Day 20: Saturday, May 10, Florence to Ravenna

Today we traveled to Ravenna in the morning and saw the town in the afternoon. On the train to Ravenna there was a guy or girl (I’m not sure which) who was the most goth person I have ever seen: black trench coat ala The Matrix, black lipstick and eyeliner over a lightly powdered white face, black hair pulled up and back so it is narrow and tall, and enough metal in random places to make it look like he had been hit by shrapnel.

We rode the bus to a stop near our hostel. Here in Italy people hold up their thumb for “one” and add successive fingers, unlike in the U.S. where the thumb comes last. That means that if you hold up an index finger instead of a thumb you get two tickets instead of one… When we got off the bus we turned a corner and this old guy who was standing outside a shop immediately pointed down the street and said something in Italian before I said anything. I confirmed that he was pointing toward the hostel, and then we were off. It’s a residential neighborhood, so he has obviously figured out that anyone looking like a tourist with bags must be headed to the hostel.

Abel and Melchizedek appear in a Ravenna fresco.

Back in Ravenna we checked out the local churches as well as a mausoleum. Ravenna is on the map because of its many beautiful mosaics, to which I am particularly partial. It had a strong Byzantine influence, and thus its art is different from much of Italy’s. We passed a place where a wedding was either starting or ending. We later went by again and saw two guys in tuxes going through some grass and a flowerbed with their hands. It looked like someone had lost a ring. We later went by again and they had deployed the kids, one of whom was happily stomping around methodically; he would have to have “princess and the pea” senses to detect a ring through the soles of his shoes. We also saw lots of dressed-up older ladies biking around town, but many had potted flowers in the handlebar basket. I’m not sure if that’s just popular or if there had been a flower market, but it sure added to the atmosphere.

The holes in this wall were probably attachment points for a marble facade that once coated this building.

After hitting the sights we headed for dinner. I had expected to cook at the hostel, but this hostel didn’t have a kitchen for guests to use. It was a great hostel otherwise – decent beds, free internet, great common room with pool/foosball tables, etc. – but no kitchen is a big downside. It’s a great gathering place for one thing, and cooking dinner for yourself is worth at least E15/night. Anyway, we hit a pizza and kebab place since we hadn’t done that yet in Europe. The other motivation was that this place advertised “cone pizzas.” Yes, we were curious. The guy serving us was really nice and spoke pretty good English. The conversation with him was as good as the cheap food. He said he had spent two years in Brighton as a waiter, though he said his English wasn’t as good as he would like it to be because he spoke mostly with Italians in his off time. He was really down on Ravenna and sort of ranted that it was a slow backwater town. He also said he didn’t think Italians were friendly unless you had money or wore cool clothes. I asked him where he would go if he were vacationing in Italy and he immediately picked Rome, I guess because it is the most cosmopolitan Italian city. He said English isn’t required in schools, and even if you take it voluntarily you have trouble because the teachers have poor English pronunciation – he said he thought he knew English but didn’t understand nearly as much as he expected when he went to England. He said kebabs weren’t very popular in Italy, which wasn’t surprising given the few kebab places we had seen. It was an interesting and different perspective, but from some other things I picked up on I have some reservations about taking everything he said as absolute truth.

Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: a cone pizza is… just like its description. They take a crust shaped like an ice cream cone and add a scoop of sauce, then a scoop of cheese, then a dose of your topping, then another scoop of sauce/cheese, and run the thing through a toaster. I’m surprised that kebabs aren’t popular in Italy, but after experiencing them I’m not surprised that cone pizzas haven’t caught on.

If you hark back to our time in Rome I talked about Romans and validating bus tickets. Today Ravenna must have had a sting operation going on, because both of the buses we took today got checked. The first time we pulled up to a stop and a guy immediately hopped on and ordered the bus driver not to open the back doors, so everyone who got off had to go past the checker and show that they had a validated bus ticket. Everyone passed the test. The second time we were on the last bus home out of the old town center. A guy got on the bus at one of the stops along with some other people. As soon as he got on he turned around and started checking others who were getting on for a bus ticket. There were two black guys who got on, one just before the checker and one just after. The second one had a talk with the checker and obviously didn’t have a ticket, so the checker required him to buy one from the bus driver then and there. That was easy. After the bus started moving the checker moved down the bus. He came to a group of three Italians in front of me just as we pulled up to a stop; the checker kicked them off the bus and they went with embarrassed grins and no problem. We got our tickets checked and he moved on to the back of the bus. The two black guys were sitting on the last row, and when the checker got to them there was a quick talk and the checker shouted up to the bus driver to stop the bus. It turns out that both black guys had tried to ride without a ticket, and one had the mishap/fortune to be caught before even riding. Now the second guy was caught and a big argument ensued, and guy #1 joined in; after a bit the checker trying to physically toss guy #2 off the bus. After three minutes or so of yelling at each other guy #2 finally got off in a huff. I don’t speak Italian, but I sure know the words for “ticket” and “police,” both of which were sprinkled throughout the conversation. I’m sure I could have learned a few choice Italian phrases if I had been trying.

We later put our heads together and I’m pretty sure this is what happened: guy #1 got stopped before getting on the bus and was forced to buy a ticket. Guy #2 was later caught and the checker wanted him off the bus, just like he had forced the other Italians off. Guy #2 says, “Hey, you let my friend buy a ticket, you should do the same for me.” Checker says that it was obvious the guy was trying to ride for free and get away with it even after seeing other people on the bus get caught and that he had just been nice to guy #1, but he was going to enforce the rules. It then became a “that’s not fair” argument. Both of these guys spoke good, fluent-sounding Italian, so I’m guessing that they weren’t immigrants. (Random, but guy #1 was wearing a “Texas Junior League 8 Champions 1995” jacket. I didn’t see/hear anything to indicate they had grown up in Texas, I’m guessing he picked it up secondhand or something.)

Honestly I surprised at how light the consequences were. If you get tossed off a bus it seems that you just walk forward/backward to the nearest bus stop and hop on the next bus, perhaps validating your ticket this time if you’ve had enough trouble for the day. The only reason I could see for getting all huffy was that it was the last bus of the day and therefore you might have to take a cab after getting kicked off the bus. In Rome I was told that they give you a E50 fine, which is painful, and if you can’t pay on the spot it jumps to E200 payable within a month.

Shirt for the day: “Skydiving saves lives from mediocrity.”