Camping Not-So-Fabulous

A great deal has happened to me on the course of my travels, including spilled drinks, lost reservations, buildings collapsing, beds breaking, misplaced luggage, fellow travelers fighting either verbally or physically, famine, fire, plagues of locusts, etc. I tend, as anyone who has traveled with me will admit, not to complain. I tend to always talk about the positive, gloss cheerfully over the negative and do my damnedest to be a good sport.

(And ok, technically I've never had to deal with a plague of locusts, but all those other things have occurred--even the collapsing building.)

However, in the interests of not just skipping Rome all together, I must mix in the bitter with the sweet, as the saying goes, and tell you about one of the worst travel experiences of my life. So, with my apologies, the following will most likely feel like a laundry list of complaints. I'll try to keep it light and throw in enough jokes to keep from scaring you off, but feel free to skip it if you wish.

So we get to the site, and since we're in a public service vehicle, they have other tasks to do, so they drop us off, in the cold, now persistent rain, with our gear and high-tail it off to wherever Italians in cargo vans go. I think they probably have a big cargo van swap-meet where they brag about their latest adventures and drink coffee from tiny, tiny cups. I theorize that our drivers will have the best story at this particular meet "We picked up 12 American Tourists in a cargo van designed to hold no more than 5 people plus luggage, then transported them through the streets driving as if we were an ambulance!"

My mother goes and meets with the organizer of this crazy event, and we meanwhile stand, in the rain, attempting to keep ourselves warm and dry as best we can considering there is no possibility of either.

After quite some time (20 minutes? It feels like 40.) we are shuffled off to the welcome desk of the place, and from there into two tiny mobile-homes, each split down the middle into two three man rooms, complete with ensuite bathrooms, running (frigid) water, and non-functioning heaters.

We are given sheets, and some of us are even given blankets. (oh happy day! Surely the gods have smiled upon us and granted us luxury!)

So, without hot water or heat we make our unceremonious arrival in Rome. Well, near Rome. Actually getting into the city center from Camping NSF takes over an hour via public transit, but we're near Rome, we think. At least we know Rome is out there somewhere. Everybody is speaking Italian, right? So how far away can the city be?

Of course our entire area, being a campground, a location which is notorious for not being well paved, has absorbed enough water to float a 37 foot yacht in comfortably. Thus we are, by the time we are assigned rooms, slogging through mud, trying our best to stay out of it but failing, and tracking with us enough dirt and clay to build a 5 gallon vase, fill it, and raise flowers.

We get to the mobile homes ("Look guys, it's just like being back in Alabama!") and drop off our stuff, then begin discovering how many 'unique features' our lodgings have.

One of the doors doesn't latch and must be locked or it drifts open. One latches too well (trapping the occupants inside! Whee!). Three of the four heaters don't work. No-one has hot water. All of the rooms are filled with mud (on account of the rain) and the steps shift, sometimes blocking the doors so that people become trapped in their rooms. The situation appears pretty grim.

On the plus side, there's food in one of the rooms, which the girls promptly begin to consume--since we're all starving and they figure that each room had food in it. We discover later that:

A) Only this room had food. It was meant for all. And
B) This food was to be our breakfast for the following morning (whoops!).

Keep in mind that this evening we are scheduled to attend a nice sit-down banquet-and-production, we assume in semi-formal or at least dressy-casual clothes.

None of us would survive the showers without hypothermia though, so we're in a bit of a bind about not looking like a bunch of gypsy-hobos that just fell off the train and put on nice threads.

All this takes a backseat to a much worse revelation though. Our leader has some contact with one of the organizers, and he tells us that we should definitly attend the event (cue eye-twitch and displeased voice) in-costume. Now understand that these are the costumes of ancient Romans, not exactly draft-free if-you-get-my-drift, and designed for much warmer climates than the 50 degree rain we are experiencing. We had hoped for 70+ and partly cloudy and that is obviously NOT what we're going to get.

So we're still trying our damnedest to be good sports about all this. I'm cracking jokes about how I think I see blue skies ahead, and how at least the rain has let up to a drizzle (though it's caused the temperature to drop) and that there's always suicide!

Ok, so I didn't actually make jokes about shuffling off our mortal coils to avoid some bad weather and embarrassing moments, but it was tempting.

Since we're all still trying to be good sports, we nod and mumble "Ok", although none of us is particularly happy about hearing that we've got to wear the costumes out in this weather.

So, without having seen any other members of this Groupo Historico business except our contact, we decide to get dressed and head down to the main area, where supposedly there will be travel arrangements provided for us. (This dinner event is held far in towards Rome, and we must get there by bus).

Now allow me to explain briefly that we are at this point unaware of the bus situation. Quite simply, there are no buses for everybody. There are individual chartered buses arranged by the individual groups (the dance troupe, the Spanish bachannalians, etc) and we are essentially arriving, travel arrangement-less and just trying to hop in other people's private buses. Speaking no Italian, and very few of them speaking any English.

At this point though, we don't know this yet. We're still under the impression that there are buses meant for the whole group.

So we get into our silly-looking costumes, and we huddle in front of our leader's mobile home (Hey Maw! Come see this here funny dress Ah put awn!) in a bunch. 12 drowned cats, shivering in too-little clothing and just thanking the heavens that at least it stopped raining.

We run across our contact organizer, who is, of course, NOT IN COSTUME (this should have been our first clue to go straight back, change into nice clothes, and proceed as planned). We get to the bottom of the hill where everyone is congregating at the bus-area, and there are lots of people. All members of the Groupo Historico. They all appear very nice and friendly and ARE DRESSED IN STREET CLOTHES.

This is NOT humorous to our bedraggled band. We fear we are being made a laughing stock, and that truly fortune and our God have both turned against us in our hour of need.

Ok, so that's being a bit overdramatic.

In any case, it was awkward.

Thankfully we note that a couple of the groups do have large bags and are going to change when they arrive (turns out they were part of the dance troupe that was in the program, performing) and finally 4 people from Germany show up in costume as well (turns out they were also performing).

In fact, only a handful of people show up in costume, and 95% of them are in the freaking show that goes with dinner!

We are not amused.

But we bite our tongues (it's too late to go back and change now) and board the bus, ignorant of everything going on around us in quick, sing-song Italian, and head for dinner.