Italy: Be Not Forgotten

It was 2005. My freshman year of college. I had survived my first quarter, and was hurriedly packing my suitcase after my last final so that I could get to the band room on time. After a whole football season of preparing, the Ohio Northern University Marching Band (ONUMB) was about to hop over the Atlantic for a week-long performance tour in Italy. We had our passports in hand, and our tour T-shirts which read: “There’s No Place Like Rome.” It was a trip I knew I’d never forget.

But now that it’s been five years, I find myself often thinking back on Italy and realizing that I AM already starting to forget when and how and why certain events happened. Perhaps it’s because I was traveling with a massive group. Perhaps it was because I was missing my boyfriend back home at the time. Perhaps it was because it happened in the time before I decided to write about and seriously document my travels. I’m not sure. Whatever the reason, though, I don’t want Italy to slip through the cracks.

So, in attempts to make sure these memories remain intact, here are some moments from Italy I don’t want to forget:

The first day in Italy was an utter blur. The I-just-flew-trans-Atlantic-and-now-am-so-disoriented sort of blur that tends to occur on guided tours when you are ferried from the airport to your hotel and then directly onto a sightseeing bus. I have photos of the blurry Roman Forum, the blurry Colosseum, the blurry streets of Rome – all taken from the tour bus. But I don’t remember much about that day, other than I didn’t sleep at all on the flight over.

On our second day in Rome, we were offered the option of signing up for a guided tour of the Vatican — the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, St. Peters Basilica; you get the picture. We were dropped off at the Vatican Museum, where we stood outside in line for a while (“outside” meaning literally outside the Vatican walls) and watched Italian police chase street vendors who were hawking fake (or stolen) handbags.

We were all given headphones and an old-school cassette player, and then herded into the Vatican. My friend John “swim-moved” tourists in the museum, and proceeded to take illegal pictures inside the Sistine Chapel. Four of us ended up losing our tour group inside St. Peter’s, but took the opportunity to explore a little further. We listened to a bit of the Mass that was going on inside the ornate basilica, and then ended up climbing the 520 steps that lead to the top of the dome of St. Peter’s. This was, by far, my favorite part of our Roman experience. Standing at the top of the dome on a sunny November afternoon, looking out over the backs of the statues of the saints guarding St. Peter’s Square, it was breathtaking. Rome is beautiful.

I acted as our Roman tour guide for the rest of the day, navigating Rome’s metro system and breaking out my guide book at each new fountain or ruin to rattle off some obscure fact. We traveled without a real plan, simply hoping to stumble upon the good stuff. We hit up the Spanish Steps, overflowing with tourists, and then moved on to the Trevi Fountain, followed by the Colosseum and Roman Forum in the fading light.

The Trevi Fountain was crowded and noisy. Vendors assailed us from every angle, trying to sell us everything from light-up bouncy balls to rubber ducks. We pushed our way to the edge of the fountain, me determined to throw in the three coins my dad assured me would bring me good luck. As I was tossing, however, a rose vendor was sweet-talking the other two girls I was with. Lisa and Rachel, flattered that this Italian man was “giving” them roses, took them. The lone male in our group, Mike, was not happy when the vendor then turned to him and demanded money for the roses. Mike was forced to cough up the cash, and the vendor then took a photo of the disgruntled four of us in front of the fountain before we moved on.

We returned to the hotel later that evening to find an irritated tour guide who had apparently thought that we’d snuck away from the group earlier that day with the intention of selling our headphones and cassette players for some extra spending cash. … Do people actually do this often?

Returning to our hotel room that night, one of my roommates and I decided that something was wrong. As far as we could tell, the heat had not turned on in our room since we’d arrived. Having already relayed our worries to our band director earlier (only to be told that we were dumb, because the heat only comes on during certain hours each day in Rome), we sought out the concierge. Unluckily for us, our band director was standing at the front desk when we arrived. We convinced him to come to our room and feel the chill for himself. He did, and we were moved into a new room an hour later. We left a note on the door of our old room for our other two roommates, but they came back too addled to notice it. They spent the night shivering on the couches underneath the bed comforters (why they didn’t just sleep in the empty beds, we’ll never know).

Our one and only performance in Rome (a short parade and stand-still concert) is a jumble of images for me. Fighting to roll my xylophone down Rome’s uneven streets. At least one of the hung-over bass drummers passing out during the concert. A handful of Roman spectators probably wondering why the hell we were playing “La Donna E Mobile.”

That night, a bunch of us helped our friend “Tucky” get dressed for an evening out on the town. Having been locked out of his room without pants or shoes, we put our heads (and wardrobes) together to fashion an outfit for him to wear to dinner. We then dined at a nice restaurant, and visited the Piazza del Popolo and Piazza di Spagna by night. The girls climbed the lion fountains in Piazza del Popolo, and some of the boys climbed onto the boat fountain at the bottom of the Spanish Steps for a drink. What typical American tourists we were, climbing all over things we weren’t supposed to.

The following morning we were onboard our buses bright and early, bound for the ruins of Pompeii, further south down Italy’s boot. We got a guided tour of the ruined city, with Mount Vesuvius looming always in the background; a reminder of what caused it all. We saw remains of those buried in the ash of the ancient eruption, the forum, houses of noblemen, the baths, and explored the remainder of the amphitheater. My roommate Lisa, small as she is, helped demonstrate the acoustic engineering of the structure, standing in a certain spot and projecting her little voice (and subsequent giggle) all the way to the last stone seat.

Next it was on to Sorrento. We blew the fuse in our hotel room trying to use our hairdryers. I ate the most delicious gnocchi in a cream-tomato sauce in a restaurant near our hotel. We marched a parade down the city’s main street, complete with police escort. The crowd loved us.

That night, a bunch of band members discovered Chaplin’s Pub — a bar with Charlie Chaplin’s likeness plastered all over. The bar owner loved the ONUMB kids so much that he promised, if they came back the next night with more Americans ready to open their wallets, he’d move all the tables and throw a private American dance party. This, obviously, took place. Even our band director was there to witness the debauchery.

But before the dance party happened, I spent the day on the Isle of Capri. It was windy and rainy and cold, making for a rough ferry crossing to the small island. Once there, we got a walking tour of Capri, took in its turquoise waters and knobby cliffs, and purchased some perfume made by monks on the island. We then moved on to Ana Capri for lunch, where I got a group of us kicked out of a souvenir shop — apparently for mocking some little wooden boats for sale there.

The next day — our last full day in Italy — found us winding our way along the looping roads of the Amalfi Coast. Fending off hangovers and motion sickness, many ended up sleeping as opposed to appreciating the Italian scenery as it unfurled outside the bus windows. I did my best to soak in the blue sky and colorful towns perched upon the hillsides before they disappeared around the last corner. We stopped for a performance in Piazza Duomo in Amalfi, playing “Bohemian Rhapsody” on the steps of a gorgeous cathedral, with the sea just down the road. I did not take enough pictures.

Then it was a long ride back to Rome, where we had one last night to spend our euros and take in the sights before flying back home after a whirlwind week in Italia.

I know I haven’t done Italy justice. But it’s on my list of “places to revisit someday,” so hopefully I’ll make up for it the next time.