The Crazy Roman Taxi Driver

       Rome 25 July 2010

Janneth and I were at the Vatican late Saturday night because we wanted to see the Vatican glowing: St. Peter’s Basilica, the fountains, the columns, the statues. We had arrived taking the subway. It was probably about midnight, and the subway crowd was less than savory. We did not feel particularly at ease walking to the Vatican, but as we stood there admiring the soft glow of the Basilica our concern was forgotten as we slipped into a state of awe and peace. The square was blocked off for some event that was going to take place that Sunday—probably mass—so we could only stand at the far end of the square. After about ten minutes of reflection, we decided it would be in our best interest to get some much-needed sleep. We had spent the entire day walking around the most popular sites in Rome. Our feet were miserable, our bodies were exhausted, and our minds were way past functioning. We knew our hotel was in the vicinity, but we forgot to bring our map and we really had no desire to get lost at one in the morning, in Rome, in our present state of exhaustion. So, as we contemplated a better solution, we realized that there was a Taxi stand just behind us with a rather expectant looking Taxi sitting at it.

What a convenient solution: hop in a taxi, relax, arrive at our front door easily within five minutes. We gingerly walked over to the idling Taxi. The cab was dark inside obscuring the figure of the man behind the wheel. We asked in our ever-improving Italian if he could take us home. A sound issued from the window, resembling “Si” and so we crawled into the back seat. We handed him the card with the address of our hotel. He looked at it for a while. He seemed to have trouble reading it—this man was probably eighty years old! His face was wrinkled like that of a man who had spent his life in the sun instead of in a cab. He had a golf-ball sized wad of tobacco in his lower left lip that he chewed contemplatively as he regarded our address. Janneth and I just sat there, too tired to care much. This ancient man put the card down on the seat, mumbled something in a gruff voice and drove off. We buckled up. It was Rome after all, the Italians there are know for their driving… skills.

Well, we did not get far before he stopped. Much to our surprise he stopped next to another cab. Why would we stop to talk to another Taxi driver? How would this help us get home? The old man leaned out the window and started talking to the other Taxi driver—keep in mind that our meter was still running. We realized that he was asking this Taxi driver where our hotel was! He had not had trouble reading the card, he was trying to remember if he knew where the address was. We gathered that the other Taxi driver had no idea where the street was either. We probably would have understood what was happening sooner had the radio not been effectively overpowering the conversation between the two Taxi drivers. Instead of hearing the conversation about how to find our hotel, we learned how to prepare the perfect dish of spaghetti con pomodori.

Finally, our ancient Taxi driver drove away from the taxi stand and Janneth and I assumed that this meant he knew where he needed to take us. We were quite mistaken. He began to grumble something in Italian to us. We could barely make out what he was saying through the wad of tobacco, the thick accent, and the loud radio. It became clear that he was telling us, while driving, that he was not sure where the street of our hotel was. In fact, he was trying to ask us for directions as he was driving. We were weaving in and out of traffic, and he kept looking back at us to yell over the radio and through his wad of tobacco, asking which direction he should take us.

Janneth and I sat desperately clenching the seats in front of us, leaning forward so as to hear this old man’s gravely, raspy voice over the radio. We rarely took our eyes from the road because of the frequent oncoming traffic. He was yelling questions at us about where he should turn, where the street was, and many other things we could not make out. We realized we might have more luck if we told him the name of the Metro stop near our house. He seemed to understand because one second later I was pressed back into my seat as he threw the Taxi into third gear.

We sped down street after street. After a few minutes the old man slowed down and turned to look back at Janneth and I. From what I could tell, he was trying to ascertain if he was headed in the right direction, but I was preoccupied with the direction the car was headed at the moment. With his hand on the wheel and his eyes on us, chewing and grumbling, the Taxi driver veered into the oncoming lane. For what seemed like a minute the oncoming lights grew rounder and rounder, filling our windshield faster with every passing second. The old man was yelling at us with but I could hear nothing—I was immobilized by fear. Fortunately, the crazy old man turned back around to steer the car to momentary safety. What had felt like two seconds too many in the headlights of another car had passed. The car to which the headlights belonged honked, annoyed at our ancient taxi driver. This act of impatience frustrated our taxi driver who spat out a strain of profanities dripping in chewed tobacco.

After about ten minutes of flying past streets, slowing down only enough to turn ninety degree turns, and speeding off again, we arrived at a spot Janneth and I recognized. We were almost home! But, instead of turning towards our hotel, the crazy Taxi driver turned in the exact opposite direction. Janneth and I had had enough. We yelled at him to stop. We yelled out of urgency. We yelled because we were competing with the voice of a woman explaining how important it was to dice the tomatoes instead of slice them.

The crazy old Taxi driver pulled over, but because we were in the middle of a round about he needed to move the car out of the way of the traffic. He pulled the cab up onto the sidewalk. The car made a wretched grinding sound as its underbelly scraped the cement. A car should never make such a horrendous noise of grinding metal and cement. The old man growled some profanities and we could see he was working his wad of tobacco just to say them. He was annoyed that he was letting us off at what to him seemed a random place but to us looked like a five minute walk from our hotel and an escape from another ten minutes in the clutches of this crazy Roman Taxi driver.

We wanted to pay him the ten-euro charge with a fifty, because that was all we had. Naturally we were expecting change, but he had none. Due to some small miracle, we were in an area that apparently was one of the frequented night places of Rome. The unassuming fruit stand from which we had bought our lunch earlier that day, was surrounded by an affable crowd of laughing, chatting, and relaxing young Italians. We followed the old man to a nearby bar where he got change for our fifty. Janneth and I practically took off at a run after receiving our change, revitalized from the blood-pumping ride. As we walked back to our hotel, we could not stop laughing at the crazy old Taxi driver.

Next time, I think we will just walk to our hotel.

Nights in Bologna

Hanna and I called all the people we know and invited them all to our place to eat, drink, and then go out dancing. At 8 it seemed like nobody wanted to come at all. We were cooking some tasty food but it was beginning to look like we were the only ones who were going to be eating it. We were starting to feel down because all our friends seemed to have better things to do.

Just as we were saying that nobody was coming and maybe we should just stop cooking, Hanna's friend Maja, from Poland (who speaks English and Italian and obviously Polish) came with her friend Daniel, who was visiting from Germany.

Hanna and I were so happy. We ended up having such a great dinner. Between the four of us, we had had so many different and worldly experiences. We talked about our preconceptions of certain parts of the world and how they had been changed or confirmed. We talked about how much schools cost around the world, the different kinds of governments and the peoples’ mindsets towards these governments, about taxes and roads, and much more. But unlike many discussions I have had of this nature, it was not overly political or overly economical. We just said what we thought without feeling the need to back up our opinions with extensive facts—personal experience were evidence enough. It was nice to have a discussion that did not become a debate where everything became personal and people felt the need to defend to the death their idea and or country. Instead, people felt free to agree and disagree. It was an intriguing discussion about our views and opinions of other countries and our own countries.

After dinner two girl friends of Hanna, one from Italy (Chiara) and the other from Taiwan (Tam) met up with us. And then from there, as we were walking to a house party for a friend of the Polish girl, more people met up with us—all friends of Hanna. Apparently I have lame friends who do not want to go out, because everyone we met up with were friends of Hanna.

Anyway, there was in general a lot of English last night so that Hanna could understand, but when I got the chance, I just used Italian. Hanna was also using Spanish and German. It is one of the most mind-blowing things to go out and hear at least three different languages in one night. I absolutely love it. I have to learn more languages!

We finally finished up eating and took off. Mind you, it was raining all night, and though there are portici you still need and umbrella for certain parts of the walk. Daniel, German boy, had a big orange umbrella that Hanna and I were crowding under. It was quite comical actually, because Daniel is, as Hanna put it, quite German. He likes to keep his distance. He walks tall. He is proper and polite. He offers you his arm but in a rather manly kind of way. It was hard to not snicker the whole time. People kept joking about how lucky he was—one guy escorting approximately five girls and two were clinging to him to stay under the umbrella and out of the rain. And to top it off, his umbrella was a rather, stop-traffic, kind of orange.

We picked up another group of about four people, also all friends of Hanna.

So we finally make it to the house party. We are all substancially wet, but happy none-the-less. When we got there we realized that this house was about two rooms too small for all of us and it would be better if those of us who did not know the person just left. So we did. We wished the birthday boy a happy birthday and then left him to celebrate with friends. Well the people we met up with wanted to go to a bar before going out dancing. So we ended up at a bar that was giving out one free drink to all girls. All you needed to do was to show up with a flyer—which we had—before midnight—which we did.

As Hanna and I were walking up to the bar, this guy was blatantly staring us down. It was rather disconcerting. It turns out he wanted us to use the free pass to get him a drink. Who would blame him—ask every girl he can, and maybe one will actually use their one pass to get him a free drink. Initially Hanna and I were confused; there was a lot of "I don’t believe it" discussions and occasionally a comical language barrier. In the end, after much concern that we were buying a guy a drink instead of him buying one for us (I mean, nothing is ever free right?), we used the free passes to get this guy a rum and coke, which left Hanna and I a beer to share. It worked out perfect on all accounts.

This guy was surprisingly quite polite. Both Hanna and I thought he was going to try to hit on us, or be awkward, instead he was interested in actually talking about school and majors and such. He did not use his need for a drink as a pick up line, which was a nice change of pace. We had a reasonable conversation and then after about five minutes of talking we went our separate ways.

At this point I think there were about eight of us in this crowded bar. So we all went down stairs where there were hardly any people. We found a table. We sat down and began to drink and yell.

We did not talk. We yelled.

You could not talk. The music was so loud. I think the bar was expecting people to show up and dance, but nobody was. So we had to yell over the music to have a conversation. The Italian girl from Calabria, who I was sitting next to, was super nice and we “talked” for a while; it puts a large strain on your voice to constantly yell over music so eventually we just gave up.

After about an hour or so we took off. Our group split back up again and it was just Hanna, Chiara, Tam and me. We went to this place called Soda Pop because Hanna and I have been wanting to find a place to go out dancing for the last few weeks. We do not actually know any places in Bologna so we are always up for suggestions.

Soda Pop was fun but awkward. They call it a dancing bar because there is not really a dance floor, just a large space away from the bar where people often dance. The place was really crowded to the point that actual dancing was difficult. Mostly it was awkward because there were a lot of people dancing but there were more people just standing there, not even trying to dance—just watching you. And usually the people just watching you were guys. Also, we were crowded around a table, where we had put our stuff, trying to dance. It was totally reminiscent of Junior High dances but more crowded and there was alcohol!

We probably danced for 30-45 minutes, which was great, even if the place was kind of lame and the guys were really awkward. But as most people know, I absolutely love to dance and so, 45 minutes (which is admittedly short) in a hot, sticky, crowded, bar is better than no dancing at all.  

We left because it was so hot and well, not the greatest place to dance. Also, some of the girls did no really enjoy the music. Hanna and I loved it. A bit of Latin, loud, good beat, well mixed, and then popular songs. It was hard to leave because they kept playing a lot of songs we knew and liked, but we just could not stand the heat.

Usually when I try to make my way through a crowd at a dance, the most effective way is to dance through the crowd—people are usually more willing to let you pass. Not so true at this place. The guys will think that you are trying to dance with them and try to stop you. One guy put his hand around me to try to dance with me. I just pushed him away. I was leaving for the door and had no interest in dancing with a strange, drunk, man. He was reluctant to let go, which made it quite uncomfortable. But I guess that is what I get for dancing my way out the door. People think you are trying to dance with them.

When we finally made it out of the crowd and closer to the door, this guy who was super drunk and dancing up on his friend, was directed (by his friend) to dance up on Tam and me. This guy was tall, probably about six feet but he looks taller because most people in Italy are short. He had on a grey long-sleeved shirt. With his long sleeves, his wayward arms looked even more awkward. It was funny because if I had pushed him he would have just fallen over. All I had to do was put my hand out and move him out of the way. I was doing everything in my power to look disgusted, because really, all I wanted to do was laugh at this guy; he was ridiculous. I think he was attempting to imitate an albatross in flight. Though I suspect he would have called it dancing.

Finally we made it to the door. We put back on all of our layers because it was still raining outside. From there we walked over to Irish Pub to meet Chiara’s boyfriend and his friends. At this point Hanna and I were exhausted. We sat and talked with them for about an hour. We now know even more Italians, some with cars who are willing to go to the discotecas outside of the city. These places are supposed to be the best.

In the end, Hanna and I had an amazing night. We went out, had so much fun, spent absolutely NO money (which definitely made the night perfect!), DANCED, and met so many new people from around the world.