Ciampino, or at least in my experience, wasn’t so much of an airport as on long and winding path from planes to a public transportation circus. I was part of a herd of travelers. We made our way outside the terminal and were faced with too many options for how to get from this block of concrete to the heart of the city. Businessmen peddle modes of transport. Door one: Terravision. All you need is 5euro and a valid boarding pass stub. Door two: navigating the metro, bus, and train. I see it as a way to see the city and save a couple euro. Door three: taxi. The price of admission is 40euro or so plus that horrible feeling of knowing you could have bought 15 gelatos, or 5 pizzas, or two and a half nights in out hostel… I pick public transport. I’m an independent girl, but above all, I am curious and cheap. I buy a train and bus ticket and head out to catch the next bus. During all of this Gimpy and I have been trying with mediocre success to text or talk to each other.
Andrew Gim is studying in Rome with all the Notre Dame Architecture students. By default, he knows how to get around, a good amount of Italian, and where to find the best gelato. I gotta admit he’s not bad company either. Because of this, it troubled me when I couldn’t get in good touch with him. But we had a pretty central meeting spot. It seemed everyone on my plane was headed to Termini Station. I’d be fine.
Waiting for the shuttle I met a mother and daughter from South America, or so I assume. The mother was maybe in her late 50s and the daughter late 20s or so. The mother only spoke Spanish, but the daughter spoke decent English. I don’t know if we exchanged names. We only talked a little bit, but we helped each other to figure out the right shuttle to take. We were going to the same place. It was nice to already be meeting people from different place than I, but then again I was still only a stone’s throw from an international airport.
The shuttle was easy enough. I found my train which was just about to depart. I should have had about 5 to 7 minutes between arrival and departure at the station, but I guess things were running off schedule. I accidentally didn’t compost my ticket. So long as I didn’t run into any comptrollers, it was fine with me. The train was a little different from the French ones but still very indicative of the euro lifestyle. It wasn’t too packed. I found myself a seat next to a stranger who had no idea who I was or where I was from or what I was going to do. We made no polite conversation. Our eyes never once met. He or she forgot my face and my existence just as fast as I forgot them. I looked out the window at the landscape passing by. The houses were so colorful. The land was pretty beautiful in this naked kinda way. It wasn’t spoiled like so many old cities tend to be. It was just left alone save a strawberry colored apartment building or a kiwi duplex, like concrete flowers up and down the hills. It was all too pure and too pretty. I was on that train for about 10 minutes before I realized I was going in the wrong direction. Damn! And I was supposed to meet Gimpy in 30 minutes. I got off at the next stop and got ready to catch the train in the other direction.
The sky had turned a bit grey and it began to drizzle. The stop was just that. The train simply stopped for about 30 seconds as a half dozen of us got off. I stepped on something that resembled a platform and faced a large hill and wire fence. There was one sign signifying that my comrades and I were on platform 2. We were exposed to the rain which had now turned to sleet; or hail. I couldn’t tell. I was dumbfounded. The train had not yet pulled away and I saw no kind of building or pathway to other platforms. One of the other former passengers began to walk towards the fence and continued on through a hole and past it. The others were just standing facing the train as if they could win this staring contest. The train pulled away and a building appeared behind it. A large dog appeared out of nowhere. It was pretty docile and I assumed it belonged to one of the other former passengers. In what I thought was a gesture of disregard for safety in the absence of any other option, we all crossed two or three pairs of tracks and entered the building.
This white, brick box had two rooms and a ticket window. One room had about a dozen chairs and a simple rectangular table. It was about 15 feet by 12 feet. The other room housed a garbage can and I guess the large dog I had seen before. Both rooms were decorated with unimpressive graffiti in varying degrees of vulgarity and just as much of a variety of languages. Almost immediately most of the people there with me left through the back door. They had made prior arrangements and were apparently at the correct stop. I was left there with a man in his early thirties carrying a large backpack. The large dog seemed to be a friend of his and the both of them appeared to be waiting for someone. I looked up at the screen to find out when my train was coming back.
There had to be something I didn’t understand. I looked around for a map of the train line. I found all kinds of interesting line drawings and tables with numbers and such, but not a single map. It took me a good ten minutes to find out the name of the station in which I was becoming discouraged about my navigation skills. I called Gimpy to let him know what had happened. I have already accepted that this weekend would eat away at my cell phone credit, but I figure I don’t buy the minutes because they’re pretty to look at. The next train would not be coming for another hour and a half. I asked Gimpy if he could direct me another way. He told me that he could not. He had never taken the train in the wrong direction before. I think I’ve taken every form of transportation in the wrong direction before, save an airplane of course. (Only, in retrospect, the trip from Paris to Rome was a voyage heading in completely the wrong direction. I would not rectify my mistake for four days.)
I prepared myself for the wait. Since I walked into the O’Hare terminal that would bring me to France, I had become a pro at letting time pass. I can daydream in bouts of up to 20 minutes. I create little tasks for myself and afford to each of them the kind of importance that one might give to the completion of a professional résumé or income tax declaration. The most meaningless of responsibilities becomes my sole purpose for the time allotted. (You see when you are pressed to finish something, the time you have never seems to be enough. Minutes fall out of the sky and you only catch a few out of every 10 or 15. This phenomenon is catastrophic when dealing with matters of true consequence: preparing for the birth of a child, studying for standardized tests, finding all the heart pieces in a Zelda game. But I was dealing with matters of false consequence. If I could not complete them, I would immediately make it my next mission to forget about them. I am very good at that one. I have never failed.)
I walked slowly around the room, becoming familiar with my surroundings. This was my first task. I gave myself 5 minutes to complete it. The large dog and the man were still in the other room, waiting. I studied the screen and all the posters on the walls. They helped me to practice some Italian pronunciation. When you have no time to learn a language, it is best to have very expressive eyes and to at least know how to pronounce the words. This way you could take a word like “Pâques”, for example, and know that in Italian it’s “Pasqua”. I was studying the graffiti when the man and dog left. In forty minutes I had already gotten 5 tasks out of the way. My trip to Rome had so far been more productive than my last week of finals at ND.
I sat down to finish off a very important bag of chips and surf the radio stations on my phone. In the middle of my work, a couple entered through the back door. They appeared to be having an argument. I barely looked up at them. I think it’s best to give people their privacy. Then I remembered that they were in a public train stop and I turned down the volume on my radio. If anything, I would catch a few Italian words to add to my vocabulary. Eavesdropping is a very good way to learn colloquial terms and tune your ears to the melodies of a foreign language.
I found myself able to understand the conversation and I was deeply disappointed. I think they were speaking English because of me. I don’t know where I looked like I was from, but it was obvious that English was their second or third language. The irony of the attempt to have a “private” argument in my presence was amusing to me. As they walked on through the door to my right I credited the situation to my extraordinary ability to blend in to any culture. I convinced myself that due to my gift espionage was still a viable career path. I gave myself the next 15 minutes to think about my future and daydream about the life of a spy.
I was disguised as a waitress, bugging my target with an elaborate monitoring device as he accepted the bill I graciously handed him when three people came through the back door. Two girls in their early teen years were traveling with their mother or aunt. They were Italian and were waiting for the same train as I. I had about 20 minutes left in my wait. I had eaten my chips, rearranged my backpack, learned some Italian, walked through the two rooms, decided against a life of espionage, and “feng-shuied” the room. I was done with all my important tasks for the time being. It’s a good idea only to plan up until about the last 10 or 20 minutes of a long wait as I never like to lose out on the integrity of waiting. There should always be some time where you let yourself be aware of the situation or else you won’t remember that you assessed the comfort of the establishment’s accommodations when you look back, but that you spent 10 minutes going from one chair to another and deciding that although they were more or less the same, one in particular was best for the most subjective and forgettable of reasons. It’s good to remember oneself in the proper light.
The door opened and closed several times letting cold air in as future passengers came in and out. They were as anxious for this train as I was. I checked my backpack straps to make sure they had not been cut in the knife-fight. I had had some intense daydreams. It was possible. I walked outside.
I hear the train and in 9 seconds I will be able to see it. I make the decision now that I will not validate my ticket. I tell myself I’m sticking it to the man, though it has already been paid for. Unsubstantiated or not, I only feel pride as I rebel and walk onto the train, a criminal in the eyes of the Roman penal code. I place myself in a seat with the self-confidence and swagger of someone other than myself as if I hadn’t just had to wait almost two hours because I took the train towards the countryside. There is music coming through my headphone. It provides a lovely break from what I find to be the whiny voice of Italian DJs. Leona Lewis is crooning about that bleeding heart of hers and I’m looking out the window seeing the same movie as before in reverse.
I ready myself to swallow Rome whole. “I don’t care what they say. I’m in love with you. They try to pull me away, but I know that it’s true… you cut me open and I keep bleeding keep keep bleeding…” Leona, this does not sound like the best of relationships to be fighting for. But we’ll have to chat about it later, I am about to discover Roma.
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