Hostel Environment

- Rome: Nov 28 to Dec 2 –

Goddamn dogs. Okay, so my Couch Surfing luck so far has been flawless. I’ve spoken with other people who have been amazed that I’m able to find hosts after sending out only two or three requests per city. Apparently people are used to sending up to 20 requests before finding a host. Well, friends, I employ some fancy selection tactics, and I craft every request with care, which apparently greatly improves my success. Plus, I have a killer profile. I’m a superstar at writing web profiles that people like. It’s a wonder I haven’t done better with online dating (yes, I’ve tried). But anyway, I was unable to find a host in Rome. No biggie. I’d budgeted for hostels from the beginning of the trip, so I don’t depend on finding hosts; but I also know that with my social habits, it’s possible that I could hole up unless I have someone to force me to interact. Maybe. I don’t know. Sometimes I’m under the impression that I’m socially quite normal, and that it’s everybody who are afraid to talk to people. Cowards, all of us.
So I book into a hostel. It seems like a sweet deal: 15 Euros a night, which includes blankets, pillow, breakfast and a pasta dinner with a glass of wine every night. So I book it. I go to my room and see two other backpacks already there; one has a Canadian flag on it. Okay, something to talk about there. Two girls enter the room – the owners of the backpack. They actually are from not-too-far from Toronto, so we form an immediate comradery, I feel. They explain that the final (fourth) bed in our room is to be occupied by an Australian backpacker they had met in… Somewhere else; I forget. He arrives quite shortly. I learn that one joke they have with him is that they give him a hard time about his age. I can’t tell how old he is, but I’m placing him in the high 20’s. I’m terrible at this game though. I’ll learn his age later.
We go do laundry, which is something we all had to do, then go to the free pasta dinner (small, and crap wine, but FREE!) and out for a short night walk in Rome. Okay, the social problem is resolved. I’ll simply cling like a flea to these people for my time in Rome. It’s an unspoken agreement that is made. They seem cool and friendly, and I’m immediately able to joke with them, so I revert into comfort. I also notice that the girls are generally a little more worrisome about some things than I am, which I think causes me to take the “hey, relax; don’t worry” role. I’m pretty cool anyway, so it’s a role I adapt well to. We wander until some time, I don’t know, then find our way back to the hostel.
Rome is the first of my cities that I’m visiting for the second time (well, in memorable history). It’s an interesting experience, since I’m trying to place things against their image in my memory, but it certainly looks like a different city. I don’t think I was paying attention before, or perhaps all this travelling and mental-map building has caused me to look at cities a little differently – a little more functionally (when last I visited Rome, I took the role of passenger; not really paying attention to the map, just following my sister).
Day 2 we get up and head for the Colloseum. Spell-check is calling me out on that one, but I’m sticking with it. It’s all right, I guess. I remember it being kind of but not really impressive, and it’s exactly as I remember it. Certainly not worth the 11 Euro regular price, but we bought Roma passes, which work out to be a decent deal, so it’s no biggie.

From Italy

After the Colloseum (relax, spell-check) we wander the nearby ruins. I can’t recall their name, but this is a much more satisfying experience than the Colloseum was. I try to use my imagination to recreate the bustling streets, the politicians, the Forum, the togas. We also come upon some orange trees, and me and the Old Man try to retrieve some of the higher-up and juicy-looking oranges using a long stick. Minimal success, but a fun diversion. There’s a ridiculously long line for seeing Augustus’ house for what it is. Just a few frescos in two rooms. The best part is the Forum. There used to be a city here, but now there is a hole. I can’t help but be a little reflective about the whole thing. Always thinking about mortality; anitcha.
We see more stuff, probably, then go back for the free dinner. There are a few flakes of meat in my vegetarian pasta, so I bring it to the attention of the hostel guy, but I do it in a very awkward way.
“I think there’s meat in this.”
“It could be, yeah.”
“Was it prepared with the meat sauce?”
“Maybe, yeah.”
“So you agree that this looks like meat?”
“Yeah.”
Long pause.
Me: “Okay.”
Hostel guy leaves. When he comes back a few minutes later, I managed to turn it into an actual complaint, instead of a series of questions:
“Sorry about that awkward interaction, I know it’s not your fault, but I’m a little upset that there’s meat in this. Can you tell the kitchen?”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
I’m making him out to be heartless and ignorant here, I think, but he wasn’t. I just think he knew what I was getting at, and didn’t know how to react, so he was waiting for me to make a specific request he might be able to fulfill.
Anyway, me, the Girls and the Old Man (oh, by now I had found out he was in his early 30s) go to a gelato place that I was told about by a wonderful girl in Berlin. It’s a little outside the main city, but a relatively close walk nonetheless. Man, oh, man, was the wonderful Berlin girl right. 3 Euros gets you FOUR scoops (each of a different flavour) in a big waffle cone. And this is in-house-made gelato. Top-quality stuff. Great flavours. We all agree this is the best thing, and that we’ll return the next night.
Next morning, Vatican. More idiocy with prohibited photo-taking. Again, I don’t care; I don’t take pictures of junky chapel ceilings; that’s for chumps. But it’s ridiculous that they even pretend to enforce a no-photo policy in the Sistine Chapel. People are snapping photos everywhere – the place is packed – and two “guards” walk around covering random cameras, saying, “no photo.” Then they walk away, and the person is free to continue taking pictures. What a joke. Who hasn’t seen the Sistine Chapel? It’s everywhere. There’s no way the extra money they make on postcards can justify what they pay these guards. Whatever; not my museum. Then into St. Peter’s Basilica. Nice. Oh, in between those, we allow ourselves to be a little ripped off on a meal. But that’s to be expected. And it wasn’t a huge rip-off. Anyway, we go back for the free dinner (doesn’t seem like we did much, but the line into the Vatican museum was a monster – took ages), then pretty much call it a night. After gelato.
Next day. Goddamn dogs. We want to get the most from our Roma passes, so we head towards other sights listed in the pass guide. It’s a little outside town – we take a bus to get there. We then walk a good distance away from civilization, passing several busy and narrow streets before getting to the site, and it’s closed, but a friendly little white dog greets us. There’s two old men sitting on the nearby curb. Ah, the dog must be theirs. It runs up to us, and we pet it (well, my companions do, but I wisely resist). Well, time to go; good-bye, dog! We walk back toward where the bus dropped us off, and the dog is still following us, occasionally running ahead and falling behind, but always in our general vicinity. Okay, these guys don’t seem to mind their dog going far, but surely the dog will realize soon how far we’ve gone and will want to turn back. Several minutes later, closer to those busy roads, and no such thing has happened. The dog is distracted occasionally by other people and animals, but does not leave our side. What a stupid dog. We get to the busy road and don’t know what to do – this dog is jumping on and off the road, oblivious to the amount of momentum being carried by these roaring metal beasts. My mind goes back to the day last Halloween when me and Nemo stumbled upon a dog running around the streets of Toronto. It didn’t end well.
We wait for traffic to calm down a little, then call it towards us on the side of the road to make sure it doesn’t just step out. We had passed a large parkland area a short while ago, so we make our way towards there, hoping that the dog will grow distracted long enough for us to leave it in the safety of the park. We lure it in, and indeed it does get distracted by some people sitting at a booth for something, so we take the opportunity to jet back to the bus stop. Phew, problem solved. As we wait, we can peer down the narrow street (narrow because it’s surrounded by walls) at the entrance to the park. I dread seeing that dog’s head poke round the entrance, and we all joke about it, as if it couldn’t happen. Ten minutes later, no bus and no dog. The bus makes its approach, and we’re almost in the clear, when the dog pokes its head out, followed by a person who appears to be calling it back. Ah, this poor soul is now where we once were – the accidental guardians of the dog that is clearly not meant to live in such a world. But what can we do? We board the bus and leave, the dog and its guardians behind us. I don’t think there’s any chance that dog made it through the night; it was just too stupid.
Rest of Rome passed without incident as far as I can remember. More gelato, exploration, human bonding, and finally, a departure. I took the day train to Bern, because I was told by a nice girl in the hostel that the view from the trains in Switzerland is spectacular – a fact I was soon to verify.