I was cold. I was tired. I was hungry. But I didn't care. I'd just spent the day in Rome, and then I headed two hours north by train to Viterbo, Italy, to stay with a friend from Ohio University who is studying there this semester. The original plan had been for me to call Marshall when I left Rome, but of course my cell phone, which was supposed to work, did not. So it was on to the contingency plan that we'd made over AIM the night just before I left Swansea. I'd chuckled before at the thought of actually following it but couldn't have been gladder that we had it.
Scusi
dov'e la Piazza dell'Erbe?
I was supposed to meet him at a piazza toward the center of town that he knew the locals would be able to direct me to and would be full of people. If he hadn't heard from me by 9 p.m., he would come find me there.
When I got off the train, I asked the first friendly-looking old lady I saw. It was the sixth time I'd used Italian that day, and it was the first time an Italian actually understood what I was trying to say. She answered right back, much more quickly than I could understand after being out of practice for a year and having only taken two years of the language to begin with.
I managed to ask if she spoke English, and she smiled and shook her head. But then she said, Straight right and pointed toward where she wanted me to go.
I asked three more times, but I found the place. Marshall showed up right on time. When we got to his apartment, he had homemade chicken soup ready, just taken off the stove by his American roommate Levi. I'd never tasted anything so good. The slice of mushroom and tomato pizza I'd had eight and a half hours before during my walking tour of Rome had long been digested.
We chatted a bit, and then I practically passed out. I'd been traveling and site-seeing for more than 39 hours. It was completely worth it.
In Rome, I had followed a route mapped out in my Lonely Planet travel guide. I started at the Trevi Fountain that the movie La Dolce Vita made timeless, looped through the endless vie e piazze to the Pantheon, ended up at St. Angelo's Castle and the Vatican City. I toured St. Peter's Basilica and would have done the Sistine Chapel, but my back hurt from carrying my backpack and my feet were starting to ache. It was time to get to Viterbo.
My guidebook says Viterbo is Lazio's best-preserved medieval town, having survived bombings from World War II. Its claim to fame is that in the 12th century, cardinals came here to elect Catholic popes. It doesn't have much else, but then again neither does Swansea and it has more than three times the number of people Viterbo does.
I thought about my small attempts to communicate in Italian during my four-day weekend, most of them failed, ending in gesturing with emphasis on a couple of words and lots of si and no. I suppose I would have adapted if I'd studied somewhere that didn't speak English. My language skills obviously would have had to improve.
In Rome, it wasn't a problem. But in Viterbo, not many people speak good English. I made it around Rome with a bit of stumbling, but overall, my self-guided tour went well. I got to la Piazza dell'Erbe without too much trouble, and once I had Marshall as a guide, I was golden.
Generally, eating Italian food, drinking Italian wine and shopping for Italian clothes was great. When we went out, I tried Italian beer. Today, I took an Italian nap.
Soon enough, I'll be doing British stuff again. And when I get back, I think that'll be okay, too.
Jessica Cuffman is a senior journalism major. Send her an e-mail at jc334204@ohiou.edu.
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Jessica Cuffman
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