A Fistful of First Days

The ghost of Sergio Leone must have had a hand on the roulette wheel that deposited Mom and me at the base of the Janiculum in Trastevere. It turns out the ancestral home of my childhood idol is less than a block from the B & B where we landed. I wouldn’t discover this ‘til later but strange coincidences (that persist to this day) like this began piling up immediately.

Tevere: river. Trastevere: “beyond the river” (please pronounce it correctly: "tras-TEH-ve-ray") is the area of Rome that until 509 B.C. belonged to the Etruscans. Romans named it Ripa Etrusca (Etruscan bank). Located on the west bank of the Tiber this neighborhood is by far my favorite in all of Rome. Trastevere doesn’t compare one-to-one with anywhere in particular in the states- it’s fashionable at the same time that it’s unconventional; it’s home to scads of artists; and laid back in a way Rome on the left bank of the Tiber most definitely ISN’T. Much more about Trastevere to follow.

A bit about the B & B. Technically this appellation is correct. There were beds, and we were offered delightful breakfasts. Literally, this was a two-bedroom apartment we shared with a gracious Italian-American woman who grew up in Texas (meaningful coincidence number one). Our lovely hostess also happens to shepherd four Tibetan Buddhist monks (coincidence number two) who live there in the apartment with her. The layout: four monks in one bedroom, hostess on the sofa, mom and me in the other bedroom. The otherworldly experience of readying ourselves each morning to the sonorous chants of the monks doing puja in the next room only heightened what was already the extraordinary sensation that inevitably comes with finding oneself on the other side of the planet from home.

We had our own bathroom, and this seemingly mundane mention is a great place to begin examining the unexpected trivialities that represent the effort needed to acculturate oneself to the day-to-day upkeep that seems so effortless at home. Bathrooms in Rome are notoriously clumsy. I was told that when Rome was “updated” plumbing was often installed pell mell without thought to longevity. What this means is sewer gas will frequently pervade your space, fixtures won’t work, and water pressure will be iffy. This was not a problem at our B & B, but my current apartment is a nightmare in this regard!

Bidets are commonplace in residential quarters (perhaps because a functioning shower is a luxury!) and though this delighted me, Mom was vexed. The shower stall was just that- a stall, so I encouraged Mom to use the bidet instead of struggling in the tiny shower. I have no idea what happened but Mom was not impressed with her bidet experience. Unaccustomed to the shower, Mom and I both caused it to leak and had to mop the flooded floor after each session. I was always in fear that Mom would slip in the sopping wet floor so I remained on stand-by to provide support for her shower exit. In Rome I bow to the bidet as my savior from tub trauma!

The next survival issue is procurement of sustenance. No doubt I was prepared for the meat-o-rama of Italy, but I had naively assuaged myself with the PBS travel show notion that loads of vegetables would be served at every meal. Not the case. At least not the case in the historic center of Rome: a nexus of opportunism that caters to the carnivorous, comatose, tourist corpse that feeds on whatever carrion is thrown in its general direction. Granted, there are plenty of open-air market vendors selling fresh (amazing and surprising) vegetables, but if a vegetarian wishes to eat at a restaurant they should be very careful as to what and how they order. Many Italians are quite accustomed to accommodating vegetarians, even if all they can offer is a salad, but if you don’t know how to read a menu in Italian your salad might arrive decorated with a meat menagerie bouquet.

Now that I have been here a while and spent time with locals I know where to go for great food. There are actually tons of fantastic places for vegetarians, and discerning omnivores alike. These restaurants are only just slightly off the beaten path (more on this later). Shopping for organic vegetarian food in a grocery store is a bit more of an effort. The center of Rome is what hipster America would like drawn on as a comparison to its “urban villages”, where a person never has to walk more than a block or two to tend to all their needs: dry-cleaning, grocery, tobacco, hardware, etc. Rome is perfectly organized this way, therefore grocers, cheese shops, meat markets, and bakeries can be found on just about every street. Organic grocers do exist but they aren’t in every neighborhood. I’ve found them to be mostly concentrated in Trastevere. Actually, Trastevere has more than its share of hippies and healers. “Agricultura Biologica” means organic. The chain stores carry a very limited supply of “bio” foods but I found exclusive “bio” vendors in the Jewish Ghetto, Trastevere, and my favorite is just off Campo de Fiori on Via Pelligrino.

For the first few days Mom and I never got across the Tiber. The very first evening we walked to the Piazza de S. Maria in Trastevere where we enjoyed pizza and gelato (of course!). Mom bought pizza for the homeless (and toothless) guys, and I tried to get the homeless dogs to play with me but they were too busy running all over the place-even into restaurants. After tasting our first flavors of Rome we walked into the basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, and I was left speechless. At the time I knew nothing about the basilica but nonetheless I could tell it was medieval and ornamented with ancient decorations. This is still my most favorite church in all of Rome. I will tell more about it later.

The next morning Mom and I had our first coffee experience. A coffee shop is called a “BAR” and you stand at a bar (banco) wedged in alongside throngs of Italians and drink your coffee. When you order the barista asks you “banco or tavola?” meaning bar or table service. You will pay at least twice as much for your cappuccino if you sit down for table service! That said, the very first bar Mom and I found happens not to operate in this fashion. Bar Saint Calisto in Trastevere is a lowbrow but excellent place (90 cent cappuccinos!) where locals sit outside people watching, drinking espresso and smoking cigarettes. This bar reminds me of what Café Paradiso on Capitol Hill in Seattle used to be like in the early 1990s: a Mecca for perfectly disheveled and slightly hung-over musicians and artists discussing the previous night’s follies, and musing over what will tickle their fancy that day.

From here we walked through the Piazza exploring the new sights and sounds. We decided we needed more coffee and stopped in at another bar. When I inquired about "shots" of espresso (as in how many are in a drink, etc.) I told the barista I normally have three shots in my latte, and I thought he was going to flip! He said drinking that many was VERY dangerous! By this time I'd already had four. I spent the next few hours wondering when I was supposed to keel over. Nothing happened. Mom laughed because I kept asking her if she thought something terrible was going to happen from me drinking that much coffee, and that wouldn’t it have happened by then? I’m not convinced Italian espresso is any stronger than American espresso, and it would take a lot more convincing to prove to me that the U.S. doesn’t trump Italy as far as free trade, organic, single bean flavor goes. To my great fortune I live very near the BEST coffee bar in Rome: Bar Saint Eustachio, where I delight in a grancaffe as often as possible. When I’m short on time and need to get straight to class I drop into Magnolia on the Campo and sit at the bar for a caffe Americano doppio con latte caldo a parti, and all is well.