Four Things My Geeky-Jock-of-a-Best-Friend Must Do in Europe (9 page)

Thursday evening

Dear Delia,

I am COMPLETELY BUMMED about tonight being my last night on this ship. Even though it’s been less than a week, I feel strangely at HOME here. The stateroom may be the size of a walk-in closet, and the bed the size of an ironing board, but there you are.

There’s a farewell party tonight, and I really should be taking a shower and figuring out what to wear. Of course, what to wear shouldn’t be a huge deal, because all my tops are dirty except my “Alexandria Recycles” T-shirt. (Uh, why did I bring THAT?) The matter of taking a shower may be a little more difficult, though, because our porter has shaped my bath towel into a rabbit tonight. Very cute, but I’m feeling squeamish about taking a furry animal apart. So, I will instead take the time to write you now, since you are probably patiently (HA HA HA) waiting for the report of my day in Florence and my pursuit of the Euro-hottie.

Mio madre and I took a bus to the Livorno train station, which I am guessing took longer than she had scheduled for in her carefully planned itinerary, because when it arrived, she felt the need to grab my hand and RUN at top speed. The train station was buzzing with Italian life, much of it male, so I began doing some hottie hunting right off, which ended abruptly when my mother stopped short in front of a vending machine, causing me to run into her with such force that I almost flipped over her head like a circus performer.

“This is the place to buy tickets,” I could hear my mother’s voice saying through the dizzying chirps of cartoon birds around her head. “According to Rick Steves, people in these stations don’t always speak English, so it is best to use these machines.”

I was curious about this but didn’t dare ask any questions for fear of having to hear the (potentially boring and long) answers. The things I wondered: Who is Rick Steves, and is he the Euro-hottie I’m looking for? AND, why is an Italian vending machine easier to communicate with than an Italian human, and should I be worried about that?

The answer to one of those questions (you decide which) became clear when a screen appeared on the vending machine with a menu of language choices—French, English, Japanese, etc. As a cute little joke, I reached out to press “Greek,” but I changed my mind when I noticed my mother’s hand ready to violently slap mine away from the machine.

(The lesson I have learned: Never get in the way of a mother-turned-emboldened-tour-guide.)

On the train, we sat next to—get this!—an Italian man. (No, not Euro-hottie material, but cute in a unibrow-ish sort of way.) Mom thought this was a “marvelous opportunity” to practice our Italian, to which I replied, “Our what?” So she handed me a piece of paper, on which she had written out—just for me!—many Italian phrases with pronunciations and meanings. Here are a few she included on the list:

prego
(PRAY-go)—please, you’re welcome, all right

e basta
(eh BAH stah)—that’s enough

per favore
(pair fa VOOR ay)—please

il dolce far niente
(eel DOHL chay far nee EN tay)—the sweetness of doing nothing

“Why are there two words for ‘please’?” I asked her.

“I guess you can use either,” she said.

“And what about that ‘il dolce far niente’ thing?” I asked. “In what situation, exactly, would I say that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just so wonderful. I think the Italians would be impressed.”

“And then they’d, uh, speak Italian to me?” I asked.

To this she nodded enthusiastically, obviously not seeing the inherent problem with convincing a population that you speak a language you actually don’t.

I reached into my pack at that point for my Discman and CDs, facing the fact that it would be a VERY long trip to Florence.

“Prego,” my mother said, turning to the Italian man next to her.

I wondered what she meant by this. Please? You’re welcome? Maybe she was trying to be cool and was saying “All RIGHT!” I watched to see if a high-five would follow. But, no. She began saying a bunch of words that made no sense to me (or probably anybody), and the Italian man nodded politely at her and glanced over at me. I smiled back at him, hoping my mother had not inadvertently offered me for sale.

Then the man said something which sounded very musical, somehow, and included the word “Firenza.” My mother nodded, somewhat carefully. (I think “Firenza” was the only thing she understood, too.) Then the man went into this whole THING with lots of words ending in vowels, arm gestures, and nods of the head. I had an urge to applaud when he was done, but instead I just stared at him. My mother did the same.

Then he sighed, in an Italian sort of way, and began a pantomime with his briefcase, holding it tightly against his chest, and then moving it in the air. At the end of it all, he uttered what may be the only English word in his vocabulary: gypsies.

Mom leaned over to me and whispered, “I think he’s warning us about the gypsies who attack tourists in Florence.”

“Why are you whispering?” I asked her. “He obviously doesn’t speak English.” Then giving some thought to what she had actually SAID, I added, “WHAT gypsies who attack tourists?”

“I read about that online,” she said, patting the man gently on his knee as he sighed, loudly, again. He was obviously very distressed about this gypsy thing.

I stared out the window at the sunflower fields going by in a blur, wondering what the Italian gypsies would be like. Joyful people in colorful, beaded clothes? Or more like those Irish boat people in the movie,
Chocolat
? Then (because I’m trying very hard to keep my promise to you, Delia) I wondered if any of the gypsies would be hotties, like, say, Johnny Depp, who even I agree is a blistering, radiant code-red. A Johnny Depp attack couldn’t be so terrible, I thought, as I slipped my headphones on and chilled for the rest of the train ride.

I’m glad I had that chance to relax, because mio madre went right back into manic-mode the second the train stopped. The first place she (very literally) dragged me to was the San Lorenzo Market, which was, actually, AWESOME. We MUST go there, Delia—you would not believe the stuff! The leather jackets are amazing! I wanted to try them on, but before I had one off the hanger, Mom said we had to move on.

“Time to see David!” she said, over her shoulder.

“David?” I asked.

“Michelangelo’s David!” she answered.

I glanced back at the leather coats of the San Lorenzo Market, all waving their sleeves at me (YES, they WERE), and then I followed my mother into the crowded street. She was jetting along so fast I could hardly keep up. At one point I lost her completely, but that was not my fault. It was YOUR fault, Delia. I was passing this crowd of teenage, back-packed boys who were speaking what might have been German (but what would I know?), and I stopped for just the briefest moment to scan the group for any signs of Euro-hottiness. When I looked ahead again, my mother was nowhere to be seen.

“This is NOT working,” I said, aloud, to myself. (No, I don’t know why.)

One of the German-ish boys looked over at me and said, “America?”

“Yes,” I said, looking closely at him, sizing him up as a code-orange. If nice, I could easily bump him up to red, I thought. Which made the nervousness start rising, rising . . .

“Where?” he asked.

. . . rising, rising . . .

“Across the Atlantic Ocean,” I said, knowing IMMEDIATELY that I was, well, an IDIOT. He wasn’t asking me where America IS, of COURSE, but where I LIVE in America.

(Hottie hunting OBVIOUSLY has an adverse effect on IQ. Which might explain some things about YOU.)

He and all his friends started laughing at that, which avalanched him right into the Euro-glacier zone. I felt a sudden, crushing need to see my mother (which should give you some sense of the humiliation level).

I darted down the stone sidewalk, pushing my way through a large glom of people spilling off a bus, and found my mother standing on a street corner. She was scanning the crowds, and when she saw me, she signaled me over and said, “Come ON!”

“Aren’t you even a LITTLE relieved to see me?” I asked, catching up to her roadrunner pace. “I could have been kidnapped by gypsies!”

“I don’t think they KIDNAP people, Brady,” she said. “What would they DO with a bunch of tourists? They probably just steal your money and go.”

Then (CUE THE GYPSIES), a man dressed in a red suit appeared in my path and started entertaining us. He had a large water bottle balanced on top of his head and a dog that hopped on its back legs. (Uh, the dog wasn’t on his head in case I didn’t make that clear.) Then, out of nowhere, two little kids—like, five years old or less, I swear—started bouncing around me, tugging at my backpack. My mother shooed them off and pulled me along.

Looking back at the red-suited man (who looked NOTHING like Johnny Depp, by the way), I said, “If those are the gypsies, I’m REALLY disappointed.”

“We are SO behind,” Mom complained, grabbing onto my hand, now, and shooting down the street.

“Mom,” I whined, “slow down!” But she was completely oblivious.

Then, remembering the piece of paper in my jeans’ pocket, I pulled it out and scanned her list of (seemingly useless) Italian phrases. “E-BASTA!” I yelled, grabbing onto a nearby lamp-post. My arm almost came out of its socket, but it was worth it because she stopped.

I braced myself for the expected impatience of mother-turned-drill-sergeant, so IMAGINE my surprise when she SMILED at me. I had, apparently, impressed her with my command of the local language. “What, dear?” she asked.

“Mom,” I said, panting (for dramatic effect). “I’m HUNGRY.”

“But I planned on eating after the Uffizi,” she said, pulling a piece of paper out of her pack.

“Uffizi?” I repeated. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound very appetizing.

“Oh, no, not after the Uffizi,” she said, looking over her notes. “We eat after we see David at the Academia. Can’t you wait?”

“Uh, no,” I said. “Let’s get some take-out and we’ll eat it, uh, on the steps of that big churchy-looking place over there.”

“Oh, Brady!” she cried. “That’s the Duomo!”

I wasn’t sure if that was good or not, so I looked back down at my little cheat sheet and said, “Prego?”

She smiled at me again and said, “Okay.”

(I’m DEFINITELY switching languages at school this fall. Italian apparently gives me complete mind control over my mother.)

We found some EXCELLENT pizza. Do you know that there are actual LAWS in Italy about what ingredients are allowed on pizza? In fact, they take pizza so seriously in this country that the colors on the FLAG are even about pizza. Madre told me this stuff—she said she learned it from the Internet. You know, in these Mediterranean lands, there are laws about pizza and clothing sales, but it’s okay for women to go around with no shirts on. Interesting priorities.

Munching away on our pizza, we settled on the steps of the Duomo, and I asked Mom if I could see her list. It looked like this:

THINGS TO DO IN FIRENZA

San Lorenzo Market

Uffizi

Academia

Eat Italian food

Duomo

Ponte Vecchio

Piazza della Signoria

“Do you have a pen?” I asked my mother.

She handed me one, and I said, “So, what things on this list are museums?”

“The Academia and the Uffizi,” she said enthusiastically.

I took the pen and made a line through those things.

“But—” Mom started to say.

“Mom, we go to the museums in Washington a LOT.”

“But—”

“With the touring exhibits, I’ve probably even seen some of the things in these museums, right?”

“Oh, Brady, you’ve NEVER seen David,” she said.

“DAVID, again,” I said. “This guy is becoming an OBSESSION with you. I am SO telling Dad.”

“It’s a very important sculpture, Brady,” she said (apparently not amused by, uh, me). She pulled her mammoth stack of papers from her pack and leafed through them until she found what she was looking for. “You know which one it is, right?”

I looked over her shoulder. “Oh, yeah, David. Very cute, in a naked-Bible-character sort of way.”

“He’s in the Academia, Brady,” she said.

“Why don’t we just go in THIS place?” I asked, looking up the steps to the doors of the Duomo. “It’s on your list, and we’re here.”

She obviously liked that idea, so we went up the stone steps and through these huge doors, and into this mammoth, open room. It was dark, and old, and COLD. As we walked around, slowly, silently, I could feel the breath of the ancients on my neck and see the Renaissance artists hanging from the ceiling by their toes (or whatever they did), painting angels and clouds and stuff. Creepy, but I was INTO it. Until Mom broke the spell by saying, “Let’s get information on the tours here.”

“Tours?” I said. “Isn’t that what we’re DOING?” And then I hooked my arm into my mother’s and headed for the side door.

“But—” she started saying again, but I kept pulling her out the door.

She suggested we stop and look at the map she’d gotten off MapQuest, but I assured her we didn’t NEED a map, and we walked down some little street, which ended at a river. We stopped there and looked down at the gondolas—MOLTO Italiano.