Musical introduction, or “the songs I heard playing in 1985 as I traveled around Europe.” I had no Walkman or radio of my own, so the urban environment provided the tunes. Some I liked, others not so much. From the vantage point of Rome in June, I knew almost nothing about the Live Aid concert coming up on July 13. But coverage escalated as the date drew nearer.
Previously: Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 4: Greece, Turkey, a famous Pythion interlude, and the Levant according to Hassan.
I’m only a sporadic consumer of motion pictures, and “binge watching” in the contemporary sense remains an alien concept for me as it pertains to scripted television. Documentaries? That’s more like it, and I find them occasionally binge-worthy in their own right when (blessedly) without car chase sequences.
Alas, my preferences seldom make for festive date night viewing, as they run toward the very driest academic documentaries, during which academic professionals who’ve spent their lives studying a specific topic expound upon it, and I am more likely to learn something of genuine importance as a consequence.
However, there are exceptions, evidently so few in number that I remember one that occurred 13 years ago.
In 2012 I was dragged kicking and screaming to view Woody Allen’s then-newest theatrical release To Rome with Love. Reviews were appropriately middling, and I am well aware that Allen has since been “canceled,” but as with other cinematic excursions here and there that I find otherwise lacking, it was impossible in this instance for me to fault the director’s choice of top-tier locales.
As such, start by forgetting the forgettable (i.e., plot and cast). They’re entirely disposable, because the Eternal City itself is the star, and sumptuously depicted. Food is ubiquitous, and wine pours freely in almost every scene. We all might be forgiven for wanting to pack our bags, chuck the daily grind and go frolic by the steps, fountains, gardens and ruins, even if we suspect the city-wide reality might not live up to its cinematic airbrushing.
Rome did, at least the choice bits. I’ve been back only once since the first time in 1985, but it was an essential destination for me during that inaugural trip to Europe, which was intended quite consciously as a “greatest hits” Euro urban jaunt emphasizing classical overtones, with periodic interludes in smaller cities, and largely without extended countryside idylls. These happened later.
In fact, I hailed from the countryside ― a Hoosier hick from somewhat close to French Lick ― and in many respects, the whole point of the journey to Europe was to test an emerging theory that the stork had erred, and at heart I belonged to the planet’s populated areas, not its boondocks, and was by definition a city dweller.
I’d venture the opinion that experience has proven this theory to be spot on. However, it is true that I found city life to be like a second language that one only gradually learns to speak fluently, and it took some practice to become acclimated to all of it. Already I’d visited Athens and Istanbul in 1985, now Rome. Talk about world heritage travel; more cities were yet to come, and my eagerness was palpable.
I wasn’t familiar with the Italian writer Italo Calvino, who died unexpectedly a few months after my arrival in Rome. Around the year 2000, at age 40, I read Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities and found much to chew on.
Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone’s gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly.
Calvino’s book is imagined, and hardly a travel guide, but had I come to it sooner, there’d likely have been lessons to contribute to a better understanding of my emerging urban consciousness. As it stood, my days in the Italian capital were suitably revelatory for a joyful daydreamer of a neophyte, with neither cable news nor the future dream of an Internet to so much as dare suggest a direct connection between my daily experiences in Rome with the larger world outside, although I confess to sneaking an occasional peak at headlines from the newspaper kiosks.
I was becoming adept at thumbing through the papers just long enough to get the news stories I wanted from the International Herald Tribune, before being chased away by annoyed kiosk proprietors.
There was a long walk along the Appian Way, examining the crumbling, often formless remnants of 2,000-year-old memorials bearing the names of tremendously important Roman patricians, politicians and magnates, most of whom have been forgotten for as long as they’ve been dead.
The bulk of my reveries about the past were deferred owing to a heightened appreciation for the present in the form of cacophonous sports cars and motorcycles zooming past my vantage point on a scantily paved road the approximate width of a bicycle lane.
Nimbly dodging the expanding sprawl of picnicking families oblivious to the din, I repaired to the nearest bar for sustenance, and later, a descent into the catacombs.
I remember laundry fluttering in the breeze from the windows of post-WW II housing blocks; the oddball 2/3 liter glass bottles filled with industrial beer for roughly 50 cents; a suburban rail excursion to Benito Mussolini’s EUR (a 1930s-era planned suburban and business area south of the city; delicious bread-like pizza brushed with oil and herbs for dispensing from kiosks and windows; and more architectural styles, churches and domes than anyone could categorize, especially as viewed in the jumble of the Roman Forum and adjacent Colosseum.
It was a sensory overload unlike anything that the comparatively limited life and times of Southern Indiana might provide in terms of preparation. Rome made me wary, not of being pickpocketed or lost, but losing myself in the sheer profusion of perceptions.
As in Athens and Istanbul, the bulk of my time in Rome was spent just wandering the streets, profoundly dazed, desperately trying to absorb as much as possible on a trip that I’d viewed from the outset as surely the only chance I’d have in my life to see Europe before returning home and acquiring some form of a productive life ― and realizing shortly thereafter that life was most productive when lived according to one’s own philosophical terms, framed in the manner suited to an individual’s interests and obsessions.
But before any of this, I had to get to Italy from Greece.
—
My Eurailpass covered the cost of deck passage on the ferry, but it was a time-consuming effort that took the better part of a day, noteworthy for a pause in Corfu and my first glimpse of Saranda and the mysterious Albanian shoreline opposite the Greek island.
On ship, I was intrigued by a 60-something, intrepid, backpacking American couple from Chicago named Butz, a name I recall solely because it also belonged to an ill-fated secretary of agriculture who resigned in disgrace in 1976 after inopportunely uttering racial non-humor. We chatted about Midwestern topics, and while I’d guess they enjoyed an economic status several time zones above mine, making their down-market attire puzzling, as people they were kind and responsive.
Mr. and Mrs. Butz debarked at Corfu, and when progress continued toward Italy, so did the on-board festivities, because these long sunbaked hours were being shared with thirsty backpacking Aussies and Germans, all of us sprawled cross-legged in the ocean breeze on the ferry’s peanut gallery of a deck.
As previously noted in this series, I was aware that I had little to offer in any advanced cultural realm, so instead I taught them how to play the familiar Hoosier drinking game redubbed Drachma Bounce, using a metal camp cup and alternating portions of retsina and ouzo either as penalty for winning, or reward for losing.
This is how I briefly enjoyed status as a social magnet. They loved it.
In late afternoon, sobriety slightly compromised, the vessel docked at the Italian port of Brindisi. Exiting the boat, a dockside café provided the convenient pretext to commence a lifelong love affair with garlic-laden clam sauce over pasta, as accompanied by a cool (not cold) draft beer.
Then, walking to the train station, I passed a doorway guarded by an improbably tall Black man, who took stock of my appearance and addressed me in perfect American.
Disorientation must have been evident, although he just laughed heartily and offered the back story: College basketball back in the States (Oklahoma State? Tulsa?), prior to accepting an offer to join Brindisi’s team in the Italian league, which paid decently enough but required him to dabble at being a bouncer at the team owner’s nightclub. His name is lost to me now, and I can’t verify any of it.
In ancient times, the Appian Way actually connected Brindisi with Rome. In modern times no couchettes (couch-like sleeping berths) were available on the overnight train, and so “sleep” was napping upright in a seat, sardine-like, amid fellow travelers.
Such was my level of fatigue that I actually did snooze a bit, awakening at dawn just in time to glimpse Montecassino Abbey, as rebuilt on its mountaintop after being completely destroyed in the famous World War II battle of attrition. At least I think it was Montecassino Abbey. It might have been Downton Abbey for all I know, given a bone-rattled grogginess borne of two too many days aboard trains and boats. In Rome, there’d be time to rest.
Arriving early at Rome’s Termini station, I immediately jogged toward one of the $25-A-Day book’s suggested budget pensions, those small family-run hotels usually located upstairs in urban residential blocks. The first one was booked, but the second had a vacancy for a single room with a real bed (and shared bathroom with hot water down the hall).
It was four flights up without an elevator, and I settled in for a five-night stay. It took only a few hours to become a café veteran, paying the cover to sit outside by the sidewalk, nursing Nastro Azurro lagers and watching the girls pass by ― because happily, with some effort and forethought, my budget did not preclude a decent quality of life in Rome.
A famous barebones eatery called Osteria da Salvatore at Via Castelfidardo 39c was highlighted as “the best bargain in town” by Let’s Go Europe by virtue of its 6,000 (in Italian lire) fixed price menu of three courses and a glass of wine, although the book cautioned patrons to “ignore the constant arguments among the proprietors.” At the prevailing exchange rate, this sum came to $3.07, including gratuity.
Another go-to was a cubbyhole down the block from the train station called Er Buchetto, which was founded around 1890 and remains in business today. I took no photos of it during my stay in Rome, so here are recent views from the internet. The eatery seems very little changed.
Arthur Frommer’s Europe on $25 Dollars A Day referred me to Er Buchetto and its exemplary, ample pork sandwiches, but as you can see from the listing, the book actually garbled the establishment’s name.
PORCHETTA ROMANA: Ever try a porchetta romana (spiced roast pig) sandwich? It is as typical of Rome as pizza is of Naples, and will cost you only 1,500 lire, plus 600 lire for a quarter liter of wine, if you buy it at a tiny shop about the size of a train compartment, called Vino e Porchetta Romana, and located at 2f Via del Viminale (between Via Giovanni Amendola and Via Principe Amedeo, near the big square in front of Termini Station). Owner, Signor Franco Floravanti, is busy all day selling his tasty and filling sandwiches, as well as separate orders of porchetta alone, and his excellent wine in one-liter bottles. I’m told the turnover is one roast pig per day. Closed Sundays.
The sandwich was simple, just meat and bread, but the price of a dollar in the epicenter of tourist-packed Rome was almost obscene. Unsurprisingly, as of 2024 the price has risen to around six Euros (or six and change in dollars).
Better still, in 1985, many of Rome’s high points were absolutely free of charge, as when I wandered into a church one Sunday and a city fairly swooned. Trust me: It was completely accidental.
—
At some point, I asked myself: What’s an underfunded atheist to do on a Sunday morning in Rome, when so many tourist attractions are closed? Eventually the lightbulb fired: people go to church on Sunday ― right? Not that I had much experience doing it back home.
Being in Rome meant not having to settle for a generic chapel somewhere in the suburbs, because the Yankee Stadium of organized religion was right there inside the city, inside the city: St. Peter’s Basilica, which I suppose is the capital of the Vatican. A free Sunday morning necessitated an atheist’s pilgrimage to Catholicism’s temporal HQ for Mass at St. Peter’s.
How hard could it be? Quite literally, it was time to put on my cleanest dirty shirt.
I tiptoed away from the pension before the morning rolls, jam, butter and coffee came out to the communal table. It was a pleasant, albeit strangely quiet walk to Termini, where I stopped for espresso and a pastry and boarded the subway, eventually hopping off a few blocks away from Vatican City.
There were plenty of people walking toward the Vatican, forming ragged but well-dressed columns down the sidewalks while listening to the entreaties of loose-footed vendors hawking souvenirs, novelties and genuine facsimile artifacts.
I merely followed the crowd into the vast expanse of St. Peter’s Square, feeling overwhelmed to see for myself the grandeur of this man-made-mountainous cathedral and numerous other historic structures ringing the piazza (later in the week I returned for a look at Vatican Museums, including the Sistine Chapel and Pietà, and a climb to the roof of St. Peter’s Basilica).
Then it hit me: It wasn’t so much the architecture as the throng. There must have been a couple of thousand visitors milling around, engulfed by the immense size of the setting. Most of them were queuing through an endless series of crowd control stanchions intended to impose some degree of order on the situation. It now looked as though everyone in Rome intended to attend Mass at St. Peter’s.
But would an earnest young unbeliever like me even be permitted inside? Could they discern that I was pagan? Might there be a litmus test, x-rays or a pop quiz?
Striking what I imagined as a humble pose of requisite piety, I readily observed that the lines were at least moving steadily forward. It was a gargantuan building, after all, one meant to accommodate Catholics from all over the world, many of whom were about to experience a bucket list highlight of their lives.
As a matter of principle, I shuffled headlong into the scrum, because there was no reason why I couldn’t pretend to be one of them.
The attendants were patient and friendly. At regular intervals, ever deeper within the labyrinth, someone would greet me in a variety of languages, from Croat to Tagalong, and ask whether I had a ticket. I’d specify English, smile, apologize for my negligence in arriving ticketless, and be told that it was okay, just go this or that way, and follow the next worker’s directions.
These diversions routed me inexorably toward the right side, followed by a big left turn into an immense doorway on the side of St. Peter’s, and when the dust at last settled I was instructed to have a quite pleasant seat in what I characterized as the “club-level” pews behind the altar. Evidently my brilliant disguise had worked, and I relished my role as faux pilgrim for a day.
Meanwhile, it was standing room only inside St. Peter’s, and the atmosphere didn’t seem very sacred at all. The expectant, edgy vibe mimicked a football stadium’s feel just prior to kickoff, with nervous energy and mounting excitement. Having had little experience with religious ecstasy, I surmised that perhaps a dosage of peyote would have helped to properly align my attitude.
I’d brought along my fully manual Pentax, but left the flash apparatus back in the room because I didn’t want to be disrespectful about the solemn premise of the church service, and so it genuinely shocked me when suddenly, hundreds of flashbulbs started popping. Heads tilted and turned, and I saw a nun clambering onto the shoulders of another nun, hugging a stone column and snapping photos one-handed with a snazzy automatic.
Inexplicably, the Sunday service at St. Peter’s in Rome had morphed into a rock and roll show. Then I saw the precise reason for the bedlam. Advancing slowly down the aisle, no more than 20 feet away from my assigned seat, walked the Pope himself, John Paul II, the former Karol Wojtyła, amid universal clamor and unrestrained adoration, throughout which perhaps the sole prim and proper hombre in the whole holy juke joint was me, a bona fide American heartland heretic.
I had enough light to get two shots of my own, although in retrospect the combined flash-power of the others had the basilica’s interior shining bright as day.
And so it was that I went to Mass in Rome and did that liturgical thing with the Pope, who wasn’t to be found after all in Father Guido Sarducci’s renowned pizza pie ― or, for that matter, Woody Allen’s. But would my good fortune hold out a few days later up in Turin?
—
The bus conductor was obtrusively perfumed, immaculately groomed, and possessed an epochal five o’clock shadow just after lunch.
His bureaucratic spit and polish provided suitable embellishment for escalating anguish: chest heaving, arms unfurled and palms outstretched, he glared dramatically at the wad of Italian banknotes crumpled in my hand, then peered skyward, operatically enunciating his indignation in Italian.
I could only imagine the conductor’s thoughts.
Why me? Why must I be the one to correct the ignorant American? And on this perfectly gorgeous summer’s day, when I might be tending my garden plot or enjoying a lovely wine out on the terrace?
Fellow passengers remained resolutely still, their faces buried in newspapers, avoiding the dispute, which was the silly and inconsequential matter of my failure to possess a valid bus ticket for passage into rural Italy. It wasn’t even my fault.
Well, maybe not. As with most crises, it began innocently enough.
Accompanied by a shopping bag filled with pork sandwiches and bottles of Carslberg, and encumbered with luggage now expanded to two pieces with the purchase of a cheap, exceedingly ugly black and white checkered gym bag during market day somewhere in Greece (the selling point was a usable shoulder strap), I boarded the northbound train at Termini for the ride from Rome to Turin, home to the fabled burial shroud ― and Euro-crooner Paulo Conte.
A young, raven-haired beauty at the Turin tourist information office helpfully examined the postal address I offered her, and announced solemnly that Pecetto was not a street in the city, as I’d mistakenly assumed. Rather, it was a village called Pecetto Torinese, out yonder in the hinterlands. This was an unanticipated complication.
But wherever Pecetto was, I was compelled to find it. Cousin Don was visiting there, staying with his friend Scott, a teacher at Turin’s international school. The young lady gestured across the square to a row of regional buses, assuring me that transit to Pecetto would be very easy. Buses departed regularly, she said, smiling: “You may buy the ticket on board.”
I deposited my bags in left luggage (how hard could it be circle back for them later?), and found the transport stop she’d indicated. There were two different types of bus, municipal and regional; as I was soon to learn, only the municipal variety sold tickets on board. I did my best to decipher the Italian language schedules, and boarded.
Setting off, all was peaceful until the conductor began breathing vituperation, his incomprehensible rebukes increasingly florid, to the point where bodily removal seemed a likely fate, and then … poof.
Nothing at all.
He stopped, belched, shrugged, straightened his tie, and made for the front of the bus, muttering to himself all the while. An elderly man seated in front of me, who’d kept quiet throughout the performance, turned around and whispered, “You may ride, he cares not, but please, you are on the wrong bus.”
At that precise moment, I glimpsed two road signs, one pointing to Pecetto, seven kilometers away, and the second heralding our imminent arrival in Chieri ― obviously not where I wanted to be. Completely by accident, the conductor had enabled me to make a necessary correction. The bus stopped in Chieri’s main square, and still blushing, I brushed hurriedly past my tormentor and hustled to the sidewalk.
Focused on me were dozens of suspicious eyes attached to youthful, sullen and generally unshaven men, presumably without gainful employment, some napping, others smoking, all of them combining to induce a stifling paranoia. Immediately, I began retracing the bus route back to the previous fork in the road as though absolutely certain of my actions.
However, there was a new plan. It was time for a bracing walk.
Two hours later, a narrow lane crested atop a gentle rise, with vineyards all around, and Pecetto came into sight.
A dense jumble of tile-roofed houses was arranged around a small hill, the town’s church steeple naturally dominant at the apex. Somewhere in this village, Don was present. Finding him would prove my fledgling ability to follow a plan to fruition, even if inelegant and mishap-ridden.
He’d provided me with his travel itinerary, which was amazing. You mean tourists have plans? I didn’t, but had surmised that Italy fit the guesstimate of my whereabouts and would be the best place for us to meet initially. Don asked me to telephone Scott from Rome and let him know my arrival time.
This was a seemingly simple task that I first neglected, and then botched. I cannot explain this lifelong phobia about making telephone calls, only that it plagues me to this very day. Worse, the stolid metal Italian pay phones in Rome kept spitting out my Lira coins, until someone finally told me that tokens alone could be used. Supposedly these were available at newsstands, and yet I failed to locate any.
Consequently, my Pecetto host was entirely unaware I was coming. But the walk from Chieri to Pecetto had been a rejuvenating joy, almost a testament to the virtues of serendipity. The landscape on all sides was daubed in greens, blues and reds (those ubiquitous roofs). There were barking dogs, lazy cows and majestic horses, with plenty of fresh air, tall grass and vines. Tiny cars hissed past me way too fast, but even this was tolerable.
At the very first café to be encountered in town, I ordered a cola and unfolded my battered note paper. My halting query in ridiculous Italian was answered in perfect English by a cheerful middle-aged woman who’d lived in California during the first five years of her previous marriage (she told all during the course of my second cola). My path ran across the street and up the hill: “At the top, go right, and watch the street numbers. Have fun!”
Soon I found the small stucco apartment house, set back off the lane and surrounded by a fence in the typical European fashion, with numbered buzzers for alerting the inhabitants to unlatch the gate. I buzzed Scott’s number. Nothing happened. Then I noticed the gate was ajar, so I walked to the entryway and knocked.
Still nothing happened.
The drill was repeated, with the same results. It was early evening by now, shadows dancing and the brilliant sun steadily lessening in intensity. I began exploring some of the side streets, uncertain what to do next, as I’d not yet seen signage for any sort of lodging.
Around seven, seated atop the stone wall across the street, I spied an unfamiliar male emerge from the house, followed by a worldly Hoosier-born educator with a prominent proboscis and a soon-to-be-famous blue jacket.
It was Scott and Don. I met them at the gate.
“Doc Barry, I presume?”
Don just may have been as stunned by the pounds I’d already lost as the fact of my abrupt appearance, emerging as I had from the literal gloaming to stand before him just as he and Scott were about to walk to a cocktail reception nearby. Either way, it was as close to speechlessness from my cousin as we’re ever likely to witness.
“Goddamn,” Don said.
(It’s a favorite epithet of his.)
He looked at Scott before adding another, this time for posterity’s sake.
“Goddamn!”
Next: A week in Pecetto, the Parisian exception, and my Italian conclusion in Milan and Venice.
