WHEN IN ROME!
When morning’s light pierced through the window like a hot poker jabbing right into my eye, I got up and we jiggled our way to the train station. Rome was a fairly short train ride away and once we arrived we were pretty pumped to get out on the town. Our hostel was pretty weird to say the least. It was owned by the mysterious “Walter” but run by a group of short oompa loompa like Sri Lankins. We went to the address on our directions and walked upstairs into a small cramped office full of coffee and nuttella jugs. After hours of listening to a short orange man yell at some goof over the phone we had about had it. Thankfully though, he finished his rant and calmed down enough to speak to us in incomprehensible English constantly reassuring us that he had done this before. This did not reassure us. With clouds of spittle spewing forth from the Sri Lankan’s gaping mouth we were led by his lackey to our greatly anticipated room. We followed the oaf of a man carrying our bed sheets as he led us to our room but we started to wonder if we had understood correctly when he led us outside and across the street into a park.. We whispered worries to each other about possibly having just paid for a nicely sheeted park bench and were rank with expectation believing at every turn that he would lay our sheets down in the gutter and say, “here’s yer new home for the next 3 days boys! How’dya like it?” After about 2 miles of anxiety filled walking we came to a door and breathed a sigh of relief yesss we’re gonna live inside! Gerald (the oafish lackey) puled from his shawl a ring of 50 keys and opened the door. We followed as he opened another locked door and then another and then another and a we entered a comically small elevator. Then two more locked doors were opened and we were finally at our room. No exaggeration there we’re five locked doors between us and the outside Rome. We didn’t know if we should feel safe or trapped. Gerald then handed us a 50 Lb. ring of keys and gave us a 20 min. power point presentation on how to get past the slew of doors to the street below. We thanked him and bid him au duo and then relaxed a bit in our new Hostel / Fortress. Soon after we set our bags down, we met our roomies. It was a mixed apartment this time so there was Gabby (f), Alfonzo (m), and Adrian (m) these three were some of the most superbly lovely Mexicans I have ever met. There was also a Columbian family that lived with us. It was kinda interesting 1. Because we had all these people in a tiny apartment and would live with them for several days and 2. Because we had to get use to female flat mates. After we said hello we left the flat and went out into the market. We found some cool stuff like a compass and a knife that I ended up buying and then we went off in search of Rome-ish monuments. We found tons. We saw a massive cathedral which we entered and then we found a famous fountain and some other glorious things. I even ate the best Rome Pizza ever! It was sooo greasy and they gave me soo mucha and it had full uncut green olives on it and yummmm it was amazing. Eventually we decided to head back home and get a good night’s rest. After spending hours getting through all the locked doors we entered our abode and noticed something … amiss. The floor in our room was a big puddle. In fact after closer inspection the puddle continued all throughout the flat and went all the way to the other side, past the kitchen and computer and into the other bathroom revealing its source.. The washing machine.. I had already removed my pants and put on this sweet pair of women’s yoga pants that I had purchased the very same night in a desperate effort to use them as long underwear and so I began dutifully tiptoeing across the pools of tepid water and then mopping said water with a mop I found… This is what Gabby and her friends walked in on. Me in extremely tight yoga pants and nothing else, mopping up the inch deep pool in our kitchen. It was odd but I just went with it and despite the stares I just continued to mop as if nothing was wrong. I think I gained their respect, because later they asked me if I knew how to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew. That’s not the kind of wisdom you go asking just anyone for. Unfortunately I had no idea although I did quickly look it up online and offer some suggestions. After all that, we went to sleep.
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