The Eternal City Revisited

There are those who say you should never go home once you have left. Nothing is the same and seeing the present somehow destroys the past. Memories become diminished by current realities. Rome represents for your tramp and trampess a time in their youth that was almost perfect. It was the last stop on their own Grand Tour (which had begun in Germany with a car and a tent and which encompassed the Low Countries, France, England, Scotland, Spain, and Switzerland before reaching Italy) – a tour for which the trampess had been given carte blanche in choosing the itinerary. The trampess’s undergraduate degree having been in art history, it is not hard to imagine how the tour shaped up. But, the tramps had been very lucky and had managed to see many things which are now closed to the public (or where visits are so physically restricted as to change the experience) – the caves at Altamira to name one – as well as many that would be on anyone’s list today. The tour was meant to end in Berlin where the tramp had studied both at university and extracurricularly, music. It was his plan to study with his old singing teachers and enjoy the rich musical life Berlin had to offer.

We never made it. Rome was warm, sunny, cheap and a good place to study voice. The tramp found a teacher on day 1, the trampess found a convent (not to join you understand), which gave tours of Rome to small groups of pilgrims (one church or ancient site a day – not one of those whirlwind see Rome in 24 hours sort of tours) and, of course, arranged papal audiences and masses for the faithful. It was not long before the tramp and trampess married, took up resident in the convent (!! – these were Dutch nuns –highly progressive and delighted to have a tall, strong man accompanying them to the Vatican bank to deposit the cash earned from their small pensione on Piazza Navona and a young, English speaking, educated assistant), and settled in to becoming Romans. We were poor: working for a convent does not come high on the list of well paying jobs; and while our address was one of the best in Rome, our furniture was hand-me-downs from the nuns. Try to imagine just how basic that is! The tramp made our bed (he is good with his hands) and our mattress was made of straw (don’t knock it, the trampess’s mattress at a well known eastern college had also been made of straw). The bathroom was on the other side of the corridor, so one could occasionally bump into the porter or the sacristan or their wives when heading for the tub. We survived on frozen fish (the Romans were deeply sceptical of frozen food so it was very cheap) from China (a highly dubious provenance), chicken livers (incredibly cheap, but locally produced), fresh pasta, and lots of salad, vegetables, cheese and cheap but honest wine (no banana skins or other questionable additives). We learned Italian, read Goethe’s Italienische Reise, worked hard, studied hard, sat in the sun, explored Rome street by street, and strolled from fountain to fountain in the evenings. Every now and then we shared an ice cream (which we never ate sitting down as that made it at least 3 times the price). When the nuns were on holiday in Holland, they allowed us to use their roof terrace: bliss – dinner alfresco with a view from the bell tower of Sant’Agnese over Piazza Navona. If you have to be poor, it doesn’t get better than that.

Of course the first three months were awful: we spoke no Italian, people alternatively took advantage of us or ignored us, the streets were dirty, the driving chaotic, and a shrug was the common answer to any question or complaint. By the time we left, we spoke fluent Italian, we were not taken advantage of or ignored (well, no more than any other Romans), and thanks to the tramp’s decision not to become a professional singer, we could afford to eat meat at home and in restaurants both (the latter a treat previously only as a result of a visit by the trampess’s parents or their friends). For many years after, but BC (before children), the tramps’ holidays always began in Rome. And the Eternal City never disappointed.

But now, the opportunity to return for the first time in a long while, and for some time, suddenly presented itself. Our French friends, who have done so much to introduce us to the joys of Verbier, Salzburg and Vienna, planned to come to Rome for Christmas. It would be churlish of 2 old Romans of no fixed address and with no fixed plans not to head south to be the welcoming team, not to mention chief guide and restaurant selector (in a city of tourists, priests and politicians, it is highly likely that the politicians know the better restaurants, the priests know the cheap but authentic ones and the tourists suffer – it was your trampess’s job to make sure she had the inside track on where the priests and politicians eat).

The trampess had to be back in London for the usual meetings and social whirl (it is hard to switch gears from the low key life of a trampess spending her days in hiking shoes and Patagonia gear to long gowns at Buckingham Palace and dressy evenings at the opera house, but your trampess does her best: it helps that the wardrobes are kept in quite different locations but sometimes the hair looks a little wilder than London might expect!), but flew to Rome and found the tramp waiting at Fiumicino (it must have been the threat that if he meandered down too slowly from Venice, the trampess knew her way around Rome sufficiently to find a very nice hotel room!). It was not long before the tramps were installed inside the Circolare on the via Aurelia in a large, quiet and well run campsite. Our neighbours? A family of real gypsies in a brace of caravans. With a supermercato just across the highway (conveniently the campsite had built a pedestrian bridge across it), a Fitness First (yes, really) a five minute drive away, a bus stop at the entrance to the campsite and the metro (a new addition since our first time in Rome) only a short bus ride away, a one month bus/metro pass in their pockets, the tramps were ready to see what it was like to come home.