Hit Me with Your Best Shot

 Day Three: Soccer match. Bologna vs. Cagliari. This is Caesar’s itinerary item and I’m going along for the fun (?). I owe it to him for all the televised soccer matches I’ve ruined with vacuuming during the single goal of the match, which seems to happen with relative frequency.

 The night before the match, he tries to get tickets, which are available but the firewall on the site is blocking the final payment. We spend an hour on different devices but just can’t get the tickets. No worries, we’ll buy at the stadium, which is about three miles away. Then we learn that there is a marathon taking place in the city and we can’t get the car out. No worries, we’ll get a bus. 

Morning comes and we start out to get the bus but the marathon route changes the bus route. No worries, we’ll walk. Forty five minutes later we are at the  Stadio Dall’ara but can’t find the ticket office. No worries, we’ll ask some fans. Caesar Caramanico approaches a large group of them outside a bar and only when I get closer do I realize that he has disturbed the partying neo-fascita Ultra fans who seem to favor face tattoos and dislike dentists. The one woman in the group is eyeing me up and I’m pretty sure she can take me but I shoot her a tough, Darby girl glare and say nothing (because I can’t say anything worthwhile in Italian anyway) and she backs down a bit. No worries. Ticket booth is around the corner. 

As we approach the booth, security stops us because you can’t go that way and then inform us that you can’t buy tickets at the booth but only online. Caesar spends the next twenty minutes explaining the online issues to two older men who I highly doubt even know how to get online much less buy something. A younger kid, managing traffic, jumps in and another twenty minutes of him playing with Caesar’s phone and having the same outcome as us. Then Caesar insists he try it on his phone which works but the kid doesn’t have enough credit on his card  to buy them even as Caesar offers him more money than they cost. No worries. He lets us through to talk to people in the ticket booth that doesn’t sell tickets.

 The girl in the ticket booth tells us that you can’t buy tickets on the day of the event except online. No kidding. Caesar is relentless and walks down to the VIP entrance and tells the young girl and guy there his story. They are kind. They’ll help him and they proceed to do exactly what we’ve been doing since last night and they too can’t get past the firewall. More security people jump in to help. The entrance is now being covered by a single girl. I have no interest in the ticket saga, so I’m watching the Maserati and high end European cars arrive and present their pass, which the girl scans. These people are definitely not Ultras, good hair, shiny teeth, expensive sunglasses. 

I’m thinking about all this when Caesar shouts “Gianni Morandi” and rushes the arriving car. I think he’s run into a grade school friend as he is talking and laughing with a handsome man in the car. The security kids are laughing too. Whatever. I don’t understand the conversation, it is too fast. Caesar loooks at me and says “Lorraine, do you know who this is?” Yeah, I think , you just said it’s Gianni Morandi, the question is how do you know him? He is telling him something about playing songs for his students at Grays Ferry. I’m really lost. The guy is friendly and he gives me a look too but not the kind the Ultra girl gave me, a more flirty one, so I like Caesar’s friend. They’re talking about the ticket situation now. Oh Lord. He jokes that we can have his for a hundred bucks. He has to go, we’re holding traffic and he says in English, “I’ll see you inside” and I reply, because finally I can, “not unless I figure out a way to sneak in”. The people in the car laugh. I’m not being funny but whatever, it’s my first communication with anyone besides Caesar for the past two hours, so I’m satisfied. 

The security people try fifty different ways to buy the tickets but nothing works until we decide to say that we are Italian and not USA. Bingo! The firewall goes down and we’ve scored two tickets twenty minutes before game time. Caesar is happy as a kid on Christmas morning. He is so excited! “I can’t believe we just met Gianni Morandi!” Huh? Oh, is he a soccer player? “Lorraine, you just met the most famous entertainer in all of Italy. Let me see your pictures.” I look at him. There are no pictures . I thought it was your friend, I had no idea. Yes, the best shot of the soccer game came at the VIP parking lot and I missed it.

You Say Bologna

 Day Two: Trying to recall when we learned about the great European cities and I’m thinking it was fourth grade with Sr. Immaculata. What I do remember is all of us kids calling Balogna,  “Baloney” and this thought came to my head as we were served mortadella on a table covered in starched , white linens. 

The world’s oldest university, established in 1088,  is located here, so the city feels young, especially late evenings when students clog the portico covered sidewalks outside the bars and restaurants, eating pizza, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and having thoughtful conversation. 

This too, reminds me of my youth as I remind Caesar Caramanico that there is Advil in the bag for his hip pain and that I really need to get some sleep.

Italy in Winter

 Day One. Why the hell are we here in the dead of winter and during a political firestorm while the Pope is dangerously ill? I’ve never seen Rome. Aside from flying into and out of Fumicino airport and spending a single night during a heatwave in a hundreds year old house without AC, I’ve not seen Rome. While Caesar Caramanico was teaching, we always opted to travel during the summer and Rome in summer is huge crowds and unbearably hot. I despise crowds and CC hates  the heat, so we always would say “next time” and end up next time on the beach somewhere on the east coast of Italy or visiting a hidden gem in a town high in the mountains without tourists. 

So, when I heard it was a Jubilee Year for the Catholic Chirch and Caesar’s first year not teaching, I planned our trip to coincide with Carnevale and Ash Wednesday. After sharing my ideas and plan with CC, who has already been to Rome, and doesn’t share my fervor about the plenary indulgence (more about that later) we will receive, he wanted to add a couple days in  Bologna, a city he never visited, and a chance to attend a soccer game. So, here we are in Italy in Winter. 

When we rent our car, we are told to pick up a  bag of tire chains from the attendant as it is a law in Italy, to have chains in your car in anticipation of snow through April 1st. As we leave the rental garage, CC driving and me in the passsenger seat, the final attendant asks for Caesar’s license ( the same one that he rented the car with fifteen minutes earlier) and  a lively conversation ensues between the attendant and Caesar about his license but I can’t fully follow the conversation (in Italian) except that apparently Caesar’s license is expired and he cannot rent a car. Caesar then inforns me that they are plotting ways around this prooblem including me driving the car.  I’m horrified in English and Italian and after consider punching Caesar for not renewing his license, it occurs to me that there is no way that his license renewal would be floating around our home office without my knowledge or incessant nagging him to attend to it.  At this point, i ask to see the license, which clearly does not expire until 11/2/2025. The man is reading the date Italian style, so it looks to him like it expired on 2/11/25. I had to produce my own license to convince him of this truth, thankful that my  expiration date  is a 22 and obviously not a month. 

 The first thing we notice when we get outside is that it really is more like spring, especially around Rome where the grass is already greening and the cherry blossoms are blooming, than winter. As we drive north toward Bologna ( note-still only have seen Rome airport so far) it does get cooler and wetter and feels more like winter but  compared to our Philly winter this year, totally comfortable.

 We stop in Siena for pranzo and a difficult but much needed passagiata and promise that we’ll be back to this lovely town. We arrive in Bologna at nearly 8PM after being awake, except for cat naps, for 36 hours. We get twisted, miss turns, drive into the restricted area, can’t find the AirBnB, climb four stories of stairs ( description said elevator I swear, Caesar) with bulky luggage and I realize the truth to the meme I saw recently “traveling might be expensive but you can’t put a price tag on arguing with your spouse in a different city”.