Day 4 - Rome to Urbania

Some journeys seem to take longer the closer you get to your destination,

I left Roma's beautiful (cough) Termini Station early on Satuday morning, having secured my ticket the day prior and even remembered to reserve a seat. A 3 hour train ride to Falconara on the Adriatic coast was the first leg.

At Termini station I was that guy that always gets those looks from yourg girls or older ladies who are having or are anticipating having trouble freeing up a baggage trolley... and being the all round nice guy (read sucker) that I am ... I helped out when I could, even with a rather large backpack strapped to me, ... and to answer the question... no,.. not all the ladies I offerred assistance to were good looking... some of them were great looking, I think one of them may have been a model, although for what who could say, but there was at least one who was rather plain. maybe...

So if you are looking for trolley loosening tips see me when i get back cos i had that shit sorted after an hour standing around the departures board waiting for my Ancona train platform number to appear. But if you are googling a solution and need info now... It's all in the bounce, lift the trolley gracefully and slam it down hard... dont shy away from a 5 or 6 trolley convoy as this additional mass helps you on the crucial downstroke... the same theory applies to many things not solely trolley related.

The trip to Falconara was reasonable, sat next to an italian woman reading a translated Wilbur Smith novel,.. it seems crap literature knows no boundaries... Got to see some rather picturesque scenery, it felt good to see lush green plains augmented by the brilliant european springtime sun.

At Falconara I disembarked gracefully and got a lungful of Adriatic air, as most of you hardened travellers will know the train line along the east coast of Italia runs along the shoreline for pretty much the entire calf muscle of "the boot", so my trip from Falconara to Pesaro was spent mainly looking over my right shoulder at the expanse of blue and the meeting of sky and water.

At Pesaro it was time to use the italian and sort out the buses,.. A bus to Urbino was the second last leg of the journey, ... ask ''dove la bus per urbino'' at the train station, walk to the °piazza° (I have learnt now that Piazza usually means the place where the rubbish bins are located ... or ... carpark)... stand around waiting, ask the guy in the ticket office when the bus comes, he tells you when the bus comes but doesn't tell you that the tickets are for sale at the bar at the other end of the piazza, so when the bus arrives you do a mad dash across the piazza and meet the bar owner at the door who has a handful of tickets awaiting the oncoming masses... anyway... i am now on the Bus

Urbino, is a university town nestled in the mountains about 45 minutes off the Adriatic coast, fairly unique mix of architecture and humanity, very youthful due to all those pesky students but right up there on world standards of significant buildings with the palazzo ducale and other highlights certainly making the place worth a visit,.. I had a quick stroll around but the very steep hills, my backpack and already 8 hours on the trip clock combined with the fact that it was only 18kms from my ultimate destination made me figure... come back some other time.

So I parked my ass under the portico in the very tasteful carpark and waited for the Urbania bus to arrive... 60 minutes of squinting at oncoming bus signs paid dividends and one large Bucci bus lunged towards me with my destination displayed above the driver's head. 1, or 2 or 20 steep climbs, breathtaking turns and with me the only person on the bus the doors are flung open at yet another car park along with the driver's enthusiastic cry of "Urbania"

But Im not there just yet,.. I am in Urbania to do a 4 week Italian course, accomodation at an apartment has been organised, i have the apartment address but dont really fnacy my chances of finding it,.. i have the owners mobile number which i assume i had been given with good reason.. so i call it.. an old lady answers the phone...

me: buona sera signora, signore davide passeri per favore
signora: 30 seconds of uninterrupted italian shouted down the telephone line
me: mi scusi signora ma parlo un po' italiano
signora: repeats what i assume was the same passage but slower and louder,
she then drops the phone, I figure i am supposed to stay on the line... she returns... and rattles off a series of numbers... i am a clever guy and figure this is probably a phone number... I hang up and ring it

The phone is answered thusly
"yes yes si si aspetta arrivo a cinque minuti.. i have one car ggggreyyyy"
I knew what that meant so ordered a coke and sat down at the bar near the bus stop trying to spot anything moving and grey.

Several cars pull up, none of them grey, one rather nice silver hatch appears,.. i recall the difficulty my father and i had over the years understanding the subtleties in the translation of things silver in colour grey in colour white in colour or transparent, if your dad is a wog, try a little experiment, ask him to pass you something "clear" like a screwdriver with a clear plastic handle... go on... do it... see what happens...

So a Silver VW Golf, translated as grey appears,.

I stand up backpack in my hands,... I am trying to look as touristy as possible ... i am pretty sure I even had a map in my hands... he walks up to me doesn't give me a second look... walks past me into the bar ... out again and into his macchina and off. After what I know now would have been a lap of the town the silver car returns, he gets out walks past me again ... °Davide?° I say... he turns to me as if i just fell from the sky... °Yes... chrisa!!!° we go.

He takes me to what will be home for 4 weeks.. its a combination of typical melbourne suburban construction methods,.. with that added element of euro wog chic, the place is newish but seems to have been constructed using salvaged parts and the remains of what used to reside at that address, different tiles in each room, differrent door knobs on each door, strange mixture of light fittings, but it was reasonably clean and i was assured that it was just "two one hundred metres " from the centro,. this could have been 2100 metres, 102 metres, or 200 metres., I obviously had too much time on my hands.

A brief tour of the facilities and my new landlord Davide disappears and I, a tired and weary traveller on the new leg of a journey stand in the kitchen listening to two flies bounce off the window.

Its probably nowhere near as bad as it seems, i say to myself.

I unpack my bags, lie down for 30 minutes and decide to test out this "two one hundred metre " theory, Davide's directions were good and I find myself in the centre of town... once again turning heads.... the sole objective was food, but some of the buildings and the old bridge i literally stumbled across just made me stop for an oh wow moment.

The smell of wood fired pizza dragged me nose first into La Loggia pizzeria, i had an insalata Caprese with some very generous slabs of fromaggio de la name escapes me, fat juicy pomodore and basil leaves that cover your palm.. and a pizza boscaiola, the pizza was super thin, crisp and still had charcoal specs from the wood oven on it, it hung over the plate, big but not very bready so it hit the spot, luckily my good sense told me that it was unlikely that i would find something to eat on sunday in such a small town.. so i loaded up... wise choice.