If you want to send us mail, you may as well send it to Via Vicenza, no. 43, Roma. Cause apparently we live here now. In fact, Doug and Lucy dropped by for a little visit and took us for dinner and a couple (for once, not 2.83€) bottles of wine.
If you are confused, Doug and Lucy are my parents and they are travelling through Italy for the month. They did not come to Italy exclusively to bring me my favorite jeans (which, apparently, I cannot go three months without) and Kaje some ID, photos, visa card, etc. But it worked out really well. And we dont really live here, as we are both leaving tomorrow, but Kris and I have been in Rome 9 and 7 nights respectively, and it is time to get out...
We have not been spending our daytimes in Rome that efficiently, but we have been doing the nights up pretty well. Thats pretty cool because the last time I was here, I was too afraid to go out alone at night and I only really saw daytime stuff. Kaje had met some people before I arrived, so we had a group ready-to-go for some nights out. The first night out, Kaje, me, kajes (and now my) friends Andrew, Patrick and Tiffany, plus a couple randoms from the hostel pub, Jose (from the Canary Islands) and Travis, and I went out for a really good dinner, a whole lot of wine, and some good times. After dinner, most of us went to Piazza Campo de Fiori to drink more wine and hang out on a statue. Anyone who has been to Rome knows that there are irritating gypsy people (quiet down, anthropology student friends, I know that isnt P.C...but neither am I) trying to sell you junk...including roses. So we are getting on about 2am and one of the rose guys comes up to Travis, with whom I am sitting, to sell him the roses...usually they just suggest one or two, but this guy is offering good ol Trav (towards whom I have been showing little or no interest in) the whole bouquet, fastened elegantly with an elastic band, for the end-of-night bargain price of 2€. But this is an excessive amount for our Travis, and he offers the guy 0,50€...the guy barters for the flowers right in front of me. He ends up getting them for 1€ and hands me the bouquet proudly...and is shocked when I act less than knocked off my feet by the gesture. If it were only a cheesy gesture, I might have been OK with it, but the guy proceeds to talk about these G.D. roses for the rest of the night. He keeps acting mock-offended that I dont appreciate the roses...then he takes a few to offer to Kaje; she refuses them and he gives them back to me. He apologizes for this. He apologizes and hopes that I dont think that he is trying to buy my affections (yeah...seriously...for 1€) with the roses. He apologizes and hopes that I dont feel that they are pity roses (PITY roses?!?) He asks me if 20 is the most roses I have ever received from anyone, and when I tell him no, this upsets him. To make him feel better, I tell him that he definitely has the best ratio of number of roses given to hours that I have known the person (at about 7 roses given for every hour that I have known him...impressive...and a record I daresay no one will ever beat). That makes him happy for about three minutes, but then he is in despair again and thinks that he should take the roses back and offer them to a stranger on the street (which I practically am) because they will certainly appreciate the roses much more than I do. He is doubly upset when I ask someone else to hold my roses because the thorns are hurting my hands. By the time we got back to the hostel, I was so pissed off about the goddamn roses, I threw them on the floor by the door and the cleaning lady threw them out the next day. I have not seen dear Trav since.
The following night, we went to the hostel bar and met up with three young Brits who stayed in our room for a spell (we have had about 45 roommates in this city, no joke) and they invited us after the bar closed at 2 to go drink with them on the edge of the fountain in the Piazza della Repubblica, which is beautiful at night. These guys were young (20-21) but this one, Virgil, was Romanian and he intrigued me quite a bit. Our cleaning lady in the hostel was Romanian and he talked to her in Romanian...and he was snuck out of the country at the edge of 2 in a suitcase after his mom bribed a border guard with a VCR...Naturally, I was intrigued. So we drank sambouca (sp??) out of a plastic water bottle in the piazza, all classy-like. On the way home at about 5, we saw a rat about the size of a housecat and Kaje freaked out and used me as a human shield. She is still freaked out about 3 days later.
I am getting really tired now so I dont think I will tell the rest. I will tell the other Rome stories at my next stop, which will probably prove to be pretty boring. Kaje and I are splitting up again for a bit. Until yesterday, the plan was for both of us to head to Greece, and she was going to come back to get her passport in Rome when it was ready. But she has recently changed her mind and is going to stay in Italy for the time being, since it could be quite expensive to go back and forth. Hopefully we will meet up in Greece very soon. We dont want to split up, but it has to be done. More stories to come...
Buona sera,
chels
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