Wait. This cannot happen to me. This is relegated to the realm of the naive tourist. I'm a real Italian! I look Italian. I speak (some) Italian. I am an Italian citizen with a tax number and an identity card, and a passport and I've even bought a car! I have an Italian car, damn it, with an Italian license plate. A real car of my own and not on on (expensive) loan from a rental company. My badge of authenticity. Maybe that's why I brought BOTH keys on this trip. I was just so darn tickled with having my very own set that I wanted them with me. To feel, to jingle and hear a musical accompaniment to my real Italian self: the "La macchina di Teresa Mastrobuono" aria. But my real Italian car is sitting about 18 km away waiting for me to drive it home. Except I can't do that now. The car keys - the original and the spare are in the purse. And, I've just discovered, the purse is gone. Stolen, apparently, from my tote bag on the train somewhere between Bologna and Pescara. Stolen purse. It was true. Although I couldn't believe it, I knew it was true. Now what? After a 7-hour train trip, 5 of them next to a fat man with hairy arms that kept brushing against mine in the sweltering train car, so that I could feel his sweat and the scratchiness of the synthetic fabric of his shirt, all I wanted to do was get home. But home was 40 km away from my present location at the Pescara train station. And, right, I have no car. Luckily, I have a phone. And as an Italian who owns her own Italian house, I have friends here. I called every single one in the contact list - Italian, American, British, Scottish. No one was roused. It was a Sunday afternoon. When all "real" Italians of any national origin or sense were either with their families or at the beach. Not me. My authentic ass was in a sling. And since the validity of my national identity was doing me no good, I switched to tourist mode. Where would someone with no ties at all to this country begin? Right. The police. And off I went, carting what was left of my luggage with me.
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Day 1 into 2
The police at Pescara Centrale station were nice enough to teach me the word for "robbery" ("furto"). And to let me know they could do little else but take a report. Even though I played the poor stranded femme fatale role to the hilt to try and jockey a ride home, I ended up returning home via a 65 euro taxi ride. My cleaning lady lady let me in to my house with her spare key. My house keys were keeping the car keys company. The cab driver was not inclines to stop at the big IPER grocery store, the only one open on Sunday, to pick up food for dinner, as I had planned to do if I'd had my real Italian car. I resigned myself to making do with the lump of warm cheese and 4 bottles of wine the considerate thief had left behind. By some grace or pity of some higher force, my previous guests had left behind some great homemade ravioli and a jar of sauce canned by one of the local ladies. I feasted. I did break open the wine. Only one bottle. And fell right to sleep after dinner.
to be continued....
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