"Three Coins in a Fountain..."

As I mentioned in my first blog I wanted to give you a little background as to who I am and some of the early influences in my life that made me who I am.  Now I would like to tell you about an early event in my life that opened my eyes to the big world and created the thirst to explore foreign countries and all of the marvelous, weird and wonderful things that come with travel to and living in other places in the world.  I want to talk about my first trip to a country outside of the US other than to Canada for some day trips to Niagara Falls, which wasn't very far from my home town.  Actually, Canada was less that 20 mile across a narrow part of Lake Erie from my hometown, but we had to drive east about 100 miles (160 km) to Buffalo at the eastern end of the lake, and cross the Niagara river, near the famous waterfalls to get to Canada.

My mother was from Rome, Italy which I have talked about already.  She liked to go home to see her family as often as she could, which is perfectly understandable.  When I was 7 years old, my mother decided it was time to take me as well.  I was very excited to learn we would go to Italy, the thought of going to another country, on another continent, far from home was just unimaginable to my young mind.  The day finally arrived in mid July of 1963.  Bags were packed, and my mother, my brother, my sister and I piled into the car and my father drove us to the train station early in the morning.  Already my first adventure on the trip would happen, a ride on a real train to New York City!  I have always loved trains and after watching many of them travel through our city, I was going to ride on one myself.

I really can't recall too much about the train trip except it was exciting and it was long.  Probably around 8 hours or so.  But we could walk around in our train car and look out the windows as the scenery rolled by, through cities and the countryside.  We arrived in New York, another amazing sight.  Of course I had seen pictures of Manhattan in magazines and in TV shows.  Here I was surrounded by tall buildings and people everywhere.  It was like magic!  We took a big yellow Checker cab to the port facility on the Hudson River on the west side of central Manhattan.  At the time, travel by ship was still relatively common and the port was full of activity.  People everywhere, ships docked at the piers and giant sheds to protect the workers and the passengers and their belongings from the weather.  A Red Cap porter with a cart took our suitcases and we went to find our ship.  We were to travel on the Italian lines SS Cristoforo Columbo, a medium sized ocean liner.  These ships were a far cry from the huge, multi decked cruise ships that you see today.  The sleek, stylish ocean liners were designed to take passengers across the world's oceans in almost any weather and sea conditions.  The purpose was to get to the destination, not just to meander around the Caribbean or other vacation spots. 

We boarded the ship after some formalities, found our our small cabin, got our things settled and went to the main deck to await our departure.  Back in those days, the departure of a liner bound for Europe or other exotic destinations was a bit of a big deal.  On the deck, the ship's crew were circulating among the passengers with rolls of thin paper confetti.  We were each given several rolls of the colorful paper.  We all lined up along the railing of the ship, looking down on the crowd of family members, friends and onlookers on the pier below.  After a time, the ships steam horn blew a long, deep, throaty blast announcing the departure.  On this signal, all of the passengers along the rail grasped the loose end of the rolls of confetti and hurled the rest to the people waiting below.  They would catch the remaining end of the roll and soon the entire side of the ship was connected to the pier by hundreds of colorful streams of paper.  I'll never forget that sight on a sunny and warm July afternoon.  As the ship slowly pulled away from the pier, aided by tugboats, we let go of our confetti and watched it flutter down to the water.  I had already known the trip would be a wonderful and exciting adventure and this little ceremony was a fitting start.  

The trip took 7 or 8 days.  The weather was beautiful, the sea was relatively calm and the ship was wonderful.  We ate our meals in a nice dining room at a table that was assigned to us for the duration of the trip.  People were well dressed at dinner time, waiters in formal outfits brought the delicious Italian food served on nice china dishes, and saw to our every need.  We found our way around the ship, it wasn't so large.  They had a place for us young kids to play under supervision, there were other children, toys and activities and my mother and my teenaged sister could have some time to relax and enjoy other amenities on the ship.  They had an art contest in the playroom.  Other children drew trees, flowers, animals, people, etc. but I was no fool.  I had been drawing ships of all kinds since I could first hold a crayon, and I won first prize by drawing our ship, even though I had reversed the Italian flag colors painted on the funnel of the ship.  My prize was a little leather coin purse.  Unfortunately they kept my drawing, although I found that rather flattering.  Maybe they framed it and hung it up in the ship somewhere!  The ship had an outdoor pool and a kiddie pool that we splashed in, and there were other activities as well.  The time passed quickly and one afternoon there was the famous Rock of Gibraltar off of the port side of the ship as we left the Atlantic Ocean and entered the Mediterranean sea.  The next morning we passed by the US Navy 6th Fleet, the big gray warships were very impressive in the Naples harbor, on our way to the pier.  Some of my mother's extended family lived in Naples and they were waiting for us.  We disembarked, said goodbye to our beautiful ship and headed into Naples to stay with family for the night before our train trip to Rome the following day.  I quickly realized were 'weren't in Kansas anymore' as I was surrounded by friendly strangers all gesturing and chatting rapidly in Italian.  I wouldn't be surprised if my cheeks weren't a little bruised from my Italian relatives continually pinching the cheeks of the small, red headed American kid.

The next day we boarded a train in Naples, and a few hours later we arrived at the Roma Termini, the main train station in the middle of the 'Eternal City'.  We made our way to my grandparent's apartment, where my mother grew up.  My grandparents, in Italian nonno for grandfather and nonna for grandmother, lived in a building in the Parioli district which was regarded then as well as now as one of the most fashionable and beautiful parts of Rome to live in.  The district, in the NW quadrant of the city is named after the main street in the area, viale Parioli.  A small side street, via Nino Oxilia. intersected viale Parioli, and on the 2nd block down from the main street, on the corner was a nice looking 5 story building covered with the ubiquitous terra cotta colored stucco that covers many buildings in Rome.  Now, my grandparents were far from rich.  How they managed to live in such a beautiful part of the city is an interesting story.  My nonno, around 18 or 19 years old at the time, fought in WW I for the Italian King, Vittorio Emmanuel II.  Nonno was in an artillery unit that was in the Tirol, in the mountains in northern Italy near the Austrian border.  His unit was fighting in the less famous yet equally brutal, ugly front in the east, against the Austrian-Hungarian forces.  My nonno never talked about the war, however he and the men in his unit were awarded a special gold medal from the king of Italy himself for their bravery in the brutal combat.  My brother, named after my grandfather now has the solid gold medal.  I imagine my grandfather had enough excitement in the war to last him for the rest of his life and he ended up in a middle management position in the Italian postal system, he was a bureaucrat.  By this time Mussolini had established himself as the fascist dictator of Italy.  Il Duce had some nice apartment buildings built for Italian government employees, and there was a lottery to allow the workers to rent one of the apartments.  My nonno was one of the lucky workers to be assigned an apartment.  Many years later, the residents had the opportunity to buy their apartments at a reasonable price and my grandparents did so.   The apartment is still in the family, one of my cousins now lives in it.

So we settled ourselves into my grandparents apartment for our nearly 3 month stay there.  Outside, on the ground floor of the building there was a small, low walled courtyard and large, arched double entry doors which gave access to the entry area inside and the stairs.  The big doors were open during the day time and in the evening they were closed and there was a smaller door in one of the large doors for access.  Just inside the entry was a small office with a window to the entry area and there was a full time portiere (doorman) on duty there.  At night, if you didn't have a key, you rang a bell and he would come to the door to let you in. The actual apartment was quite beautiful with high ceilings, large windows, and travertine floors, a beautiful form of limestone, similar to marble.  The entry to my grandparent's apartment was through large double wooden doors, and there was an entry hall immediately inside.  To the left was a reasonable sized living room that could double as a sleeping space, which was needed with 4 more people in the apartment.  To the right was a small room that originally served as the maid's room, should you have had one.  There was a long hall at the other end of the entry hall opposite the front door.  About halfway down the hall on the right was a large bedroom, which was my grandparents bedroom.  On the left side was a small kitchen with just enough room for a counter with a sink, the stove, a small refrigerator and a small table.  There was also a door to small balcony off of the kitchen which looked on to ta a 'U' shaped courtyard formed by the shape of the building.  At the end of the hall on the left was a long, narrow bathroom with a sink, a deep, old fashioned claw foot bathtub, a bidet and a toilet as well as my grandmother's clothes washing machine.  Opposite of that was a large formal dining room with a big window.  At the end of the hall was a door to another balcony identical to the one off of the kitchen.  This was where my mother, her 2 younger sisters and my grandparents lived when my mother was growing up.  

With 4 additional people, it was a little bit of a squeeze, but it wasn't too bad.  My grandmother would cook the traditional main meal around 1 o'clock in the afternoon and she would set up a table in the long hall.  The formal dining room was mostly for special occasions.  The apartment was on the 4th floor of the building (the 3rd floor if you are European) and there were 2 flights of steps for each floor.  There was no elevator until sometime in the late 1960s when a very small 2 person elevator was installed in the middle of the stairwell.  As was the tradition in most of Europe at the time, my nonna would go shopping for the day's food every morning at a street market which started on the corner where the building was.  After shopping, she would walk up all of those stairs with her bags of fresh fruit, vegetables, meat and everything else for the meals that day.  There was a little bakery across the street for bread, and a wine shop just up the street where you could bring your own empty bottles and have them filled from taps on the wall behind the counter, one labeled red, and the other white.  You could also buy olive oil the same way.  I loved to go the the market early in the morning with my nonna.  She had a couple of net bags to carry her purchases.  The market was full of fresh produce and meats form the farmers in the countryside that would bring their products into town to the market, and there were many similar markets in the city, they were open from early morning, until the late morning time, 6 days a week.  The sights and smells of the market firmly remain in my memory.  I remember being a little shocked at the sight of freshly skinned rabbits hanging on hooks, along with veal, pork and beef at the butcher's stalls.  There was also a wonderful variety of Italian cheeses and just about everything you needed to create a wonderful Italian feast.  There was also a cut flower stall and I would sometimes buy my nonna fresh flowers when I visited when I was older, she always liked that.  My brother, being named after our nonno, and looking a lot like him, was nonno's favorite.  My nonna, perhaps feeling a little sorry for me as well as feeling some solidarity because she had red hair when she was young (unusual for an Italian), like mine, decided that I was her favorite.  

This was how we began out nearly 3 month stay in Rome.  In some ways it was all very new, different, and very exciting.  Because my mother had some Italian friends in the US, hearing the Italian language wasn't too strange, I was used to hearing it.  My mother cooked a lot of Italian food at home of course, so the food was familiar and my nonna was an incredibly good cook.  But the buildings all around were large and different. Nobody lives in a house in the middle of a city of 3 million people, although there was a villa surrounded by a high wall with a large garden on Viale Parioli not far from my grandparents apartment that was still occupied at the time by some wealthy, noble family.  The architecture was very different from what I was used to in the US, and the sight of palm trees everywhere was very interesting and exotic to me because we lived in a climate back in Pennsylvania that was far too cold for palm trees.  I was used to the large American cars of that time and the cars in Europe and especially in Italy seemed to me to come in 2 sizes.  Small and smaller.  There were many other small differences as well.  It was all very exciting to me to see all of these new sights and the sounds and smells that I had little or no prior experience with.  

In my next blog, I will talk about the city of Rome, the famous landmarks such as the Coliseum, Saint Peter's Cathedral and the Vatican, the Roman Forum and all of the other well known and famous evidence of 3,000 years of history.  But I will also talk about the rest of Rome, the Rome that few tourists ever see, and what is to me, the real Rome.  Most of the important historic sites in Rome are in a relatively small part of the center of the city and a reasonably fit person can actually walk to most of them in the course of a single day.  Over the millennia, the city has grown considerably larger and a good part of the city doesn't contain much of interest to the average tourist.  Apartment buildings, small and large shops, office buildings and other commercial establishments and all of the usual things you will find in any big city.  There are several large parks in Rome and a couple of them are mostly undeveloped, just trees and paths so that you can forget you are in a very large city.  We can explore all of these things in my next blog.