Roman Holiday

Continuing on with my trip to Europe this summer, my brother, mother, and I traveled from Paris to Rome on June 24, 2009. From there we took trains to the Campania region, Venice, Florence, and back to Rome.

I am grateful for having gone on this trip, but when people ask me about how it was, I make no qualms about speaking my mind. Most have been accepting or at least respectful of my opinion, but a few feel I haven’t given Italy proper credit.

While I enjoyed the experience and would not hesitate to go back, it was by no means what I thought it would be and by no measure as romanticized as I have found it to have been. It was actually as a result of this idealistic state that I feel many negative aspects of my opinion exist. So while I grew to like France, I have found less of an occurrence in Italy.

Don’t get me wrong—I thought Italy was beautiful. I felt that there was grandeur and culture present, but had to learn that it was not to be presented how I was used to it.

If the graffiti in my travel to Paris made me realize not all would be how it was expected, then let’s just say that there was a lot more graffiti in Italy—a lot more.

Charles-de-Gaulle airport is okay. The terminal that I flew through was not the new, classy one that many people fly through. Other than the fact that Lufthansa, my airline, was quite late (though officially on time), causing us to miss our connecting flight to Rome, I had no problems with the Paris airport. It was relatively clean and definitely secure, though when we first landed, I asked some security personnel who we were talking to whether we had to go through customs or not.

A lot of people don’t seem to believe me, but when you enter the United States, you go through customs. You fill out a form and get “randomly” selected for an actual customs check, which most people don’t end up going through. In France, it was not up to random selection as to whether or not you go through customs. Upon exiting the airplane, the exit was straight ahead, and if you had anything to declare to customs, you could go to the right to do so.

I didn’t know there was this honor system in place, so I asked the guards. I asked in English. I was answered frankly, but the other security guards murmured something to each other about those stupid American tourists in French. The statement was off-putting, but I didn’t really care. I heard how annoying tourists can be, especially American tourists. I guess the French airport security guards had enough exposure to English to distinguish accents.

On the other hand, I can’t say the same thing about the Italian civil servants we encountered, but more about that later.

En route to Rome (and also coming back home), we went through Munich, where it was raining both times. While the Paris airport was acceptable, Munich’s was immaculate. Their bathrooms were so clean that I hesitated to use them; their floors everywhere were perfectly polished without so much as a scuff in sight. As our flight was delayed, the Lufthansa employee was courteous throughout helping us get on the next flight and gave us meal vouchers—not to mention his English was perfect (albeit foreign-accented).

When we got to Rome’s Fiumicino airport, the situation was quite a bit different. The terminal we landed at was dingy, at least giving it the appearance of being dirty. Before leaving the airport, we needed to find the tourist information area so we could buy our Roma Cards (which gave us some free museum entrances as well as transportation in its entirety).

Now the airport’s exit was lined with quirky little shop booths and information stands. So we went up to one of them. My mom asked, “Do you speak English?” Unlike my French, which I could get by on, our Italian was not so good, and we had to resort to using their English instead, which, as I understand, they Italians (as well as the French) really don’t like.

The question was met with an offended tone by the woman who my mom had asked. “Yes. Of course I do.” Okay, great.

“Do you know where Tourist Information is?” my mom asked.

“Do you mean Touristic Information? It’s down on the left.” My mom was confused.

“So Tourist Information is on the left?” she asked just to make sure.

“Yes! Tou-ris-tic Information is down on the left!” It appeared the civil servant was upset. She insisted that our English was wrong and made sure she corrected us, or at least tried. Unfortunately it was she who was wrong. She had simply mixed up her languages and stayed stubborn about it. In her mind, she was thinking how in French, the term is “(les) informations touristiques.”

Whereas in Paris, the metro and RER light rail lines were clean and efficient, the airport express train from the airport to Roma Termini station was extremely late and ran bumpily down the tracks. There was more graffiti down this corridor than that from Aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle to Paris’s central station Châtelet-Les Halles. This did not bode well for what was to come.

My main conclusion about Italy was that it was interesting; however, I did not find it more exciting than other places I’ve been—say China. As aforementioned, I’ve gone on a two-week tour to China. Like Italy, it was full of cultural significance. Like Italy, English competence is something to be improved upon. Unlike in Italy, China’s people understand that their English isn’t the best. And also unlike in Italy, China’s people seemed to appreciate the money coming through tourism, as evidenced by their attitude towards tourists.

Italy was something else, in my opinion. For the money that tourists, especially American tourists, spend in Italy, many people that we’ve met seemed ungrateful and sometimes spiteful towards our presence. I realize that this is not and should not be a reflection on an entire country, as there were many nice people, but this is the basic impression that I received from the areas I visited.

An example of this is the Capuccin Crypt in Rome, which is famous for its collection of monks’ bones artistically arranged as morbid figures. The site is owned by the Catholic Church and run by what I think was a priest. Upon entering, we were met with a donation basket with a sign that said “1 euro minimum!” Whatever. Other than the fact that a “donation” is optional on an exhibit or museum, and what they were asking for would properly be termed “admission price” as it was not optional, the priest gave us a death stare walking in. We deposited our money into the basket, which we were going to do whether he gave us the dirty look or not.

He then proceeded to get upset with us, telling us in English that we didn’t put enough money in. I pointed to my coins, insisting that I had put enough in. Hearing us going back and forth, a tourist came by unsolicited with good intentions but bad sense. In her American (probably Midwest) accent, she insisted on translating the priest’s English to English that we could understand, if that makes any sense.

The fact that this tourist thought she would help us understand her English was off-putting to me, so I stopped her midsentence. “Thank you. We speak English,” I told her. Yeah, I was curt, but I wish she would have spent some time figuring out how our interaction was going before interjecting.

And another point—call me spoiled, but I’m used to American museums. They’re large, air-conditioned, and if your flash goes off, a security guard would be sure to inform you promptly that you just did something that hurts the artwork. Those old paintings are delicate, so the curators have to keep them in low-humidity, low-light environments, right?

Apparently in Italy they didn’t think so. If any one of those paintings (maybe one of the three hundred “Madonna and Child” paintings from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence) found its way to the Getty (which is probably my favorite museum), it would be pampered and kept in a special room in a climate-controlled environment with two security guards to promptly ensure no flash photography. In Italy, they say no flash photography, but even if security wanted to stop all the flashes from going off (which I think they didn’t), they couldn’t if they tried due to the hordes of tourists flashing away indiscriminately. And if paintings are vulnerable to flash photography, they must surely be vulnerable to the hot and humid environment that the interior of the museums provided. Though on a hot day, I love air conditioning, I could do without, but seeing as they put minimal effort forth to preserve and protect their pieces, I couldn’t help thinking where all the money from tourism went.

The only museum that I can say was what I expected was the Vatican Museum, but then again Vatican City is not technically part of Italy, as it is its own sovereign.

From Rome it was on to Campania. Naples is known for not being the most appealing of cities, so we pretty much skipped it. Instead, we stayed in Sorrento, which many people told me was really nice. And it was really nice, but it seemed basically like a less humid Santa Barbara. It seemed really done up for the tourists, and it was one of the few places that didn’t have conspicuous and copious graffiti. (In Rome, I could only tell that I was in a ritzy area because of the few brands that I know. The storefront of Versace had quite a bit of graffiti on the front, for example).

We also took a ferry along the Amalfi Coast and a bumpy bus ride back. (Amalfi is where we found out we were from Giappone a few posts ago.) It was also beautiful, but like Sorrento it looked like Central California. In fact, when I went up the coast a few weeks ago, Big Sur looked just as striking, but the road was wider and much better engineered.

We saw the regular tourist stuff. Pompeii was great and met expectations, but my mom had us take a decently long journey off to Paestum. Though it was farther than expected, it was well worth it. Formerly a Greek colony (I believe Athenian), it had some pristine Greek temples and some of the only surviving Greek artwork placed in the nearby museum. The reason it was so well preserved was because it was spared from conflict and human inhabitants for some 800 years due to a mosquito infestation.

Next was Venice, which I thought probably failed to meet my expectations the most. It had the famous canals and some old, noticeably sinking buildings along the Grand Canal. It was quite hot and even more humid, but the small city on the water lost its charm with the hordes of tourists ever present on the islands. Compounded with the narrow pedestrian streets and constant, familiar noise of English, the experience was less than charming. On top of that, many facades around St. Mark’s Square were under renovation, so our picture of the Bridge of Sighs is surrounded by scaffolding covered by advertisements. Whereas the Bridge of Sighs is often immediately recognizable, many people asked if that was truly it.

Near Venice was the island (or two?) of Murano. It’s famous for its glass shops. We got some interesting tours of the glass blowing and shaping factories, but one shop stood out from the rest. I doubt they sell many pieces. We went into this one shop and there was a nice old man assisting a couple from China look at some of the pieces. They spoke only Mandarin and understood a little bit of English, probably less Italian.

Looking at the different glass horses to see which ones they wanted to buy, the younger employee came back from his lunch break and rudely closed the door of the case after repeating, “I’m stressing, I’m stressing!” which sounded more like “I’m stretching!” He pulled the glass horse that they were holding and brought it to the check out counter to wrap it up. Because of his rudeness they decided that they didn’t want it any more.

My mom helped them tell the employee but he didn’t quite understand. His English was quite broken and the only conclusion he could come to was that that couple and the three of us were the same party. When he insisted that he wrap it up for us, even though no one wanted it any more, we all just left.

From there it was off to Florence, which had a lot less to do than expected. We went to Uffizi but skipped Accademia (where Michelangelo’s David stands). We took a sidetrip to Pisa, followed by Lucca (in a feeble attempt to escape the tourists). In Pisa there was basically the Leaning Tower, and instead of taking a picture pretending to lean against it, I took pictures of the many people doing so.

From there it was back to Rome, where we went on our flight to Munich (which landed an hour late) and then to Los Angeles (which, luckily, was also late). The trip was well worth it, and this Thursday, I fly off to Hong Kong. I plan to post once more before I go.