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"They Call Me 'The Ghost'."
"What if it turns out that life isn't defined by who you belong to or where you came from, by what you wished for or whom you've lost, but instead by the moments you spend getting from each of these places to the next?" - Jodi Picoult
Rome, I love you but I'm tired. My knees are sore from your sloping stone streets, my skin is losing patience with your motor fumes and my wallet with your cover charges and tourist traps. Your crowds are loud and crushing, your traffic impassable and your homeless heartbreaking.
The other day I was walking along one of the city's main arteries and passed what looked like a protest. Translating the signs the congregation was holding as best I could, I suspected it was some sort of rally against austerity. Checking online headlines back at my guesthouse confirmed my suspicions. The march had started at roughly 2PM downtown with riots in favour of affordable housing and plans for new labour regulations which would make firing and hiring easier. Later that day, Parliament Square, near Via del Corso, was swarming with police. Noting the number of people there, I thought at first that the cops were serving as crowd control, but then the energy of the square hit me, raw and impassioned. My inner horse raised its head and flared its nostrils, warning bells sounding in my gut.
I heard a pop. And then another pop. The crowd scattered, pressing together in an attempt to break apart in the narrow streets and alleyways. I will never know whether it was really gunfire, fire crackers or just a car backfire. All I know is horses hate any kind of fire, and I wasn't interested in sticking around to find out. So I bolted.
I took a walk in Piazza Navona late yesterday afternoon. I knew it was a good spot for a pre-dinner drink. Most places here didn't have cover charges, offered free Wi-Fi and featured Happy Hours with cocktails priced around €6 as opposed to the €8 or €9 one usually paid around the Pantheon. I stopped to look at a menu posted outside of one of the many patios, always risky as this often caused waiters to appear as if from no where and try to entice you inside.
"A drink, Signora?" A rather rotund waiter in a black bow tie flourished a hand at the menu board. I shrugged one shoulder as if I was thinking about it, playing hard to get. He brought the hand to his chest. "My name is Angelo," he said "Tell me what you want, I tell you the price and then you decide. I give you Happy-Hour prices."
I half-smiled, amused at the implication that he was doing me a favour. It WAS Happy Hour. Still, I humoured him. "Bellini?"
Angelo looked apologetic. "That's a cocktail," he shrugged, both hands upturned at shoulder-height. "Best I can do is...eight euro. It's normally thirteen." He showed me on the menu. I didn't blink. Not impressed, Angelo. "Or," he added after a moment, "you take at the bar - five-fifty." I pretended to consider it for a moment. "Or," he persisted, "you can sit at a table inside." This didn't sound like too bad a deal. I thanked him and said I would think about it and maybe come back.
From there I made my way down Via Del Governo Vecchio, a narrow side street off Piazza Navona where I'd seen a number of other off-the-beaten-path osterias and wine bars. Stopping outside one, I pointed to a blackboard advertising free Wi-Fi and snacks with €6 cocktails. "I can get a Bellini here for six euros?" I confirmed with the waiter standing out front.
"For you, Signorina," he beamed, "three."
Amazing what a little makeup will do.
Once again, I was seated next to an American couple - a middle-aged man and woman from Boston on a ten-day tour of multiple Italian cities. We exchanged guidebooks and restaurant recommendations. They, like most people (not to sound too humble or anything), seemed all but floored when I explained that I was on a round-the-world trip, so I gave them the address to my blog.
When I asked for the bill, the same waiter who'd offered me €3 Bellinis held up ten fingers. "I thought you said three euros for a Bellini," I challenged. I'd had two.
He shrugged. "Okay seven," he yielded, then paused. "Or less...if you want."
Satisfied, I nodded and dug for my neck wallet in my pack. That's when, in my peripheral vision I caught the look of awe on the couples' faces next to me. I'd seen that look before. It was an I-didn't-know-you-could-do-that look, a look-at-you-go look, a how-long-have-you-lived-here look. For the first time, I saw myself through someone else's eyes, and felt an immeasurable sense of accomplishment.
I spent my last morning in Rome writing in the 18th-century tea room of Antico Caffe Greco. I'd finally decided the €8 for a table was worth it, if only to me, and couldn't think of a more fitting way to say goodbye to this dazzling and decadent city than by sitting in one of the very seats Byron or Keats once occupied, reflecting on my time here. This historic salon was an old haunt for artists and writers like myself, and the term 'haunt' made me think of the conversation (if you can call a tattered patchwork of multilingual words and phrases a conversation) my host's Irani roommate and I had over tea the other day while we waited for my laundry to dry.
"I don't see him around much," I'd remarked, referring to our landlord.
My tea mate shrugged. "I don't see you around much," he'd countered. And it was true. I barely spent any time at all in the apartment, content to pass the days wandering from one end of the city to the other or indulging in two- or three-hour meals. Filomenia and Mario had made the same comment in an online guest review for Airbnb: "Alexandra has been a very nice, quiet, clean, discreet and almost 'ghostly' guest!" They'd written. "I will suggest you to host her if you are happy to have a very well-educated and independent guest."
"They call me 'The Ghost'," I laughed over the brim of my teacup, remembering the review. I couldn't help thinking it was a perfect nickname.'Ghosting' was precisely what I felt I was doing, always an entity apart from everyone else, living a liminal existence between this place and the next, in transit both in my life and on this trip. And now the time had come to reinstate my nomadism. Just as the horse protects itself by maintaing a life of constant mobility, of sudden, 'ghost-like' disappearance and reappearance, I had to find another place to haunt. It was time to move.
Remember that scared, sad little girl who arrived here two weeks ago? The one who was afraid to leave her room and afraid to speak Italian and afraid to take the Metro? She doesn't exist anymore. The girl you are looking at today is one who has on multiple occasions walked on her own to the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Coliseum, Piazza Navona and Campo de Fiori. She has rented an apartment next to the Pantheon, almost taken a train to Naples, crossed the Tiber to Trastevere, taken the Metro to the Protestant Cemetery of Rome and to Eataly, an Italian food empire in the Garbatella district consisting of four full floors of fresh pastas, breads, artisanal cheeses, meats, seafood, wine, homemade jams and preserves, not to mention a cooking school, three or four restaurants, a cafe, pasticceria, gelateria and much more.
She has taken a tour of Vatican City, the smallest country in the world, and the Sistine Chapel inside it. She has eaten at some of the best off-the-beaten-path trattorias in Rome, had a cappuccino in the second-oldest coffee shop in Italy, had pizza made by a celebrity chef and gelato that has been argued to be the best in Rome (several times at different places). She has made some incredible international friends. And she's just getting started.
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