An American in Faleria

      I didn't know that I was American until I moved to Italy. In fact, prior to that I had probably never before even said the phrase “I'm American”. Now that may strike you as odd, but consider the fact that I grew up in a predominantly white, upper middle class town in the suburbs of New York City, and that I was born in Italy, spoke Italian, and had a mother with a very thick Italian accent. People have definitely been labeled “Italian” for far less...just take a look around New Jersey. So if ethnic classifications came up, I always said “I'm Italian” (or “I'm Jewish”, but that's material for another blog).

      To be honest, I loved this detail that set me just ever so slightly apart from my peers. It was my thing. When we'd visit family in Italy and they would refer to me as “American”, I felt robbed of an integral piece of my identity. I just did not identify with being something as boring as “American”.

      But when I moved here, I realized quickly that I could no longer get away with saying “I'm Italian”. I became The American, and little by little I have come to embrace it in almost the same way as I had embraced my previous label. And actually I feel far more exotic here as an American than I ever did in Westchester as an Italian. Of course this may have something to do with the fact that we bought a home in a small town with a population of roughly 2,000 and a median age of about 91, where most people have only ever seen an American on TV. To a good portion of these people my husband is a foreigner and he grew up one town over.

      Now almost all of the Americans that I can think of can imagine nothing more romantic and picturesque than moving to a small rural town north of Rome where I can step outside of my door and within five minutes be walking down a dirt path surrounded by a landscape of olive groves on one side, hazelnut trees on the other, and rolling hills in the distance. Up here it's just a short drive to your average, quintessential, medieval hilltop town or to natural springs where we can fill our own bottles with restaurant quality sparkling water. Our village even has it's own abandoned castle.

      But talk to my fellow Falerians, and it's like telling someone you've just moved from Paris, France to Antimony, Utah. They just think I'm crazy. Which is why I get the sense that everyone knows who I am, in a suspicious, waiting-for-me-to-make-trouble kind of way.

      I had been so used to being relatively anonymous all my life, that when I first learned of my notoriety I was taken a bit off guard. It was last Spring, shortly after we had officially moved into our new home. I was out on our front patio taking advantage of one of the first warm, sunny days to hang some laundry outside to dry. A woman that I had become friendly with stopped by to say hello as she was passing by so I had the front gate open to the street. As we stood there chatting, an elderly woman who I had never seen before walked past with her grandson. The standard “buongiornos” were exchanged before she said, “So you're the young couple that finally bought this house.” I nodded and smiled. Then she added, “You're American aren't you?” I nodded and smiled again, but inside I was thinking, “What the-?”

      When she left I turned to my neighbor in shock. “How on earth did she know that?” I asked rhetorically.

      “Oh, everyone knows everything around here. You don't think it's big news that an American moved in?” she responded with a smile and a twinkle in her eye.

      After that I started noticing the way people would stare after me wherever I walked, especially the little old ladies sitting on the sidewalk in their folding chairs or on benches gossiping with one another, whose chatter would suddenly fade as I approached and whose eyes would follow me until I turned the next corner. I started making a point of smiling and saying hello in an effort to become That Nice American Girl, but each time it was like they were seeing me for the first time and I gradually stopped.

      Instead I accepted that no matter what I did I would be The Eccentric American Neighbor. So I stopped being careful. I pet the stray cats and put food out for them regularly, I did yoga in front of my kitchen window where anybody walking by could see me, I sang at the top of my lungs, and I hung my skimpiest and most colorful underwear out to dry.

      Then one day as I was just getting out of the shower I heard someone yelling outside. At first I thought it was merely someone calling casually to a friend from a window. But then the words and the voice got to me. It was my next door neighbor, Wilma, yelling for help, and there was nothing casual about her tone. I threw on the first thing I found and with my hair still dripping wet and disheveled ran out of my front door and up the stairs to hers where she was on the landing, supporting her elderly mother who appeared to have lost her balance and slipped from her chair. Apparently she had been yelling for several minutes but no one had come until me. Together we got her mother situated back on her chair as other people finally started showing up, curious about the commotion. As each new person arrived Wilma, still frazzled, told of how she had been yelling for help and how I had come running straight from out of the shower.

      Unfortunately, it was obvious that her mother was still not well and as several people moved her indoors I went to call an ambulance. Later that day I learned that she had had a stroke.

      To be clear, I am not in any way making light of this situation. It was a tragic day that luckily didn't end in further tragedy. As for my part, I don't believe that I did anything extraordinary. But let's just say that in the same way as the gossip about an American girl moving in travels fast, so does the news that that same American girl came running to the aid of her neighbor in need. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but for weeks afterwards I felt a difference in the stares that followed me. From suspicious and guarded, I felt them soften into something warmer and friendlier.

      It didn't last. Sure it boosted my public image for a moment and at least one other first responder continues to acknowledge me with a smile when we pass one another, but for the most part the town memory, especially of the older citizens, is short and has apparently defaulted back to suspicion, wariness, and general unmasked curiosity. It would probably take a great deal of personal interaction and town involvement to crack this shell and I'm certain that I do not possess that level of commitment. So I fully accept that I'll probably always be the The American.

The Frequent Flyer

      I have flown back and forth between NY and Rome roughly 30 times in my life (maybe more) and half of those trips took place within the past four years. I've also flown round-trip from Rome to Bangkok, from Rome to London, from Rome to Amsterdam, and from Rome to Cairo and one-way from Rome to Paris, from Berlin to Rome, and from Madrid to Rome. There have been other miscellaneous trips within the US, within Brazil, within India, within Malaysia, within Costa Rica, and within Thailand. I'm not bragging, I'm setting myself up as a qualified expert in air travel.

      The first flight that I remember was of the NY to Rome variety when I was six years old. My mother and I were going to visit relatives for the first time since moving to the US three years earlier. I'm sure I was more excited about being on an airplane than I was about the actual trip. Before we even taxied away from the gate my nose was smudging the plexiglass window. The flight itself is a blur but I remember my mother preparing me for take off and I remember laughing with her as I felt the weight of my body pushing back into the seat as we accelerated and then lifted off the runway. I remember being enthralled with the world growing smaller and smaller beneath me while my ears clogged, popped, and clogged again. I remember being terrified of the loud, suctiony flush of the toilet (truth be told I would probably still ask someone else to flush for me if that weren't weird) and I remember loving the compact little meal they brought us with its dishes set up like a game of Tetris. And eventually there was Italy growing larger and larger beneath me. My mother and I joined right in with the applause as we bumped onto the tarmac. (It would be years before I found out that this was a uniquely Italian thing.)

      Fast forward 26 years. I'm no longer an easy-to-please six year old. (Oh how I wish I were. It would make air travel so much more pleasant.) Flying has become routine. I do not know how many different airlines I have flown with and I have no brand loyalty. I simply enter my travel dates into Orbitz and pick whatever is cheapest with the shortest lay-over. Recently that means I've been flying mostly with Delta or Alitalia which are practically interchangeable since they're in code-share with one another. (Oh yes, I know the lingo). So I can say first hand that not only have the quality of air travel and the customer service therein gone way down hill, but that Alitalia is by far the worst of them all.

      I'm not a high maintenance cynic either. If I'm reasonably comfortable, watch a good movie, manage to sleep a little bit, and am given a moderately decent in-flight meal, I basically consider that a good flight. So when I say that Alitalia is the worst, you get the picture.

     

      Two specific flights helped to solidify this reality for me. The first was a trip from Rome to visit a friend in Cairo. It wasn't a long flight so my husband and I were definitely more accepting of the cramped space, the broken TV monitors, and the overall shabby appearance of the plane than we would otherwise have been. (Please note that this was months BEFORE the economic crumble of 2009.) Then came the meal. We're vegetarian so when booking our flight we requested the vegetarian option even though it's usually disappointing. They brought us our special tray with the main dish covered in aluminum foil. Beneath the foil was boiled rice with a section of cubed carrots on one side, a section of cubed potatoes on the other, and two limp stalks of asparagus draped over the whole thing. Yum. Evidently the “vegetarian meal” is also the “vegan, gluten-free, sodium-free, every-diet-restriction-imaginable meal”. But that's what there was so we dug in. My husband began with the carrots, I began with the potatoes. The RAW potatoes. We were speechless. Not only was the whole thing without a single molecule of flavor, but one third of the dish was inedible. We did our best with the roll and cheese, the limp salad, and the bland fruit plate. (As a side note, I've never understood why the vegetarian meal on every airline always comes with a totally flavorless fruit salad made up of several pieces of unripe melon, one or two large seeded grapes, and a hemispherical slice of orange instead of the delicious looking junky thing they give to everyone else for dessert.) In the end we managed to find the episode rather amusing. Clearly someone had made a mistake in the kitchen. It can happen.

      The other flight was roughly one year (and one other Rome-NYC round trip flight not with Alitalia) later. We were flying to NY once again, this time for our wedding and with my future in-laws in tow. We happened to book our flight with Alitalia only because it fit the stringent criteria I mentioned previously. From the moment we got on the plane it wasn't looking good. The cloth head rests on our seats clearly hadn't been changed from the previous flight (evidence: several hairs), there were cookie crumbs on my husband's seat, there was some trash in one of the seat pockets in front of us, the arm rest had a jagged piece of bent plastic jutting out from its underside, the color balance of the TV monitor closest to us rendered it impossible to watch or even look at and at least half of the rest of the monitors were completely broken, a nearby exit sign dangled at a slightly askew angle, my husband's tray had difficulty remaining in the upright and secured position.... Need I go on? Yes... I need.

      Meal time! Vegetarian meals not only for us but for my mother-in-law and sister-in-law as well. Only slightly different from the Cairo flight: boiled rice, boiled carrots and peas, and the tell tale limp, mushy asparagus. We searched desperately on our trays for some butter or salt to add some small hint of flavor to what otherwise was only texture in our mouths. There was nothing but unsalted margarine, which at least added some moisture to the meal, but not flavor. So I stopped the hostess.

     “Excuse me, can we have some salt?”

      “No.” Cold stare. (Translation: I'm busy and you're wasting my time.)

      “There's no salt?

      “No.” (Translation: Stop bothering me.)

      “There's no salt anywhere on the plane ever?”

      “There's only sugar. Company policy.”

      My moment of speechless incredulity gave her the time she needed to get away. We turned back to our vegetarian delight and did our best.

      Later a snack was served. The non-vegetarian snack was a fragrant, roll-sized, meatless pizza pocket. MEATLESS. Why then, you might ask did they bring us this: a salad of limp raw shredded carrots and cabbage with what turned out to be raw cubed potatoes. Again with the RAW POTATOES. And no salad dressing to be found. Our laughter was of the incredulous sort and not actual amusement. Once is a mistake, twice is... What the hell is twice?! I stopped the hostess again even though in her eyes I had clearly become That Person.

      “Excuse me, but these are raw potatoes.”

      “Oh. Sorry.” (Translation: What do you want me to do about it?)

      “I'm really sorry but this is just inedible. Aren't there any of those pizza rolls left?”

      “I'll see what I can find.” (Translation: Pain in the ass.)

     She came back with one for each of us. At this point they were the most delicious thing we had ever tasted. Several moments later she stopped by of her own volition, looked at me with a fake little smile and said, “Is THAT edible?”

      So... thumbs down for airplane cleanliness, thumbs down for airplane maintenance, thumbs down for airplane food, and big thumbs down for customer service. A bad flight. (And, interestingly, no applause upon landing.)

      I could actually continue railing on Alitalia (don't even get me started on the rude flight attendants for our return flight), but I won't for now. Instead I will fast forward once again to several weeks ago when we were flying to NY to spend Christmas with my family. We were relieved to be booked with Alitalia only until Paris so that the long leg of our journey would be with Air France, which we had heard good things about. Unfortunately Paris was in the middle of a blizzard and closed it's airport so our flight out of Rome got canceled. After eleven or twelve hours of waiting around in the airport they finally booked us on another flight for the following day. Alitalia to Geneva and then Swiss Air to NY. Since technically the flight that had been canceled was the Alitalia flight, we were in their hands and we just knew this wasn't a good thing. They sent us on a wild goose chase to four different kiosks before booking us a hotel for the night. Then the next morning they didn't send enough airport shuttles to the hotel so were forced to pay for a cab which they might reimburse us for in a few months if, after reviewing our claim, they deem it valid. None of this surprised us.

      Anyway, one day behind schedule we arrived in Geneva. And then we boarded for our flight with Swiss Air. Until that moment I hadn't realized just how bad Alitalia really had become. Sadly, I had come to take for granted that air travel in general had gone down hill unless one could afford to shell out the big bucks for first or business class. But here the flight attendants greeted us with genuine smiles. The seats were pristine with their perfectly placed pillows and blankets. The magazines were in the seat pocket in perfect order. There were inches to spare between our knees and the seats in front of us. Our personal, seat-back TV monitors were perfectly calibrated for optimal movies-on-demand viewing pleasure. I could almost hear a distant choir singing in perfect harmony as a light shown down on me from above.

      The one worry was still the meal. What with all of the re-booking confusion we were pretty sure that our vegetarian meals hadn't been carried over to this flight. So I politely stopped one of the flight attendants to ask if there happened to be any vegetarian meals available and she said that they always have a vegetarian option. “I love them,” I said weakly to my husband.

      And the meal was actually quite good. Afterwards, in addition to the apricot tart, they brought us vanilla ice cream. And shortly before landing they came by with a basket of Swiss chocolate. Need I say more? I need not.

      Several days ago we flew home. The long leg of our journey was with Delta (not as a code-share with Alitalia thank god) and it was a decent flight, but didn't remotely compare to Swiss Air. After our lay-over, we flew to Rome with Alitalia once again. The plane was clean, pretty new and well maintained, the flight attendants were friendly. We found it frustrating and ironic that for a 1 hour flight they manage to get their act together, while a nine hour flight with them is a disaster. That was until we discovered that they had lost one of my suitcases.

      “Yeah,” I thought, when we were the only ones still looking expectantly at the now empty conveyor belt. “This feels more like it.” And internally I broke into belated, bitter applause.