Italian Hours

While Linda was away in Pennsylvania to attend the birth of grandson Jonathan Allen, I took the opportunity to visit Rome, and with long-time friend Cheryl made a trip to the Amalfi Coast and Pompeii. I had a wonderful day on each side of that trip to roam my favorite neighborhoods and galleries in Rome, and to see other old friends. After the orderliness of Vienna, Rome seemed initially like a maelstrom. Cars routinely cross through intersections against the light, whether or not there are pedestrians in the crosswalks. (Jaywalking is usually the safest way to cross a Roman street.) The sidewalks are narrow and crowded, frequently cramped or blocked wholly by cars that climb curbs to eke out a bit more parking space; like the cars, pedestrians move at a variety of speeds, many carrying suitcases, briefcases, and shopping bags, and families amble along three or four abreast, blocking the way; some people stop in the middle of a walk or in front of a shop doorway to chat; some amble as unpredictably as butterflies, talking on cell phones, free hand flying like an orchestra conductor's. Motorscooters, buses, trucks, and cars mill through the streets and intersections like jams of twigs, branches, and logs floating down a river. It is freedom and creativity and noisy impatience and frustrated exuberance. I love being in Rome. Rome is alive.

Heading South...

It rained heavily on the Saturday of our trip, and the highway from Rome to Naples took on a typically Italian rhythm, with cars and trucks moving like schools of fish, weaving, surging, and sidling by us, most of the drivers paying scant attention to how far they were drifting into our lane as they passed, oblivious to the expletives Cheryl blurted at them. After we left the autostrada just south of Naples, navigated a few small-town traffic jams, and slowly climbed the narrow road into the mountains, spectacular views (or so I was told) were wholly obscured by rain and fog. By mid-afternoon we were in Amalfi, a small town built into a steep volcanic mountainside rising out of the sea, and the rain was easing up. After we arranged for the car to be parked, we scaled five flights of stairs to reach our hotel; we checked in and then emerged into gray, drips, and sprinkles to explore the steep town slopes. Lots and lots of tourist shops heavy on the Amalfi lemon theme lined both sides of the main street and stretched along the waterfront. Most displayed the usual t-shirts, mugs, and refrigerator magnets; a few offered locally made majolica and other kinds of pottery. The restaurants were, for the most part, pizza joints--the alimentary equivalent of t-shirts, mugs, and refrigerator magnets. But we had come to Amalfi for the scenery, not the food, and the views were transfixing. The town is a maze of vertical cobblestone lanes and winding alleys; steep staircases carved in stone tunnels give the place the feel of worm holes in the timbers of a sunken ship, and we would wind, ascend, and descend to pop out on tiny squares lined with shops and flower boxes.

We browsed ceramics shops and other souvenir shops more like we were gallery visitors than shoppers. There was a tiresome uniformity to them--except for one. Along the waterfront we stepped into a deep, dark junk store--like a cave in the sea cliff. The shop was dimly lit, with a creaky wooden floor like a boat deck, and unfinished, grimy wooden tables and shelves on which rested dusty animal figures, curios, and dishes of wood, glass, and majolica. The shop seemed to be run by two young men, who were industrious about answering our questions and showing us articles. When we entered, we had noticed a very elderly man in a wheel chair, sitting between tables of wares, wearing an oversized blue knit wool cap on his head and a three-day growth of white whiskers on his drooping face, staring up at us with half-closed eyes rimmed red, looking very like a poverty-stricken, homeless grandfather smurf. Half visible under a black shadow blanketing half the room, he would glide on his wheels out into the dim light a few inches from time to time to blurt out numbers and then slip silently back under his rock; I realized that he was the owner, telling the clerks the prices of items we were examining. Cheryl found a small silver lion that served as an incense burner and asked the price. The man in the wheel chair answered, "3,000 euros." We made our way back out to the waterfront.

Sunday morning we were back on the winding coastal highway, so narrow that at spots cars and buses had to pull to the shoulder or back to a wide spot to let oncoming traffic pass. We drove up the coast to Positano and on to Naples, stopping from time to time to take photos and to browse produce and souvenir stands. At one point, as we passed a stand on the opposite side of the road from us, Cheryl spotted three puppies rolling around under its tables; she wanted to go back for pictures, so she pulled into the parking space of the next stand we came to. There was only the one space, and the family running the stand was clearly displeased when Cheryl emerged from the car and walked back toward the other stand. I thought it necessary, at that point, to purchase something from the place whose parking lot we had just usurped, so I got out to examine the boxes of apples, oranges, and lemons, and the thin, gnarly red peppers drying on strings in the sun. An obese elderly woman with bristling red hair and weathered skin red-brown like the drying peppers sat in a cane rocker in the shade of the awning. Beside her was a box of over-sized Amalfi lemons. In a deep, raspy voice, every few seconds, she shouted "Zitrone!" (lemon) at me and pointed to the box. I nodded--repeatedly--to Johnny-One-Note of the produce world. After I had feigned interest in their wares for several minutes, I bought an overpriced string of peppers; I looked up to see Cheryl returning. Freedom. We drove on toward Naples and, seeing a sign for Pompeii, turned onto the exit ramp on a whim and, at the bottom of the ramp, found ourselves directly at the entrance to the archaeological park.

Pompeii

Pompeii died young. An archaeologist's paradise for what it reveals of Roman houses, businesses, and daily life, the city has been dug out--brought back to life--for only a little more than a century. Many of its walls and buildings are in large measure reconstructed, and the valuable artifacts, frescoes, murals, and mosaics have been relocated to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, safe from weather and thieves.

I prefer the ruins of Ostia Antica or Volterra. Though prominent, they are not so famous as Pompeii because their ends were not so dramatic. Cities that died of old age, as I hope to, have more attraction for me than the resurrected ones. Mark Twain noted something to the effect that Italy makes its living by displaying the body of its dead grandmother to tourists. Perhaps it is the impermanence evident from the ruins in Italy that, paradoxically, evokes the sense of timelessness I also feel there. The aged smurf in the wheelchair and the zitrone woman, ruins in their own right, may well have carried the DNA of some of the people who perished in Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D. I imagine the woman has always croaked "Zitrone!" all day with the regularity of the surf, while the aged smurf lurks eternally in his shop sea-cave waiting for a visitor to snorkel in and pay 3,000 euros for a lion-shaped incense burner.

Two days later I was home in Vienna, picking up my loving companion at the airport, and loving her all the more as I saw her glow while she talked about her beautiful new grandson and the new life he was bringing for all of us. Timeless....

Filler

Two Airports, Two Cultures

The Vienna airport, though small, is efficiently arranged and convenient in a variety of ways. Security checks are done at the individual gates, so there is no huge, crowded hall to process through, as is the case at so many international airports. I was able to check in quickly for the flight to Rome on Italy's national airline, Alitalia, and just a few minutes after I reached my gate I was through all the checks. Our flight left right on time. Apart from the orderliness of the process, one singularly Teutonic feature stood out--the announcements. One, delivered in crisp, authoritarian tones first in German and then in English, was the following: "Passengers so-and-so and so-and-so, proceed to Gate B3. You are delaying the plane!" Inflicting guilt, public humiliation, and harumphing probably work well here. In Italy, that announcement would have been met with a shrug.

Although my arrival in Rome was simple, with minimal bureaucracy, that was not the case at my departure. At Fiumicino Airport, Alitalia has perhaps 200 desks for checking in passengers. On entering the departure hall, I located my flight on a large electronic board that indicated which bancarella was serving passengers to Vienna: "Desk 118." There was, however, no one staffing Desk 118; the nearest desk with staff was three down, and a long line queued back from it. So I joined it. Bewildered passengers in the line, I overheard at times, were heading for Brussels, Madrid, and other points in Europe; they, too, had joined this queue because no one was at the desks assigned for those flights. As they got to the front of the line, the attendant checked in some of them and sent others to join other lines. After 30 minutes, I reached the desk and handed my reservation sheet and passport to the clerk, saying "Vienna." I anticipated that I would be dismissed to rejoin the roiling masses, and I wondered whether a modern Sysiphus--instead of rolling his boulder to the hilltop and then having it roll back down on him, for eternity--would be doomed to move from one line to another forever, in Fiumicino, dragging huge leather bags for his boulder. But the clerk came back, "Window or aisle?" I processed through security easily enough, as the x-ray technician chatted with an attractive colleague and ignored my bag, another made me remove my belt and watch and put them through the scanner, and another chatted distractedly on a cell phone. I proceeded to my designated gate, my carryon bag and Herald-Trib with crossword puzzle in hand, with an hour to go for the flight. At the gate, at the announced boarding time, I looked up to see the sign over the check-in desk change suddenly from "Alitalia/Vienna" to "Air France/Paris." A polite query to the staff person managing the desk got me the information that my flight was now set to leave from a gate 300 yards away. As I headed off, trailed vaguely by straggling fellow passengers for Vienna, I noticed that the large electronic boards continued to show the original departure gate for my flight. We left an hour late, but it didn't matter. Rome is timeless....