(Image courtesy: New Indian Express)L Suresh traces the footprints of Obelix across Italy to find out why the Romans are crazy.
If you are going to Italy, haven’t opted for a typical tours and travel package, aren’t being sponsored by your company and most importantly, haven’t gotten over the fact that the Euro is whipping the Indian Rupee 55 to one, you’ll want to cut this out and stick it to the inside compartment of your hard luggage.
One of the first things you need to remember when you are making your travel plans is that most hotels in Italy are named after monuments – when they are not named after the Mona Lisa. So, however meaningless this may sound, make sure you specify to your travel agent that you intend staying at the hotel and not at the monument. I wouldn’t be saying this without reason - my travel agent promptly cancelled my hotel booking when I told her that I would prefer to stay at The Forum – perhaps she thought that I would be camping at the ruins of the forum, somewhere between pillars two and three perhaps, reliving the good old days of the Roman orgies, with the jolly spirits of long gone Caesar and his old cronies for company.
For those of you going abroad for the first time, a typical international aircraft is an object of study for space scientists – every inch of space that they discover inside the aircraft is likely to be lauded by public at large. A cross between a Mumbai flat and a corsair galley, it gives you just about enough space to slip in to your seats in a simple three-step process. One, duck under the wildly swinging doors of the overhead luggage compartment. Two, retract both legs to save your kneecaps from the backrest before you, as the passenger in the previous row stretches out and pushes the seat back without a warning. Three, stick your hands up in mock surrender as you settle down into your seat, otherwise your elbows may find their way into some tender midriffs and you will have irate fellow passengers to contend with, on either side. Of course, the only thing missing is a pair of oars and chains that kept the slaves in their seats, but keeping passenger comfort in mind, all chains have been uniformly upgraded to seatbelts. Now that you are seated and are completely immobilized, the pilot indulges in small talk with you and his crew as he waits for rigor mortis to set in before taking off.
If you’re amongst those who have spent a week shopping for designer wear, getting your hair coloured and practicing imaginary scenes at an Italian café, where you snap your fingers for the cameriere (waiter) and order tagliatelle with salsa di pomodoro or lasagna al pesto with an impeccable Italian accent, you are likely to have a bad start to your trip. The airline will do its best to make you feel miserable about leaving the country – be it offering you idli-vada-sambar for breakfast as you are flying somewhere over Turkey or screening full-blown Tamil action flicks that leave you looking as ghastly as you probably do in your passport. But don’t let such trifles bog you down. You’ve spent a bomb for a makeover, so if someone tries to link you back to your third world roots, ask them to go climb a tree.
Since some of us have a way with languages, we don’t find it too difficult to speak Italian. Italian is Italiano, wine becomes vino, beer becomes birro, credit is credito and a cone, cono. But adding an o to the loo will only communicate your sense of urgency, but will not get you anywhere – you need to look for a bagno. Unfortunately, there are occasions when we don’t get an opportunity to show off our linguistic skills. Ever since I set foot in Italy, I became a human magnet and attracted all the Indians living there, in alphabetical order. The first cab I got into was blaring Bhangra pop. The first taste of ‘original pizza’ came at a restaurant managed by an urdu-speaking gentleman. The family next to me at the Duomo in Milan was Indian. And the ISD phone booth next door was managed by – you guessed it – a Hindi speaking son-of-the-soil who greeted me with a namaste everytime I walked in. To think that I spent a fortnight in a new country and got by with Hindi – if you’re the kind that doesn’t need much more than a low-flying plane bound for the West to pass over your house for you to pick up an accent, this must come as a crushing disappointment.
Communication is of vital importance when you are in a city like Rome, especially when you have to drag someone back home out of the bathroom to tell him that you are standing in front of the Colosseum. As Confucius (probably) said, “Man who does spadework gathers only dirt.” So whatever you do, don’t go armed with information from India or you’ll never face what I did - the zero tolerance test. There are telephone codes for the country and the city, there is the number you need to dial and there are zeroes that have to be added at the right places. So where do the zeroes go? In Spain, you wave a red flag at a bull. In Italy, you wave a piece of paper with a telephone number for similar results. I was mistaken for a beggar and was shooed away by a snobbish couple, so I made up my mind to toss a coin in the fountain of Trevi and wish for something terrible to happen to them. I don’t know if it did, but I lost two Euros at the telephone kiosk, one Euro at the fountain that I threw in and found out something new about Italy - it has zero tolerance.
There’s something about Florence that makes you feel hungry all the time. It’s called the food bill. Of course, it’s doubly expensive for vegetarians. A hamburger costs 1.5 Euros while the veggie burger – what a hamburger is reduced to after the service attendant painstakingly removes the patty and slams the burger shut – costs 3.5 Euros. I figured that the cost of this additional labour was being added to every veggie burger and tried to wangle a discount on the fare by volunteering to dislodge the patty myself. But since I did not have a work permit and was further depriving a Caucasian male (who was already pissed that all the jobs were going to India) of an employment opportunity, the offer was turned down. However, to keep me quiet, the discount was passed on under the table. Being a true third world citizen, I promptly took advantage of the situation and insisted on having every meal there – at reduced rates.
Planning a train journey in Milan is not as simple as it is in other parts of the world.
The metro has different train lines – red, green and yellow - that crisscross the city in such a way that the maps at the metro stations resemble a confused colour palette. Each has a different ticket and has been priced in such a way so as to make all your plans of saving on cab fare go haywire. In all, the metro has been designed with the tourist in mind and works like a treasure hunt. You first figure out where to buy a ticket, find out how much it costs and hunt for the right subway that will take you to the station. Once in, you look out for the right station to alight, change direction and redo from start. Keep plenty of cash in hand because the chances of you going wrong are pretty high and there is a huge fine if you get caught. If you’re lucky, you even get shot by the surveillance cameras. And to keep you totally clueless, everyone speaks in Italian. In all, the excitement beats any reality show hollow.
Of all the places in Italy, Venice is truly a case study for any tourism department in the world. There are hardly any roads and hence no open-top buses, luxury coaches or cabs to charge you a bomb and take you around. Yet they find other ways - you can be walked or jogged through the town – for a fee. Which means you go puffing and panting behind a pro who’s literally giving you a run for your money. By noon, you are so tired that you can’t do anything but hire a gondola and sink into its plush velvet seats like a beached whale. That’s another 6000 bucks, so you paste a stupid smile on the face just to tell the world that you are having the time of your life.
Thus you conquer Rome and then take on Florence, Milan and Venice without magic potion, a druid or the final banquet. But all good things must come to an end – for the Italians. After contributing to their economy, their veggie burger sales and Rome’s flea markets, you reluctantly take the flight back home - for the sole reason that you are completely broke and are relying on the airline for your next meal. And out slide the TV monitors as another Tamil action flick starts an assault on your senses. That’s when you tap your forehead, shake your head and tell yourself, ‘these Romans are crazy.’
One of the first things you need to remember when you are making your travel plans is that most hotels in Italy are named after monuments – when they are not named after the Mona Lisa. So, however meaningless this may sound, make sure you specify to your travel agent that you intend staying at the hotel and not at the monument. I wouldn’t be saying this without reason - my travel agent promptly cancelled my hotel booking when I told her that I would prefer to stay at The Forum – perhaps she thought that I would be camping at the ruins of the forum, somewhere between pillars two and three perhaps, reliving the good old days of the Roman orgies, with the jolly spirits of long gone Caesar and his old cronies for company.
For those of you going abroad for the first time, a typical international aircraft is an object of study for space scientists – every inch of space that they discover inside the aircraft is likely to be lauded by public at large. A cross between a Mumbai flat and a corsair galley, it gives you just about enough space to slip in to your seats in a simple three-step process. One, duck under the wildly swinging doors of the overhead luggage compartment. Two, retract both legs to save your kneecaps from the backrest before you, as the passenger in the previous row stretches out and pushes the seat back without a warning. Three, stick your hands up in mock surrender as you settle down into your seat, otherwise your elbows may find their way into some tender midriffs and you will have irate fellow passengers to contend with, on either side. Of course, the only thing missing is a pair of oars and chains that kept the slaves in their seats, but keeping passenger comfort in mind, all chains have been uniformly upgraded to seatbelts. Now that you are seated and are completely immobilized, the pilot indulges in small talk with you and his crew as he waits for rigor mortis to set in before taking off.
If you’re amongst those who have spent a week shopping for designer wear, getting your hair coloured and practicing imaginary scenes at an Italian café, where you snap your fingers for the cameriere (waiter) and order tagliatelle with salsa di pomodoro or lasagna al pesto with an impeccable Italian accent, you are likely to have a bad start to your trip. The airline will do its best to make you feel miserable about leaving the country – be it offering you idli-vada-sambar for breakfast as you are flying somewhere over Turkey or screening full-blown Tamil action flicks that leave you looking as ghastly as you probably do in your passport. But don’t let such trifles bog you down. You’ve spent a bomb for a makeover, so if someone tries to link you back to your third world roots, ask them to go climb a tree.
Since some of us have a way with languages, we don’t find it too difficult to speak Italian. Italian is Italiano, wine becomes vino, beer becomes birro, credit is credito and a cone, cono. But adding an o to the loo will only communicate your sense of urgency, but will not get you anywhere – you need to look for a bagno. Unfortunately, there are occasions when we don’t get an opportunity to show off our linguistic skills. Ever since I set foot in Italy, I became a human magnet and attracted all the Indians living there, in alphabetical order. The first cab I got into was blaring Bhangra pop. The first taste of ‘original pizza’ came at a restaurant managed by an urdu-speaking gentleman. The family next to me at the Duomo in Milan was Indian. And the ISD phone booth next door was managed by – you guessed it – a Hindi speaking son-of-the-soil who greeted me with a namaste everytime I walked in. To think that I spent a fortnight in a new country and got by with Hindi – if you’re the kind that doesn’t need much more than a low-flying plane bound for the West to pass over your house for you to pick up an accent, this must come as a crushing disappointment.
Communication is of vital importance when you are in a city like Rome, especially when you have to drag someone back home out of the bathroom to tell him that you are standing in front of the Colosseum. As Confucius (probably) said, “Man who does spadework gathers only dirt.” So whatever you do, don’t go armed with information from India or you’ll never face what I did - the zero tolerance test. There are telephone codes for the country and the city, there is the number you need to dial and there are zeroes that have to be added at the right places. So where do the zeroes go? In Spain, you wave a red flag at a bull. In Italy, you wave a piece of paper with a telephone number for similar results. I was mistaken for a beggar and was shooed away by a snobbish couple, so I made up my mind to toss a coin in the fountain of Trevi and wish for something terrible to happen to them. I don’t know if it did, but I lost two Euros at the telephone kiosk, one Euro at the fountain that I threw in and found out something new about Italy - it has zero tolerance.
There’s something about Florence that makes you feel hungry all the time. It’s called the food bill. Of course, it’s doubly expensive for vegetarians. A hamburger costs 1.5 Euros while the veggie burger – what a hamburger is reduced to after the service attendant painstakingly removes the patty and slams the burger shut – costs 3.5 Euros. I figured that the cost of this additional labour was being added to every veggie burger and tried to wangle a discount on the fare by volunteering to dislodge the patty myself. But since I did not have a work permit and was further depriving a Caucasian male (who was already pissed that all the jobs were going to India) of an employment opportunity, the offer was turned down. However, to keep me quiet, the discount was passed on under the table. Being a true third world citizen, I promptly took advantage of the situation and insisted on having every meal there – at reduced rates.
Planning a train journey in Milan is not as simple as it is in other parts of the world.
The metro has different train lines – red, green and yellow - that crisscross the city in such a way that the maps at the metro stations resemble a confused colour palette. Each has a different ticket and has been priced in such a way so as to make all your plans of saving on cab fare go haywire. In all, the metro has been designed with the tourist in mind and works like a treasure hunt. You first figure out where to buy a ticket, find out how much it costs and hunt for the right subway that will take you to the station. Once in, you look out for the right station to alight, change direction and redo from start. Keep plenty of cash in hand because the chances of you going wrong are pretty high and there is a huge fine if you get caught. If you’re lucky, you even get shot by the surveillance cameras. And to keep you totally clueless, everyone speaks in Italian. In all, the excitement beats any reality show hollow.
Of all the places in Italy, Venice is truly a case study for any tourism department in the world. There are hardly any roads and hence no open-top buses, luxury coaches or cabs to charge you a bomb and take you around. Yet they find other ways - you can be walked or jogged through the town – for a fee. Which means you go puffing and panting behind a pro who’s literally giving you a run for your money. By noon, you are so tired that you can’t do anything but hire a gondola and sink into its plush velvet seats like a beached whale. That’s another 6000 bucks, so you paste a stupid smile on the face just to tell the world that you are having the time of your life.
Thus you conquer Rome and then take on Florence, Milan and Venice without magic potion, a druid or the final banquet. But all good things must come to an end – for the Italians. After contributing to their economy, their veggie burger sales and Rome’s flea markets, you reluctantly take the flight back home - for the sole reason that you are completely broke and are relying on the airline for your next meal. And out slide the TV monitors as another Tamil action flick starts an assault on your senses. That’s when you tap your forehead, shake your head and tell yourself, ‘these Romans are crazy.’
(Appeared as a slightly abridged version in the New Indian Express Sunday Supplement on 02 July, 2006)
3 comments:
heheh... cool one man! Whassup with life otherwise? howz the new home? moved in yet?
that was FUN ! so how about a link to pictures of the Roman Holiday ? We may, just may, do it in sep .. and will take tips if & when its finalised ..
keep rocking :)
yowz - i am off and running to say this is such a funny blog even before i fully read this post. great writing.
will b back for more.
apu
Post a Comment