IrishOboe

As we pass the one week mark I’m finally going through papers I should have gone through long ago and what should I happen to come across but a paper entitled “Italy” and on it a list of about eight points briefly reminding me of some of my adventures there.  Sharing this with my mom, she pointed out that she did a website for me while I was in Italy, but had completely forgotten if I ever realized it because I wasn’t much into computers and certainly hadn’t heard of a blog.  The link is still on Mom’s homepage and the password is the same.  It has all my pictures labeled and everything!  There is a separate section entitled “Men” that has no content because apparently I promised all the juicy stories and never got around to writing about them.

It’s been three years since my first trip to Europe alone in the summer of 2004 when I went for a music festival in Urbania and stayed for about ten days to travel on my own, but these notes are enough to jog my memory.  I suppose you can decide to discount everything I write since three years is enough to turn history into folklore.  I may appear a bit naïve in these stories, and I was.  Remember, this was my first experience dealing with such advances (even public school didn’t prepare me for it) and in fact, Italy was where I learned to deal with such unwelcomed attention from strangers.  Hope they give you a laugh, and remember, I really enjoyed my trip to Italy, but here’s a warning not to go as a single woman, and if you do, make sure you never look at your map in the public square!

In no particular order:

1. Apparently there was a crazy man in the campsite in Rome where I spent a few nights with two girlfriends (the only time during my travels I had companions).  Since I cannot remember what made him crazy, I’ll leave it to your imagination.
2. In Florence I stayed in an ever cheaper campsite and had my first experience with squat toilets.  I was so horrified I didn’t use them.  My how things change . . . but it was here I had one of the more frightening experiences with Italian men.  I was enjoying the view of Florence from Michelangelo’s square across the river when I was approached by two boys (late teens, I’d guess).  I managed to shake them off with difficulty and walked on and found a nearby park where I sat down and continued my reflection.  Soon one of the two boys found me there and tried to engage me in conversation.  I always wanted to practice my Italian so I obliged, but one month of study might be enough to have a conversation with a prolific old Italian momma, but not prove effective enough for a young man with something on his mind.  I couldn’t understand him and so he tried French and then German and the only other language I knew at the time was American Sign Language.  Maybe that would have scared him off . . .  Anyway, I tried to get rid of him again, but he followed me – I could see him creeping along the road behind me!  I’d been in Italy for a month and had traveled for a few days before hitting Florence so I’d learned a little sense and knew I did not want to show him where I was spending the night, much less that it was in a very insecure tent in a crowded campground!  (That was scary, but I got to sleep under olive trees!)  So, I went a different direction and found a fancy hotel into which I confidently entered and walk around the grounds and tried to look like I belonged.  Whether my ruse worked or not, I don’t know, but I never saw the creep again.
3. In Milan I stopped to examine my map after stepping out of the amazing Cathedral and was promptly offered help by man of about thirty.  I refused and walked on like I knew where I was going then stopped in the shade of a building further on and proceeded to examine my map.  The man found me again (duh, how long till I learn my lesson?) and engaged me in conversation.  He spoke fairly good English, and I believe he was the only one of my ‘approachers’ who did.  He wanted to go out for coffee or hang out together and I was making silly excuses and let myself be flattered by the fact that he thought I was French and was surprised to find out I was American.  Now I can’t remember if he left and then came back a second time, but I was scared enough that I used my wonderful Eurail pass to hurry to the train station and hop on the next train that was leaving in hopes that my hasty retreat would leave him no ability to follow.  In this way I got to visit the very touristy Lake Como, but sadly it was before my piano teacher studied there or I would have paid him a visit.
4. My very fist experience with creepy Italian men was one my way home after a rehearsal in the little village of Urbania, which was a lovely place.  A man approached me and I couldn’t have had more than two weeks of Italian at that point.  The conversation (in Italian and gestures) went something like this.  “Do you want to go into town and get something to eat?”  “No thanks.”  “Why not?”  “I’m going home.”  “Why go home when it’s a beautiful evening?  Come out with me”  “I want to go to bed.”  “Let’s go to bed together.”  [I was shocked out of my wits but didn’t know enough to walk away right then.]  “I have a boyfriend!”  “Is he in America?”  “Yes.”  “Then what’s the problem?  I have a wife” [More shock and a loss for words]  “I have a boyfriend!!”  “Yes, but he’s in America and we’re here!”  I can’t remember how I got out of it, but I managed to walk away and was burning with the knowledge that with my little Italian I’d been able to understand that some creep had wanted to sleep with me.  (My roommate had the best story about Italian men, though.  She was at a bar when a guy said to her “I want to love you tonight.”  She responded “Do you know what love means?”  The mans friends said “Yes” and started making obscene gestures.  My roommate responded “That’s not love, that’s sex.”  To which the first man replied “I want to sex you tonight.”)
5. Public transportation can be the scariest because there is no way of escape.  I once saw a guy sketching me on the subway, though there could be no harm in it, it did not make me feel good.  On the train to Venice I somehow ended up sharing a compartment alone with a crazy singing man.  I since learned not to pick a compartment alone but rather make sure I saw with other women.  This man tried to engage me in conversation and then tried to impress me with his wide knowledge of songs in different languages.  I endured the serenade for a while then got away with the excuse that I needed to use the restroom.  To my horror he escorted me there so I stayed in it for a long while.  I was very relieved to see him gone when I came out and I quickly made my way to another part of the train and didn’t hear from him again.
6. Men in cars aren’t much better.  While I was walking in Milan to find Michelangelo’s horse for MNKB a car came up along side me and a man started making strange gestures out of the window.  I ignored it and eventually the resumed its speed.  I suppose they could have been asking for directions, but after ten days of traveling alone and getting harassed, I wasn’t about to take a chance.
7. It might have been a bit more frightening while I was walking up a lonely road to the place where Kenneth Branagh shot “Much Ado About Nothing,” but that was toward the beginning of my trip and I hadn’t learned to suspect every man that talked to me.  I didn’t see many cars on the road at all but this one with two men drove past me a number of times (going up and down the hill for what reason?) and offered to give me a lift.  So the hours walk left me sweaty and too late for the wine tour, but I think I was better off for it anyway.

That’s the list and that’s the story.  It only takes eight men to give me a sour impression of Italians of the male sex, but I’m sure most Italians are not like that and to be sure I met some very pleasant and decent folks.  Just don’t talk to the ones that approach you . . .