this week in the odyssey
4.26.99 -- 5.3.99
rome, italy

Nothing To Lose But Your Chains

You may not believe it, but I am actively telecommuting in that picture at right. Despite the carefree rakishness of my expression and the beauty of the scenery, I am diligently working on my next project, mentally outlining a chapter in my new manual and composing incisive responses to emails from my co-workers (sample incisive response -- "Umm, I dunno...maybe you should ask Ed"). You could come with me, if you want. Throw down your keyboards, your security badges, your daily commutes, and take up laptop computers against your oppressor! Shake free the yoke of corporate control, steal some office supplies, and go mobile! Telecommuters of the world unite! And pass the cheese danish!

Of course, telecommuting is not without its challenges. Sure, we're used to the life of the North American digital nomad, endlessly roaming the icy steppes of Wyoming, looking for phone jacks, but things change when you get to Europe. First of all, we don't even speak European and can't seem to find anyone else that does, either. So, I've taken to speaking Spanish to the locals. I figured since it's a Romance language, I could probably just get by with it. Unfortunately, no matter how many different inflections I put into "Yo quiero Taco Bell," I still can't seem to get anybody to tell us how to buy a bus ticket. They just don't seem to be intuitive about languages here, even when I really slow it down and speak loudly. So now, I mainly just scream slow English at people, though I am considering some Esperanto lessons. Kristanne keeps calling me an "Ugly American," but I really don't know what she means by that. If I'm so ugly, why the heck did she marry me?

Xenophobic tendencies aside, Italy does present some interesting problems for the aspiring international telecommuter. Aside from the usual jumble of different telephone adapters and power adapters, you also have to adapt to the world of metered rate phone service instead of flat rate. Flat rate is what we pay in the United States. Under flat rate billing, you typically pay a single fee per month which gives you unlimited local calling. It's not like that in Italy (or most of Europe, for that matter). In Europe, you typically pay metered rate, where each call is charged individually based on the amount of time it takes. Because of this, no one really wants to let you just use their phone (after all, it's costing them money). Now, the really insightful Odyssey reader will see what this does to us -- no jacking in from the laptop on someone else's phone line! Our days of cadging phone service from some unsuspecting hotel or business are pretty much over unless we really want to risk fines and/or imprisonment. Or folding, spindling, or mutilation. Or being chewed out by an old Italian lady.

Of course, none of this would be a problem were we fortunate enough to live in an apartment with a real phone line. We could just dial up to the net at our leisure and do what needed doing. Sadly, our apartment barely has a roof, let alone an actual phone line. This leaves us to navigate the nether world of cyber cafes for our internet access. For the last four weeks, this is exactly what we have done. I am intimately familiar with nearly every internet cafe in the central Rome area. I know their daily hours, the operating systems of their computers, and some of their administrator level passwords (muahahaha). I know which clerks will let me send email for free and which ones will peer over my shoulder to make sure I'm not doing anything untoward. I know who has Macs, who has PCs, and who has Linux terminals. I have installed FTP programs at the Museo di Corso, email clients at Bibli, and PGP at Netgate. The dark side of all this hydra-headed net access is that I also know how to walk the fastest route from the Pantheon to Piazza Barberini to Trastevere to do all the various things I need to do in a typical day. My feet hurt.

Fortunately, I also know my wonderful wife, Kristanne. And "Kristanne" translates into only one thing in Italian -- action. Big time action. The kind of action that unwinds your mind, rethreads your head, and sets your personal blender to "Frappe." That kind of action.

When Kristanne and I caught our flight to Europe from the States, the helpful counter agent there left us with a lesson. Here is what he said -- "I have found that the people in life who ask for what they want generally get it." Let's call this man Squeaky Wheel. Kristanne took the words of ole Squeaky to heart and set to changing our situation. After some weeks of lobbying, logrolling, and the odd bit of arm-twisting, Kristanne managed to get us elevated into the stratosphere of University housing here in Rome. We are now occupying a large room (shown above at right) in an elegant three bedroom flat near St. Peters, sharing with two other supercool graduate students in the program (and I think we all know exactly how supercool graduate students can be). There is a phone (no more internet cafes for us!). There is more than one room. A large kitchen. A dining room. Two balconies. That's Kristanne on one of those balconies there at the left, watching the crowds mass for the Padre Pio beatification ceremony over at St. Peters. We're still stumbling about the place in disbelief, the dazed glaze of lottery winners blanking our brows. We touch each other to make sure that we are real. We are. Either that, or a really good consensual illusion. Thanks, Squeaky! Thanks, Kristanne!

Of course, every move comes complete with its associated difficulties. Kristanne and I have been living together (and without roommates) for some four years now. We were worried that we might permanently have lost some of the spirit of compromise and acceptance that you need to coexist harmoniously with people who are different from you. For example, upon moving in we were slightly nonplussed (and more than a little dismayed) to discover the vase you see there at the right. "Cocaina?" What the heck was up with that? Were our new roommates cocaine addicts? Blow fiends? Snort hounds? White line pirates? Oh, sure, Mr. Scucherini would be really happy about this, but not me and Kristanne. Not only is cocaine just a totally eighties addiction (sheesh, couldn't they at least move it up to the early nineties and be crackheads?) but we were also worried about the bucketloads of clever Eric Clapton references that would be sure to dog us for the rest of our stay. (Sample clever lines -- "Say, Sid and Kristanne, I see your day is done. Would you like to ride on? Would you like to get down? Down on the ground?"). You can see that we would have no choice other than to stuff their mouths with cotton for this kind of nonsense. While we sat mutely contemplating either muzzles or interventions (Kristannne wanted action; I favored counseling), our new roomies finally arrived to reassure us that they were huge fans of Nancy Reagan and did indeed just say no to drugs. Kristanne still wanted to stuff cotton in their mouths, just for fun, but I said no. Sorry to be the party-pooper, folks, but someone's got to be the voice of reason around here!

Pretty much every Friday, Kristanne's program has been going on field trips to various scenic and educational destinations. Fortunately for me, I've been allowed to tag along as a sort of "mascot" for the group. It's a great deal, even though I do sort of resent the big puffy chicken outfit they make me wear. It also gets a little bit old when I have to restore spirit to the bus by leading them in the "We've got Bernini, yes we do. We've got Bernini, how 'bout you?!" cheer. I can't quite hit those leg kicks like I used to. Nonetheless, the tradeoff is good -- in exchange for publicly humiliating myself in front of art historians, I get a free bus ride to wherever they are going. This week, we headed off to the Alban hills east of Rome. There, we toured an ancient Temple of Fortuna (dating back to 1 BC) in the town of Palestrina. After a headswirling twenty minutes we were back on the bus to Castel Gandolfo, a picturesque village high above the volcanic lake you can see in the picture at the top of this page. That's also Castel Gandolfo at left, with Kristanne happily fronting the main street.

Castel Gandolfo is beautiful, which is probably one reason why it's also the site of the Papal Summer Villa. As you can tell from the name, though, it's also a fairly dangerous place, full of hobbits and wizards and dragons, as well as some mangy little dude named "Gollum." Fortunately, my twelfth-level paladin was with us (23 hit points!), so were able to fend off the assaults from the gelatinous cubes that beset us from all sides. Just when it looked like we were out of the woods, though, a full regiment of Gryphons set upon us (page 87 in the Monster Manual). However, luck was on our side in this tilt. Kristanne's eighth-level cleric rolled its seven-sided dice and cast a Spell of Laughter and Forgetting on the scurrilous beasts. Faster than you can say "The dark lord rides in force tonight" three times, the gryphons were gone and we were safely on our way back down the hill to Rome. Phew!

As an aside, that last paragraph officially completes my lifelong quest of mixing a Dungeons and Dragons reference with one to Milan Kundera. I can rest easy now. Thank you.

We finished off our week with a visit to the beatification ceremony for Padre Pio, a Capuchin monk from Southern Italy. Since I had no idea what a beatification ceremony was, I better let you all in on the secret, too. When the Catholic church has some person of great grace and who has performed miracles on earth, they sometimes vote to beatify that person -- turn him or her into a saint. Today, it was Padre Pio's day. Though the good Padre died back in the 60's, he is still a huge folk hero here in Italy. Reportedly, he had the stigmata (bleeding crucifixion wounds like Christ's) for over 30 years. He is also said to have performed many miracles and was known to possess the healing touch, even removing the fluid from a believer's lungs the day before she was to undergo surgery. Padre Pio was also said to have kept a lover with whom he dallied two times a week well into his late 50s. One waggish newspaper remarked that the real miracle about Padre Pio was that a fifty year old man with bleeding palms could still find someone with whom to make whoopie twice a week.

The beatification ceremony was amazing in its scope. Over a million people were expected, and if the noise outside our windows was any indication, the crowds did not disappoint. They started arriving at five in the morning, marching down the streets to St. Peter's and singing songs, holding up banners to show what town they had come from. We didn't have tickets to get into the ceremony itself, so we contented ourselves with going to the base of Via Conciliazione (the road that leads up to St. Peter's from Castel S. Angelo; see the pic at left) to check out the crowd. A distance of close to a mile of road was completely packed with worshippers there to hear the Pope bless the crowd and perform the ceremony. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the Pope popped into the Popecopter and flew across town to bless another 350,000 people gathered at the Lateran Baptistry (home church of the Bishop of Rome, which the Pope is). In case you're wondering, September 23d has officially been declared Padre Pio day. It's never too early to start making plans!

What a week! We're still thinking about heading off to the Abruzzi National Park next weekend, but are not sure. If you've got a place you really think we should see, please do send it in! We'd love to hear it. See you next week on the Odyssey!

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