“How can we pass this up?” Olivia said being jostled a little by one of the singers.
And after the song was over, they cut into the strudel and the crowd went nuts, cheering and hooting. I couldn’t tell who was happier, Suzie, whose strudel dream was realized, or Olivia, who held up her watch and shouted over the crowd at us, gleefully, “They did it early. It’s seven of three.”
We collected our 15 Swiss francs, we grabbed our record-breaking strudels and then we walked swiftly down the hill. We all walked the same way–one arm swinging for more power and the other held up, holding our strudel, protecting it with our thumbs on top to prevent the precious victorious record-breaking strudel from being lost forever.
The train station was closer than we thought. We grabbed our bags and waited at the binario for the train to come. We still had four minutes to spare. The operation was tight.
When the train came, we hurried onto it, found a car and stacked up the bags on the rack above us. It was as if we were competing in some kind of event of our own. Finally, we flopped onto our seats and smiled at each other’s efficiency. Then we began to eat our reward.
“I think we broke the record,” Olivia said.
“I’m so glad that they cut it early,” Suzie said.
“To think we might have never known record-breaking strudel joy,” I said, chewing happily, licking my sticky fingers. In a way, it wouldn’t have mattered if we didn’t make the train. I believe we would have gone with it, rolled into whatever we had to do. But we did make it. And got the strudel too.
I looked out the window. I watched for hours the landscape of Switzerland. It was a beautiful countryside, and it changed from dark lush green to a pure white as we went, from being surrounded by forest to snowy peaks. The train trip lasted about three hours, but none of us were anxious enough to play cards. We were all content to stare out the window and doze a bit.
I was beginning to believe that we were having exceptionally good traveler’s luck, that there was some force looking out for us. Some fate was willing us to be okay. I won’t jinx it, I thought. I will just enjoy it.
10.
When we arrived in Lucerne, Olivia stopped in the travel agency and grabbed a map. She asked Suzie and me if we wanted to be in charge of it, but we knew it was just a formality and declined. She was meant to be the navigator; it was her gig. She already chose the accommodations from the list in Let’s Go.
The woman in the travel agency spoke English and gave us directions to the hotel. We walked over a bridge to get there. There were paintings of goats on the bridge. I wondered if this was like the three billy goats fairy tale and if a troll was waiting on the other side. I didn’t feel scared of anything, the way I did when I got to Siena. I felt ready for a troll, for whatever. But, instead of a troll, it was an amazing party.
We maneuvered our big backpacks through a crowd of dancing drunken people speaking German. The people were red-faced and energized. We weaved through the joyous gyrating bodies.
“Must be Carnevale. They must have that here, too,” Olivia said. There was a smell of roasting chicken. I noticed a sign advertising cheap beer. We didn’t need to know German to understand that. We fell in behind Olivia, who expertly navigated the people onto a side street. She held the open map out in front of her. Suzie and I relied on this, that she could find the way.
The one-star hotel had breakfast and was almost as cheap as hostels and more private. This room had two sets of bunk beds with white sheets folded over pitted woolen blankets. We threw our stuff down on the beds, washed our faces in the sink in the room and went back out to the square. There was no way we were missing out on the fun tonight.
On the street, everyone around us was drunk and yelling in German. A band was playing loud music with lots of horns. We studied our coins before handing some over for mugs of cheap dark beer. We sat at one of the tables surrounded by other travelers. One husky bearded man grabbed Olivia and twirled her around the square.
“Should we be worried?” Suzie asked.
“She’s laughing,” I said, shrugging.
“I think she’s terrified.”
“Oh, it’s good for her,” I said. When I was done with my beer, I got three more and a basket of roasted pieces of chicken. Olivia, back at the table and breathless, finished her beer and took great gulps of the new one I offered her.
“What I really need is water,” she said.
“Bottled water is almost three times as much as beer,” I said, biting into the delicious chicken. “Try this. It’s yummy. So who was your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know. He couldn’t speak English or Italian. Just French and German. Just.” She laughed at herself. “Anyway, I couldn’t tell if he was giving me his name or dancing tips. I just kept repeating what I thought he was saying.”
At that moment three of the dancers with linked arms and flailing legs crashed into our table knocking over the remains of the plastic cups of beer. The dancers were laughing and slightly stumbling but apparently apologizing.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Suzie said and then tried again. “Niente, e niente.” But neither language was understood. The dancers stumbled back over with more cups of beer. The beers were filled to the top and spilled on my hand as I took them.
“Grazie,” I said out of habit, but then I remembered and tried, “Danke.”
The dancers returned to dancing. I wasn’t sure if it was a specific dance because everyone was just moving happily, drunkenly, without any amount of inhibition.
“This is insane,” I said. “These people are out of control.”
“Germans.” Olivia said. “They know how to drink.”
“Swiss-Germans,” Suzie corrected. She counted out some coins for more beer.
We drank the next round up, hoping the alcohol would warm us and bring us closer to the mood of the dancers. But the cups were cold in our hands and we blew our white breath at each other.
“It’s freezing,” I stated the obvious through chattering teeth.
“Maybe we should try to find a bar or a club,” Suzie said.
“There was a bar in the book,” Olivia said. She reached into her pocket for the ripped out Lucerne page from the guide. “It’s called the American bar.”
“Sounds like it could be the perfect place,” Suzie said. “Or it could be really cheesy.”
“Take us there, Olivia.” I said, leaving my fate in her hands.
“Okay,” Olivia said. She looked around, looked at the river and back at the map. She wasn’t bossy about being in charge, but she definitely liked it and it was a relief for me to have her so confident. “Follow me, ladies.”
Once again we maneuvered through the dancing masses. The streets were darker as we got further and further away from the music. None of us were afraid, perhaps because of the alcohol.
“Cazzo,” Suzie said, jolting us out of our thoughts after about 15 minutes of walking.
“What?”
“I lost my glove. It must’ve fallen out of my pocket.” We reversed directions and looked for the glove for a while. In spite of the cold, it was our mission to find it. We looked around until my own gloved hands felt like they were going to be permanently numb. It was only when we realized we had been up and down the same street three times and would most likely have to totally retrace our steps back to the hotel that we continued on to the oasis of a bar. Suzie kept her hands in her pockets.
At last, we found the bar. We opened the door and stepped in from the cold. The bar welcomed us with a roar and then returned to whatever was happening before we stepped inside.
I woke the next morning in the one-star hotel with the smelly bathroom down the hall. I was in a bunk beneath Olivia and looking over to my side I saw the back of Suzie’s head in the other bed. The night in Lucerne appeared to me as a series of images that I strung together in my mind. This, I thought, is what it is to travel. The travel bug took a nice juicy bite of my flesh.
Inside the bar t
he music was loud and sounded like American, 80s pop. A Swiss-Italian was serving drinks. We learned somehow his name was Massimo. Oh, we learned from the mother of the British rugby player who was also there. His name was Chris, and he had just broken up with his girlfriend. This didn’t explain why his shirt was off. The mother seemed to want to get with Massimo. Massimo kept giving us fruity frozen drinks.
Another Swiss-German was also serving drinks. He spoke English really well, but he spoke it with an Irish accent. He said he had lived in Dublin. He told us to call him Johnny, but we doubted that was his name.
And here, my memories began to have holes. The crowd was raucous; everyone was speaking English. There were Australians, there were Brazilians, there was a guy from Nigeria. I would never see these people again, but they were forever imprinted on my memory. It was like the whole world was represented in the bar.
The three of us waited until the bar closed. Then there was some deception so Massimo could escape while Chris brought his mother back to their hotel. Massimo was taking us to a disco. He was holding Olivia’s hand. She was giving him the okay to be the leader, to get us to the next place. She deserved a break.
My vision was hazy. Suzie and I were holding on to each other, trying to count the number of beverages we drank that night. I pointed to Massimo, who had stopped in the street to unwrap a piece of gum.
“That means he is going to kiss her,” I whispered to Suzie. Then I realized he might have heard me and leaned closer. “Do you think he knows he is?”
“He can’t understand us; you don’t have to whisper,” Suzie said, leaning into me to avoid falling. She shouted up ahead. “Hey, where are we going?”
“To dance,” Olivia said. “I don’t know where.”
“Ooooh, she doesn’t knooooow,” I said to Suzie, who now had both of her hands on me to steady herself. We laughed. “Let’s see what they’re going to do.”
We watched Olivia’s profile, chin tipped up and waiting for the kiss. When it came, it was sloppy, but she smiled. She held on to Massimo and turned to us. I have never heard her voice get louder
“You guys just have to kiss this man. We cannot walk any further until you kiss him.”
We were all drunk and laughing. Somehow Massimo understood why Olivia was nudging him to us. Suzie said no right away, but her hands on me gave me a push toward him.
“She loves Kurt,” I said. “He’s her one and only.”
This was not an expression of mine and it made me giggle until I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to kiss Massimo either. I wanted to tip my head up expectantly. I wanted to go with the night and charge into whatever it offered.
But I couldn’t. I didn’t want someone else’s mouth on me. I wanted to want it, but it just wasn’t right.
“All for you, Olivia,” I said. They kissed some more, and Suzie and I held the wall for support as we laughed. I thought my laugh was beginning to sound hollow now. Once again, I had begun to question everything.
Chris caught up with us, and we went to the disco. I couldn’t remember anything about it, except it was dark and everyone was wearing jackets, still cold from outside. We girls danced. Olivia stayed with us when Massimo tried to get her to sit on his lap at the table. Eventually, Chris and Massimo were gone. We kept dancing.
“They are probably fucking his mother,” Olivia said. I nodded. I wasn’t feeling the fun anymore. I kept thinking about how I couldn’t kiss Massimo even though I wanted to, just to do it, to get kissing someone else over with. Maybe I would never kiss anyone again.
“Hey,” Olivia said. I looked up at her. She took my hand and swung it to the time to the music. “It’s no big deal. It was just a kiss. Just have fun.”
I nodded again. I kept dancing even though I wasn’t into it. Suzie was spinning, eyes closed, totally gone. I wanted to be there, but I wasn’t. Then Olivia came closer to me. Her eyebrows knit together. When she spoke it was a command, almost a fact, like she was telling me to turn right based on looking at her map. “Just. Have. Fun”
And I did. I let go, because I had a friend who wanted me to. I reminded myself that I was young and traveling and away from everything and everyone.
Then the disco closed and Olivia tried to remember the way home. We hadn’t been paying attention to where Massimo was leading us. So we were like Hansel and Gretel in Lucerne. We crossed the same bridge twice over the Ruess River, the paintings on the bridge eerier each time. We didn’t have the patience to marvel at how old everything was. Olivia was getting frustrated. She peed on a side street and looked up at us with a strange expression. Her eyes, usually scouting for road signs, seemed to float around in her head. It made us laugh so hard we had to pee too. Then we found Suzie’s lost glove on a street I thought we already went down. There it was, just sitting on the sidewalk waiting for us. It was a blessed sign. Fate, I believed, saving us once again.
Soon after that we found the hotel. We tried to be composed for the hostess who handed us our key. We took aspirin and gulped handfuls of water from the sink in our room. Olivia and I were too dizzy to brush our teeth. We took our jeans off, left our shirts on. Then we passed out. How Olivia made it to the top bunk, I can’t remember. I closed my eyes as fast as I could to stop the spinning.
It finally stopped when I lay down on the thin mattress.
We slept through the continental breakfast hour at the hotel. Olivia found a cheap cafeteria in the Let’s Go. The city was different in daylight, everything a little less spooky and wild. As chance or fate or whatever puppet master was pulling the strings of our trip would have it, Johnny, the bartender, worked at the cafeteria. He greeted us in his thick Irish accent.
“I have decided to offer you drinks,” he said, awkwardly placing latte and orange juice before us. We saved several Swiss francs just paying for the chocolate pastry.
We had our meal and waved goodbye to him. Olivia hustled quickly out of the place.
“Slow down, O. I’m still hungover,” Suzie said. “Actually, I got to use the bagno. Can you guys hang on?”
“We’ll wait outside,” said Olivia. She tugged my coat and said, “I need a cigarette.”
“Since when do you smoke first thing in the morning? And not to mention when you’re hungover. You are hungover, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Yeah, I just wanted to get some air.” Olivia took a deep breath, but didn’t light up a cigarette.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. That latte did me good though. Woke me up a bit,” I said. “It was nice of him to give us those. What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Olivia said. Her expression was mischievous.
“C’mon, what?” Olivia looked past me into the cafeteria.
“He should have given us the whole thing.”
“I don’t get it. “
“I kissed him on the way to the bathroom in the bar last night.”
“You did? I didn’t even know you liked him.”
“I didn’t either. It just kind of happened. I actually forgot about it until he winked at me when he gave me the latte.”
“Shit,” I said laughing and then remembered what we did after. “You hussy, you kissed the bartender, too. You’re a kissing bandit, that’s what you are.”
“I know. I wanted to tell you. They were both fun. Here comes Suzie.”
We saw the sights of Lucerne in the daytime. We got a chance to really study the eerie paintings of the Spreurbrucke bridge in daylight. We took a bus and two cable cars up to the breathtaking views of Mount Pilatus and hiked around, studying the landscapes from above.
For an early dinner, we ate fondues and salads and drank pints of German wheat beer. Our hangovers disappeared. We talked about all the traveling we wanted to do in the future. We vowed to each other that no matter what we did or where we worked, we would live for vacation days, always planning to get as far away as we can on the money and time that we have.
And then back on a train. Once again we were not sure we were on the
right train. We asked the German-speaking conductor when we should change, and he told us to stay on. We weren’t as preoccupied with a schedule now. Right or wrong, I believed we would get to where we were meant to be. Sure enough, the train split in two with some cars going in a different direction. Our part wound up headed to Firenze as we expected. A new Italian conductor came on to check our tickets. He smiled when he punched our tickets and called us “ragazze.”
As I looked out into the darkness rushing by, I kept thinking of being called ragazze, girls. In the states, at our liberal arts college, we would all be called women, never girls. But here, I didn’t mind being called ragazze. I felt, at that moment, that I wanted to be a ragazza for as long as I could.
MARZO
11.
Sometimes Gaetano waited for me outside the università on his vespa. He took me into the countryside, to the churches I hadn’t yet seen or to a pizzeria that he discovered. He enjoyed showing these things to me.
Sitting behind Gaetano on the bike, I was often overcome. It wasn’t the smell of his brown leather jacket and the strong wind in my face. But it was all the old stone buildings around me, the promise that the gray fields we passed would some day blossom to green. If there was promise under that cold dirt, there might be hope for me.
I was there, listening to him sing in dialect. The words I would never understand. I imagined they were songs he heard as a child from fishermen in the sleepy Southern Italian town that he considered a country.
I still wished I could have seen this all with Jonas or at least climbed into bed with him at the end of the day and described it, with our hands and bodies interlaced.
“You’re crying?” Gaetano asked once after a ride, noticing my full eyes. But I blamed it on the wind–il vento, and he nodded, seemed to accept that, but still watched me closely.
A Semester Abroad Page 11
