a group) were from the Czech Republic. I told her her English was very good, and she said she had just passed the Czech state exam for English.
Someone opened the blind despite the station lights to let some air in. Someone else turned out the lights in the compartment. Soon the train pulled out, and a little air was pumped into the compartment before the window had to be closed because of the noise, and the blind had to be lowered again because of street lights and such flashing by. We dozed fitfully for a little, then Minnie had to get up to go to the rest room. It had been several hours since she had relieved herself because when we visited the restrooms in Roma Termini, the women's room was closed again for cleaning or repairs or something. With the help of a little key-ring flashlight that some corporate Dogbert had once given me, we figured out how to unlatch the door and got to the rest room at the end of the car.
For the rest of the night we dozed off and on. When at last I fell into a sound sleep I was suddenly wakened by an eerie silence and lack of motion. At first, I thought we had stopped, but then I saw by an occasional light flashing by that we were indeed moving at high speed. I could only conclude that the condition of the rails and roadbed had suddenly improved. My guess was we were out of Italy and in either Austria or Switzerland. I dozed some more till about five o'clock when I finally gave up and got up to stand in the corridor and watch the mountains scroll past. The contrast between these green mountain valleys and the arid plains around Rome was striking and pleasant. The villages of steep-roofed, half-timbered houses clinging to the mountainsides were one Sound of Music postcard scene after another. The streams that occasionally ran along with the rails were swift and clean, and I could see by the direction of flow that we were climbing. I didn't get any photos because my camera was in a bag under the bunk, and I didn't want to disturb our still sleeping fellow passengers.
After a while, we stopped at a station in a small mountain city. I could look across the small platform into the plate-glass windows of a café where a handfull of early commuters sipped their coffee and read their newspapers or chatted idly with the paunchy, bald man in a waiter's uniform of white shirt with black tie, black vest, and trousers. I lowered the window to get a breath of the fresh mountain air and poke my head out for a look up and down the platform. A young couple were embracing feverishly at the door to the car behind ours. After a while, the young man lifted their suitcase into the car, then they clinched again till at the last moment the young woman broke loose and climbed into the car. As the train slowly started up, the young man walked off toward the café looking as though he was now thinking about what to do till time to punch in at work.
We went through a couple of tunnels, and the next stream I saw was flowing with us. At about six o'clock people started getting up and pushing back and forth down the narrow corridor, which was barely wide enough for two people to squeeze by each other. About an hour later, our overnight roomies started bustling about getting their gear into the corridor, and when the train stopped at another small city, they got off. I glanced in to see Minnie awake but still lying in her bunk. For the remaining twenty or thirty minutes of the trip we had the compartment to ourselves. When the train finally stopped at the Munich station, most of the passengers worked their way patiently to the doors at either end, but some handed their smaller bags through the open windows to people on the platform. We waited till the crowd had cleared before making our way to the platform, thence to the midway where we found a place to pause and collect ourselves.
A portion of the midway at Munich Bahnhoff