Last minute on his visit back in the UK, British geologist Pete and I decided to hire a car in Switzerland and co-drive through the Alps down to Italy. We’d driven around Taiwan when we were both working there. He’d said on that trip, “You’re not a bad driver — for a woman!” Grudgingly or tongue in cheek, take your pick.
Unfortunately, in those days (1981), one couldn’t pick up a car from one place and drop it off in another. Also, another last minute development, he was wanted back in Conoco Jakarta earlier than scheduled, so we flew to Rome, from where he was to return to Indonesia after three days, with me travelling on to another two destinations (Venice and Florence).
Being someone who always picks the wrong queue, trust me to go and choose to be the adventurous traveller on that occasion. Don’t be boring. Don’t pre-book, just go. There’s always the first time. One has to start somewhere. Be brave.
I didn’t even do my homework beforehand by reading up hard copy travel guides on those places, which proved to be very silly indeed. My only justification is that it was all last minute. Still…
That impulsive decision to be spontaneous and adventurous came at a cost: I arrived from Rome around 5pm to find that half the world had turned up in Venice.
I’d gone to Venice on their annual regatta*, without having booked any accommodation!
The queue at the tourist information office was long. In the end, all they did was to give me a list of hotels to ring.
Public phones in Italy require a special(ly shaped) coin called the gettone (which means “token”), so I had to go to a shop next to the tourist information office to get a handful of them.
There were ten public phone booths in the hall, five on each side, back to back (well, face to face for the callers).
The first few calls netted the phone being hung up as soon as they heard English, or my being told they didn’t speak English or that they were full. I was beginning to run out of gettone.
I saw that there were two young men (20??) in the next booth, one of whom could speak English, so I approached them and suggested that we pool our phone calls: we’d ring different hotels and try to get two rooms with each call. Still no joy.
After a while, the English-speaking one, Juan, said they were going to give up and head out to a campsite in the suburbs as they had a tent and sleeping bags. I didn’t, so they invited me along to share their tent.
One could say that it was a bit foolish of me to have agreed to go along and share a tent with two boys I’d only met five minutes earlier. What else could I do, though? It was 6 or 7pm, and starting to get dark. It was also 1981, when perhaps life was not as complicated as nowadays / people were not so bad (I think). These boys were tourists like me, so it wasn’t as if I was running the risk of being robbed. Or raped — certainly not with my looks (a tomboy, not wearing low cuts or revealing clothes and all). (I know, I know — it only takes the one time for the regret of a lifetime.)
Well, at least the panic was over.
They (Juan and Jorge) turned out to be from Ecuador, doing some engineering course in Romania and had come over to Italy during a break in their studies. Juan had studied at high school in America, which was why he could speak English.
They were so sweet: set up the tent, invited me to inspect it, apologised for not having got any roses or champagne, then (at bedtime after dinner out) offered to let me sleep in the middle. They’d opened up their two sleeping bags, using one as the ground sheet, with the other as the blanket. I didn’t like the idea of sleeping between two boys (that was a bit too intimate for me, plus I suffer from claustrophobia), so I chose the edge. It turned out to be the wrong position when both or one of them rolled over (away from me) in the middle of the night, taking the blanket away, so I spent the rest of the night without a share of the covering. Small price to pay for a roof over my head.
Thank you, Juan and Jorge, the two guardian angels who turned up when I needed somewhere to stay. I’m eternally grateful to you.
(Venice, 1981)
* (from googling) The Venice Historical Regatta, or Regata Storica, is a major annual event in Venice, Italy, held on the first Sunday of September. It features a historical water pageant and rowing races, serving as a celebration of Venetian rowing tradition and history. The event is a highlight of the "Voga alla Veneta" rowing calendar, a unique Venetian rowing style.
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