Slow Saturday

One by one we stumbled off the bus, deposited on the Italian doggydoo-bespeckled pavement in a typically “wrong-side-of-the-tracks” kind of street.

When you first arrive in a new country it doesn’t matter how beautiful the scenery is, how charming the architecture, how orgasmical the food. You are oblivious to all these delights until you have showered, and possibly slept. After twenty minutes of standing like pacifist zombies in the foyer of the youth hostel, me and three girls retired to the room that we would share for the rest of the week. Over the next hour or so they took turns showering, while I passed out face down on the pillow until air deprivation forced me awake.

Amazingly I’d managed to choose a room with the three girls of the tour who had the most typically Dutch, impossible-to-pronounce names. In order of difficulty; Veronie, Agnes and….Geertje. Oh boy….that one took a while to learn. I know it doesn’t look hard; but now try to say it and gargle with your own saliva at the same time.

Soon the sweet sound of the football being kicked back and forth by our friendly on-tour footyheads alerted us to lunch being served in the courtyard. Said lunch consisted of several alarming dutch foods; chosen purely for their ability to stay out of the fridge for 10 days without perishing. Afterwards there was a pleasant but mercifully short recourse to kindergarten, playing getting-to-know you games with everyone on the tour.

Over dinner we developed are own, much more entertaining getting to know you games. Proposed by (and this doesn’t surprise me in retrospect) Simon, there was one round of everyone’s sexiest faces. Not so sexy in my case because I was laughing my head off. And then trying to explain exactly what the English word flaunting means (its not really the kind of thing you think about often, is it?). My initial alarm at this table full of strangers disintegrated after a couple of glasses of wine and a frighteningly dry pizza. Then it was sexy faces with the best of them.

This was followed by a rather endless walk through the city at night, setting a precedent for the rest of the week. I suffered greatly at the hands (or rather, legs) of the tall dutch people. Always it was Guido and Agnes at the front, taking mile-long strides on their long, long legs, while I had to jog to keep up at the back. I had trouble memorizing everyone’s faces, since I only ever saw the backs of their heads.

More or less inevitably, we eventually ran into the river Po, and found a brightly coloured bar to rest our weary bodies awhile. It was horrifyingly expensive… 4 euros a glass of wine. I refused to drink anything on general principle, at this exorbitant price, having become too accustomed to the cheap beer in Holland. Of course the result of this that I remained sadly sober while everyone got progressively drunk around me. Soon I was to learn that 4 euros is a normal price for a drink in torino…after which I abandoned all sensibilities to the wind.

You see its not possible to go to the river Po when you are sober. This is because it is dominated by a rank of excessively nasty discothèques, which no one in their right mind would go to unless they were at least three quarters drunk. Including all but the most dodgy Italians. Every other year the river floors, and mercifully submerges them from human sight for a few weeks. After which they return to their former river-smelling concrete glory, no worse for the wear. Open the doors and they’re all ready for business again.

The toilet was so bad that I could only stand and laugh, while I tried not to fall in. Could only stand, because it was of course, a hole in the ground. With no paper. And no lock on the door. Not even a doorknob…rather, one of those western-style swinging saloon doors so that Clint Eastwood can come busting in on you. Being caught enthroned when someone walks in on you is one thing. Gazing up sadly at them from your precariously balanced position above the hole is quite another. Especially when you have a handbag hanging around your neck like a St Bernard’s barrel, because the floor is so disgusting that you dare not put it down for even a minute. And of course there’s no doorknob to hang it on…

After being traumatized by the toilet, a group of us decided to return to the hostel. Missing the last tram, we waited hopefully beside the taxi rank until a group of Italians took pity on us and called a cab for us. The Italian girl made small talk while we waited.
“You went to the discos?”
We exchanged wary glances with one another, and nodded meekly.
“Yes…. I know. They are not very nice are they… Next time go to Quadrilatero Romano.”

She was our guardian angel.