Well, I haven't written much about my second life in Europe, which is now seven months old. So I think I'll write a quick excerpt now.
In March, my girlfriend broke up with me and soon after my friend Eddie came to visit me here in France. It was still cold here, so we decided to head south. We found cheap plane tickets on Ryan Air to Roma, so we booked tickets on a Sunday and Monday morning we headed to the airport.
We had beds booked at "Hostel Happy Days," which has marked no more aptly than a hand-written "Hostel Happy Days" label on the door bell. Actually, we didn't find it...more like it found us. As we were walking down the street after unknowingly passing it up, some guy, apparently leading a group of young people, yelled to us, "Marco?!"
It turns out he was the owner of Hostel Happy Days and he was trying to guest which of his new arrivals was arriving. We told him we weren't Marco, but indeed we were looking for his hostel. He told us to go on up, that they were headed out to dinner, and we could meet them later if we wanted. We went up the stairs to the hostel, someone else was headed up, so they showed us the way. When we entered what looked, more or less, like an apartment, there was someone sitting behind a small desk with a computer. It turned out they didn't work there though. There was another group of guys sitting off to the right in a breakfast-type room at a picnic-type table, one leaned over some kind of registration book. An adjoining kitchen-type room had writing all over its walls. One of the guys at the picnic-type table rather abruptly asked us for our passports and 70 Euros. They also informed us that we'd be actually be staying in another building. Finally, they told us to sign the registration form, and when Eddie asked what he was actually signing, they offered no explanation, except that it was some new anti-terrorism law or something.
Anyways, needless to say, we were quite skeptical, but we followed as two of the guys (one with a broken arm) led us to the other apartment a few blocks away. We were tired, we just wanted to put our stuff down and get settled. I assured Eddie that although it seemed quite sketchy, we'd be alright, and we'd feel a lot more comfortable in the morning.
Once we put down our non-essential items in the room, we went out to grab some dinner. We found a nice little authentic-looking roman pizzeria, which was quite great, equipped with a picturesque italian-kid waiter. The only downside was they charged us a 3 Euro service charge, which we were again quie skeptical of.
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Fast forward
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On my 25th birthday, Wednesday, March 25, 2006, we woke up quite early to walk the several blocks to St. Peter's Square for the Pope's General Audience. The line was already quite long at about 8am, but we got in quite quickly and headed towards the front rows of a large assemblage of chairs.
...to be continued...
