Hiking and Ridiculous People

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  Riomaggiore, Italy
Saturday, March 24, 2007

Okay, as I sit here I am trying to keep myself from falling apart from laughter.  I am on the train having experienced one of the more ridiculous moments of this traveling trio's moments.  We had reserved our seats on the train, which was a brilliant idea, but nonetheless, a situation for confusion when we arrived to our seats and we found that they were occupied.  The three of us stood in the corridor with our many, many bags, trying to make it clear to the older Italian couple and a young woman that they were in our seats.  This lead to a mass confusion of what to do with our bags, which were strewn about the corridor as the old Italian woman tried to direct me to where I should put our bags, "above here, move that bag, don't let it fall, here under the seat," all of this was in Italian which means that I don't know for sure if that is what she was saying, but Italian is an amazing language so that even if you don't know it you can still understand it.  And of course as I'm throwing baggage around with the Italians yelling instructions at me every 2 seconds and the younger Italian woman rolling her eyes at us, a gypsy woman and her children somehow managed to get into our small compartment, already full of 7 people and their luggage, to beg for money.  I don't know if this description is accurate enough to give you the full idea of what was going on, but it was one of the strangest scenes that I've yet experienced while traveling.  And FYI, don't travel with 3 months worth of luggage when you are touring and changing locales every three days.  Flying out of Rome back to the US was a bad idea.  I should have returned to Paris.
 
Anyways, ridiculous is the theme of this entry.  Riomaggiore was beautiful and a great respite from the constant museum tours that we have been on for the last 4-5 days.  The sun came out for our day of hiking along the ocean side trails that link the 5 villages of Cinque Terre.  I couldn't have asked for a better weather.  But to continue talking about the mountain vistas overlooking the shimmering dark blue ocean would be futile.  Nothing I could write would fully capture the image, so instead look at the pictures and imagine the sound of waves rolling into the rocks hundreds of feet below you with the spring sun shining warmly upon you.
 
Rather what was ridiculous were the people we met in Riomaggiore.  Our first encounter was with the bartender at Bar Centrale, and the three college guys from Boston.  As we entered the only establishment that was really open in this small village it was clear that this was not like the well-to-do bars in Paris that we had been frequenting, but rather the small town we-know-you-and-your-business kind of place.  And then Grace made her mistake.  Colleen and I stood there in silent horror as we watched Grace walk behind the bar to look at what she had apparently thought was a menu.  Upon seeing this the bartender stopped her conversation with an Italian man and turned to Grace saying in a very heavy accent "What do you think you are you doing?  Why are you behind my bar?"  And after this grand faux pas we sent Grace to the tables to wait while Colleen and I got our drinks.  We did order our drinks and brought them back to the table where we were invited into conversation with the Bostonian guys when one of them says in the strongest Boston accent that I've ever heard "bartanders don lik'it when you go b'hind thur bar."  And so then we got into rather pleasant conversation until one of them asked us about our politics.  I asked him to drop the subject since as civilized Americans there are two things we should never talk about lest our great republic destroy itself, one of them being politics.  But we did, and then that somehow devolved into a very awkward conversation in which somehow Grace and Colleen got behind defending the French, and we revealed things that even Stanfordian students don't talk about between themselves.  I blame Colleen for taking the bait despite my ardent efforts to steer the conversation away from such unbarlike conversation.  In the meantime Colleen was doing a good job mending what could have begun as a bad relationship between the bartender and us.  So that by the end of the night Colleen was getting extra good deals on drinks and keeping on some great conversation.  One quote in particular that summarized the night was when Colleen asked the bartender for the 2nd time what was the name of the regional dessert wine. She replied in her charming (now discovered Italian/Croatian) accent, "I will tell you but you will not remember."
 
The next day when we were out on our treks between the villages we ran into a couple from San Diego that we had run into just two days earlier in Florence while we were waiting in line to get into the Accamdecio.  While waiting in line the bubbly woman somehow managed to delve into personal stories in just two minutes.  By the time that her husband had returned to the line from window-shopping she had told us that she and her husband were traveling together with their son and his girlfriend.  However, she was very excited to tell us that that evening her son would be proposing to his girlfriend.  We had talked for about 20 minutes when we finally got into the museum and said goodbye, but we did find out that they would be in Cinque Terre at the same time as us.  So while we were hiking the trails we had begun wondering about how interesting it would be to run into the couple again and find out about her son's marriage proposal.  And behold as we turned the corner in one of the small villages I spotted the husband in front of me.  We stopped and said hello and introduced ourselves to his son who was standing next to him.  He had proposed and so we congratulated him and were about to move on when the wife comes out of the small shop yelling after us to wait.  We turned around to say hi to her and she brought out her new daughter-in-law.  It was funny to hear from the daughter-in-law that she had heard so much about us.  But it was nice to see the happy family that had just been created.
 
And finally that evening we returned to have dinner at one of the restaurants in Riomaggiore where we met Nono.  He was a small old Italian man who was doing some of the serving at the tables.  We were first directed to him by his way of walking from table to table tossing the breadsticks on the table as if he really didn't care at all.  Then he started to make some small talk in a broken English/Italian.  He would ask us where we were from, where we were staying, where we were going, etc.  Somehow he guessed correctly on the first time that we were from California.  Then he moved on to flirting with the two girls.  He told me that I was "fortunato" for traveling with two beautiful women.  Then he asked me if I was just a little bit Italiano, because my hair gave me away.  I was proud to say that I did have some Italiano blood running through me.  I told him that it was my grandfather who was Italian (really my great-grandfather, but since I don't know the language I decided to keep it simple).  He replied, "Italiano, no no."  But then we said, "yes he is Italian."  But he insisted, "Italiano, no no."  Finally, it was cleared up when he stopped us and said, "in Italiano, grandfather, Nono".  Ahh!!!  And then we knew what he had been saying.  He was incredibly nice, and it was only after a 10 minute discussion that we decided we would not kidnap him to be our very own Nono. 
 
The entire trip was great.  The people we met were the best yet.  I'm also glad that we took some time to do hiking instead of more museums, because otherwise I think I would be burnt out by the time that I arrived to Rome.  Speaking of which, that might be a long time, because as of now our train has been stopped for almost an hour in some random location.  From what I can understand from the conductor and the kindly man next to us there was a problem on the tracks, police where here, and we are now hopefully 15 minutes from continuing our trip now that the inspector has given us clearance.  None of this makes sense to me, but alas that is what happens when one thinks they can travel without knowing the language.

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