Throughout the three days in Rome, we had noticed a recurring road sign with two words on it and an arrow pointing in a particular direction. We thought, “Hmm, that must be a really famous place because there are signs everywhere telling people how to get there.” The two words, we later discovered in a dictionary, were “senso unico” [one way].
After Rome, I was going up to Venice by train, so off I went to the terminus to get my ticket. The night before, I’d scoured the map for places near Florence that I could visit, as I was going there after Venice. A name attracted my attention: Chiaso (or something like that), because it looks like a Chinese surname (Chia).
The Rome terminus is massive, with lots of windows. There was one with “Venezia”, one with “Firenze”, and three with another name I didn’t quite recognise. I thought, “Oh, only one window each for the world-famous places like Venice and Florence, but THREE for this place, so it must be really popular with the locals. Maybe I can drop in.”
I couldn’t find it in the map, then a little light bulb in my head told me to look in my dictionary. The word was CHIUSO, which means “closed” in Italian.
(Italy, 1981)
The Rome terminus is massive, with lots of windows. There was one with “Venezia”, one with “Firenze”, and three with another name I didn’t quite recognise. I thought, “Oh, only one window each for the world-famous places like Venice and Florence, but THREE for this place, so it must be really popular with the locals. Maybe I can drop in.”
I couldn’t find it in the map, then a little light bulb in my head told me to look in my dictionary. The word was CHIUSO, which means “closed” in Italian.
(Italy, 1981)
How wonderful to think that inportant places are "closed".
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