Italy II: Pferdi Takes The Pferry

I like the nomadic life. It’s got the freedom of an orphan but without the ache of absent parents. My happiness with that state had crept up on me. When we were planning the great escape, I couldn’t ever imagine living like this. Once, when trying to dampen down the fear, I remember telling myself that someday I will look at the map of Central or South America, and it’ll be as familiar to me as Highway 1 to San Francisco. And it was, many times over. The one thing I’ve learned is that you can get used to anything and the reality is never as scary as the anticipation.

But waiting for borders to open is getting old, and while I cannot envisage a life needing more than five tops and three pairs of pants, we find ourselves reluctantly having to think of putting down roots, at least for a while. After deciding the world was our oyster, the pandemic has shown that while you can still be a nomad in times like these, it’s only feasible if you’ve hung on to your umbilical cord and checked-in with mother every so often. The problem is when we left California we’d no plans to return; we would make everywhere and anywhere our home and move on before habits and, perish the thought, routine formed. Our cords have been waving about in the wind for so long now we’ve no idea where they should attach to, or even if there’s a Mammy out there who’ll welcome us.

By the time it came to leave Italy the Christmas tree in the opposite apartment should have been long gone, but there it was, naked as the day it was born except for two twinkling lights on weekends. The panettones in the supermarket were replaced by long-life milk and the small liquor store on the corner, as well as the local print shop, went quietly out-of-business. In our tiny cobblestone piazza the card-players and coffee drinkers were getting tired of distancing. With the 6 PM shutdown of bars and restaurants, lost drinking hours were made-up for by earlier starts. You knew it was Saturday when the bongo drums began beating and the square’s resident Rasta sang the same plaintive African melody in the alley below. By mid-afternoon the trash bins were acting in a more orderly manner than the revelers and it was easier to count those with masks than without. When the big lockdown came, it wasn’t a surprise.

It was clear we needed to choose a country, get an address and ask someone nicely to put us on a vaccine list, that is, if the EU ever has enough supply to reach our age group. Portugal looked promising; it would be a new country for me and Fran has fond little boy memories of the dungeons of the Tower of Belém. With a point to aim for, we now had to find a way to get there. It was about a week’s drive away but we didn’t relish the thought of traveling through Italy’s northern states or the south of France where the virus was again in full swing. We didn't know if there were even any hotels open along the way. As it happened, it wasn’t our choice to make. All roads may lead to Rome but there were none leading out of it. We weren’t allowed to drive out of Lazio never mind Italy. While mulling over our ever decreasing options Fran had the bright idea of checking sea crossings. He found a ferry from Rome to Barcelona and it seemed like the answer to all our prayers. I spent only a few minutes feeling cheated out of the drive. Preparing for a long journey in the current climate is worse than the trip itself and I spent hours researching the requirements for the boat as well as the entry into Spain. As it turned out we needed only two forms, one for each, and a Covid test. If only there was someone to tell you this beforehand, instead of ploughing through endless websites, almost all of them designed for air travelers. By the time I’d finished, I was convinced we’d be turned back for the lack of one minor piece of paper. Give me Central American border crossings any day.

The tricky part was the test. Only a molecular (PCR) test was accepted, which I read required a doctor’s prescription in Italy. If this was true it was going to be an added complication. The test had to be done no later than 72 hours prior to arriving in Spain and the boat crossing alone took 21 hours. There were small white tents outside many of the pharmacies but they only performed the rapido tests. There was also a long list of requirements for the results which could be printed only in Spanish, English, French or German. After searching for local clinics and testing sites I gave in and found an English-speaking service that arranged a home visit, with prescription, and results in English and Italian by 4 PM the next day, which was also the day of departure. It all went remarkably well, even with the young guy who arrived with his swabs and starched blazer almost expiring on the climb up to our front door.

We packed up. I hated leaving. Every move we make these days feels like a major milestone. We’re very aware that it’s not just a place we’re saying good-bye to now, but a time in life that will never be repeated. We didn’t have these feelings before because there were always miles and miles of roads, countries and cultures up ahead, and people, like the Winstons of Campeche and the Miltons of Medellín. We’d been stopped for so long that at times I felt like even our pilot lights had burnt out. But now, underneath the chaos of the departure, a spark of excitement had reignited and if the road wasn’t beckoning, then at least the ocean blue was. We promised to return, when we can embrace, hug, do the two-kiss-thing and not have to meet in short, huddled encounters at opposite ends of a park bench like a pair of aging drug dealers. We may have avoided the selfie-stick wielding “Rome Today/Paris Tomorrow” hordes but travel is no fun when you spend your time steering clear of the locals. Scenery is all well and good but you can’t go for a nocturnal motorbike ride with it and its amigos, or hang out at the roast chicken joint while its babies take turns in your sidecar.

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Back in the autumn we thought we’d be taking the long way out, via the south and Sicily. Ha! Instead, we were exiting stage left and grateful for it. At 5 PM we locked-up, descended the 65 stone steps for the last time and left Trastevere’s alleyways. U-turning across the Ponte Palatino, we passed under the looming façade of the great synagogue and back across the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II, its white statues indifferent to our leaving (you’re not the first to go my sweets, and you certainly won’t be the last). My final glimpse of ancient Rome was the Castel Sant’Angelo before being swallowed-up by ’60s modern apartment-lined streets and rush hour traffic. The phone wasn’t picking-up our location but the signs for Civitavecchia were plentiful. It was a golden evening. With the bike fully loaded, the 80k drive past neon green fields and blood red farmhouses made it easy to forget the pandemic and believe it was just another day in the life that used to be. The sun, flanked by a floating graveyard of indefinitely stalled cruise ships, decided to set just as we caught the coast.

Apart from the trucks from Bulgaria, Greece, and countries that weren’t even countries when I was small, we were the second vehicle in line at the port. It was 6:45 PM and I wouldn’t have felt so smug if I’d known we’d be standing beside the bike stamping our freezing feet for the next four and a half hours. It was almost midnight by the time we took aim at the steep ramp (Pferdi needs a lot of poke when faced with a vertical climb). We’d booked the Ural as a ‘Smart Car’ but it was just us and one other motorbike on board. We found our seats, which didn’t look quite so adequate in person. There were no windows and the thought of spending the next 21 hours sitting upright in what amounted to a small cinema with no movie, and worse, no fresh air, wasn’t at all appealing. We upgraded to a cabin and falling in the door, the double bed and large porthole looked as good as a penthouse suite. By the time we'd peeled the bike gear off, Rome had slipped quietly away.

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It was a clear blue morning in Porto Torres. The loudspeaker woke us up at 7:30 with instructions for all Sardinia passengers to disembark. Up on deck the small port was beginning its day. In another time we’d be going ashore and touring the island. Then again, in another time, we wouldn’t have been here. Back inside there were very few people on board and plenty of places to relax but Roman habits die hard and the mask rule wasn’t enforced. Somewhere along the way it seemed that knitting and screen time had been added to the list of ‘sporting’ activities. We were glad we had our cabin. By afternoon the sea looked decidedly un-Mediterranean and the white horses were galloping. On a second tour of the deck we were forced inside by gusts so strong I almost got blown into the empty swimming-pool, never to be found as Fran’s glasses had already blown off. We looked a right pair; definitely not on the finals list for a Club Med brochure.

The ship docked in Barcelona three hours late. Nobody ever asked for the blasted Covid forms I so carefully filled-out. We were directed to a parking lot where the port authorities took our Spanish entry documents and test results. Nothing else was needed, no bike title, no registration, no passports or insurance. We seemed to be the only ones who had our papers ready so we got away quick. By now it was after 11 PM but the phone was still refusing to tell us where we were. Due to the ferry delay the accommodation arrangements had gone haywire. We had a last-minute address to pick-up the keys and another for the apartment but without navigation we were driving blind. I think Pferdi toured most of the city that first night. The ‘key guy’ was ever so gracious, insisting we hadn’t kept him up, no, no he said, I was just washing-up after dinner. I’m still not sure how Fran got us there but thirty-one hours after we left our Italian home, we arrived at our Spanish one. The plan was to stay no longer than a week; after all, Portugal was only three more days further down the road. Or so we thought. Oh when will we fools ever learn, to resist the “best laid schemes o’ mice an’ (stupid) men"*.

*Robert Burns