TRAVEL SPECIAL...Travel planner - Bonjourno Roma

Travel planner - Bonjourno Roma





The 1,000 years of freedom oozes in the gait of women in Rome. It's inexplicable till one sees it.
In fact, what stands out in Europe, is the freedom and abandon of their women

Justin and Beatrice make a strik ing couple. The ebony and ivory combination at the reception of the Hotel Piram, a few hundred yards from Rome's Termini station exuded enough charm to make one feel immediately comfortable.

It had been a pretty long, but seamless, journey from New Delhi to the Italian capital with a small stopover at Doha. A little apprehensive but surely not tired.

In these `whatsapp times', one constantly gets guided and alerted. A friend from Osnasbruck kept insisting to take the metro to Pyramid. And added the rider, `Beware of getting duped. Rome is not a safe place at all'.

Honestly speaking, I never came across anything to be alarmed at all.Above all, to be able to lavishly use my mother tongue so far away from Kolkata, upped my spirit a lot more.

The waiters, the ticket sellers at the HO-HO bus, the hawkers of trinkets and hats, all spoke Bangla with a twang. The drawl reveals their nationality. They are from Bangladesh. One morning, waiting at the bus stop, I get to hear one of their stories. “I had a decent job in Dhaka and a position in society. I left all of it and see what I'm doing here.“ He was selling hats and bottles of chilled water for five euros and one euro, respectively. Rome in June is real hot. Often, it felt as hot as Delhi. Keeping a jeans on turned out to be an ordeal. The common dress was shorts or three-quarters and a tee or top. And every girl was wearing nude sandals. Well, they really have legs to show off. And the 1,000 years of freedom oozed in their gait. It's inexplicable till one sees it. I guess, what stands out in Europe, is the freedom and abandon of their women.

Rome's HO-HO buses are a treat. A day's ticket assures you any number of rides till nine in the afternoon. Yes, the sun sets only after 10, so one can jolly well call it late afternoon.

Our visit to Rome was actually a visit to the Sistine Chapel. It took one full day to walk through the corridors, amazed at the walls and ceilings and domes but that's nothing new. That's what Michelangelo and Raphael and their Renaissance brethren does to lesser mortals. Make them realise, how pathetically average in talent most people are. And of course, gives them a glimpse of true excellence of human imagination and expression of beauty.

There is hardly any street in Rome that is not captured in movies. So it is rather a conditioned reflex to remember Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn, licking their ice-cream cones, when you walk down the Spanish steps (Piazza de Spagna). But what was not expected was the Keats Shelley House right next to it.

That's where my friend in Germany helped. I took a tour of the house and `whatsapp' told me to take the metro from Termini to visit the last resting place of the two immortals.

So the very next morning, without breakfast, I rushed to the station to find that the whole of the city was rushing.Holiday has a strange habit. It makes one feel the rest of the world too is on a holiday. It wasn't.

Initially, it took some time to figure out which train to take from the maze of platforms. And when it was decided, I shuddered at how to get into it. I guess, all metros at rush hour look the same. Only difference from our own is that, women with prams and school kids with cycles push and shove their way into the trains.

Still managed to board one and even managed to be hurtled out on the Pyramide station.

After a couple of queries for directions, we figured out our walk and reached the cemetery. It was closed and still a solid 45 minutes to wait. Nothing doing. I waited, ambled around aimlessly and fruitlessly egged my watch on to run fast.

Finally, an old lady came and parked her car and went in. I went up and asked, `Can I go in?'. She said, “Bonjourno, please come in.“ I was ashamed. I forgot to wish her. It is not in our habit or upbringing to say `Hello'. More so, the waiting took a toll on my Indian manners.

I followed her in. She showed me the way where Shelley was buried, a little pagoda on a high ground. Meandering the pebble strewn path, I reached there. His ashes were buried here after being cremated where he was drowned, with a collection of Keats' poems in his pocket.

And Keats was buried a 100 yards away, with the words, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water“ etched on the tombstone. Next to Keats lay his friend Joseph Savern.

The train to Florence was about to leave in an hour. I couldn't finish the conversation with Keats that I had planned when I first came across the lines, “Lips thou canst kiss.“

The metro back to Termini was equally packed. The morning rush hour was coming to an end. And it was time to say goodbye to the Eternal City.

Saumyajit Basu

ETM23AUG15