Lights, Camera...Travel!

by Lonely Planet

  Non Mia Piace Siena

  EILEEN HEISLER

  Eileen Heisler has enjoyed a twenty-year career writing television comedy, currently as co-creator and executive producer of the hit series The Middle, starring Patricia Heaton. Born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, she lives in Pacific Palisades, California, with her husband, Adam Wolman, and nonidentical twin boys, Justin and Ben (age twelve). This is her first foray into travel writing.

  Non mia piace Siena.

  I don’t like Siena. Sorry, I just don’t.

  I know I should. They say it’s lovely. They say it’s a second Florence.

  I wouldn’t know.

  It started with a circle. A road sign with a circle, and an arrow in the center that said ‘Centro’ – or maybe it was a dot … I don’t remember exactly, but as I clutched the wheel of the only automatic rental car in Italy – twenty-six years old, with my 24-year-old sister by my side and our overstuffed backpacks in the backseat – I saw a simple sign with a circle and a dot: centro. Center … the center of the city – and all roads lead to it. Easy. Simple …

  Wrong.

  Sweat beading on my lip, heart pounding, how long had we been driving? I was losing track of time. All these signs … promising me a centro that I wasn’t finding. Marcy made suggestions: ‘Haven’t we gone this way already?’ I don’t know! I was older, I was in charge, and we were driving in circles … lost. Just the same damn sign, Centro, I get it I get it. But where?

  Forget it. This wasn’t working in a car. We needed to ditch the car and start walking. We just had to find a parking garage, but the signs to the garage were as useless as the signs to the centro. We had to get out of this car! Oh, is that a space? Seems legal. Let’s just get out and we’ll walk to the centro. But how would we remember where we parked? We looked around for a touchstone. We were right next to an Esso gas station and an Api gas station. Perfect.

  We locked the car, heaved a sigh of relief, grabbed our guidebooks, strapped on our fanny packs, and set out to find our way. And there, lo and behold, a sign with a circle, ‘Centro.’ That way. We’d had no luck in the car, but maybe if we just trusted our feet … The air felt cool on our faces. Now we could think clearly. Now we were out of the car. Now we would find the centro.

  We walked, following crowds down the winding medieval roads. In the centro would be the square, we could navigate back from there. Once we found it.

  But we didn’t.

  Was it the driving that had unmoored us? Where was our sense of direction? I was hungry, dizzy … Whose idea was it to make a circular city, anyway? We had been lost for about four hours. Lost in a car, now lost on foot …

  My little sister was starting to doubt me. I could feel it. Well, maybe not starting to doubt me. Probably started doubting me a week earlier when, as we were getting off the plane, I suddenly blurted to a flight attendant, ‘Non parlo inglese!’ I don’t speak English. Idiot. So, yeah, my leadership abilities as the chief navigator through Europe were probably not very confidence-inducing.

  Well, we walked and walked … and eventually we reached a square. Was this the ‘centro’ we had been promised? Couldn’t tell. It seemed central. There were restaurants.

  At last, we dropped, exhausted, into café chairs. We sat and ate – I’m guessing I had gnocchi. I think I had gnocchi everywhere. It was a word I knew. At this point in the trip I felt fairly confident that gnocchi and wine was a meal I could order in Italian without too much embarrassment. So we ate gnocchi, and we caught our breath, and we laughed over the adventure of the day and the fact that we’d spent so much time lost that eating this meal was probably the only thing we’d do in Siena. No time for museums, no time for sights. Who could find them? In that moment we were not lost. We were in a square in Siena and all was well.

  For that moment.

  Hours later. We’re lost, Leeny! We’re lost. This isn’t the way. We’ll never get out! Fine! You find it, then. I’m not Italian, I’ve never been here before. Why the hell are you following me, anyway? I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know! We walked, and we bickered – two short, curly-haired exhausted girls from the suburbs, fighting our way through the crazy rat-maze that is Siena, bickering and fighting and bickering and fighting our way out … to the car. That was parked near a Benetton on the outskirts of the city … between an Esso station and an Api station …

  That was nowhere to be found.

  And then reality hit me. Lost in a car, lost on foot, and now… lost the car? The car with all our stuff in it that was parked somewhere outside this circular city and we had no idea where it was. Tears welled up in our eyes. Which of us was going to admit we were seriously fucked? Everything looked familiar, nothing looked familiar … Marcy looked at me, shook her head and wailed, ‘Non mia piace Siena.’ No, I said. Me neither.

  And then I actually began running scenarios through my head. What if we never found the car? Could we just ditch it, and all our stuff inside, hop a train for somewhere and hope for the best. Did we need stuff? Did we need anything? ’Cause we were never gonna find the car.

  Turns out Esso stations and Api stations are pretty common sights in Italian cities … there are hundreds of ’em.

  So we looked at each other, and we knew what we had to do. Here in this ancient city we would turn to the wisdom of the ages – we would call upon everything we’d ever learned at Eileen Boevers Performing Arts Workshop, taught in a garage in Highland Park, Illinois – improv … drama … expressive dance.

  And so we started yelling, desperate, to every passerby, arms waving, faces contorted – ‘Esso, Api?’ ‘Esso, Api?!’ Miming and gesticulating to show that these two landmarks were side by side. ‘Esso, Api?’ Pierdo el automovil (complete with gestures of driving and shrugging). ‘We lost our car!!!’ Esso, Api? Esso, Api? Old, young, the citizens of Siena nodded politely, they smiled, not understanding. One man gestured to the sky and mimed an umbrella, ‘Piogga,’ he said. Yes, sir. Piogga. It is, indeed, starting to rain.

  We walked, and we ran, and we got wetter, our hair flattened to our heads, as our pantomime, dance, dramatic international improv plea grew more frantic, more urgent, with each passing hour … the light dimming, the sun setting, Esso, Api? Esso, Api?!

  And then an old man in a gray coat nodded. Esso, Api. And pointed. Over there.

  We looked at him in disbelief, and then in the direction he was pointing. And there, like a vision … an Esso station. An Api station right next to it. A Benetton nearby. And in front. All by itself. Our car.

  Esso, Api! Esso, Api! We flung our arms around him in joy, as he nodded politely and a little confused at our sudden outpouring of affection. And still shouting ‘Esso, Api’ we waved a grateful goodbye to the glorious man in the gray coat – the glorious man who understood. And we ran toward the car, and collapsed, in relief, across its hood. Esso, Api. Yes.

  If you keep following a circle, you will get back to where you started. And as I looked at my sister, her head thrown back, curls flying, familiar twinkle in her blue eyes, flopped over the car in grateful desperation as we laughed and laughed over our absurdity … I knew I had. In a foreign country, all grown now, living on separate coasts, we were, nonetheless, back where we started. My sister and me. Il centro. The dot at the center of who we are. Or was it an arrow? I can’t remember.

  Mia piace me sorella. Mia piace l’Italia.

  But non mia piace Siena. Sorry. I just don’t.

  Miami Diary

  ROLF DE HEER

  Rolf de Heer writes, produces and directs feature films. Works include Ten Canoes, The Tracker and Bad Boy Bubby. The Old Man Who Read Love Stories, of which this is just one such story, was filmed in 1999 in French Guyana, after actor kidnap insurance was unobtainable for shooting in Venezuela or Colombia.

  I’m staying at a hotel in Miami. Not just any hotel, but Loews Miami Beach Hotel. The hotel Richard Dreyfuss is staying in. Not the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed in (that’s still reserved for the b
est hotel in Puerto Ayacucho) but the hotel I hate more than any hotel I’ve ever stayed in.

  Figure it this way. Friday morning I’m in the jungle … deep in the jungle in French Guyana, staying in a place where they can’t have small animals as pets because they attract jaguars. The nearest settlement is an hour away by boat. The jungle is thick, peaceful, magnificent.

  It’s still early morning when I walk towards the boat to leave; mist still hangs in the treetops. I take the long trip by boat, my ass still sore from the epic boat journey the previous day. I arrive at the settlement and walk up the hill and through town. By now it’s hot and I sweat freely. Eventually I get to the place where the ‘taxi’ is meant to pick me up (apart from tractors, there appear to be only two vehicles in this town, both vans, which are used to ferry things and people between town and the airport). The taxi arrives; I journey the slow and extremely bumpy journey to the airport. I wait.

  Eventually the twenty-seater arrives. Twenty passengers and too much hand luggage are crammed into the little fuselage. The plane stands on the dirt tarmac, baking. The twenty passengers sit inside, being baked, the air almost unbreathable. A tropical storm passes, the plane starts up and we’re off. The air begins to move, inside the plane and out.

  It’s the air moving outside that’s the trouble. It’s moving rather too much for my (and everybody else’s) liking. The little plane is thrown around in the air like a leaf. People scream. Others are silenced. Some are crying.

  We make it to Cayenne. I find the rest of my luggage, most of which has been left in Cayenne, and gratefully put on a pair of dry socks and shoes; by now I’m a little sick of wearing wet socks and wet boots. I wait for the flight to Miami.

  Eventually I’m allowed to stop waiting and I board the plane … one class only. I’m wedged in the middle seat, between a thin six-foot-eight German scientist whose legs must encroach on my territory (nowhere else for them to go) and a fat man of uncertain nationality whose arm must encroach on my territory (nowhere else for it to go).

  We take off. Again it’s a pretty wild ride, again there are screams, but this is a much bigger plane and eventually it finds its way over and around the storms. We’re fed (sort of). The journey goes on. And on.

  Suddenly we land somewhere, I don’t know where. I’m dying for a cigarette, and to buy something English to read. I’ve read Wednesday’s copy of the Herald Tribune twice, including the financial pages and the stock exchange reports. But we’re not allowed to get off the plane.

  The plane swelters on the tarmac and now some people do get off. Unfortunately, neither the scientist nor the fat man does. I stay wedged, no room to work, nothing to read. Some people get on, then there’s an argument about seats. There are no facilities for seat allocation at this airport, so all the newcomers sit just anywhere, but there are too many people and not enough seats. Babies are crying.

  The flight crew have got lists, so they start to allocate seats. The culprits are found, a couple of blokes attempting to get through to Miami by staying on the plane. The plane takes off without them and I wonder what’s to become of them.

  Within twenty minutes we land again … somewhere else or the same place? There’s confusion about getting off or staying on. I decide I’ve heard we’re allowed to get off if we want to, so I do, not caring much if the plane takes off without me. There’s a terminal, modern, with shops, but smoking is forbidden. I prowl the bookshop for something in English. There are hundreds of magazines, thousands of books, dozens of newspapers, but everything’s in French or Spanish, even the girlie magazines. The only English publication is a Hot Rod magazine. I’m not so desperate.

  I notice a huddle of uniforms, flight attendants and pilots. French. Hah, where there’s an accumulation of French people, there must be smoking. It’s true … the outer ring of nonsmokers is protecting the inner ring of smokers from sight. Such loyalty and devotion to one’s fellow workers. I pretend, in my Balinese shirt and Akubra hat, to be a French flight attendant. They understand. I’m accepted as one of them, even by the nonsmokers. And they say the French are arrogant.

  There is movement, we get back on the plane. We must get back into our allocated seats, even though minutes later the free-for-all scramble of the new passengers happens again. We take off again … two hours to Miami!

  I’m wrong. Two-and-a-half hours to Haiti, no reading, no video, no room to sleep. We land in Haiti, the runway feels like it needs repairing.

  This time we must get off the plane. We’re locked into a large room … too many people, air-conditioning doesn’t work, thoughts of the Black Hole of Calcutta. No shops, no smoking, not much fun. People complain, nothing can be done. I’m tired, nothing can be done.

  Back on the plane again … two hours to Miami! I was in the jungle this morning …

  At Miami someone opens an overhead locker and my computer falls out, landing on someone else’s head and then straight to the floor. It’s picked up and thrown onto a seat. The fat man has decided there’s no reason to rush, so he waits for most of the passengers to be off the plane before he moves and the scientist and I can straighten our legs. This patience turns out to be a mistake. Most of the people on the flight are unable to fill in their customs or immigration forms correctly. The customs and immigration people are remarkably good-humored and friendly about this. I guess it helps that most of them are black, as are the incoming illiterates. The queue moves very slowly.

  I’m through and collect my bag. Even though I look suspiciously like a drug dealer, I’m allowed through without a search … maybe I look too obvious. By now it’s ten o’clock at night, and the mist in the treetops was a long time ago. I stagger out of the terminal into an oven of exhaust fumes and noise. I light up a cigarette and add to the pollution.

  Seconds later a taxi stops in front of me, the driver gesturing that I should get in. I gesture back, indicating I want to have my cigarette in peace. He opens the window and yells at me, I can have my cigarette in the taxi. He’s so urgent about it, so worried about getting caught for jumping the queue, that I think fuck it and throw my bags into the taxi and clamber in after.

  He opens all the windows to dissipate the cigarette smoke and begins, in very bad English, to explain that his father smokes – unbelievable, unbelievable! A packet a day! Unbelievable! Smokes while he’s eating his soup because it tastes better! Unbelievable!

  Then more unbelievable! Which would I take, a million dollars or one cent doubled each day for thirty days? I rather spoil his excitement by saying I’d take the one cent. I ask him where he’s from; he says Colombia. I ask him how long he’s been here; he says, all his life, he was born in Miami. Unbelievable, he says, everybody wants the million dollars. I do a quick calculation and say I’d end up with $15 or $16 million in the thirty days. Unbelievable, he says.

  We get to the hotel, but not before he manages to tell me the cheapest rooms are more than $500 a night (this turns out to be untrue). Unbelievable, I say. The fare is twenty-five dollars. I hand him a fifty and ask for a receipt. He gives me a receipt but no change, and starts to take off while I’m still half in the cab. I yell and he stops. I retrieve my change and give him five bucks. You never know with Colombians, even those born in Miami.

  I enter the hotel lobby, and none of my experiences of the previous sixteen hours has prepared me for the assault on my senses. They don’t play muzak in the lobby, but the local FM station is blasted out at full volume. There’s a band playing at the other end; the two musics fight. The air-conditioning is on so high that within minutes I’m shivering. People walk around yelling into mobile phones. Americans walk around yelling at hotel staff. People at the front desk put on a brave face, but they’ve been yelled at by Americans all day and at best the service is perfunctory.

  I’m booked into a nonsmoking room. I ask for a smoking room but they say they haven’t got any. I don’t believe them but I don’t want to start behaving like an American. Where can I smoke then? In the lobby or outside. In
the lobby it’s minus degrees and neo-Breughel with contemporary noise. Outside it’s still ninety-five degrees (really) and exhaust fumes. This morning I was in the jungle.

  I last half a cigarette in the lobby, then go to my room where at least it’s quiet. I turn off the air-conditioner and try to open the windows … no luck there, the building is almost hermetically sealed.

  I decide to go to sleep. The room is too stuffy without air-con, so on goes the air-con and on come the blankets. (There’s a lunacy about having to have two blankets when the temperature outside is still ninety-two degrees at midnight, but that’s America.)

  I wake up early, eye the minibar but resist, going downstairs instead. ‘Where do I go to have breakfast?’ I ask the front desk clerk. ‘Depends what you want,’ he says. ‘Breakfast is included in my booking,’ I explain. He peers at the computer screen … ‘It’s not,’ he says.

  ‘It may not be on your computer,’ I counter, ‘but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been paid for. It simply means it isn’t on your computer.’ I try to stay very nice, very un-American. I volunteer to go upstairs and get the booking confirmation. I come back with it.

  ‘I was afraid I’d be wrong,’ he says, and hands me three breakfast vouchers.

  ‘Where do I go with these?’ He points to a sort of stall in the middle of the lobby, selling coffee and pastries. I wander over to the stall. I’m told I’m allowed a juice, a pastry and a coffee. I select a mango juice and a pastry and ask for a caffe latte (they have a machine!).

  ‘That’ll be seven dollars.’ I look strangely at the attendant. I had just handed her a breakfast voucher. She looks strangely at me: ‘You’re only allowed orange juice and American coffee.’ What an idiot I am.

  She hands me the orange juice and the American coffee in polystyrene mugs, the pastry on a polystyrene plate with a plastic knife. ‘Sugar’s over there.’ I get a little bag of sugar and sit down in the cold, with some contempo rock star blaring out at six in the morning. I drink the juice. Almost cool. I take a bite of the pastry. Sort of fresh. I pour the little bag of sugar into the coffee … nothing to stir it with.