Dark cobbles and yellow walls of Florence
We woke up on a planet called Italy. It was a completely different landscape: The grassy fields of France and craggy slopes of Switzerland had given way to hot, red-and-green hills covered with acacia-shaped pines and yellow stuccoed buildings with red tile roofs. We were suddenly in Mediterranean Europe.
Having slept well since eluding the border guards, we awoke reasonably refreshed when the conductor arrived with breakfast. The one nice touch in first class--besides the bedpan--was that they brought breakfast to us, so we didn't have to go get it from the dining car. Lest you suppose that breakfast was included in the ticket, I will point out that we had to pay extra for it.
The breakfast was interesting in itself. Hoping for a first taste of Italian coffee, I was a mite surprised to see the brand on offer: "Maxwell". I believe that this was a sly attempt to cash in on the gourmet image of Maxwell House, which--believe it or not--is actually considered a luxury coffee in Europe, or at least in Sweden. The coffee, sadly, lived up to its name and not its nationality. It was accompanied by juice, croissants, and little containers of something called "Tastes Like Fresh Milk", suggesting that it either was not fresh or was not milk. Again, I sensed the influence of American publicists; you may be familiar with their fondness for ridiculous product names like "Gee, This Tastes Much Less Like Shit Than Most Fake Butter".
Since both we and the train had broken our fast, there was nothing to do but sit watching the hills tick by and waiting for Firenze. Every once in a while a hill would saunter by with an impressive, unspecifiable medieval structure on top. These alternated with clusters of stuccoed buildings with green shutters, and the occasional train station announcing a town with a name suggesting cold cuts.
Many cities have several train stations. Florence appears to have one train station with many names. Once we had sorted this out and realized that we were entering the station, I made a frantic attempt to dismantle the bunkbeds in our cabin, a process which I hopelessly bungled, resulting in many sounds of twisting metal and the loss of one pair of socks. We fled onto the platform and into the city.
Dark cobbles and yellow walls of Florence
I had not been to Florence in many years and was surprised to learn that it had been colonized by the United States. Every voice we heard belonged to an American with awful Italian: "BON JOARNOW, DOE-VAY AY EEL DWO-MOW, PUR FAVORAY?" This was hard for me to take, because in addition to my usual dislike of running into Americans outside of America, I was forced to swallow the realization that I too was an American with awful Italian! Aaaaaragh! My desperation increased to fainting level when I realized I didn't even have a map and had to buy one at the station kiosk. Beaten into humility, I hung my head and bought a map, along with a baseball cap with a picture of Michelangelo's David, and a label saying "Michelangelo's David" for anyone still too stupid to get it.
(Actually, that is a lie--I bought no such thing. The tiny sliver of pride I was able to maintain in Italy derives from the fact that I did not buy any tacky tourist claptrap. In fact, my purchases there were limited to a whole bunch of postcards which I neglected to send. Don't be surprised if I hand you one when I get back.)
Equipped with our new map, we made our way to the hostel at which Annelie had reserved us a room--again via the Internet. We were a bit more nervous about this one, since the confirmation we had received seemed a bit vague and was strewn with extraneous characters, as though some HTML program had started to translate it to Greek, and then decided against it. We found the place without problem but failed completely to get inside. Apparently nobody was up yet, it being only nine in the morning. We found a telephone number and got through to the proprietor, who said she would arrive in ten minutes, failing to specify that she meant ten Italian minutes.
This gave us plenty of time to check out the Duomo, Brunelleschi's masterpiece of ecclesiatical architecture, of which the Florentines are so rightly proud. It is busy and colorful, but so beautifully proportioned that the effect is more stately than shocking.
The Duomo, photographed by Americans for 600 years
When the proprietor turned up, she was very friendly--to Annelie. Quite curiously, she completely ignored me, as though I had merely been hired to carry the suitcases. More curiously still, she apparently had gathered from the papers (lost when we got there, but eventually found), that Ädel was Annelie's first name, not her last name. This, plus the fact that she seemed to like addressing Annelie this way, had an amusing effect: "Adel, we have a lovely room for you. Adel, it dates from twelve century, very historic. Put your bags here, Adel. I must tell you, Adel, here you can be quiet. Very quiet."
This last bit had me confused, since to the best of my knowledge, Annelie was not famous throughout Europe for noisiness, until I worked out that it was a bad calque from Italian "quieto". The intended meaning was "you needen't worry". This reassurance was necessary, since to our bemusement, not only did our room not have a lock, it did not have a normal door. In fact, there was almost nothing normal about our room. I don't know whether it really dated from the twelfth century, but it was intriguing nonetheless: the ceiling of the room was formed by a pair of brick vaults, with the walls so low that I nearly hit my head on the ceiling.
This room had a single, oval window, but it did have electricity, which was fortunate, because when the heat of the day set in, along with the realization that the conference started in a day, we decided to spend the hottest part of the afternoon working on Annelie's presentation in the medieval gloom of our chamber. A perfect spot to tweak one's PowerPoint animations.
Annelie, safe in the vault
We had the bad fortune to arrive in Italy during a heat wave; again and again, people told us that the weather was not usually this bad. Do you know any tourist who takes comfort in hearing this? It helps about as much as a parent saying, "Oh, dear, he usually doesn't soak people's shirts with hot coffee."
When the heat abated, we explored the city a bit. Florence is certainly a lovely city, by any standard. But it was darker and grayer than I remembered--what had impressed me were the yellow walls everywhere, and the dark green shutters. But most impressive were are all the gorgeous churches and palazzi (many Italianate in style, I noticed), as festooned with American tourists as with gargoyles.
The American occupying forces continued to get me down, not only by their presence but also in the effect they had had on the local service workers. These poor people had obviously seen enough Americans to last them awhile. I quickly learned that when ordering a coffee, I had to ask for "un espresso", because if I said "un caffè", they inevitably countered with "Un caffè espresso o un caffè americano?" I restrained my urge to say "Qui hanno Starbucchi?"
The coffee was good. And, to my surprise, the pasta was also amazingly good: fresh, and slathered with perfectly concocted sauces. I had always thought that pasta, like pizza (in the humble opinion of this author), was made just about as well in North America as in Italy. But this pasta was waaaaaay better than anything I had had in the US, I must say. I have to start checking out Boston's North End more carefully.
The only problem in the restaurants was the furious abandon with which the waitresses ignored us. I think it is safe to assume that this had something to do with our membership in the David-baseball-cap-wearing class; in one pizzeria, I watched several tables of Italians get served before we got so much as a menu. To avoid our gaze, the waitress practically threw a cloth over her head as she went past our table. Finally, after I had chopped several pieces off of the edge of the table with my knife and used them to light a signal fire, she brought us an ashtray. To get the menus, I had to resort to desperate measures.
More charming old stuff in Florence
Wandering around Florence during the cooler hours, gazing at the buildings and trying to decipher the signs, was pleasant; we spent a long time in a place called the "Vietato d'Affiggere Cartelli". One charming detail repeated around the city was the plaques on the walls of buildings commemorating visits by famous people, with marble-carved inscriptions like "In this building, in 1820, the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley declared, "These salami sandwiches are a damn sight better'n what you get back home, innit, George?"
One sign that appeared all over Italy was a rainbow-colored flag with the word "PACE", for "peace". The Italians were very clear about their rejection of America's war on Iraq. I can't imagine that this made the situation any better for the American tourists. In fact, I did see one tourist couple wearing buttons saying "Americani Per Pace" ("Americans for peace"). The buttons were professionally made, and I wondered whose idea this singularly specialized venture was. I also wondered if perhaps these two tourists were able to get menus...