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Live Your Life Newsletter - December 2005
Travel & Hostel Newsletter for Backpackers
Newsletters: December 2005 | All Archives
Catalyst For Adventure: The True Story of Best Friends Travelling Through Europe
This is an exciting feature of the “Live Your Life Newsletter”! Every month we will be featuring an extract of a fantastic new book entitled, “Catalyst for Adventure: The true story of best friends travelling through Europe” by Crystal Stanczak.
We spent our last days with Elizabeth in Florence, trapped on a tourist highway. Tired students and pickpockets pushed their way around us as a dozen gelato stands shouted for our patronage. Souvenir kiosks spat out Florentine junk of every variety. You could purchase anything with a statue of David on it—with or without a leaf censoring his anatomy. If Michealangelo were alive today I wondered if he would sport his work on a wife-beater tank top. Would the artist, like the midwestern tourists behind me, overlook the fact that the threading in his tank top was coming undone with every twist of his torso?
Maybe. Then again, on the tourist highway, when accompanied by white sneakers and fanny packs, such fashion violations seemed minor.
At the Duomo, in Florence, pigeons outnumbered people. I have never understood why people enjoy playing with pigeons. To me, they are rats that fly.
They peck around without proper fear of the fact that I am 75 times their size, and pester me so that I cannot enjoy the outdoors. Pigeons have horrible social boundaries and often carry lice and bacteria.
When you don’t feed them, even when you kick at them, they return within minutes, forgetting that they are completely unwelcome. Pigeons are the annoying younger cousins of the bird family.
We stood in front of the Duomo, an antiquated structure polluted by car exhaust, and though we tried to appreciate its beauty, at best the three of us could only relate to its battered state. After walking all day and playing the rope in a tug of war between tourist shops, the four of us (Elizabeth, Summer, the Duomo and I) were exhausted. We escaped, slipping onto a forgotten back street, and that is where Florence became beautiful.
Our only company came in the form of two local mini-mart owners. Their stores faced each other, and somehow forgot that they were in competition. The owners stood outside, arguing about something passionately with smiles on their faces and laughter on their breath. They were delighted to help three ladies pick out foreign candy, and we were delighted to have the help. So helpful, they were, in fact, that we asked them for a cheap-yet-delicious restaurant recommendation. The men sent us down the street to a friend’s little diner, a place I’ll never forget.
The restaurant had five tables. Jugs of red wine were pre-poured and the staff memorized everyone’s order. This was the local piece of culinary heaven I had always imagined. As opposed to the restaurants near all the tourist traps, this place was really affordable, and since it was Elizabeth’s last evening with us, we felt compelled to order whatever we wanted. We would have an appetizer, a salad, a pasta, a wine, and a dessert. We might have to be rolled out of the joint in a few hours, but that caused in us no hesitation.
One of the key phrases I learned in Italian was ”I am a vegetarian, is this one okay?” (accompanied by my pointing at the menu). This is how I ordered a five-course meal. Summer did not share my dietary restrictions, and proceed to simply point away at whatever looked interesting. The evening was filled with mystery. For one, it was an enigma what sex the server actually was. He/she spoke in a low for a girl, but high for a man voice. He/she had short, slicked hair and a baggy white dress shirt. Fortunately, if we called him/her with the wrong word, the language barrier was our scapegoat. Another mystery appeared when the ambiguously gendered person set before Summer her first coarse. Summer did her best to poke around the meat substance, not recalling, at that moment, the correct words for various farm animals. When she couldn’t feign her disgust any longer, Summer called He/she over to our table.
“What kind of meat is this?” Summer asked.
He/she wasn’t offended in the least. Rather professionally, our server proceeded to pantomime a chicken. If I were playing charades, I would definitely pick he/she to be on my team. He/she was focused at the task at hand and within seconds, we all realized that Summer had been eating chicken liver.
“Eew!” Summer said, catching the attention of another table.
Luckily, the other courses consisted of normal and delicious ingredients.
As we enjoyed the rest of our meal, it became apparent that this cozy hole in the wall was a local secret. People began to show up one after another—and it was only a Tuesday night. As the line for a spot at one of the coveted five tables winded around the restaurant, and eventually around the block, I began to feel a twinge of guilt that we had ordered so many courses.
“Nonsense,” Elizabeth reasoned, “We may be tourists, but we have every right to enjoy this place.
Besides we were sent here by a local.”
And with that, we slowly sipped espresso and let fluffy pieces of Tiramisu make their way around our tongues.
Just as expected, I was stuffed beyond recognition. If it weren’t for the fresh night air tapping at my cheeks, I would probably have gone into a starch comma. The stars gave off a hazy twinkle and with each step violin music grew louder, until we reached its source. This was no ordinary violin music.
The player was a wiry Indian-Italian boy who held his instrument incorrectly while casually sucking on a cigarette. His bow slid forcefully across the four strings, stopping everyone on the street. This was the best violinist I had ever heard. He would close his eyes and feel the music. We could all feel it as well.
When he finished a legato piece, we all craved another legato. If he started a waltz, it was the only song anyone wanted to hear. Vivaldi, Mozart, and Beethoven, all became our favorite artist, depending on whom he was playing at the time. A dozen songs passed and a sizeable crowd gathered until we realized that we had been sitting on cold concrete for an hour. His violin case was open for donations in the form of change, but this adolescent prodigy was worth bills. One day, I predicted, he would be a world-class composer.
Contented, we made our way back to our room. My eyes sank into sleep, relishing the thought that I had just experienced an evening of Tuscan perfection.
Order this book: You can order this book at Amazon.com
Read any other good travel books? Send your recommendations to submissions@st-christophers.co.uk
Newsletters: December 2005 | All Archives
